Psalm 33

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Hey, hey, welcome to Coffee and Devotions.
It is Thursday morning. This is where every day we get together, we get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2021, we will make it through all the wisdom literature. This morning, we are at Psalm 33. It's a beautiful Psalm. Why don't we go ahead and have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for what a rich blessing it is to get to come to your word. We pray, Father, that as we read your word, that you would care for us and watch over us. We pray that we would rejoice in who you are. In Jesus's name, amen.
Well, real quick before we get moving too far, I do want to let you know that at the end of this devotional this morning, we're going to take a look at a resource that I have free for you available today. So just a free resource, so stick till the end and I'll show you that. Why don't we go ahead and turn to the computer now and get into God's word. Alright, here we go.
So we are at Psalm 33. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, for praise from the upright is beautiful. Praise the Lord with the harp. Make melody to Him with an instrument of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully with a shout of joy. Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully with a shout of joy.
For the word of the Lord is right, and all His work is done in truth. He loves the righteous. Sorry, he loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fill the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
For He spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever. the plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen as his own inheritance. The Lord looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men. From the place of his dwelling he looks on all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashions their hearts individually. He considers all their works. No king is saved by the multitude of an army. A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety. Neither shall it deliver any from its great strength.
Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his mercy to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield, for our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name. Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in you." Well, the psalm starts with, Rejoice in the Lord, O you the righteous. And here it ends, Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in you.
Hey, what is this about? This is about who God is. God is the one who is right. All of his works are done in truth. He loves righteousness and justice, and the earth is full of his goodness. When we look around the world and we see the beauty that surrounds us, we know that all God's works are righteous and just. Now, when we look at the works of man, we know that's not the case. We know that nations and people struggle. And we are having debates about that in America right now. There's news reports coming out of Myanmar right now. And we know that men are always bound up with issues of righteousness and justice, and we're always falling short, aren't we?
But the Lord never does. And what does it say about the Lord in verses six and seven? By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, right? God speaks in things that were not become. Out of nothing but his own will and power, he says, and he creates by what theologians call ex nihilo, out of nothing. God just speaks, and by the word of his power, it's there.
He gathers up the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays the deep and storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord, right? He made all of us. We should fear him. We should follow him. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast.
When's the last time when a storm has swept across Have you just stood in awe? That's the Lord who's moving those clouds. I mean, we live in a technological age where the weatherman thinks he knows exactly what's going on, but we often know that that's not the case. They don't know why things are always moving the way they are. They're able to predict things because God works in predictable ways. He's not a God of chaos, but a God of order. And yet it is God himself who is moving.
It's God himself. that we should stand in awe of? When's the last time you've stood in awe of God as you've seen the sunrise? When's the last time you've stood in awe of God as you looked out over the ocean and you saw it stretch out as far as you could see? When's the last time you've gone to the mountains and saw the great heaps that were piled up and knew that it was God who established them? We should stand in awe of him.
And there's this interesting thing he says here, right? He talks about where our strength and confidence comes from. We think that if we build the fastest fighter jets, if we have the best military, if we have the best tanks, if we have the best artillery, if we build a space force and if we do all these things, we're gonna be strong and we'll win the war and everything will be okay. But the reality is, that's not where we should put our confidence. We don't put our confidence in the DOD or in the CIA. We put our confidence in the Lord.
This is what David was trying to get at. This is what God commanded them. This is why the kings of Israel were specifically commanded not to multiply horses, not to multiply chariots, because they needed a trust in the Lord. It was the Lord who would give them victory in battle.
It's the Lord who we look to. It's the Lord whom we trust. It's the Lord who we must bow to as the eternal King. And so, how does the psalm end? Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy to deliver the soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits on the Lord. He is our help and our shield for our heart shall rejoice in him."
Do you come to the Lord on your own strength? Do you come to the Lord on your own strength, or do you come to the Lord bowing before him, looking to him for protection, going to him for mercy, standing in awe of his great power, and that the one who made the universe will care for you? It's this beautiful truth that we've been going through in our congregation in the book of Esther, that Romans chapter eight so clearly brings out, that God is sovereign in his providence and he is working all things together for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purposes. And if he did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? If we fear him, if we stand in awe of him, if we love him, if we look to him as our shield, our strength, our help, our savior, he'll care for us. Is that the cry of your heart?
Let's go ahead and pray and then we'll get into our free resource for the day. Lord, we thank you so much for this day and we thank you for your word. We pray now that as we get into your word that you would care for us and watch over us. Lord, we pray that we might not just let your word be something that we've heard, but we pray that it would seep down into our soul, that what we've just gotten into, Lord, that we would lift up our eyes to you and rejoice. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
All right, why don't we go ahead and jump in real quick? I'm gonna change some things on the screen here, so that's why I'm looking away. Let me pull this up. Give me one second. Okay, I gotta clear out a few things. Okay, here we go. All right, so you're able to see here, I'm gonna minimize this past this, and then I'll jump over here. This is a website, it's called logoffs.com. Oh, I need to move this out of the way for you guys. Give me, nope, wrong thing. Here we go. I'm gonna move myself down here and put myself in a small corner so you guys can see the screen.
All right, so if you go to the website, logos.com slash basic, logos.com slash basic, you'll find this website here, Study the Bible Anywhere. And as you go through this website, it's gonna give you a whole bunch of stuff, but this is a free resource. It's a resource that I use. Actually, it's a resource you've been following along with this whole time. So, oh. Let's try that again.
So this is actually the Bible software I use. It's called Logos, and L-O-G-O-S. And so you're able to see they have a whole bunch of, this is what they call the home screen here. And you'll see that our daily Bible reading plan is right here. So I just click on this. And it's going to pop up our daily Bible reading plan. So it automatically loads up a study Bible for me.
And here's a calendar of where we are. So like today, when I'm done with our passage, I'll go here and I'll click Done. And it will automatically mark it that we're done. Oh, I just realized that's. There we go. That's a lot easier for you to see now. And so it'll show you all this. But let's say I wanted to do something else.
This is really fun. And this is amazing that they're giving this away for free. I'm not sure how much of it they're giving for free. There's different modules, and you're able to expand your library. But let me... Let me go here to a passage guide. This is a really helpful tool they have.
So if I go to a passage guide and I type in Psalm 33, it's going to load all the different content we have for Psalm 33. So as it loads, it's gonna keep going. You see these little dots, they're loading here all the different things we have. So the first thing it's going to bring up is the commentaries after this. So here's all the different commentaries I have on this passage of the Psalms. And then there are, so you're able to read any of those. And this is fun too, you know, if you just click it, you don't have to look for it. This is Matthew Henry's commentary. It's just going to pull up straight to Psalm 33, and it's right there for you.
If you want to go to parallel passages, you're able to see, oh, Ephesians chapter 5, 19 says this, and when you hover over it, it will show you a verse. If you go down here, you're able to go to cross-references, and that will load up different cross-references for that passage. And so you're able to dig as deep in as you want.
One of the things I love doing is I like going down here to the ancient literature, and I like seeing what did the church fathers write about these things. And now these are library packages that I've had to buy, but I find it helpful to see, okay, you know, oh look, Augustine quotes Psalm 33 multiple times all over the place. Or I'm able to see that Ambrose, Ambrose also wrote on it. There's other things as well. There's biblical theology. So if you own different books, you're able to search those different books or systematic theologies or confessional documents. Or you're able to see John Piper has a sermon on there. And there's a whole bunch of different things.
Let me just show you one last thing real quick. This is something I really enjoy I'm a visual type person and so I need this I'm going to just go over here and I'm going to on tools press the search button and Now I'm just going to type basic and I'm gonna this is something I was interested in Esther chapter 5 she Esther goes to the uh King Ashuarius and she wants to get a presence with him and he holds out the scepter and I thought what does a scepter look like and so there's a whole bunch of stuff here about what a scepter looks like but this is where I was really interested let me see if I can find where it was in the media section all right search all media sources and this is what I found interesting here This picture is going to take me to a book that I have in my library. And here I'm able to see, here's King Darius I with Xerxes behind him. And this is the scepter he had in his hand. What a cool picture. There's a relief on the wall of one of the walls in the city. And so here, Here we have a picture of, at least a stone picture of what this golden scepter looked like.
So all that to say, this is a really cool resource. It's free. It's the Bible software I use. I really like it. Logos, so www.logos.com forward slash basic, and you'll be able to get it. And I think they're including 40 free resources with it. So anyways, if you're still following along, I hope that's helpful to you and I will see you tomorrow. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.