Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro -

Dark black clouds billowing over the mountain.

Thunder looming in the distance.

Growing ever closer.

Our Psalm for today is a picture of a storm, rolling into the land of Israel from over the Mediterranean, covering the whole land.

Displayed in this great storm is God, in his full wonder and majesty.

I would like to do something a little different this morning.

If you would all close your eyes as I read our passage.

Each time you hear The voice of the Lord, imagine with me a great thunder crack.

Thunder storms captivate us.

The great power that is displayed leave us with a sense of awe, wonder, and sometimes even fear.

Does the glory of God captivate your heart above all else?

Pray

As far as placement in the book Psalms, where this particular Psalm is located appears to give us a wonderful example of God responding to David’s pleas to not be silent in a spectacular way.

Give God glory.

v. 1-2

The Psalm begins -

Looking at these first two verses, our attention is immediately drawn to the purpose in writing, or singing this Psalm.

The Lord.

Overall in this Psalm, the Lord’s name, Yahweh is repeated 18 times.

It is in ever verse at least once.

The most important elements in Hebrew poetry are repetition and parallelism, and this Psalm is stuffed full of both.

David begins with an appeal for the heavenly beings to give glory to God.

This begins our first sense of movement in the Psalm, that everyone and everything is to give glory to God.

David begins in heaven with the sons of God, or angels.

The heavenly beings David speaks of here are with God.

They know his strength.

They know better than we will ever know this side of heaven the glory that is due to the Lord.

The true worship that is due him.

I believe the idea is that David, by calling the angels to give God the glory due him, is desiring to be part of a greater congregation of worship.

Perhaps David seeks to look at the angels as an example for his own worship, and for an example for the people to follow.

To ascribe is to give credit to.

Give credit to the Lord.

Give Him the glory that He is owed.

Worship The Lord for who He is.

David’s desire is that his own heart, and the hearts of the people, be filled, just as the angels are filled, with a sense of awe and wonder, that their highest calling be to give to the Lord what He deserves.

Recognition of His strength, His splendor, His glory.

David’s desire if for all to give to God the glory that He is due.

God’s glory declared in the storm.

v. 3-9

As we look into verses 3-9 we see some beautiful and rather terrifying imagery.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon has a great poetic soul, and here is what he advised: “Just as the eighth psalm is to be read by moonlight, when the stars are bright, as the nineteenth needs the rays of the rising sun to bring out its beauty, so this can be best rehearsed beneath the black wing of tempest, by the glare of the lightning, or amid that dubious dusk which heralds the war of elements.

The verses march to the tune of thunderbolts.

God is everywhere conspicuous, and all the earth is hushed by the majesty of his presence.

David writes of a great storm coming into view on the horizon.

When I was growing up in Missoula I remember a few nights when some big storms came rolling through.

I would sit, watch, listen, and feel the pounding of the thunder as it crashed through the valley.

If you can think of a memory like that, when you could actually feel the thunder in your chest, think of that as I read again for us verses 3-9

Throughout these verses, God’s power is described as a mighty storm.

His voice cracks of thunder that penetrate and shake all around.

Today we somewhat understand what is going on in a thunderstorm, electrical charges passing to another place so fast that it breaks the sound barriers.

If we tell ourselves though that the voice of God is not in thunder as we read this Psalm, that thunder is only the clashing of differently charged electrified particles, we miss it all.

To truly appreciate this Psalm, we must put ourselves in the middle of a violent storm.

In a place to witness the storms majesty and ferociousness unfold, all the while recalling that God is in the storm, directing its every move.

Verse 3 begins the second picture of movement we see in this Psalm.

The choice of words bring to our minds some pictures for us as we read.

First we must think of the location of Israel.

Israel sits on the Mediterranean sea.

If you were here one of the first times I preached, I was speaking about Jonah, how vicious the storms can be.

Winds that create waves taller than the cruise ships that sail there.

Perhaps David is looking out to see, watching the storm cover the horizon, the view becoming darker and darker as the storm approaches.

The phrasing also though points us back to God’s work in creation.

The Lord is over the waters.

It points us to give glory to God for his work and power in creation.

These verses point to another reason to give glory to God as well.

The waters, or the sea, were often considered dark, ominous, foreboding, and even represents death at times.

But the Lord is greater than the darkness, the uncertainty.

The Lord thunders over the waters, He is powerful, He is full of majesty.

Yahweh is in control.

There is a sense of anticipation built in.

The storm is gathered over the waters, it can be seen from a distance, growing in size, clouds becoming ever darker.

Verses 5-6 provide us a picture of the storm making landfall and begins to show us perhaps the scope, or size of the storm.

The area spoken of in these verses are the northern hills of Israel.

Lebanon sits to the north of Israel.

The cedars of Lebanon were the most famous trees in all of antiquity.

They defined the economy of ancient Lebanon.

Pharaohs from ancient Egypt, kings from Assyria, Babylon and far-flung reaches of the ancient world all clamored for the great timber of these cedars.

Picture of tree on screen.

At one time, vast forests of these graceful trees covered the mountains of Lebanon and the eastern Mediterranean region.

They can grow at low elevations as well as high, but growing in the rugged  and arid conditions of the Lebanese mountains, contributes to a hardy tree with a reputation for wood that is all but indestructible.

They are reported to have grown to the height of 40 meters (130 feet) but modern specimens are commonly around 20 meters (65 feet) in height.

It is all the more astounding then to think of the picture David is painting for us.

The lord breaks the cedars.

The ESV I don’t think quite does justice to the repeated phrase here.

The second verb is in an intensified form.

The NASB reads that the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars.

NKJV The Lord splinters,

CSB The Lord shatters.

The idea is of total destruction of these trees that the people viewed as basically indestructible.

Continuing in verse 6.

Lebanon was a mountainous area.

The whole mountainside skips like a calf.

Sirion is also known as Mount Hermon

Picture one of the those young dumb calves bounding away stubbornly as you are trying to get it to move.

This is the picture of what David wishes us to get of the mountains.

The power of the Lord is so great, the whole earth shakes.

Verse 7 is our central point of this section with only one line.

The voice of the Lord, hews out, cleaves, goes forth, as lightning.

So quick, so powerful.

Verse 8 shows the scope of the storm.