Sermon Tone Analysis

The psalmist—whoever it is—begins Psalm 33 by rousing the people of God to sing, praise, make music, sing some more, play skillfully, and shout for joy.

Those are some fairly direct commands, directed at the righteous and the upright, that is, the people of God.

Those who have been made righteous through faith in Him and those who are upright are called to sing the LORD’s praises.

To sing joyfully, with instruments, with freshness and fervor.

Verse 3, according to Derek Kidner, is a “superb synopsis of three qualities rarely found together.”

Sing to Him a new song would imply that there are always fresh reasons for praising the LORD Yahweh.

If thinking rightly and accurately about the LORD, we would never run out of songs to sing.

Beyond that, our praise should never be stale; He deserves our very best.

Shout for joy instructs us in the fervor we should have.

We should sing loudly, with all the air in our lungs; with warmth and with little regard for what those around us think.

In 2 Samuel, King David was dancing before the LORD and his wife went and chewed him out for his exuberant conduct.

David was joyful; his wife, Michal, was militantly proper.

William Blaikie asks a good question here:

“There are, doubtless, times to be calm, and times to be enthusiastic; but can it be right to give all our coldness to Christ and all our enthusiasm to the world?”

Imagine sitting at a Chiefs game the way we sit at church.

Or imagine you’re attending a concert where your favorite band is playing, with hands folded and a sleepy/bored stare on your face, your eyes glaze over, and you start drooling out the corner of your mouth.

I doubt either scenario would happen.

As C.S. Lewis wrote in 1958:

“The world rings with praise—readers praising their favorite poet, players praising their favorite game—praise of weather, food, actors, cars, countries, children, flowers, rare stamps, rare beetles, mountains, even sometimes politicians or scholars.

The psalmists, in telling everyone to praise God, are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.”

- C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

You see, we praise what we value.

And what we truly value shows.

The people of God should, at minimum, praise the LORD with joy and excitement at the same level as we praise a Netflix series or our wife’s cooking.

So here, the psalmist writing Psalm 33 is directing our praise to its rightful place, to its true object.

Look again with me at the end of verse 1:

It is fitting for the upright to praise Him.

It is a beautiful thing for the upright to praise the LORD; it’s fitting and proper.

Even more fitting and proper to praise the LORD than it is to cheer for our team or sing along with the band.

It’s fitting for the upright to praise Him.

It’s a beautiful thing when the LORD’s people praise Him.

Sometimes we can sense conviction in the way a congregation sings a certain song:

“Then bursting forth, in glorious day, up from the grave He rose again!

And as He stands in victory, sin’s curse has lost its grip on me; for I am His and He is mine, bought with the precious blood of Christ.”

Sing joyfully…it’s fitting to praise Him.

Psalm 33:1-3 are prepping us for the task; telling us how to praise, how we should look on the whole exercise of giving Him praise.

Verses 1-3 tell us to praise and how to do it, which begs the question “Why should we praise the LORD?”

The psalmist will take verses 4-22 (the remainder of the psalm) giving us ample reasons to praise the LORD.

We have all sorts of reasons for thanks and praise.

Here is, I think, the message of Psalm 33 in a sentence:

The People of God have Plenty of Fuel to Ignite Their Praise

I believe that is what the psalmist is getting at here.

He’s addressing the people of God—the righteous, the upright—giving them these commands for worship, for how to sing, what instruments to play, what attitude should color their singing.

The people of God should give Him praise.

That much is clear in verses 1-3.

The “why”—the fuel that ignites praise—is found in the verses to follow.

Here’s some fuel for our praise:

The Creation Work of the Covenant-Keeping God

Three times in these verses (vv.

4, 6, and 9) the psalmist makes mention of the word, the word of the LORD, and His speaking (He spoke, He commanded).

What the LORD spoke happened.

All that the LORD has spoken will come to pass.

He has complete intent to bring about His word.

He is faithful in all He does.

What the LORD has created springs from who He is, from His character: He is right and good; He loves righteousness and justice.

We need to be clear about the kind of God who does this creative work.

The second part of verse 5 is an incredible thought: the earth is full of His unfailing love.

This is the LORD’s hesed, the covenant God’s covenant love.

As Sally Lloyd-Jones says, this is “His never-stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.”

This is a remarkable statement—the earth is full of His unfailing love—remarkable, all on its own.

But compare that to the pagan pantheon of the day and it becomes something else entirely.

No one in the ANE would say anything about the love of the gods.

Molech wasn’t loving, not even in the estimation of those who worshipped the false god.

Neither was Marduk, or Dagon, or Asherah.

All the false deities were flighty and temperamental; one couldn’t know what they might do.

They were entirely unpredictable.

They were morally indifferent.

None of them were actually in control of anything.

And in the minds and imaginations of their followers, this god could undo what that god wanted.

Remember, even the gods were subject to a realm beyond them (magic).

For the pagan person, those who didn’t know the LORD Yahweh, the earth wasn’t full of unfailing love.

It was full of constant fear and never-ending uncertainty.

Our praise should be motivated, fueled by the knowledge that we’re praising the One true and only God who is Himself love and who fills the earth with His unfailing love.

That is the One who has created all things by His word.

The psalmist is, apparently, obviously thinking about Genesis as he’s composing this song.

Remember?

God said, “Let there be…,” and there was…” That’s the whole pattern of Genesis 1.

The LORD God merely spoke and the heavens were made.

He let out a breath, and boom!

Stars, galaxies, constellations, planets, Pluto, meteors, quasars.

It’s easy to praise one who is so superior to us.

What else do you have but praise when you’re driving through the mountains?

“Wow.

Would you look at that?!? Isn’t that incredible?”

When you’re speechless at the edge of the Grand Canyon or stopped in your tracks before the tides of the Pacific, what can you do but praise the One who created it all?

Makai and I were mowing the other night and finished not long before dark.

He looked at the setting sun and he asked, “Dad, does God tell the sun to do that?”

I stopped for a minute and realized I don’t really give it any thought, but that is absolutely God’s work.

I didn’t want to get too detailed with my 6-year-old and tell him the earth is actually rotating away from the sun, tilted on its axis at 23.5 degrees, so I simply said,

“Yeah, buddy.

You’re right.

God made the sun and gets to tell it what to do.”

And I had a little moment of worship there with my son.

The people of God have plenty of fuel to ignite their praise.

The Creator, the Covenant God, effortlessly created all there is—the heavens, the starry host, the earth, the seas.

This is creation “ex nihilo.”

It’s everyone’s favorite time: “Let’s learn Latin with Barrett!”

I don’t know Latin; just a few important theological phrases that happen to be Latin.

“Ex nihilo” means “out of nothing.”

God spoke and all the nothing became a lot of somethings.