Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro
Does it feel like sometimes God isn’t active?
We look around and see so much injustice, and we wonder, “Where is God?
Why hasn’t He put and end to this?”
Does God even see us and our plight?
Does God care about those in power who don’t use their authority and influence to uphold justice?
How long Lord until you take action?
This Psalm puts our minds at ease.
It reminds us that God does require an account of all beings, even those in the heavenly realms.
It also reminds us that the injustice will not go on forever, God himself will step in and make things right!
Continuing our survey of the psalms - covering a bunch to give us the flavour of the whole
These are songs of God’s people of Old, and God’s people today.
They find their fulfillment in Jesus, and Jesus is our worship leader.
If we sing and pray the Psalms we will end up singing and praying about things that we didn’t ever think about.
They help shape our worship.
This is one of those Psalms that gets us out of our 2022 Australia bubble, and gets us looking at the big picture of God’s work in history.
It also guards against the incessant “flattening” of spiritual things that we have a tendency to do.
It gets us to consider the work God is doing in the Spiritual realm.
Let’s break this Psalm down into 4 parts.
The Setting
Who wrote this Psalm?
What is God doing in this Psalm?
We start with the description which tells us who wrote this Psalm.
It is attributed to Asaph.
Who was this guy?
There’s a few Asaph’s in the Bible, but the most likely one who wrote 12 Psalms is Asaph the Levite who King David appointed as chief of a team of worshipers at the Ark of the Lord.
Remember, back in the Old Testament there was the temple, and before that the tabernacle, where people would come to worship, and where there were Levite priests who would oversee and lead that worship.
They had music teams!
They had people whose job it was to play music and sing to the Lord.
Asaph was the worship team leader.
And his sons followed in his legacy being temple musicians after him.
So, let’s get into the Psalm proper.
What did Asaph write by the Holy Spirit?
This is a weird place for us right off the bat.
How often do you use this language to describe God?
So lets break down the two halves of this verse.
First, God is in his Divine Council, or some translations say “Great Assembly”.
(“Great” doesn’t quite do the word justice, divine captures the idea better.)
This is like a parliament with God presiding.
It’s not like our parliaments with major parties and majority vote, but with God calling the shots, and having his divine council come and make requests, reports and proposals.
We get frustratingly small glimpses into the spiritual realm, but the Divine Council is something that pops up across the scripture, for instance:
In the opening parts of Job, there is a scene in the spiritual realm where the Sons of God, and Satan present themselves before the LORD.
This was when Satan asked to test Job.
Also we see the divine council in 1 Kings, where Micaiah the prophet speaks:
Other prophets also have visions of God, on his throne in a heavenly temple, directing the affairs of the world.
So, this is the Setting, God is in session with his Divine Council, but who is in this council and what is God doing there on this occasion?
“In the midst of the gods he holds judgment”
God is in the midst of the gods.
Remember that in Hebrew poetry the two halves of a verse are usually two ways of saying the same thing, or an extension of each other.
To say “God has taken his place in the divine council” means “In the midst of the gods he holds judgment”.
God is in the midst of the gods.
Let that sink in for a moment.
I’m not going to hide your Bible from you.
That’s what it says.
Alarms might be going off in your brain.
“I thought there was only one god?” “This is heresy!”
It’s right here plain as day.
Now one of the things that Bible teachers have done in times past is to try and smooth over the “rough” parts of the Bible.
The inconvenient bits that make for awkward conversations.
They want to make the way easy and not create any potential speed bumps in your faith.
I say that is unloving, and deceitful.
Let God speak for himself, and let God’s people hear what he has to say!
Would you like to hear what he has to say???
God judges in the midst of the gods.
The Bible does speak of other gods.
In fact God everywhere tells his people not to serve other gods.
“You shall have no other gods before me”
“LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords”
When it says he is the God of gods, it does not mean that he is the chief God among imaginary beings, it means he is the God over all other gods.
Beside Him there is no other.
So while the scriptures speak about other gods, it makes it clear that our LORD is not simply one among many Gods, but He is the God of Gods.
There is none like him, and he will not share His glory with another.
We don’t have options about which god to serve, it’s not like there is a selection and we have to pick the god that works best for us.
The ancient pagans thought this way, from Israel’s neighbors, the Norse tribes, The Greeks & Romans, even the Hindus today.
They worshiped a pantheon of gods, and forever trying to please the right combination of gods t get things to work out for their benefit.
No, there is one creator of heaven and earth who is in authority over all.
He alone must be worshiped.
Now these other gods get other names in the Bible.
Even though they are the same “species” as God, they are so distinctively different that we need other names to describe them.
The most common one is Sons of God.
And you see it is essentially used in our Psalm too in v6 where they are called Sons of the Most High.
Divine Beings
Rebellious - see Gen 6 and this Psalm
Ringleader of rebels is Satan.
Also called princes, powers and principalities in some places.
Some of them are even called demons.
But they were created good, and they had a job to do (just like us).
Before Israel went into the promised land, Moses reminded them of history:
7 Remember the days of old;
consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
your elders, and they will tell you.
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
God split the nations up and put them under the oversight and protection of the Sons of God, but kept Israel for his own portion.
God had special plans for redemption, and he was going to use his own people Israel to achieve those plans.
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