Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

We are blessed and privileged that you would join us this morning.

It’s been a rough few weeks in evangelicalism at large and the idea of what it means to be saved.

First a few weeks ago there was the announcements by Joshua Harris - one time pastor of Sovereign Grace ministries and author of the books “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and “Boy Meets Girl” - that he and his wife were going to be getting a divorce.

Shortly after that on July 26th he followed up with the following message to his followers on Instagram

"The popular phrase for this is 'deconstruction,' the biblical phrase is 'falling away," he added.

"By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian."

And then most recently within the last two weeks one of Hillsong’s primary worship music writers and musicians Marty Sampson announced - again on Instagram…what is it with that site? - “I’m genuinely losing my faith and it doesn’t bother me.

Like, what bothers me now is nothing.

I am so happy now, so at peace with the world.

It’s crazy.”

Later in the same posts he says “All I know is what’s true to me right now, and Christianity just seems to me like another religion at this point.”

What is it that causes these men who once professed the faith to repudiate all they’ve ever said they believed, and in the cases of some have taught?

What is it that causes us to question our faith and the faithfulness of God when difficulties arise in our lives?

This mornings Psalm is going to give us a look into the mind of a man who does just that - and ends up at the right conclusion.

Let’s learn from this man’s writings and see how we need to grow in our own lives in light of what he has to teach us.

Please open your Bibles with me to Psalm 89.

I know that was long but I don’t think we can ever sit under too much reading of the Word of God.

A few years ago, in 2015 to be exact, I went to the Shepherd’s Conference and sat as Mark Dever preached Psalm 119.

And before preaching he read all 176 verses.

What a joy and privilege it is to have access and to sit under the teaching of the Word of God.

I saw a note recently celebrating the fact that the United States is going to relax tariffs on the importing of Bibles from China and so it will be cheaper for those entities who are having Bibles made in China.

I think instead of celebrating that fact we should be lamenting the fact that we can buy Bibles cheaply that are being made in a country where the Bible is not available to their own citizens.

We should be praying for the Christians in that nation - that they would have as easy access to the Word of God that we do.

But here, this morning, we come to this Psalm and we are introduced to the author as being a man named Ethan the Ezrahite.

This man is mentioned one other time in Scripture in 1 Kings 4

The reason I mention this is that there is some question as to exactly when this Psalm was written.

The Psalm is attributed to someone who was alive during the time of Solomon and yet the latter half of the Psalm is a lament more descriptive of the exile of Israel.

Whenever this Psalm was written (whether it is all one writing or the writer pieced together parts from different writings) it is clear this writer is experiencing a trial of conscience and faith.

How does he handle it?

And what can we learn from what he writes?

God’s Faithfulness Exalted

The Psalmist starts off exuberantly praising the Lord.

He can’t contain himself.

He bursts forth in song extolling the faithfulness of God.

In fact, four times in the first two verses he writes of the faithfulness of God.

He is enraptured by God’s faithfulness - He says that he will sing of His faithful love, that he will proclaim His faithfulness to all generations, that His faithful love is built up forever and that He will establish His faithfulness in the heavens.

We can’t help but be caught up in his exaltation and joy in singing to His Lord.

This opening begs a question of us - who did we come here to worship today?

Who did we come here to proclaim?

We work very hard here to ensure that the songs we sing point us to God and faithfully represent His character.

But what about in your car?

Or in your home?

What songs do you gravitate toward?

What songs do you find yourself singing along with?

Have you ever examined them to see where they are pointing your eyes?

Are they pointing you toward God and His faithfulness?

Are they giving you a good picture of God, a picture that is true to the God that is presented in His Word?

Having opened in such an animated manner, the Psalmist is going to give us three places that God’s faithfulness is exalted - in the Heavens, in His creation and through His people.

God’s Faithfulness Exalted in the Heavens

He says that the heavens praise your wonders and faithfulness.

A few weeks ago we looked at Psalm 8 and saw how the heavens proclaim His name and bear witness to the majesty of our God

and again in Psalm 19:1

and in the prophet Isaiah

The heavens cannot help but declare the faithfulness of the Lord - they demonstrate the mightiness and acts of His hands.

But in our text this morning we get an even greater picture of God’s faithfulness as the heavens bear witness to Him in court.

Not a judicial court but more the royal court of Heaven as the throne of Heaven is surrounded by the assembly of the holy ones.

But there is one who cannot escape attention because He is wholly other than any other being there.

The Psalmist shapes it through a series of three questions - Who in the skies can compare with the Lord?

Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord? and then later in verse 8 he will ask who is strong like you?

And the answer to each of these is the same - no one.

There is no other being that is like God because He is the only uncreated being in all of the universe.

He is also the only one who, while He manifests Himself within the bounds of Heaven, is outside of the bounds of the earth, the created universe and even outside the bounds of Heaven itself.

Psalm 86:8 proclaims

and then later Psalm 113:5

There is no one like Him and the Heavens cannot help but proclaim His faithfulness as one who is to be greatly feared among the holy ones, as one who is more awe inspiring than all the other beings present.

There are records in Scripture of angelic encounters and in each of them the human who encounters the fully revealed angel falls on their face as if dead.

But there is only one instance (after Adam in the Garden) where a man is entreated to a glimpse of the glory of God and he can only look at the back of God because he couldn’t survive

Our God is proclaimed as faithful in the Heavens.

Although it would be tempting, the psalmist doesn’t remain in the heights of Heaven but brings our eyes back down to earth to see how He is proclaimed faithful within His creation.

God’s Faithfulness Exalted in Creation

The psalmist starts off with an interesting statement - he says You rule the raging seas, when it’s waves surge you still them.

Having spent 22 years in the Navy I’ve been in my share of raging seas.

Coming back from one deployment across the Atlantic Ocean we were diverted to a southerly route because the seas were so rough that the carrier was taking water over her bow.

And even on that route we could go out into the breaks (enclosed walkways on either side of the ship) and count 10 seconds of sea followed by 10 seconds of sky.

The ships would ride these massive waves and then crash down and the whole ship would shudder from side to side.

The seas can surely rage.

He goes on to say that He crushed Rahab - this is not the Rahab that we know best in Scripture from the town of Jericho but instead this is either a reference to Egypt and how the Lord crushed that nation during the Exodus or is another name for the sea monster known in other passages as Leviathan.

The creation demonstrates that there is a God.

The very laws of nature that we think of - thermodynamics, gravity or the theory of general relativity - all of these demonstrate that there is a God who orders His universe to operate under certain standards.

Here the psalmist pares it down the even the basics of direction - north and south.

The thing about that is as simple as that sounds it is not that simple.

There are different magnetic pulls depending on whether you are in the northern or southern hemisphere.

As a hiker I always carry a compass with me wherever I go because if for some reason I lose the trail I need to be able to navigate my way out of wherever I am.

It is important to know what kind of compass I am carrying because the needle (if it is set up for the southern hemisphere and I am around Spokane) will not point to magnetic north.

This is the explanation from the National Center for Environmental Information

For a compass to work properly, the compass needle must be free to rotate and align with the magnetic field.

The difference between compasses designed to work in the northern and southern hemispheres is simply the location of the “balance”, a weight placed on the needle to ensure it remains in a horizontal plane and hence free to rotate.

In the northern hemisphere, the magnetic field dips down into the Earth so the compass needle has a weight on the south end of the needle to keep the needle in the horizontal plane.

In the southern hemisphere, the weight needs to be on the north end of the needle.

If you did not change the weight, the needle would not rotate freely, and hence would not work properly.

And God created this.

He created all of it to work as one cohesive planet to support life for the people He would place here.

God’s Faithfulness Exalted in His people

His faithfulness to His people is most clearly exalted when His people rest securely in Him.

Look at the way he describes the joy of the people.

“They are exalted by Your righteousness”, You are their strength, and backing up they walk in the light from Your face and rejoice in Your name all day long.

It is clear that the joy that we are meant to find as people is through the faithfulness of God demonstrated to us and through us.

God’s faithfulness is exalted through the heavens, it is exalted through His creation and it is exalted in and through His people - but how did the people of Israel understand God’s faithfulness?