God Speaks to Everyone (Psalm 29)

Well, like a lot of you, I love watching family movies.

And one of the things, I'm sure this is not unique to me, but one of the things that I do when we do a family movie is I'd say seven out of ten times I pick the movie.

My kids aren't hurting for screen time, they're not hurting to watch what they want to watch.

I'm gonna pick what we watch most of the time when we watch a family movie, and it doesn't mean I want to pick things that they don't like, but I usually try to pick a classic that they don't know to pick.

I love watching 80s and 90s movies that I grew up watching, and I'm thinking Back to the Future, I'm thinking uh The Goonies, I'm thinking The Sandlot, and recently they're applauding back there.

And recently it started to think, at least for my older kids, I think it's about time to dust off Ferris Bueller's day off.

And so it sounds like most of you are aware of this movie.

Obviously, we're aware of this movie.

It's a classic, but if you're not, you've a very charismatic teen, a high schooler, and his girlfriend and his best friend, they skip school one day in Chicago, and somehow, charismatically, they see what seems to be everything there is to see in Chicago over the course of one day.

And one of my favorite scenes, which wasn't one of my favorite scenes as a child, but there's a scene when they end up in the Art Institute and they stand in front of this famous painting.

My kids are doing this, it's okay.

There's a famous painting, uh, a Sunday afternoon on the island of Le Grand Jot.

I don't know how to say that, I think that's how you say it.

And you've seen it, this 1880s sort of picturesque Sunday afternoon uh painting.

And what makes this painting especially famous, part of it, is it wasn't painted with broad strokes.

It was painted with all dots, points.

And so the idea, it took over two years to paint this masterpiece.

And the idea is when you see the hole, it's majestic, but when you zoom in, it's just little dots.

Well, there's this scene where Cameron, this motherless uh best friend of Ferris Bueller, is staring at this little girl at the center of the painting, and he keeps like looking, he keeps getting closer and closer and closer in this little girl's face to the point where you're seeing less and less and less.

You're just seeing dots.

It's almost humorous, and except it does feel poignant.

And John Hughes, director John Hughes, says what he's doing in that moment is he's looking, and what he's feeling is the more and more I look at this little girl, I see nothing.

And what he fears is the more and more people look at him, they will see nothing.

Amazing thought.

And that's not really, I don't want to explore that idea so much as the power of art to speak to us, and the power of art to elicit from us emotional responses.

And what I want us to consider this morning is that God is an artist and that even in creation, he speaks to us.

What I want us to consider is that God is a talking God, a speaking God.

In fact, God speaks to everyone.

I want us to consider that this morning, God has been speaking to you from the moment you woke up.

In fact, God has been speaking to everyone throughout time, every single person, every moment of their conscious existence, he's speaking to them through the created order.

And Paul says, this is an obvious idea, and yet the part of us that says, huh?

That's the part of us that is suppressing God speaking to us in unrighteousness.

Now, this isn't to say that we don't need the Bible.

We also need the Bible.

We're not going to look at God and hear him speaking to us through creation and stumble upon, say, the doctrine of the Trinity or the incarnation.

We're not going to find the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus through creation.

We need another book for that.

If creation is a book, we need another book of special revelation.

But what if nature is anything but natural in the way that we think about it?

What if it's supernatural in the sense that God not only created it, but he is sustaining it minute by minute and thereby speaking to us minute by minute?

If that's true, what could be more important than learning to listen to his voice?

And what could be more wonderful than hearing it?

Let me read Psalm 29, and then we're going to ask God to help us.

Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory do his name.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters.

The God of glory thunders, the Lord over many waters.

The voice of the Lord is powerful.

The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Syrian like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness.

The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare, and in his temple all cry, glory.

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.

The Lord sits enthroned as king forever.

May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace.

The word of the Lord.

Almighty God, we just read that you are strong and powerful, and that we hear your voice in creation.

And we ask now that you would help us to hear your voice in Scripture.

We ask that you would dig out for us ears to hear and give us eyes to see Jesus.

There isn't one.

We pray this in his name.

Amen.

So our pastors this morning uses language like we often talk about art.

Art, as much as it speaks to us, as soon as the artist is finished, his point of contact, her point of contact with that piece is done.

Let's highlight this with some very high art.

If you're going to my office, you would see a lot of art, looks like maybe some three-year-olds did it.

And you might ask me, how many three-year-olds do you have?

And the answer is, well, I've had exactly three three-year-olds, and I have exactly zero three-year-olds.

But the art looks like a three-year-old did it because as soon as the artist is finished, their point of contact with it is over.

It doesn't develop with them.

There's no way to know did the person who drew this or how old are they?

Are they still with us?

There's no way of knowing.

And yet Scripture tells us that when we look at God's creation, we hear the voice of God.

And it's not so much like an artist with a painting.

It's more like a satellite dish that is ever transmitting.

God does not stop speaking to us in art, not in the way of a painting, but because the God who creates is the God who sustains.

And so, minute by minute, God sustains the cosmos.

He sustains the world.

And by sustaining it, his voice to us is always minute by minute, second by second.

God is a speaking God.

And we read in Genesis, right, that when he created, he began by speaking, let there be light.

In Psalm 19, famously the psalmist says, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

Hebrews 1 tells us that Jesus upholds the universe by the word of his power.

The Bible knows nothing of a God who creates and then stands afar and watches.

And neither does creation.

Trees know nothing of an absent God.

Waterfalls and sunrises and rainbows and storms know nothing of a God that isn't orchestrating everything.

God creates and preserves and governs every molecule of creation millisecond by millisecond.

The sun didn't rise this morning because it's on merely on a timer, like my coffee pot was on a timer.

But because the God who organized and designed everything is intimately connected and sustaining everything that happens.

And creation testifies to this reality every day.

There's an old Reformed confession, the Belgic Confession.

It says this the creation, preservation, and government of the universe is a most elegant book before our eyes, in which all creatures, gray and small, are as many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely his power and divinity.

Creation is a book.

General revelation is a book, just as much as special revelation is a book.

And we Christians have the benefit of having both.

And special revelation helps us to understand what God is saying in general revelation.

In our passage this morning, David says the voice of the Lord seven times.

The voice of the Lord seven times.

That we see something of what God is like by what we see in his creation because it comes from him.

It's saying something of the artist.

And to recognize his voice in everything is to begin to listen to him.

So worship is the goal.

That's what the psalmist here is saying.

He ends with worship.

And so here quickly, I want to get to my outline.

I know that was a long intro.

But we're told what God is like in this passage.

We're shown what God is like, and then we get to respond to what God is like.

We're told, we're shown, and then we respond to what God is like.

So verse 1 says, Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name.

Worship the Lord and the splendor of holiness.

David calls on even angels to acknowledge and give proper credit to who God is.

Give credit to him for his glory and his strength and his holiness.

We're called to acknowledge the simple fact that when God is God and we are not, that he is powerful and he is holy.

To be holy is to be set apart, to be altogether different from us.

He is God, we are not.

Paul tells us in Acts 17 that in him we live and we move and we have our being.

Everything that we do comes because he sustains us.

And so we're called to acknowledge that we and all things exist because God wills us to exist.

We still breathe because he wills us to breathe.

He sits over all things as creator and sustainer, and as we'll see, redeemer.

And so when the psalmist says, ascribe, recognize, acknowledge what is true, that the one who made everything that we see, the one who is speaking to us through creation, is full of strength and glory and holiness.

And he didn't just make us, he is sustaining us.

Even now, we with borrowed breath, we listen to his word and we get to respond to it.

And so it sounds obvious to acknowledge, well, he is God, of course we are not, but isn't that the problem?

Isn't that the predicament with the human condition?

Is so easily we forget that we're not sovereign.

We want to wrap our fingers around everything and control them, and the psalmist reminds us look at creation.

Someone made that.

And the one who sustains it sustains us as well.

You know, we don't have a king in America, but I wonder sometimes, those in other countries that have kings, how do they think about them?

I'm a little bit cynical, but I wonder if I were to live in England or a country that still had a monarch, wouldn't you wonder sometimes, like, what's so special about this person?

That they get to wear a crown.

That when they enter a room, I have to show a certain respect and obedience to that person.

Why does this person, they're born into the right family at the right time, and that has to change my life?

It sure seems convenient, a little self-serving.

But J.I.

Packer says that worshiping the king of creation is not like this at all.

He says, God's glory points to a purpose not of divine egoism, as is sometimes imagined, but of divine love.

In God's kindness, his glory, and our good work in concert together.

And we find this truth in creation every day.

Paul tells us in Acts 14, in teaching us that we owe God our worship, he says, For he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

In other words, have you ever felt the sun warm your skin on a cool spring day?

Have you ever felt a breeze that just was refreshing and took your breath away?

Have you ever eaten a meal that made you smile even days after you had it?

God, the God of glory in his kindness gives us these things.

Ascribe glory and strength to the God who gives us these things intentionally and personally.

Acknowledge who he is and what he is like.

Let his glory fill us with wonder and worship and devotion and love.

And behold and see, he is magnificently beautiful and altogether different for us, for he is holy, holy, holy.

So, point one, we're told what God is like, and then in verses three through nine, we're shown what God is like through a powerful storm that ravages everything in its path.

The voice of the Lord, seven times in this section.

And David's not telling us, listen to this voice.

He's saying, recognize it because you already hear it.

He's not telling us how to find the voice, he's telling us, pay attention to the voice you already hear.

He doesn't say, look at his voice in sunsets, at least in this passage, his voice is in sunsets, his voice is in rainbows.

But listen to his voice here in a storm that ravages everything in its path.

And coupled with this idea that this voice of the Lord is heard in a storm that is destroying everything, is the idea of covenant.

And I said this a few weeks ago, and this should really leap off the page.

Anytime you see Lord, all caps, this is the covenant name of Yahweh.

There's lots of names for God in the Old Testament.

When you see all caps, and every time Lord is in this passage, it's all caps.

I think it's 18 times.

We're supposed to think, oh yes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This side of the New Testament, oh yes, the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

His voice is heard in a storm, and yet this voice is a covenant-keeping, loving, merciful God.

And he's not just the king of his people.

He's not just the king of his covenant, he is the king of all creation, of all the waters.

Perhaps some of you have heard me talk.

I know I've talked about this before, maybe use this as an illustration before, but summertime is the time for thunderstorms.

And I don't know that we've really had that thunderstorm that rattles your house, but we usually get one every summer that just like in the middle of the night, it feels like your house could just like crumble because the lun the thunder is so loud.

When it you know wakes you up because it's so bright in your bedroom from the lightning.

And whenever it thunders like this and lightning's like this, and the inevitable rain that comes with it, I get a little bit scared because we have had a number of water issues in our basement.

I am not king of the water in my house.

And so when it rains, thankfully, thankfully, uh this isn't the case anymore.

We paid somebody a lot of money to fix this, and so far it's holding.

But it used to mean we get two wet backs out, and we still can't keep up because water just would go everywhere.

It was awful.

We had an alarm that would go off when the water started coming through, and sometimes that would be at like two o'clock in the morning, and I'd be up groggy, you know, sometimes just in my boxers trying to like keep up with the water coming through.

I'm sorry for that image.

Um we're reminded in storms, aren't we?

Thunder that rattles, that we are not in control as much as we think we are.

We can stay ahead on our mortgage payments, we can buy our house outright, and yet a storm can still come and knock everything away.

We can plan, we are not in control.

I've got a note here, it just says Helene foolishness, and that's me.

The morning that Helene hit, my wife loves Chris Justice, you know this.

She would throw everything away for Chris Justice.

She's watching the storms in our backyard, and she's like, Joe, what if these trees snap?

And I said, Those trees are not gonna snap.

It's fine.

A little wind is not gonna hurt anybody.

And I played that card a little too hard, and then I left to go to work, and I couldn't get out of the neighborhood because trees were down everywhere.

Everywhere.

Storms remind us that we are not in control, and this psalm reminds us that the God who made heaven and earth speaks in those storms.

That his power is unparalleled, that even the strongest materials are no match for his word.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars.

The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon, he makes Lebanon to skip like a calf.

The strongest trees snap at the voice of the Lord.

Even strong nations, startled by his voice, like a calf is startled in a thunderstorm.

And here's the thing about God's power and glory, and this is what the psalmist is trying to get us to see.

You don't have to do anything to be encountered by it.

There are so many experiences in this life that we want.

You know, there's a million places around the world that I would like to see.

And if I were to say tomorrow, hey, let's go to New Zealand.

I've always wanted to go to New Zealand.

Let's go to New Zealand tomorrow.

You would probably say, sounds great.

I don't have the time right now, or I don't have the money right now.

We're limited by the resources we have or the resources that are available to us.

And it's easy to kind of go through life and to remote to think.

Look at these people who have more resources than me.

Look at these people who are able to have experiences that I'm not able to have.

But the psalmist says no one has to have resources to experience the glory and the holiness of God speaking to them through creation.

It comes to everyone.

There is utter equity when it comes to the voice of God coming and speaking to us.

The voice of the Lord speaks to everyone every day.

Though some of us don't have ears to hear it.

The glorious and holy and powerful God has decided to give us a glimpse of who he is moment by moment, just in the world that we walk and drive and move and breathe in.

And he shows us what he is like.

And he shows us that he is the giver and he is the taker of life because all life belongs to him.

In verse 9, it says, the voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare.

So this life and death voice, it comes to everyone.

Everyone.

And the question is, will this voice that comes to us, will it bring life or will it bring death?

Which leads to point three.

How will we respond to the God who is speaking to us?

The last line of verse 9 through verse 11 shows us the way.

And here's where we ultimately need more than God's voice to us in creation.

We need his voice to us, not just in general revelation, that is creation, but in special revelation, the scriptures.

We need him to speak to us through the Bible.

You know, he says that the holy voice speaks in storms that thunder and quake, that strip and shake.

And we don't much care for God's tone in a storm, do we?

This is not my I much, I much prefer a sunset or a sunrise on the beach.

That's the voice that I prefer.

I don't much care for God's tone and a storm, and you're probably the same way.

When your house is shaking, I'm vulnerable.

I'm vulnerable.

And what the rest of Scripture tells us is that vulnerability that we feel at the power of God, it highlights to us that we know that we're sinners.

That vulnerability that we feel, that fear that comes natural, it comes from a place that knows I have sinned before this God of glory.

I mean, think about this.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

And Paul tells us everyone has fallen short of this glory.

We all have a consciousness, a religious consciousness within us.

Even if we can't articulate it, we know it.

We know we have sinned against that God, and that's where this fear comes from.

But notice, notice how the people in this Psalm respond.

What sort of response does David describe?

Not with the terror you might expect.

The end of verse 9 it says, and all in his temple cry, glory.

So imagine a storm.

And God's people are in a temple, and they cry, glory.

That's the image that we're supposed to have.

Where do they respond like this?

In his temple.

Where God's word is opened, where sacrifice is offered, where God's word is.

In God's temple, the people of God respond exactly as we are told to respond in verse 1.

They ascribe glory to God.

They recognize his voice and they respond to it appropriately.

Hold that thought.

Now look at the first line of verse 10.

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.

Most time preacher types talk about like original language stuff.

It doesn't matter.

It's not helpful.

But there's something really helpful that I've read about this.

That the word that the psalmist uses for flood is used exactly 13 times in the Bible.

And 12 of those times are used in Genesis 6 through 9.

That's the story of the flood.

The only other time this word is used is here.

I think it stands to reason that he wants our minds to think the flood needs to inform how we read this word.

Okay?

So think about the flood.

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.

Here's what I think David is getting at when he puts the storm of Noah's flood next to people crying, glory in the temple of God.

The flood was a storm of judgment.

The flood surely elicited a response of people of terror because the God who's speaking in this storm is a God we are naturally estranged from by our sinfulness.

It was God's judgment on those who felt the sun on their skin and the breeze on them, and they saw waterfalls and they heard storms.

And rather than responding with thanksgiving and gratitude and worship, they took it all for granted and said, I can do with it what I want.

I can be God.

It's a story that we know all too well.

We do the same thing.

And so alongside this flood of judgment, we find those gathered in God's temple and they know peace with God.

And they know peace with God not because they've learned to respond to his word perfectly.

They know peace with God because they've learned that God saves through sacrifice.

That God saves through those who trust that he will give mercy to those who cry out for it.

Those who learn to cry glory, they do so not because they figured it out, but because they've been forgiven.

That's what the psalmist is showing us here.

The one who wills for us to continue to draw breath also wills to draw near in mercy for those who will receive it.

So you've got verse 1.

Ascribe to the Lord strength, acknowledge his strength, and then you see in verse 11, may the Lord give strength to his people.

Ascribe to the Lord strength.

God gives strength to his people.

When God gives strength, what else is he giving but himself?

That our posture to face his voice in a storm is now one that doesn't cower.

It's one that cries glory.

Why?

Because God has met us, not just in his voice, but we've received his strength in that as well.

God has always been giving himself to his people.

In this side of the New Testament, we see so much more clearly how that's the case.

That he is able to protect us from the storm of his wrath precisely because he came to endure it fully.

That there is now an invitation for us to find in Jesus Christ both the strength of God and the refuge of sinners.

That if we receive Jesus, and when we receive Jesus, what we find and should find is that his voice to us in creation becomes sweeter.

That when you see a sunset, that when you hear a storm, that when you watch the oceans, that you recognize the one speaking and say, that's the one who is drawn near to me in Jesus.

That's the God of glory and strength and holiness.

But now when that glory and strength and holiness is proclaimed to us, we don't just see, we don't just see strength, but the one who is our strength.

We don't just see his holiness, but the one who invites us to share in his holiness, the one who gives us peace with a holy God.

We don't just see his glory, but the one who is inviting us to share in his glory forever.

And so in this way, worship becomes so much more than obedience to a command.

Worship the Lord.

It becomes a joyful response to his word to us.

We were created to respond to God's word to us with worship.

That's the little note in the margin of our call to worship.

And in Jesus, we are enabled to respond as we were created to.

Not with terror and dread, but with a holy fear and reverence of a God who made all things and gives us his peace and shares with us his strength.

And it doesn't just happen now on Sunday morning as we open his scriptures.

We get to walk out and pay attention to what God is saying.

You look out, we're going to go to lunch, we're going to drive home, we're going to see green trees and blue sky, and we're going to say, the God of glory and strength made that, and I have peace with that God in Jesus.

It changes how we go and move and have our being.

And what that means is if creation is proclaiming the glory of God, we too are a part of that creation, we get to proclaim it.

Just by the way that our moral wills are now learning to listen to a God of grace and mercy.

Because more fundamental to God's being than just being brute force and power is his love.

That a triune God has always existed within a perfect community of love.

And he absolutely proclaims his power and glory and majesty in what he creates, but he created in the first place as an outgrowth of his love for himself.

And we get to see that power for what it is.

An expression of love that we're invited into, an expression of love that we now get to extend to others.

To respond with glory the way that creation does, we get to respond the way that we were created to.

Let's pray and thank God for that reality.

Father, we thank you that you have created us in your glory, in your strength.

We thank you that you proclaim your handiwork in everything that we see, that you proclaim your strength, even in storms that bring destruction.

And we thank you that in Christ we have no fear of destruction, but every hope of sharing in your love and glory and peace forever.

We pray these things in Christ's name.

Amen.