The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Today on the Bible Study Hour, we'll examine the rich and beautiful imagery of Psalm 33, where David calls on all of God's people to shout out praises of thanksgiving, to joyfully exalt our majestic and faithful God who sees all, knows all, and remains steadfast. Our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Praise is optional and sometimes human voices aren't enough. David reminds us in this Psalm that as God's people, we need to praise him with music and shouts of thanksgiving for both his words and his works. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 33.

Dr. James Boice: The book of Psalms, which has been called rightly Israel's hymnbook, because most of the psalms in it are nationalistic or individualistic. That is, they are either written from the background and from the viewpoint of the nation of Israel, reflecting their experience of God's grace, or else they're written by individual Jewish writers like David and some of the others whose psalms occur later in the Psalter.

Psalm 33 is somewhat different. It's different in that it's directed to all people everywhere, encouraging them to praise God and thank God for all things. So, for that reason, it's really a praise psalm or a thanksgiving psalm for everyone. Now, in spite of the fact that it has this different character, it is linked up with the preceding psalm.

And it's worth noting that, because the connection between Psalm 32 and Psalm 33 says something to us as we approach God in thanksgiving. You'll notice, I'm sure, if you read it carefully, that the first three verses of Psalm 33 echo the final verse of the preceding psalm. The last verse encouraged the people to rejoice in God and to sing to him, all those who are righteous and upright.

And a number of those words are repeated now in the psalm that follows. The word 'sing' is there, and 'righteous' and 'upright'. And although the translation hides it, there are even more echoes in the Hebrew text of these two psalms. So, that alone suggests that there's a connection. It makes us ask why.

And then there's this connection also, at least a probable connection. You'll notice that Psalm 33 doesn't have a title. That's only the second time that that's occurred so far, except for Psalms 1 and 2, which are introductory. And the last time it occurred was at Psalm 10. And when we looked at Psalm 10, I pointed out that the lack of a title probably means that Psalm 10 is to follow directly after Psalm 9, and that perhaps they were even one psalm originally.

They're printed as one psalm in eight of the Hebrew manuscripts, and they're printed that way in the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Vulgate, which is the Latin version of the Old Testament, and in most Roman Catholic Bibles, because Roman Catholic Bibles follow the Vulgate. And that means that the numbering of the psalms differs from that point on, from Psalm 10, way to the end of the Psalter, about Psalm 143, when they get back on track again.

Now, that isn't just incidental information, because although this psalm, Psalm 33, is probably not by David and has quite a different tone, and nobody today seriously suggests that these two psalms were originally one, nevertheless, this psalm was placed after the former deliberately. The compilers who put it together obviously saw the verbal connection and probably they understood a spiritual connection as well, which is the point I'm making.

The previous psalm is a prayer of confession. It's a psalm in which David acknowledges his sin openly, confessing it all and receiving forgiveness for it all. So, it's natural that out of that kind of experience of God's great mercy and grace, he should want to praise and thank God, which is what this psalm does.

And what that says to us as we come to thank God is that we have to come to God as those who have been forgiven of our sins. If we haven't come confessing our sin and finding forgiveness in Jesus Christ, where alone it can be found, then we are in a state of rebellion against God, and it's hypocritical on our part to come to him and pretend that we're thanking him for his material blessings.

What we mean is that we want things, but we don't want him. We want money, but we don't want salvation or righteousness. And in God's order, it's the other way around. He's concerned that we find forgiveness for our sins first of all. And then when we find that, to the degree that he chooses to give them, the other blessings follow. Otherwise, we're quite distorted in our thinking.

The outline of this psalm is quite straightforward. There's a call to worship, which is what the first stanza is all about, verses 1 to 3. And then the last three verses are a response by God's people, a response that we should come to as we get to the end of the study. And then in the middle, verses 4 through 19, you have the body of the psalm.

And it's there that God is praised and thanked, praised for being who he is and thanked for what he's done, where we are especially concerned. So, that's the way we want to look at it. The call to worship is important because it tells us how we should come when we come to praise and thank God. Notice a couple of things here.

First of all, there are six imperatives in these three verses: sing, praise, make music, sing, play, and shout for joy. So, six times over we're told to do something that expresses our praise to God or our thanks to God. It means that thanksgiving and praise isn't optional for people. We often neglect it, but we are disobedient when we do, because the Scriptures tell us that we should.

The second thing that's interesting about it is the mention of musical instruments. That's the first time in the Psalter that musical instruments are mentioned. The harp is mentioned and a ten-stringed lyre. We're not sure exactly what those ancient instruments were like, but the reference to them here at least indicates that it's appropriate to have musical instruments with us in our worship as we sing God's praises.

I mention that because there is a body of thought in certain forms of Christianity that says it's wrong to use musical instruments when you praise the Lord. This text would seem to teach the exact opposite. And not only does it teach that it's proper, it even encourages it, because the impression you get as you read these verses is that if we're really thankful, we want to make a loud noise and maybe human voices aren't enough. We need instruments to help us praise God properly.

Another thing to notice about it: a new song. That's an unusual way of talking. What does this writer mean when he says in verse 3, 'Sing to him a new song'? One of the commentators suggests that this psalm is new in that it's different from those that preceded it. It's speaking internationally, calling on all people everywhere to praise God.

Others say, 'Well, in one of these stanzas, you have echoes of the creation account in Genesis 1. And later on, you have echoes of that great psalm that you have in Exodus 15. And so, this is a retelling of those old passages. It's new in that sense.' I think probably that's not the case. It's probably new in the sense that anybody who has experienced God's grace should have a fresh awareness of it and should praise God out of a fresh experience of his majesty and goodness.

That's what a number of the writers say. Let me just share their thoughts with you. One says that a new song is one which springs freshly from a thankful and rejoicing heart. Another calls this the ever-new freshness of the praise of God. And another writer says there's always room for a fresh voice to proclaim the old gospel, the old creation, the old providence.

If you take those elements and list them together, you really have the essential elements for effective, joyful worship. One of them is freshness. We don't praise God much if we're just hashing over old blessings. 'Oh yes, 20 years ago God did this for me.' That's hardly a thanksgiving service or a service of praise. Freshness is important.

Skill is another: skill of the instruments, playing skillfully, singing skillfully. And I might add as well, thinking skillfully as we rehearse God's blessings. And then fervor also, because the impression you get here is that this is going to be an exuberant thanksgiving. Now, at the very end, you get a different tone.

It settles down, it's quiet, and it's a way of saying that there are different moods in which God can be worshiped. But here at the beginning, it calls upon us to do these three things. That's what our worship should be. It should be fresh and skillful and fervent or joyful also. Do we often worship God like that? I think generally here we do. I'm not sure that happens everywhere, but that should guide our thinking today.

Beginning with verse 4, you have the body of this psalm, and it rehearses God's blessings. The theme is set in verses 4 and 5, because what verse 4 tells us is that God is to be praised for two things: first of all, his word, and secondly, his works. The King James or the Authorized Version actually uses the word 'works'. God's works are faithful, and what he does is what the King James says.

So the word is there, but whether it's there or not, that's the idea. And as we follow through the psalm, we find that that's exactly what the writer is talking about: God's word, which brings things into being. So when we praise God, we should focus our praise, at least in this psalm, in those two areas.

There are a number of things said in these verses about the character of God. He's praised for his rightness and his truth, which have to do with his word, and his righteousness, faithfulness, justice, and unfailing love, which have to do with his works. And yet each one of those attributes describes the words on the one hand and the works on the other hand because, as we learn in Scripture and as the psalm says clearly, God's works and his words always go together.

They're never in disjunction. God never says one thing and does another. What God says is what God does, and what God does is what he's spoken to us about in Scripture. It's so different with us. We say one thing and we do something else. And at best, we're inconsistent, and at worst, we're hypocritical or deliberately misleading.

God is never like that. So one thing we ought to praise God for and thank him for is that he is consistent. He can always be trusted. God's word stands. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. We never find any inconstancy or variableness in God. Having set that theme in verses 4 and 5, the writer begins to think of what God has done, and his thoughts go first of all to the creation.

It's not surprising that he should turn to the creation because if you're thinking of this unity of the word and works of God, any biblical writer naturally thinks of the creation story, because of what we're told there in that first chapter of Genesis, that God brought the heavens and the earth into being by his word. Eight times over in that chapter you have the words, 'And God said,' or a variation, 'Then God said.' And every time God said something, something came into being.

Now, that's the power of God's word. That's fiat creation. It's utterly unlike anything you and I can do. You and I can form things if we have a certain substance to work with. And so you have artists making paintings and sculptures, and you have writers putting down beautiful words, and musicians composing notes. We're able to be creative in that sense, but only God creates by fiat.

As he speaks, then something that didn't exist before comes into being. No wonder, having said that, the writer says in verse 8, 'Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him.' You see how he's thinking. He knows that God is the creator God because of the Hebrew Scriptures, but he's proclaiming it to everybody.

He says everybody in the whole world should know that God's the creator and that only God can create, and that we're his creation, and therefore we should bow before him and we should be thankful. One of the things people are faulted for in Romans 1 is that they are not thankful. Not that they know God in a saving way; not everybody does. It's our task to proclaim that to other people.

Having known him as creator, the creator God, nevertheless, people as a whole don't bow before him and are not thankful. Certainly we should at least be that, if we know his redemption through Jesus Christ. That third stanza also introduces something else, because having spoken of creation in verses 6 through 9, the author's thoughts now turn to providence.

That is, that God continues to guide and protect the people that he's created. Verse 11 is interesting. It says, 'The plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.' It makes us think of Proverbs 19:21, which says the same thing but probably in better-known language. That verse in Proverbs says, 'Many are the plans in the minds of a man, but it's the purpose of the Lord that will be established.'

That's a statement of providence. It means that you and I can plan all kinds of things, but it's what God plans that gets done. God is sovereign in the affairs of human history. And aren't we glad it's like that? What if it wasn't like that? What if it were a case that our plans are the plans that are established?

Our plans are often wrong. Sometimes they're downright sinful. And our purposes vary and our word can't be trusted. If human plans prevailed ultimately, it would be a desperate situation for people. But instead of that, what we're told is that it's God's purposes that are established and therefore, regardless of the injustice that we see, the sin that God permits, in the end, the good plans of the Lord are going to stand firm. We can thank him for that.

It's hard to read that verse with its word 'purpose' without thinking of that specific expression of it that Paul makes in Romans 8. There he's talking about the purposes of God, and he explains what they are: 'All things work together for good to them who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and those he predestined, he also called, those he called he justified, those he justified he also glorified.'

That's a great statement of purpose. It tells us that God's purpose for his people is to make them like Jesus Christ, and the path by which he does that is the path of foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. What a marvelous statement of God's purpose.

And you see, we read a text like this which says the purpose or plans of the Lord stand firm forever, and we know that's true not just of history in a general way, though we're thankful for that, but that's true of us individually as well. God's plans, God's purposes for you, God's plans, God's purposes for me as his people are established.

If he's called us to himself in Jesus Christ and justified us, he is most certainly going to take us through this life and bring us in glory to be with Christ and to be like him forever. We have to thank him for those things as well. Now, in verse 12 and following, he begins to speak about God's specific care for his people: individuals, yes, and the nation as well.

He introduces it in verse 12 by reference to the nation: 'Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance.' When the author of the psalm speaks of the nation whose God is the Lord and the people he chose, there's no doubt that he's thinking about Israel, because it was not true that there were other people who had the Lord Jehovah as their God.

The rest of the nations of the world didn't know him, and they were not chosen in the way that Israel was. Israel was chosen in a very special way. So he's thinking of that. And yet it's hard for us to read that without reflecting on nations as a whole and our own nation in particular and say, because the Scriptures teach it elsewhere, that a nation that has God for its Lord is a happy or blessed nation.

And a nation that rejects God Jehovah as its Lord is a most unhappy nation. The Bible tells us righteousness exalts a nation. We find that righteousness in God himself. Now, we think of our own nation in that respect. Our nation was never an utterly Christian nation, although some think of it that way, any more than the Jews were an utterly godly people.

Nevertheless, our nation did have an extraordinary religious heritage in that a large percentage of the founders of this nation did so with an eye upon God and with a conscious seeking after his glory. The Puritans are probably the most striking example. They came to this country in order to establish a godly commonwealth.

They even used Old Testament language to describe it. They thought of themselves as establishing a new Israel in the wilderness, and they even spoke of their mission as an errand into the wilderness, by which they were reflecting consciously on the wandering of the Jewish people for the 40 years before they actually entered the Promised Land. That's the way the Puritans thought.

In those early days of our history, although by no means was everybody Christian, there were nevertheless large numbers who fervently sought after God. They prayed for his blessing, and God heard them and did bless this country with peace and prosperity. Now, it makes us reflect on where we stand today.

We are nowhere near being a Christian nation in our day. It is true that there's a Christian remnant in this country, a substantial remnant, and I am glad to see it because God, we're told, spares nations for a godly few. He was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah for ten righteous people, if only that many could be found there.

So the fact that we have a remnant of people who are godly in our country is an encouraging and comforting thing, and it probably means that we've been spared great disasters because of the godly remnant. Nevertheless, when we look at our country and ask the question, 'Is it a Christian nation?' the answer if we're honest is that it's anything but a Christian nation anymore.

It used to acknowledge God; now it no longer does. Our country is a secular nation, and if you say what kind of secularism, it is militantly secular. It's trying to drive God from national life as thoroughly as possible. And if you say, 'Well, what is the god of our nation if our national God is not Jehovah?' the answer is our god is money.

That's simply an honest way of speaking. I tremble for our country when I think of what's happening, when I think of the heritage that we have spurned. We ought to pray for our nation along those lines, pray for God's mercy. And yet, at the same time, God nevertheless, even in the midst of a secular environment, blesses his people.

And that's what these verses describe, the way in which God blesses his people. Several categories are mentioned. One is that God watches over his people. Some of the commentators are so impressed with this as it's developed in these verses that they call or title this stanza 'God's Eye', just as you could title the previous stanza 'God's Word'.

God's eye is upon all people according to these verses. This is a statement of God's omniscience. He sees and knows everything. And notice how universal it is: 'From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on the earth, he who formed the hearts of all who considers everything they do.'

There's a universal watchfulness of God over all people and all things. And yet the concern the psalmist has is not for that, though it's the background for what he is concerned about. What he cares about is what he says in verse 18: 'The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love.'

Now, when he says in verse 18 that the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, he's not thinking there in exactly the same way he's thinking earlier. Earlier he's saying God sees everything and knows everything. But when he says the eyes of the Lord are on his people, he means God watches over them to care for them and to protect them.

In other words, it's exactly what we saw in the earlier psalm: 'I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.' God watches over us in order to rebuke us when we sin, in order to help us when we stumble, in order to counsel us when we don't know the way to go, and then to see as we walk down the path that he's set before us if we deviate in order to get us back onto the path.

That's the kind of watchfulness we have. Aren't you glad that God watches over you that way? If God didn't watch over us that way, we would all be blown away in a moment, because we're not able to stand against the perils of life or the temptations of the world or the devil. We need a protecting, watching God, and that's what God does.

That leads to the second thing he talks about, because his watchfulness naturally leads to protection. This is the way I understand the references to the king and the warrior and the horse and all of that. The context for the psalm, of course, is the threats to Israel nationally by surrounding armies, and it says that God overthrows those armies in order to protect his people.

We're not threatened by armies, but we do have other threats that come into our lives, and this is a reminder that God protects us from those. Now, it's negative, you see. It's talking about the things God protects us from. As I was reflecting on this, it occurred to me that most of these deliverances we probably are utterly unaware of because we don't even see them coming.

That is, God deflects them from us before they even get within the field of our vision, and yet nevertheless they're there. On Thanksgiving Day, we normally think positively, and it's right that we do. We think of personal blessings. We are thankful for our families and our homes and provision of needs such as food and work.

And we're thankful for friends and the freedoms we enjoy in a democratic nation. And all of those things should be often on our lips and tongues as we thank God for them. And if we think beyond ourselves and think in a worldwide scope, well, there are blessings there that we praise God for.

We praise God for the way in which so many peoples in the world have recently acquired or rediscovered their freedom, and we're thankful for the opportunities we have in our day because of the state of the world and technology to proclaim the gospel widely. All of those are things for which we're very thankful and they're positive things. We can name them. We know what they are. We ought to be thankful.

And yet you see there are these negative things that we should remember to thank God for. We can't do it specifically because, as I said, we don't know what they are, but we can do it in categories. Have you been spared a serious sickness during this past year? You can be thankful for that.

Not everybody has been spared serious sickness, and God sends illness into the lives of his people as well as health. But if he's given us health and spared us from the sickness, we should be thankful for that. Have you been protected from harm, from enemies? Have you been protected at work from those who might try to hurt you there, or on the street, those who might attack you personally, or in your home, those who might rob or steal or do damage?

If you've been protected in those areas, that's a negative blessing, but nevertheless a real one. And how about temptation? The Bible tells us that there's no temptation taken us but such as is common to man, but God provides for us even before it comes. It's a suggestion, you see, that there are many temptations that God doesn't even allow to come into our lives and turns aside, knowing that if they did, we'd fall.

Isn't it wonderful that God does that? God is certainly a great God in his actions toward us both negatively and positively. And then finally, in verse 19, you get to God's preserving care of his people. You see, you have his watching over us, and then you have his protection of us, and now you have his preserving care.

He covers a lot in that verse. God's unfailing love is on us to deliver us from death and to keep us alive in times of famine. That includes all of the positive things I mentioned, God's provision for our physical needs. Well, in verses 20 through 22, we come to the end, and as I said at the beginning, we strike a different note here.

In the opening call to worship, you have a jubilant excitement. The people are being called upon to sing and shout and make noise to God because they're so thankful. But you see now, having rehearsed his goodness to us and thought about these things and meditated on his unfailing love, which is a theme throughout, at the very end you find the people settling down and declaring that they are going to wait in hope for the Lord, knowing that he's their help and their shield.

I wonder if you and I do that, if we really wait for the Lord. We say we know who he is and we're thankful for what he's done, but do we really trust him in our present circumstances? We're not very thankful if we mention our appreciation of past blessings and provisions but distrust him now.

The God who provided in the past is the same. He's unchanged. He continues to provide. He will provide. And so we can wait in hope for him to do what he will do. Charles Spurgeon has a story in the Treasury of David in which he attributes to an old writer, his name is Edmund Calamy, one of the old writers and preachers, about a young man who was at sea on a ship.

Those were dangerous days, the ships were small, and this ship got into a terrible storm. And everybody was frightened, of course; they were in danger of losing their lives and they were at their wits' end, all except this young man. He seemed to be perfectly calm, even cheerful in the midst of the storm. And some of the passengers asked him how he could be cheerful when they were all in danger of losing their lives. And he said, 'Well, my father is the pilot of the ship, and I know he's going to take good care of me.'

Now, in human terms, that might be a misplaced confidence, because however loving and concerned a father might be, there are always circumstances in life that are beyond us and nobody can guarantee the physical, much less the spiritual well-being of another. But when we talk about God, the God who is described to us in this psalm, it's quite different.

This is the God who brought the whole creation, the heavens and earth, into being by his word, by the mere breath of his mouth. This is the God who watches over his people, foiling the plans of the nations and turning aside the purposes of their people. He doesn't just protect us from individuals, he protects us from whole nations; that is, he guides history for our benefit.

This is the God who watches over us constantly, who protects us and who provides for us in all things. This is the God we worship. And if this is the God we worship, then we can really rest in him. We can wait in hope for him to do what he will do, and while we wait in hope, we can be thankful.

May I say that no one who trusts in this God will ever be disappointed? This God, Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, the God of the New, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and indeed Jesus Christ himself, is a faithful God. No wonder the people conclude by saying, 'May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.'

Let's pray. Our Father, we do thank you for all that you have revealed to us in your word about yourself. Often when we come to a day such as this and express thanks to you, we think only for what you have done, forgetting that what you have done for us flows out of what you are.

You have protected us because you're all-powerful, and you've guided us because you are all-truth, and you have provided for every need because you are all-love. So our Father, while we rightly thank you for what we've experienced of your grace, our thoughts are at the same time directed back to who you are.

And we would ask that if, as we have lived our lives over the last weeks or months or year, we have been going off from your way, pursuing our own plans rather than yours, we ask that by that same grace that reached us in Jesus Christ, you might stoop down and redirect us into a path which is pleasing to you, so that by our works as well as by our words we might be thankful and thus reflect something of who you are. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

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