Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Psalm 24.

And if you’re able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word:

May God add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David wrote 73 psalms.

73 songs of praise to the Lord.

This psalm—Psalm 24—gives us a little glimpse into the liturgical life of ancient Israel.

“Liturgy” is simply what happens in the worship service.

It’s the way we have everything in roughly the same place in the service, with a few changes here and there.

God’s people in the ANE would have come to expect certain things during weekly worship, not unlike ourselves.

This psalm—Psalm 24—was one of the psalms that guided them in worship.

Many people like to try to pinpoint the exact occasion and/or event in David’s life prompting each psalm.

We can’t know that for certain unless the heading of the psalm tells us.

There’s nothing in the heading to this psalm that tells us anything beyond this being a psalm of David.

So, instead of spending time trying to identify the occasion of the psalm, let’s get right to the teaching of the psalm.

The primary burden of the psalm is to tell Israel (and us) to be ready for the King.

The psalms were the hymnbook and prayer book of the people of God.

In their worship, this psalm played a primary role.

They would pray these words, sing these words, internalize these words.

They’d know these words the way we know The Lord’s Prayer or the Doxology.

This psalm would guide them in their worship.

This was part of their liturgy, walking them through these truths about the Lord Yahweh.

This is full of foundational truths to anchor them and focus them on the Lord (to anchor us and focus us).

This psalm teaches there is one God to whom everything belongs; He is holy and mighty.

THERE IS ONE GOD

The psalm actually starts out with the words “To Yahweh” and David is emphatic about it.

He wrote this psalm and he was very clear: “To Yahweh belongs the earth and everything in it.”

And then, the “He” of verse 2—and HE founded it on the seas and established it on the waters—that HE is also emphatic.

David’s highlighting, vocally, the primacy of place the LORD Yahweh has.

It all belongs to Him.

He founded it and established it.

HE did.

No one else.

My mom’s favorite hymn picks up on this idea:

“This is my Father's world:

I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas--

His hand the wonders wrought.”

This teaching from the psalmist, from ancient Israel, was in direct contradiction to the peoples around them.

This flew in the face of what everyone else around them believed.

The common assumption was that there were many gods, a plethora of gods.

The people living around the people of God worshipped many different gods.

They had a god for everything—a sun god, a rain god, a fertility god and goddess, a god of the harvest, a god of wine, a god of baseball, etc.

The nature of pagan gods made it impossible to live in peace.

Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna has written that the Mesopotamian society suffered from “overtones of anxiety.”

You see, in pagan belief, the different gods the people worshipped could be opposed and often were opposed to one another.

One god would sabotage the other, trick the other, dupe the other.

It was a constant state of chaos.

What’s more, pagan gods had no ultimate power.

There was a realm around and beyond the gods—magic.

The pagan gods themselves used magic, even had to use magic to accomplish what they wanted.

If that was the world in which you lived, can you ever imagine living in any sort of peace?

If the gods you worshipped and served and bribed and coerced to do what you wanted could be stopped by another god…what would that mean for you?

If the gods you worshipped lived in chaos, what chance would you have of living an ordered life?

David is making an enormously counter-cultural point in verses 1 and 2. He’s saying there’s ONE GOD—to Yahweh belongs all things.

He’s highlighting the oneness and all-sufficiency of Yahweh—He (and no one else) founded [the world] and established it.

Paul picks up on this theme and teaches that the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—did the creating:

The universe was made and is held together by strong and caring nail-scarred hands.

There need not be anxiety amongst the people of God, for the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it…He (and no one else) founded it on the seas and established it on the waters (and He continues to maintain it).

THERE IS ONE GOD

EVERYTHING BELONGS TO HIM

It all belongs to Him.

To Yahweh belongs everything on the earth and all who live in this world.

This is a foundational truth.

So foundational, so important, so crucial, Paul picks up on it and quotes the first verse of Psalm 24 as applicable to the daily lives and issues of the Corinthian believers.

This is a foundational truth for us, too.

In fact, I would argue the implications of Psalm 24—just the first verse or two—are incredibly important.

Think about it.

If this is true (and it is), it has some major significance.

Everything, without exception, belongs to Him.

And everyone (the world, and all who live in it) belongs to Him, too.

That means no one is expendable.

No one is second-rate.

No one is less-than.

At a basic level, each and every person has inestimable value simply because they belong to HIM!

AND, that everything in the world belongs to Him will, properly understood, re-frame the way we think about our possessions and the stewardship we’ve been given.

Nothing is ours.

It—all of it—belongs to Him.

Beyond those implications of this foundational truth, the main purpose of this psalm is to guide worship—theirs and ours.

When the people of God rehearse the truths in verses 1 and 2 about everything belonging to the Lord, it should serve to make us think.

All the people around us, all the beauty of the world, all the majesty of the cosmos—all of it belongs to Him.

He made it.

He put it all right where He wanted it, some mountains over here, an ocean here and there, some happy little sequoias right there.

Like Bob Ross, but on a cosmic scale.

The LORD Yahweh is an artist.

The LORD Yahweh is the Maker and Sustainer of everything we see and behold.

He made it all and even decorated it for His glory and our awe.

He painted the deserts and the wildflowers.

He placed the stars in the sky, universe after universe swirling around in the blue like jazz.

He fashioned the fields and makes the lightning bugs dance for His good pleasure and the joy of His little children.

If the realization that the LORD Yahweh made all things and that you and everything else belongs to Him—if that doesn’t lead you to worship, I’m not sure what will.

THERE IS ONE GOD; EVERYTHING BELONGS TO HIM.

That’s just the first two verses!

What a glorious psalm.

David goes on to write, in a way that will guide our worship.

The psalm continues, making clear:

THE LORD IS HOLY

After verses 1 and 2, if they’re paying attention the majesty and supremacy of God, people would rightly ask the questions in verse 3.

Psalm 24:3 “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?

Who may stand in his holy place?”

One as powerful and majestic and holy as He might not be approachable.