One of the great things unique to the human experience is our ability to feel awe, to be overcome with wonder at the size or beauty or power of a thing. We feel a certain awe at some of the things that mankind can produce: a ten-second, 100-meter sprint, or a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, or space travel, or cell phones.
The things that have the most power to awe me, however, are the things outside of human achievement: an ocean, an orchid, a sunset, the Sahara, the vastness of space, or the tiny complexity of the atomic particle. We cannot replicate these things. We can only marvel at them.
But if our ability to experience awe is one of our greatest abilities, then our ability to grow complacent is one of our most tragic. We get used to things, and what once made us say “Wow!” now elicits a yawn.
The best toy we get for Christmas lies forgotten in a corner a few months later. We live within sight of the mountains but never go there. Before marriage you try desperately to be with each other and impress each other, but after marriage you can go days or weeks without meaningful conversation. We forget the comfort, convenience and luxury of our lives and complain about the bills and the yardwork, and about the jobs that make our lives possible. So we get used to things, familiarity breeds contempt. We grow complacent. Complacency is the enemy of wonder, the enemy of joy, the enemy of real life.
And the greatest tragedy of all is when we grow complacent about that which should inspire in us the greatest awe, joy and wonder. For many of us, that is exactly our experience as Christians. Faith can get cold, and new life becomes normal life.
We can get so complacent that we simply do not notice God. It seems to me that we who have been Christians the longest are most prone to this complacency. The people most passionate about God and faith are often those who have most recently come to faith in God. On the next tier down are those who may have been Christians for a while, but came to faith as adults. But often the least passionate, most complacent are those of us who are ‘lifers’, we who have been immersed in God and church all our lives.
This morning I would like to remind us of God, to point to him and rekindle in our hearts a sense of awe at this one who is truly awe-some. The Lord God is supremely glorious and powerful and so he is the only worthy object of our worship and awe, and our trust, too.
Psalm 29 not only invites us, but compels us to consider the glory and power of God. With fierce imagery it describes the violent intensity of a thunderstorm and proclaims, ‘This is God’s power on display.’
The residents of Florida braced themselves for the arrival of a hurricane. We recently saw a flood in British Columbia that covered an area of several thousand miles a yard deep. Overseas we read about tsunamis or typhoons that literally rip a town to shreds.
That is the scenario being painted in Psalm 29: A storm gathers over the sea and unleashes its strength onto the land. Thunder detonates and lightning explodes in the sky. The earth shakes and even the mountains tremble. Towering cedars are twisted into splinters and forests are flattened, laid waste before the fury of the storm.
‘Look,’ says the psalmist. ‘Behold the power of God!’
The background and historical setting of Psalm 29 is especially fascinating. Psalm 29 is one of the oldest psalms, perhaps the oldest, and it is generally accepted that the origins of the psalm are not Israelite, but Canaanite, and that in its earliest form it reflects the worship of the Canaanite god Baal. At some point the Israelites, probably King David in particular, adapted the psalm for the worship of Yahweh, Israel’s God. Whether he just took it over and simply inserted God’s name for Baal’s, or whether he reshaped and edited it a little more, we do not know. But he did not compose it from scratch. From a technical, literary and linguistic perspective, the language and style reflects the ancient Canaanite literature, not Israelite. The place names Lebanon and Kadesh are non-Israelite, and the mountain in verse 6 is given its Canaanite name, Sirion, not its Israelite name, Hermon. Plus, the content of the psalm speaks of those things which were Baal’s particular portfolio.
So the psalmist is taking the things that were said and sung about Baal, and saying, ‘No, it’s not Baal of whom these things are true. It is the LORD God.’
Consider Christians in a Moslem country. The Moslem creed is: ‘There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ If a Christian in that country were to write a song that said, ‘There is no God but the LORD, and he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ his son’, and that song were to be sung in Christian churches in that country, that is what David is doing here. He is doing what Elijah doing on Mount Carmel: He is setting the record straight, ascribing to God the glory and honor that is God’s alone, not Baal’s.
Let consider some things that will be helpful in understanding this psalm.
Canaanite religion, like later Greek mythology, was built upon a belief in a pantheon of gods. The chief god was named El, and he was the creator, and the father of all the gods, one of whom was his son, Baal. El was not omnipotent, and over time his son Baal challenged his authority. When El tried to put Baal in his place by subordinating him to Yam, the god of the sea, Baal resisted, and conquered Yam. Eventually El surrendered power to Baal, retiring, in a sense. So Baal became the chief god.
Baal was the center of the religion in the land of Canaan when the Israelites moved in to occupy the land under Joshua, and for most of Israel’s history it was Baal worship that often pulled them away from the worship of the LORD God.
Baal was the god of storm and war (in ancient mythology those two things often went together). He was also the god of fertility, as the fertility of the land depended on the rain. His voice was said to be heard in the thunder, and the autumn storms, which swept in from the sea, demonstrated his triumph and lordship over the sea-god, Yam. One of Baal’s titles was ‘The Rider of the Clouds’. In Canaanite religious imagery, Baal was depicted holding lightning as a weapon in his hand. Baal was the god believed to control the forces of nature, the climate and, in particular, the annual cycles of rainy and dry seasons on which the planting and harvest depended.
Psalm 29 takes the language used of Baal and applies it to Yahweh, the LORD God of Israel, and claims for the LORD sovereignty over the elements and superiority over Baal.
Let us now look at the Psalm.
The psalm opens with a call to worship, the three-fold use of ‘ascribe’. Threes in Scripture signify fullness or completeness. So in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 we have the three-fold ‘holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty’ to express God’s complete and full holiness.
Here in Psalm 29 we have the three-fold ‘ascribe’ – Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name.
That is, do not simply admit that the LORD is strong and glorious, but do it completely, with a full, wholehearted, unreserved declaration of the strength and glory of the LORD.
The phrase ‘mighty ones’, by the way, (Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones) in Hebrew is bene elim, which means literally ‘sons of God’. In the Canaanite context, remember, when all the deities were supposed to be created by El, this verse would be a call for all the other gods to acknowledge the supremacy of Baal: Ascribe to Baal, all you gods, glory and strength.
But in Psalm 29, David turns it around and says, ‘Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength, all you gods.’ He’s echoing Exodus 15:11 – Who among the gods is like you, O LORD Almighty? and Psalm 97, which says, ‘Worship him, all you gods . . . For you, O LORD, are the most high over all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods.’
In other places in the Scriptures, notably Job chapters 1 & 2, and possibly Genesis 6, the phrase ‘sons of God’ refers to angels. In Revelation 4 & 5 we do see these ‘sons of God’ casting their crowns before the throne of God and singing, ‘You are worthy, our LORD and God, to receive glory, honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.’
So Psalm 29 begins, Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones, all you gods and angels, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. All those the world worships, all the celestial beings who inspire in us reverence and awe and fear, they all bow the knee, humbled before the glory and power of the great God of heaven, and as they do so, they are giving to the LORD that which is due him.
We are called, too, to ascribe to Him the glory of which he is due. He is due our worship. When we exalt, praise and glorify God, we are giving him what he deserves. We are speaking the truth about him. God is glorious. God is strong.
Do we believe that? Do we believe that God is stronger than our circumstances, that he is able to carry us through, to cause all things to work out for our good, to ultimately rescue us from death, to free us from our sins of the past and present? God is able to do all that and more than we can even ask or imagine, for he is supremely strong and glorious.
The psalm goes on to say, Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness. This phrase has to do with dress, and is better translated, ‘in holy array’, as in 1 Chronicles 20:21. When the high priest was decked out in his priestly robes, richly ornamented, spotless linen, then he was said to be serving ‘in holy array’ or ‘in the beauty of holiness’. The priests’ clothing symbolized righteousness and purity.
To worship the LORD in the ‘splendor’ or ‘beauty of holiness’, is to worship God not in a nice outfit but out of a heart that is pure. God looks at our hearts, and the kind of heart that honors him as we worship, is a humble, contrite, pure heart. When we worship every Sunday, how often do we take time to put on our ‘holy array’? Men, when you tie my tie and check it in the mirror, are you also doing an inward check of your heart to see if it, too, is right? Ladies, when you put on make-up to enhance your natural beauty, are you also making your heart beautiful for God, drawing out the inner beauty of love for God, patience, integrity, kindness, and faith? Do we worship in the beauty of holiness, or are our hearts cluttered and messy with apathy, distraction, or sin?
To worship in the beauty of holiness is to give to God what he is due.
The main body of the psalm, verses 3-9, portrays the power of the LORD by using imagery of the storm, imagery typically associated with Baal in Canaanite mythology. The focus of the psalm is ‘the voice of the LORD’, a phrase that occurs seven times. The voice of the LORD is used to demonstrate God’s sovereign power over the forces of nature, and by implication, over Baal and all other gods.
In verse three: The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
Thunder was a particularly apt metaphor for the voice of God, for thunder was the most impressive noise known to the ancient world. Thunder is identified with the voice of God elsewhere in Scripture, most notably in Job 37:2-5:
Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back. God’s voice thunders in marvellous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.
God’s voice is a voice that resounds, says Psalm 18:9, that ‘melts the earth’, says Psalm 46:6, and is ‘majestic’ and would ‘shatter an empire’, says Isaiah 30:30-31.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters: In Canaanite literature Yam is the god of the seas and had been subjugated by Baal. This verse may have been originally composed in honor of Baal’s victory, but the psalmist knows (and we know) that it is the LORD who lord over the sea.
The voice of the LORD is powerful: In the very beginning, at the birth of all that exists, in Genesis 1 it is the voice of God that is the expression of his creative power, so that when he says, ‘Let there be light’, there is light. He says, ‘Let there be sun, stars, the vast expanse of space… Let there be seas and dry land, fish, trees and birds and all creatures’, and these things came to be. There is more power in one word from the LORD than we can imagine. ‘When I say a thing, does it not come to pass?’ he asks.
The storm imagery of the psalm then moves from over the waters onto the land, to Lebanon, where its fury wreaks destruction. The voice of the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. The cedars of Lebanon are, in the Bible, symbols of strength, but they disintegrate in the face of the power of the LORD. Similarly, the unshakeable mountains tremble and quake. The mountains skipped like rams at the presence of the LORD, says Psalm 114. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, says Psalm 97:5.
The voice of the LORD strikes with flashes of lightning… it twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. These are forceful and graphic images. Nothing can withstand the power of God when it is unleashed. That is the point of this psalm. The LORD is, as the first verses declared, supremely glorious and strong.
All throughout this psalm, Baal is openly derided. God moves in on Baal’s turf. The sea, the thunder and lightning, the storm winds, these things associated with Baal, and yet Baal is absolutely powerless. These things belong to the LORD.
The section ends in verse 9 with: And in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’
Only God is worthy of glory and praise and honor and worship. He alone is God. Baal is nothing; God is everything. In our day, there are different gods who vie for our allegiance. Everyone has a god. It might be a named religion or deity. It might be an ideology or cause. For many, they are making a god out of success, achievement, comfort, wealth, or other such things. But each one of us is devoting our life to something that we are convinced demands our allegiance, something that will bring deep satisfaction to our lives, something that will prove ultimately worth living for.
There is no God but the LORD. Achievements and money, other religions and causes, are as pathetic as Baal when it comes to being worthy of our living for. They are unstable foundations, and unworthy of our lives. At the end of it all they will be shaken like the mountains of Canaan. They will disintegrate like the mighty cedars of Lebanon. Only God is worthy of worship, only God is worthy of our lives and our trust, for there truly is no other God but the LORD.
It is God who created the heavens and the earth by the power of his word.
It is God who stretched out the heavens like a canopy.
It is God who formed the stars, who called them into being and suspended them in their places.
His power is infinite.
His wisdom is complete.
His lordship, absolute.
His rule, eternal.
His justice, perfect.
His mercy, unending.
His will, supreme.
His victory, inevitable.
His love, unconditional.
His promises, sure.
His goodness, immeasurable.
His glory, overwhelming.
This is the LORD God, God of Israel, Lord of heaven and earth.
Psalm 29 continues: The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as king forever. This is simply a summary of what the psalm has been describing.
But look how it ends, in the last verse:
The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace.
The LORD whose glory and power are supreme, the God before whom all other gods bow and all that is strong gives way, this God is a good God. The power we have seen so graphically pictured in the storm is exercised for the good of his people. He gives them strength, and it is his own strength.
When life’s circumstances threaten to overwhelm, this God is on your side, to protect, to strengthen. This God in whom we have placed our trust is a sure refuge. Because of his mighty power, we know that we can rest on his promise that nothing can snatch us out of his hand, that nothing can separate us from his love for us in Christ.
I have a son, who is just over one year old and one of the things I long for is for him to be proud of me as a father as he grows up. We want to look up to our fathers. We remember thinking that our ‘dad can do everything’. Dads are our towers of strength.
The God whom we have been speaking of this morning, is our Father, and you, through Jesus Christ, are his beloved child. To those who believed in the Son of God, he gave the right to be children of God, says the Apostle John.
Friends, this is your God and Father. Do you forget? I know I do.
If we have grown complacent, or even forgetful, then Psalm 29 calls us to consider again and stand in awe again at our great LORD and God, our Father.
Two responses are appropriate for us:
We respond in worship. God is the only worthy object of our worship. and we have the privilege of not just worshiping in awe at the presence, power, and glory of God, but worshiping him from a perspective of love. Our worship is reverent, but joyful. It is awe, but it is adoration. The Israelites would often fall to their faces, overwhelmed, but they would say, ‘His love endures forever.’ So we say to God, ‘You are mighty!’ and ‘You are wonderful!’ We sing, ‘O worship the king all glorious above, and gratefully sing his power and his love.’ We tell ‘of his might’ we ‘sing of his grace. He is our Maker, Defender. He is our Redeemer and Friend.’
In our singing with our words and from our hearts, we will declare the supreme worth of God. For who is like him? So we respond in worship.
Secondly, we respond in trust. He is worth giving our lives to. We can trust his word, that whoever believes in his son ‘shall not perish but have eternal life’. We can trust that ‘all things work together for the good of those who love God’. We can trust that ‘death has lost its sting’ and ‘its victory’, and that there awaits for God’s people life abundant and eternal on the other side. We can trust that in the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us. We can trust that our sufferings here are but a little while, and they are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all. We can trust that faithfulness and endurance gain for us a crown of life. We can even trust that though we lay our lives down for his sake, we will not fail to be honored and even praised by God.
We can trust God, because if God is for us, who can be against us?
God is supremely powerful and glorious. His strength is good, his glory wonderful. And so he is supremely worthy of both our worship and our trust. Offer yourself in worship and praise, and to reaffirm our trust in God, to give ourselves to him again.
Amen.