"...I sing for joy at the works of your hands."
Fall in the Psalms • Sermon • Submitted
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It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
How great are your works, O Lord!
Your thoughts are very deep!
The stupid man cannot know;
the fool cannot understand this:
that though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever;
but you, O Lord, are on high forever.
For behold, your enemies, O Lord,
for behold, your enemies shall perish;
all evildoers shall be scattered.
But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;
you have poured over me fresh oil.
My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.
The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green,
to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
Scripture: Psalm 92:1-15
Sermon Title: “…I sing for joy at the works of your hands.”
As I mentioned last time, the tone changes quite a bit as we get into Book Four. The psalm before us today is a joyful psalm! Summarizing the ESV study notes on Book Four, these psalms, 90 to 106, appear to be the response to the problems, the laments in Book Three. We’re reminded in these of God’s activeness even long before David or any other king were on the throne. The statement, “The LORD reigns”…refutes the doubts heard earlier. Also, to note about this collection, we have limited information on the authors. Of the 17 psalms, only four of them note the author. Moses is mentioned once, David twice, and then a person who is “afflicted.”
If you have a Bible open, you can see that the title of this passage labels it as “A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day.” This was utilized in the temple on Israel’s day of rest. It’s very fitting for believers today to continue meditating on these words and using them to direct us to God.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, some of you have seen a picture on Facebook or you’ve heard me talk about it, but I caught a pretty nice bass in an area lake a little over a month ago. I can assure you this isn’t one of those fisherman’s tales where I give you wildly exaggerated measurements or I get a picture where I’m holding the fish as far out from my body and making my hands as small as possible or better yet—that I’ve photoshopped it. No, this is the real deal. This was an around 23” long, chunky bass.
The night I caught that fish, it was so nice out and knowing there weren’t too many more days like it, I told Christie let’s go out just for half an hour. I knew we didn’t have enough time to get the boat out and get the kids back to bed, but if nothing else, we’d see the fall colors and a pretty sunset. We got to the lake and after 5 minutes my kids just want to run around or sit in the truck, and so we let them do that. Christie had gone up to deal with them, and I was about to stop because it was getting too dark to see my line anymore, when suddenly I hooked into that.
Surprisingly, it didn’t put up a great fight, but when I got it in, I was looking at the biggest mouth I’ve ever seen. I told the kids to come and see it and for Christie to find me something to get the hook out of its mouth, because that was stuck in good. I wanted to keep the fish alive, and of course I just came for a half hour of lazy fishing, so I didn’t have my measuring tape, I didn’t have my scale, I didn’t have a bucket, and eventually I let it go. I have the memory and the picture.
Let me tell you, this excited me, and honestly I didn’t even realize how big it was until after we got home. That excitement made me go back to that lake several days over the next week trying to catch that fish again. It put a smile on my face and disbelief that I caught that. Even this morning, you can probably still hear the excitement in my weakened voice—the excitement that a fish that big was even in that lake, that I caught it from shore, that I landed it without losing it.
Someone said I now have an illustration for a sermon on jealousy. Yet as I thought about today’s sermon on worship and praise, it seems to fit just as well. At least some of my praise, some of my focus was drawn to catching that kind of fish and celebrating it. It’s a catch like that which makes all the bite-less casts, all the time spent tying up lures, all the dealing with knotted up line worth it. It feels like a reward for work put in, and yet the reality is not every angler gets a fish like that. I can and did give thanks to God for the experience, but I wanted the feeling again. It wasn’t just excitement, but in a way it was worship and not directed to God. Floating in my head was that my life would be better, it’d be more fulfilled if I had that fish and could get it mounted.
We begin then by addressing the question, where should every believer’s primary and complete joy come from? I think we all know the answer, and it’s the one we should give---it’s God. Notice, though, how the psalmist speaks. He begins by saying “It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High…” The initial cause for his praise and music-making is simple, because God exists, and the psalmist acknowledges he is in a relationship with God. He continues, “[It’s good] to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night...” Whether the psalmist is speaking from a wealth of personal experiences with the LORD’s love and faithfulness or simply acknowledging them to exist, the LORD should be praised for his character. Picking up verse 4, “For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands. How great are your works, O LORD, how profound your thoughts!” As if it’s not enough that God is praised for his existence and character, the psalmist praises not the creations or the creatures of God, but that which God does to accomplish those things. God is not just sitting on a throne, looking down on us smugly, but he’s active. Not only that, his mind, his thoughts, his judgments—while not fully comprehendible are praiseworthy, too.
What is captured in these several words from just three verses is enough to merit and prompt and encourage every believer in their praise of God and in their experience of joy! It is so important that we practice self-control and are aware of what is bringing us joy in life. For the angler, a fish like I caught, for the hunter, getting a big antler rack, for the car enthusiast, having that pristine hot rod or antique, you name your hobby, your enjoyment, and you know what can bring excitement and joy to you. It’s not bad to celebrate big moments and accomplishments, not at all. It’s not wrong or sinful to enjoy hobbies. But our true and complete joy should start and be sustained by what we know to be true in God. Going back to the Hebrew word, ranon, joy is giving a “ringing cry” or a “shout—we are not ashamed to express excitement in God.
That seems to be why the psalmist heads the route he does in this passage. When we get to verses 6 and 7, there’s a stark contrast. We go from the praise of God to now, “The senseless man does not know, the fools do not understand, that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be destroyed forever.” Where do other people, non-believers, non-God-praisers find joy? They find it in their works, their success, their own existence. They don’t look to the knowledge and goodness of God; they look to their own knowledge or thoughts.
So, we have to ask ourselves, where is our joy coming from? Is it in what we can make, what we can do, what we can think, in our enjoyment of life being filled with comfort and fun? Or is our joy—again whether we have a perspective on life of contentment or dread, wonder or darkness—is our joy found in God? Can we by faith celebrate and praise the One who is and who sustains us, and who watches over even the most minute details of our lives?
That brings us into our second point: we—believers—need time with those who experience the same joy we do and time apart from those who do not. Back when we looked at Psalm 52, we noted how there are a number of psalms that have this clear-cut distinction between godly and ungodly, righteous and unrighteous, the upright and the wicked, and labels like that. We hear even from Jesus’ mouth about the sheep and the goats—there is a division between those God loves, the redeemed, and those who are not. In that message I preached how we may want God’s righteous judgment on those people but we should continue loving our enemy and praying for our persecutor.
Those labels show up again in Psalm 92. We heard, “The senseless man…fools…the wicked…evildoers.” Verses 9 and 11, “For surely your enemies, O LORD, surely your enemies will perish; all evildoers will be scattered….My eyes have seen…my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.” There are people who believers must not overly tie themselves to, that we must exercise caution with, that we really need to be apart from. There’s a warning we can hear in Jesus’ Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. The farmer scatters seed and some of it doesn’t stand a chance because it’s eaten up by the birds. Some of it springs up quickly but can’t put down roots because it’s such rocky soil and dies by the sun’s scorching. Some springs up but gets choked by thorns, but the truly productive crops grew where there was good soil and nothing to wreck its growth.
That doesn’t mean that the believer should never ever interact with an unbeliever. That we should not do any type of evangelism out of fear that we’ll get choked out of our faith. That we should not serve someone until we’ve verified that they have made a commitment to Jesus. No. But we need fellow Christians to support us and we ought to desire to support one another.
The Belgic Confession Article 28 talks about the universal church and the obligations of its members—that being ordinary believers like you and me. It states, “[Christians] ought not to withdraw from [this holy assembly and congregation]. content to be by themselves…But all people are obliged to join and unite with it, keeping the unity of the church, by submitting to its instruction and discipline, by bending their necks under the yoke of Jesus Christ, and by serving to build up one another.” But this article is not just about being in and doing this together, but it also says, “…To preserve this unity more effectively, it is the duty of all believers, according to God’s Word, to separate themselves from those who do not belong to the church, in order to join this assembly wherever God has established it…”
While that may sound harsh and isolating, or think it’s saying we ought to go off and create communes to live in separate from anyone who might not believe, what the author of the Confession is getting at is how Christians are a sacred people. We are set apart from other people by God. We need him and one another for support, to be built up. That doesn’t happen when we’re never together. We need fellowship and being truly with each other—whether that’s in church or visits for those who are homebound or shut-in to encourage and correct and to shape each other as God might use us. We aren’t to be so divisive that we’re always shutting doors or trying to break off from people we’re skeptical of, but we are to recognize that the Lord preserves his own in spite of the enemy’s attempts to destroy the church. It’s a practice of love that we should desire to come together with one another, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, at the very least on a weekly basis.
That brings us to our final point, which is, what do we do with our God-rooted joy? Because this psalm was “for the Sabbath,” we might ask this with Sundays in mind or any gathering or fellowship with God’s people. James Boice takes our actions up in his commentary. “How do you approach Sunday? Do you think of it as a day in which you have to go to church, but the duties of which you try to get over as soon as possible so you can spend the rest of the time with your family or get on to other more enjoyable things? Or do you think of it as a precious day given to you by God in which you can learn about him and so praise him? Is Sunday a trial or a treat? Is it a delight or a deadly duty?” He also asks, “...Does the thought of praising God seem boring to you? If it does, you should recall that it is for this [for praise] we were created…Our enjoyment of God is expressed in our praise of God, and when we praise God we do indeed enjoy him. If you do not find the worship of God on Sunday (or at any other time) to be enjoyable, it is not because you have come to know God and have found that he is boring. It is because you do not know him much at all. For the more you know him, the more enjoyable the praise of God will be.”
Does that mean every day or at least every Sunday that every true believer will be recognizable because they walk around only ever with a smile on their face and like they’re floating on cloud nine and their nose will be stuck in a Bible? Not that that would be bad, but no, it doesn’t mean that always has to be true. We may still have down days, even on Sundays. We can have days when we are sick and tired and would rather not be around many people. We can have days when the pressures of the week or concern over an illness have our minds twisted up. Yet being rooted in God, rooted in knowing him by how he presents himself in his word and trusting that he continues to watch over us—as the psalmist did—should at the very least remind us there is so much to delight in him.
For those who believe in God and whose joy is rooted in him, the praise of God should be on our lips in song and speech. Our eyes should be on the lookout for how he is at work and our ears listening that we can testify to his continued compassions and miracles. Our souls, hearts, and minds ought to be assured by the care of his will and his purpose when things come against us. Sunday should be a day on which we fully give ourselves to God but also that we might be so refilled with his truth going into the week before us. Sunday is a day of rest not to go chasing everything this world offers, but resting in his promises and finding joy in him and with his people.
So, on this particular day, as we serve and celebrate the Lord’s goodness through the shoeboxes and ask his blessing for salvation in the lives of those who receive them, we’re praying that these boys and girls, their parents and neighbors, would come to know the joy of the Lord that we know. We’re praying that as each of us looks at the world around us---in poverty or in plenty—that each would be able to sing for joy at the marvelous work that God is doing. It is he who provides, he who saves. May our worship, our hope, and our joy never rest in anything else. Soli Deo Gloria. Amen.