1/25/2012 9:08:56 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: A Psalm of Praise
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm 33
Message of the verses: “1 Sing for joy in the LORD, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright. 2 Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. 3 Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy. 4 For the word of the LORD is upright, And all His work is done in faithfulness. 5 He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the LORD. 6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. 9 For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. 10 The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11 The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
“12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance. 13 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men; 14 From His dwelling place He looks out On all the inhabitants of the earth, 15 He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works. 16 The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength. 17 A horse is a false hope for victory; Nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength. 18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness, 19 To deliver their soul from death And to keep them alive in famine. 20 Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help and our shield. 21 For our heart rejoices in Him, Because we trust in His holy name. 22 Let Your lovingkindness, O LORD, be upon us, According as we have hoped in You.”
In his introduction to this psalm Dr. Wiersbe points out that everyone of the verbs in this psalm are plural and this means that the psalm is for worship of the Lord at the sanctuary. We see in verses 1-3 that the leader calls them to worship and the choir led the assembly in the praising of the Lord. All closed with the affirmation of faith which is found in verses 22-23. As we look at verses 10-11 and 16-19 we get a hint that the praises to the Lord were because of a victory over an enemy nation. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Except for the prayer in verse 22, the entire psalm is devoted only to praise and forms a helpful ‘primer of praise.’”
Who should Worship the Lord? (v. 1): “1 ¶ Sing for joy in the LORD, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright.”
We first want to look at a parallel verse from Psalm 32:11 “Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones; And shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.” These two verses answer the question posed at the beginning of this section and the answer is those who are righteous by faith and obedient in their walk with the Lord (“upright”).
We must remember that everyone who has been born into this world is born a sinner an sins because they are sinners, but when the Lord gives new life to a person he then becomes a new creature and all things are new and therefore this person will have a desire to praise the Lord and to worship the Lord. Those of us who have had this new birth must also walk with the Lord, to be “upright” in our walk with the Lord so that we can have fellowship with Him and thus have a desire to praise the Lord for not only what He has done for us but for all that He has created as we will look at later in this psalm of praise. There are many other reasons for praising the Lord too.
How They Should Worship The Lord (vv. 2-4): “2 Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. 3 Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy. 4 For the word of the LORD is upright, And all His work is done in faithfulness.”
“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Col. 3:16),” “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord (Eph. 5:19)” These are two NT verses that show how we should worship the Lord.
The Lord has given music to mankind and His children are to use music to worship the Lord. I once read and studied a book written by Warren Wiersbe entitled “Real Worship.” In that book Mr. Wiersbe points out that music, and the type of music has always been a battle ground in the church and that I have to agree with him. Wiersbe writes “When God works; He obeys His own Word; so any worship that is contrary to God’s Word will not please the Lord.” While living in Hawaii last year I attended a church there and the praise team led a song that was not true to the Word of God. There were a number of Pastors in attendance and none of them said anything about the song. I spoke to a couple of them to point out the error in the song and later spoke to one of the members of the praise team who told me that when she looked up the song on the internet that there was a word that was different and she told me what the difference was. It made the difference of being a song of praise to the Lord or a song that was not Scriptural.
Why They Worship the Lord (vv. 5-19): “5 He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the LORD. 6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. 9 For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. 10 The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11 The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation. 12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance. 13 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men; 14 From His dwelling place He looks out On all the inhabitants of the earth, 15 He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works. 16 The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength. 17 A horse is a false hope for victory; Nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength. 18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness, 19 To deliver their soul from death And to keep them alive in famine.”
I suppose that we could take these verses one by one and have great reasons to praise the Lord.
We can see in verse four that there is a mention of the Word of the Lord and we can only get to know the God of the Word by spending time in the Word of the Lord, but we have to have the right motive when we study the Word of God and to know the God of the Word is a wonderful motive in studying the Word of God. I can think of two different stories from the NT that speak of getting to know the God of the Word. The first is mentioned in the book of Philippians and that of course was written by the Apostle Paul and he was much closer to his death than his birth when he wrote these words: “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” The more Paul knew the Lord the more he wanted to know about the Lord. The other story is one of my favorite stories and it comes from the Gospel of Luke and the 24th chapter where we find two men walking on a road and then the resurrected Lord Jesus comes along and begins to talk to them, but He does not disclose Himself to them for a while. The men are sad because of the death of Jesus and begin to tell Him about what happened to Jesus. We then read these words: “25 And He said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 "Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?" 27 Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Jesus is telling them that they should have been studying the Word of God and then they would have understood the things that happened to Him and why they happened to Him. I have always wished that I could have listened in on that conversation as Jesus began with Moses and went through the OT telling them about how the Messiah was seen in the OT.
As mentioned above this psalm speaks of the creation and that surely is a wonderful reason to praise the Lord. I have mentioned in earlier SD’s that Satan has convinced many Christians to believe in evolution and this will curtail their worship of the God of creation who has told us in His Word how He created the world and how long it took Him to create the world and it is very plain to see this in Genesis chapter one and is actually reiterated in this psalm of praise.
We see in the verses above from this psalm that the Lord loves justice and righteousness, and He love that so much that He sent His Son to become sin for us in order that we might receive His righteousness so that we will be able to enter heaven and be with the Lord forever.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Unless our worship focuses on the character of God, we have ignored the Person who ought to be the center of true worship.” How do we know about the character of God? Well we can find this out by reading His Word, and we can also look at good Christians authors who have written about the attributes of God for in His attributes we will find out about His character. Three examples: “The Knowledge of the Holy” and “The Attributes of God” both by A. W. Tozer and then “Knowing God” is a classic book written by J. I. Packer. Chip Ingram has also written a book entitled “God as He longs for You to See Him.”
One of the attributes of God is His wisdom and this is alluded to in verses 10-11 of Psalm 33. When I think of all of God’s attributes this is one that is very amazing to me because of verses like Romans 8:28 that tells me how a Holy God can cause all things to work out for the good of His people and for His glory and that is just amazing to me. I can see His wisdom in creation, but most of all I can see His wisdom in salvation. One reason I know that the Bible was not inspired by man is because man would have never put into it about how one can be saved, but God had this all planed from eternity past. We truly serve a wise and wonderful God.
What Should Happen Because They Worship the Lord (vv. 20-22): “20 Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help and our shield. 21 For our heart rejoices in Him, Because we trust in His holy name. 22 Let Your lovingkindness, O LORD, be upon us, According as we have hoped in You.”
Again I wish to quote the ending comments from Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary as we close this section of my Spiritual Diary. “Worship should not only strengthen our inner peace and power, increase our hope, and give us greater confidence in the Lord, but it should increase our joy. The psalm begins and ends with the theme of joy. Along with the blessing, we find our faith strengthened as we behold the beauty and glory of the Lord in our worship. ‘Let your unfailing love surround us’ is the closing prayer (NLT), so we have the three great Christian virtues brought together: faith (v. 21), hope, and love (v.22). It isn’t enough to leave the place of worship simply ‘feeling good,’ because feelings are temporary and sometimes deceptive. If we find ourselves loving God and His people more, having greater faith and hope in the Lord, and going forth into the battle of life with greater confidence and joy, then our worship has accomplished what God wanted to accomplish.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I love God’s Word and love to study God’s Word and I always want my motive for doing this to be pure. I want the things that I learn to bring glory to the Lord and I want to help others with the things that I have learned so that they too can walk with the Lord having a “new song” in their hearts of praise and worship to the Lord. I know that there are many times that I fail in doing this, but I want to continue to pursue this hope.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Give myself to the Lord for worship and for service to the Lord.
2. Ask the Holy Spirit to search my heart for unconfessed sin so that my walk with the Lord and my fellowship with the Lord will be pure.
3. Continue to trust the Lord in teaching me contentment.
4. Trust in the Lord with all of my heart and lean not on my own understanding, in all of my ways acknowledge Him and then He has promised to direct my path.
1/25/2012 10:44:59 AM
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