Psalm 29:1–2

0:00 Good evening church. It's a pleasure to be here with you tonight. As we get started, I want you to think of a time when you saw something that took your breath away and in that moment you felt incredibly small. I remember standing at the southern rim of the Grand Canyon and if any of you have been there, you probably felt the same thing, which is you're standing there and you see just how large the canyon is. You see all the striations of color in the rock formed by pressure and time. And it really makes you feel small. It made me feel like, wow, like my whole life, my whole existence on this planet is just a drop in this vast ocean of time.

0:55 And it made me appreciate the timelessness of God. It really made me appreciate the way that his careful providence shaped this canyon into being. The second time that I, well, not the second time, but another time that I felt this way was the day that Teddy was born. And I remember being in the hospital room. It was maybe 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. So after a long day, being very tired, And I remember resting my eyes, but I was listening.

1:25 I was listening for his cough. And the reason why is because when he was born, he had some fluid in his stomach, right? And so every so often, he would cough and he would choke on it. And so we'd get up, kind of blow him over, kind of give him a pat, right? And send him back down. And I remember that in those moments, I felt really small. You know, and I remember thinking to myself, like, it doesn't really matter how smart I think I am. It doesn't really matter how many resources we have at our disposal. It doesn't really even matter how earnestly Emma and I try to raise Teddy in godliness.

2:02 The reality is that only God can save him. His life is in God's hand. If we want to see our son flourish, we have to bring him before the Lord. And even though I felt small, in the moment I felt comforted as well. Knowing that even though I am small, I can bring him to a God who is big. And this is a God who acts in time and in space and is moved by the prayers of his people.

2:34 That's the overall tenor of the psalm that we're looking at tonight, Psalm 29. Tradition has it that this psalm was read to children in the midst of storms to reassure them that God was in the storm. all of nature in this psalm attests to god's powerful providence but at the same time we see that god is a personal god and that he wants to draw near to his people and he wants to bless them with peace so that's the context that we come to our passage tonight psalm 29 verses 1 and 2 printed on the front of your bulletin it says ascribe to the lord oh heavenly beings ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. The main idea of this passage for us tonight is to acknowledge God for who he is, glorious and mighty, and live your life in the beauty of his holiness.

3:43 Acknowledge God for who he is, glorious and mighty, and live your life in the beauty of his holiness. And we'll explore that idea in two points. The first point, what's in a name? And the second point, beautiful and holy. So what's in a name? Here we're going to look at the first three lines of our passage. And what you see here is that these lines begin with the word ascribe, which means to rightfully acknowledge. What that means is to require a humble state of mind and take a look at reality and say, indeed, this is true of you. And what we also see is that these first three lines are imperative calls. It puts us as readers in a deferential mood, in a humble mood, To say, we will respond to this.

4:40 We will do this. We will ascribe something to the Lord. And you see also that there's a triple repetition here, right? The first time you see it, it's actually cut off. It doesn't give you the whole thought. It just says, ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings. And you're waiting for it. You're like, what? What do we ascribe? We ascribe to him glory and strength. We ascribe to him the glory due his name. And what we'll focus on here is due his name.

5:14 You see, all of us come here to church with different ideas, whether accurate or inaccurate, about who God is and about what he does. And the challenge for us here tonight is to give God glory because of who he says he is, of how he's revealed himself to be. So what's in a name? In the Old Testament, we see two important self-disclosures that God reveals about himself.

5:48 We see these in Exodus 3 and in Exodus 34. See, in Exodus 3, God is planning to rescue the Israelites out of Egypt, and he calls Moses, and Moses says, God, well, when I go there, and they ask me, what's your name, what am I going to say to them? and what's interesting about God's response is that he doesn't give himself a name he doesn't give Moses a name to say he just says I am who I am and what that shows about him is that this is his essential reality he always is he has no beginning he has no end he always not was he always is. Now that's something that you and I, as creatures, as people bound in time and space, as people who can move forward and maybe look backwards, but can always, always have to exist in time, that's not something that we really can understand. We can talk about it, we can

6:53 conceptualize about it, but that's really outside the realm of our experience. So God is above creation. He stands over creation. There's a categorical difference between the creator and the creature. So what does it look like then to give God the glory due his name here? I think it's especially salient for those of us who maybe have been Christians for some time or who've been in church for some time and especially for those who are, say, going to seminary.

7:31 You know, it's kind of like the sun, right? It's kind of like if you want to go and study astronomy. You can spend your whole life, you can spend years of your life thinking about stars. You can spend the whole, you know, years and months calculating things, right? Quantifying, say for example, the amount of energy that a star can put out. You can categorize the stars based on how big they are, how small they are. You can measure the distance of stars and hypothesize about how long it would take for someone to get there.

8:04 So you can become an expert about stars. But the reality is that 99% of us, when we go outside, we cannot spend a day in the sun without sunscreen. None of us can stare with our naked eye at the sun and not go blind. Friends, it's the same thing with God. Don't let your knowledge about God and who he is, don't let your learning about scripture and its history of interpretation or the circumstances of its composition, don't let your learning ever lead you down the road of thinking that the authority of God and his word on your life is minimized.

8:53 That's going to lead you to death. give glory to give god the glory due his name by submitting your life to him and his word so practically what does that look like well one of the ways we can do that is by gathering regularly for fellowship and discipleship with other believers people who are going to encourage you when you share with them the joys in your life but also the difficulties the struggles that you have to obey God. So make sure that you make room, make margin in your life for those kinds of relationships. Be proactive about scheduling that on your calendar. The second thing that we see is in Exodus 34, when Moses is praying for the Israelites and he asks to see God's glory.

9:47 And what God says to him is, look, you can't see my glory, but I'm going to pass by you. And when he does, he shows something about himself again by saying this in Exodus 34. The Lord, the Lord, that's his covenant name, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. There are some of us tonight who are here and who are not Christians.

10:21 And you've heard the gospel. You've heard it from friends. You've heard it from parents. You've heard it from maybe even the person sitting next to you. And you're hearing it now, that every one of us has sinned. And because of that sin, we're alienated from God. And yet, because of Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross, we can be forgiven and we can be made right with him. Friends, if you haven't trusted Jesus' take on your sin, tonight is the night to do that.

10:53 Give God the glory that he deserves by trusting in his gospel. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is proof that God is merciful and gracious. God has already proven himself in Jesus Christ. So ascribe glory to him by believing in the gospel. And that brings us to point two, beautiful and holy. When we think of the adjectives or nouns that we would use to describe God, what comes to mind?

11:27 I think for a lot of us, we might think of powerful, right? We might think of glorious. We might think of kind. Maybe if you're kind of fancy, you'll think of the different omnis of systematic theology. But the one description that's easy for us to overlook, and I think the one that the psalmist wants to bring to mind, is that God is beautiful. That God is beautiful. And that his beauty and his holiness go hand in hand. The holiness that's in view here isn't just moral holiness, right?

12:03 Given the overall tenor of the psalm, we see that God is portrayed as being the absolute sovereign of all creation. Indeed, he stands above all of creation. And unlike creation, which is made up of multiple parts, unlike creation, which exists in time, God does not exist in time, and he is divinely simple. What I mean by that is God doesn't just tell the truth. God is truth. God doesn't just act lovingly. God is love.

12:34 These are things that can be said of God that cannot be said of us. And so God is wholly other in his holiness. So that's holiness. But what about beauty? And what we see here is that the psalmist calls us to worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. Think about the last time you went outside and you said to yourself, ah, what a beautiful day. Now I could ask you to describe, okay, like what was the temperature? What was the humidity?

13:05 You could tell me all about how there were very few clouds in the sky, but just enough clouds so that you could get some shade, and the breeze was nice, and you could feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. But even if you told me all of these things, to say that the day is beautiful is more than the sum of all these parts. The day is beautiful because it satisfies a yearning for delight and for joy. friends because of God's perfections he is beautiful and everything he does is beautiful his work in creation is beautiful his work in redemption is supremely beautiful because in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we see all of God's attributes on display we see his mercy and kindness. We see his justice and righteousness. We see his gentleness.

14:13 And all of it is on display to fallen people. All of it is for fallen people. And friends, when we see that, when we really see that, our hearts run to him in joy and in delight. And I hope that beautiful becomes part of our regular vocabulary and regular thought life when it comes to God. Because that is the vocabulary and that is the perspective that scripture has on God.

14:49 So what does it mean then to worship God in the splendor of holiness? I think the best way for us to think about this is actually beyond the four walls of this building. Because the word here, worship, it really means to bow down. It means to submit your life, your whole life, everything about your life, the things you think, the things you do, the things you say, the things you hope for, all of it is submitted to the Lord. It's a sense of living before God with an awareness of and a delight in his beauty and his holiness.

15:24 It's like a pair of glasses that you put on, and it clarifies everything that you see. It informs everything that you do. You see things differently than those who don't have that sense of God's holiness, who don't delight in God's holiness. It's the reason why, as a Christian, you can go to the Grand Canyon, and you can legitimately have your faith be strengthened by thinking about and seeing the beauty of the canyon, but also by seeing the beauty of God.

15:57 It's the kind of thing that those who do not love God's holiness, it's the thing that those who do not know God, they can go to the Grand Canyon and they can see, wow, look at how large this is. Wow, look at how much time this took to make. Cool. But they will miss the essential beauty of the canyon because they miss the essential beauty of the God who made it. It's why Christians can face difficult, challenging times with hope and with joy, even in the midst of grief.

16:30 And it's because they know that they're loved by a God who isn't just loving, but who is love. They're loved by a God who works every situation for the good of those who love him, not because he can, but because he is goodness. That they're loved by a God who makes everything beautiful in its time because he himself is beautiful. And friends, when we learn to cultivate that kind of life, when we learn to see God rightly, when we learn to submit and delight in his holiness, then we start to do what we were made to do, which is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

17:16 Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you are in the storm. We thank you that you are in the quiet. We thank you that you have revealed yourself to us ultimately through your word and through your son. Lord, we pray that for those of us tonight who are struggling to see you as beautiful, for those of us tonight who are tired in their faith, Father, we pray that you would encourage them.

17:49 Father, you would strengthen them. Lord, you are high and above all of creation, and yet you come down to us to love us and to draw us near to you. We thank you for that. We praise you for that. We pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.