“'Our Heart is Glad in Him': Hope in God's Goodness (Psalm 33)” | 9/20/2020
Psalm 33| 9/20/20 | Will Duval
This morning, we’re continuing our series - “Psalms of Hope” - in Psalm 33. And as you turn there in your Bibles, I want to give you the big picture TAKEAWAY for the morning right up top:
“Because God is GOOD, we WORSHIP Him.” That’s your MAIN IDEA this morning: Because God is SO Good, we WORSHIP Him.
This psalm is about two things: 1) How Good our God is, and 2) The response of PRAISE that God’s awesomeness elicits within his people.
God’s GOODNESS encompasses all His other attributes. Love is good, so God is all-loving. He is the STANDARD and SOURCE of all love. Holiness is good, so God is perfectly Holy. Both justice and mercy, righteousness and grace: if it’s GOOD, then it’s God. God is Good.
But as GOOD as our God is, we struggle to WORSHIP Him accordingly, don’t we? The angels have no problem singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” all day long, every day, for all of eternity; meanwhile, WE get worried that we’re gonna get BORED in Heaven! Because we don’t have the faintest GLIMPSE of just how Good God really is.
Most of you are familiar with the A.C.T.S. model for prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Let me ask you: what’s the most difficult one to spend sustained time and focus on? We got no problem with Supplication, do we? Prayer requests, asking God for stuff - we’re GOOD with that, right? Thanksgiving: we’re pretty good. Confession: ehhh...
But what about ADORATION? Anybody else honest enough this morning to admit that in my SIN, I am SO inwardly, self-focused for SO much of my day, that it can be tough to spend ANY amount of time AT ALL shifting my focus solely to the Lord? Is that just ME!? I know I’m chief of sinners!
But friends: that is exactly what Psalm 33 invites us to do this morning. Turn our attention to the LORD, to HIS Goodness, and to worship him accordingly.
So would you stand with me, as you’re able, for the reading of God’s word. Psalm 33:
Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!
Praise befits the upright.
2 Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
4 For the word of the Lord is upright,
and all his work is done in faithfulness.
5 He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;
he puts the deeps in storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
10 The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!
13 The Lord looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
14 from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
16 The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.
20 Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
21 For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY…)
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We’re not sure who authored Psalm 33, many think King David, but we’ll just call him “the psalmist” - he lists for us 11 distinct attributes or FACETS of God’s GOODNESS here; and then he’s gonna suggest 8 specific characteristics that ought to define our worship in response.
But you’ll notice that I’m starting with v4. Most psalms of adoration begin by detailing who God is first, what He’s done... and THEN move to praising Him because of it, but here in Psalm 33, it’s almost as if the poet just can’t help himself - he can’t contain his praises! Before He even begins describing how good God is, he’s already broken out into song. But I want to start in v4 with who God IS. Because as James Johnston (260) notes in his commentary: “It’s hard to get excited about nothing. The joy and energy of verses 1–3 are rooted in the truth and theology of verses 4–19. Great worship grows out of great doctrine.” It is Because of who God is, that we praise Him. Specifically, 11 qualities.
#1 - The Lord is Righteous (v4)
- v4: His word is ”upright”. His way is right. And not just because God happens to know what’s right and makes his determinations accordingly; No, God DETERMINES what is right BY his words and actions. God is capital “R” Righteous. There’s not some external standard of righteousness that God accommodates to; God IS the standard. Morality, the rightness or wrongness of things, finds its SOURCE in the very nature and BEING of God. Things are right or wrong because He says so - His “word” MAKES it so.
I was a rebellious kid; I always took issue with the “because I said so” reason. And in my defense, Parents: “Because I said so” is a pretty lame reason. You are a fallible sinner! You know what’s a GREAT reason to do something: because GOD says so! THAT’S the authority I want to appeal to as a parent. Point them to GOD’S word.
-Now that said, Kids: if you’re listening - obey your parents. Even when their only reason is “because I said so”. You know why… you still obey them? BECAUSE God says so! Ephesians 6:1 “obey your parents” :-)
-But can you imagine for a moment what it must BE like, for God, to be RIGHT all the time? Ally’s got a coffee mug here in the office that says, “I’d agree with you, but then we’d BOTH be wrong”. EHHH!! Sorry Ally. My dad used to say growing up: “Son, there are two ways of doing things in life: my way, and the wrong way.” EHHH!! Sorry Dad. The two ways are GOD’S way, and the wrong way. So as Abraham Lincoln said, “Let us not ask God to be on our side; let us pray to be on GOD’S side, because God is always RIGHT.”
#2 - God is Faithful (v4)
-v4: “all his work is done in faithfulness.” Again, what must it be like to NEVER break a promise?! And listen: it’s NOT because He doesn’t make them! One of the most popular adjectives the OT uses of God is that He’s a “covenant-keeping” God; he makes promises. Anyone know how many? In Scripture? Wanna guess… ? [7,487 promises!] But that’s not the amazing part. Shoot - I can make you 7,487 promises! What makes God so good is that he KEEPS every single ONE of them.
-And in the NEW Testament, we discover something even more amazing than that: that not only does God keep every promise he’s ever made, but He’s actually already fulfilled every promise in the person and work of His son, Jesus - they ALL find their “Yes” in Him (2 Cor 1:20). And speaking of God’s goodness leading to worship, Paul concludes: “That is why it is through him [through Jesus] that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” God’s goodness, His faithfulness ought to necessarily lead His people, all the Redeemed, whom God has faithfully rescued from the curse of sin, the grip of death, the threat of Hell, it leads us to WORSHIP. To adoration. To utter “AMENS!” to God for his glory and his faithfulness in Christ.
#3 - God is Just (v5)
-v5: “He loves righteousness and justice”. In the Bible, God’s “righteousness” - tsedaqah - and His justice - mishpat - go hand in hand. Because God always does what is right, He is also always FAIR.
Psalm 89:14 declares “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of [God’s] throne”
Deuteronomy 32:4 “[God’s] work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.”
And we WANT God to be just, don’t we? The first birth mom Polly and I were matched with - before Elijah’s - she backed out of the adoption immediately after she gave birth, before she even saw the baby. The agency told us: “She knew she was gonna keep this baby all along; some moms just do this. They work the system.” We put her up in a nice hotel for the last 5 months of the pregnancy, nice meals, all her doctor’s visits… on our dime, and Polly and I are just out $30,000 with no baby and no recourse. And YOUR tax dollars paid for the delivery and are still paying her welfare and child support. The agency put her on the adoption fraud list, but they said statistically speaking, she’ll probably get knocked up, change her name, and do it all over again. She had CPS called on her during the pregnancy for abusing her oldest child. We want people like that to get punished, don’t we? To be brought to JUSTICE?
-Colossians 3:25 assures us that “Everyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs”
-2 Corinthians 5:10 “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that we may receive what is due for what we have done in the body, whether good or evil.” And we cheer “YEAHHH! JUSTICE!!”
-Until we remember that means US too. “Wait a second: we ALL have to appear?!… answer for EVERY deed done in the body…?!”
-Friends: the ONLY way that God’s justice is a GOOD thing, a praise-worthy thing, for sinners like you and me, is if God has somehow made a way to execute his justice without damning us to the eternal punishment that WE so rightfully deserve. And if we read on there in ch5 of 2 Corinthians, we discover the glorious gospel truth: that “For our sake God made JESUS to be sin, [even though he] knew no sin [he was perfectly sin-LESS!], so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (v21) That means if you are in Christ this morning, if you have trusted in HIM for your salvation, when God now looks at you, he no longer sees you as the sinner that you are, He now SEES you as covered in the perfect RIGHTEOUSNESS of His son JESUS. This is the GOSPEL, friends, that God can STILL be perfectly just without punishing you and me for our sins, a punishment that we could not BEAR, because God has provided for HIMSELF the perfect substitute, a sacrifice - the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all, and IN Him, we actually become the righteousness of God!
-Every imperfect person, I don’t care how relatively “good”, by our pathetic human standards you think you are, Mother Theresa… Gandhi… when you stand before the judgment seat of the perfectly Good, perfectly righteous, perfectly JUST God, and he presses rewind, on the story of YOUR life, and then pushes play, and he sits there beside you and watches every last word, every thought, every deed, and by the end of the video you’re just in a pile on the floor, and God asks you, “So, why should I let you into Heaven?” - there is only ONE answer that’s gonna cut it on that day, friends. Because there is only ONE who has met God’s righteous standard and has satisfied God’s absolute justice. His name is JESUS. The Way, the Truth, the Life. On that day, you better be ready to PLEAD the blood of JESUS!
#4 - God is Loving (v5)
V5: “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord”
Why did Jesus do it? “For God so loved the world…” right?
-The breath in your lungs right now, is God’s LOVE for you.
-The cup of coffee you enjoyed this morning, is God’s LOVE for you.
-The excited smile on your daughter’s face when she woke you up early this morning, is God’s LOVE for you.
-The relaxing warmth of your morning shower… the invigorating coolness of this beautiful, pre-fall weather… the sheer joy of gathering in God’s house with God’s people to sing God’s praises is God’s LOVE for you. “The earth is FULL of it! It’s everywhere!”
-James 1:17 says “Every good gift and every perfect gift [down here] comes from [your Father up] above”
-And the best and most perfect gift of all, the fullest manifestation of God’s love for us, 1 John 4:9 “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. This is love… that God… sent [Jesus] to be the propitiation for our sins.” That once and for all time sacrifice, for us. Oh, how he loves us.
#5 - God is Creator (vv6-7)
-vv6-7: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made...”
-How OFTEN do we take Creation for granted. Do we take our existence, or the existence of ANYTHING for that matter, as a GIVEN. God didn’t HAVE to make anything, you know. Like, before Creation, God was perfectly content, just the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - enjoying perfect loving fellowship with one another for an eternity stretching back into PRE-time and space. God didn’t create out of a sense of LACK. Out of NEED. Because God was MISSING something.
-No, He did it simply because He’s GOOD. And creating good things, is good - Genesis 1. So we don’t take it for granted, brothers and sisters; we ought to PRAISE God for his goodness in Creation:
-Revelation 4:11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, [WHY?] for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.””
-Romans 1:25 “the Creator… is blessed forever”
-Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.” Amen?
#6 - God is Awesome (v8)
-v8: “Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!”
The dictionary defines Awe as “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, etc.” Now you don’t often find “etceteras” in the dictionary; they try to be pretty precise with their language, obviously. But the word “AWE” merits not one but TWO ‘etceteras’, because it is by definition trying to point us to something that is beyond words. You could just keep listing emotions elicited: reverence, admiration, adoration, wonder, amazement, stupefaction… and keep listing descriptors for the awesome thing that elicits such a response: grand, sublime, powerful, wonder-FULL, majestic, great, GOOD… but part of what it MEANS to say that God is awesome, is to recognize that you could NEVER exhaust the list; you could go through the whole dictionary, but God still transcends words. So sometimes the best response is simply silence.
-Have you ever been so overwhelmed with AWE that you were struck dumb? Totally speechless? I remember the first time I saw my daughter, in that delivery room. And y’all know I’m not one to be short on words! But there are moments in life when the BEST words seem so inadequate. Friends: that is EVERY moment in the presence of our GOD! And yet, Jesus said, “If we are silent, even the ROCKS will cry out!” So the psalmist says, “DON’T be quiet; SHOUT for praise, because...
#7 - God is Almighty (v9)
-v9: “He spoke, and it came to be”; that’s Genesis 1 again, right...
- We do daily devotions as a family, right now we’re reading “Indescribable: devotionals about God & Science”; it’s a really neat one, parents - I definitely recommend it. And I learned this week, that when God asks Job “Can you tie up the stars of the Pleiades? Can you loosen the ropes of the stars in Orion? Can you bring out the stars at the right times?” (38:31-32) that “the Pleiades is a star cluster so big and bright they can be seen from just about anywhere on Earth without a telescope. Yet, they are more than 443 light-years away - that’s 2,604 trillion miles! And our God can hold the entire Pleiades in the palm of His hand. In fact, the Bible tells us He can measure the whole universe with just His hand (that’s Isaiah 40:12).” (p90) Now we don’t really have a GREAT idea of just how big our universe is, because we’re so tiny that see so very little of it. But astronomers’ current guesstimate is somewhere in the ballpark of 93 billion lightyears in diameter. As a reminder, a lightyear, is the distance light travels in one year, that’s roughly 6 trillion miles. Multiply that by 93 billion. And I’ll let you do the math.
-So when you’re the psalmist, or Job, or Isaiah, and you’re trying to convey how big and powerful God is but words fail you, you resort to metaphorical anthropomorphisms: God is SO mighty, he holds the entire universe in His hand. That’s just to say: He is ALL-mighty. And he’s ALSO...
#8 - Sovereign (vv10-11)
-vv10-11: “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations.”
You and I get frustrated when our plans fall through, don’t we? Anyone have to cancel a vacation this summer due to COVID? Cancel a WEDDING?! Miss spring term of your senior year, one last “hoorah” with all your buddies? That wasn’t your PLAN, was it? But it was GOD’S plan. To say that God is “Sovereign” is to say that He is totally in control of everything that comes to pass.
Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”
Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases.”
Ephesians 1:11 “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will”
So when we have a problem with something going on down here, we know who to take it up with. And we CAN; God invites that. That was week one in this series: Psalm 13 - “How long, O Lord: our hope in LAMENT.” We can GO to God with our honest “grievances”; but we need to keep in mind how He responded to Job, when Job brought his complaints before God. God replied: ““Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? ...“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? ...Will you put me in the wrong?” (38:4; 40:2, 8) Paul asks, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder...” ‘What are you DOING here God?’ (Rom 9:20)
Friends, we see so LITTLE of God’s plan, that our best prayer really is “Your Kingdom come YOUR will be done…”. And we can pray that prayer with confidence, because we know that...
#9 - God is Gracious (v12)
-v12: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!”
-In the psalmist’s OT context, he was referring to the nation of ISRAEL. God’s chosen people. But TODAY, brothers and sisters: it’s US! It’s the CHURCH! The apostle Peter writes of Christian believers that: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet 2:9)
-The psalmist says “You are BLESSED if you are CHOSEN”; and 1,000 years later, Paul writes “we have obtained an inheritance (a BLESSING), having been predestined (having been CHOSEN)” (Eph 1:11)
And we know, Ephesians 2, that this BLESSING, of being CHOSEN, is “not by works, lest ANYONE should boast”; rather, it is the free GIFT of God. It is by GRACE that we are saved, through faith. So then, Paul says in Romans 9: “[our salvation] depends not on human will or exertion,[b] but on God alone, who has mercy.” GOD gets all the glory in rescuing us, because we bring NOTHING to the table - no human will or exertion; we come with empty hands or we don’t come at all. It ALL depends on God’s gracious choosing.
#10 - God is Omniscient (vv13-15)
vv13-15: “The Lord looks down from heaven… on all the inhabitants of the earth… he observes all their deeds.”
Just let that sink in for a moment, friends: ALL your deeds. God sees them all. And yet, in SPITE of knowing the deepest, darkest parts of you, v5 - his LOVE remains unchanged: “the earth is still FULL of His steadfast LOVE… toward you, toward me”. How amazing! And it all culminates, God’s goodness CLIMAXES, in
Trait #11 - God is Savior (vv16-19)
-vv16-17: “The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.”
Kings put their hope in their armies.
Warriors put their hope in their strength.
The wealthy put their hope in their wallets.
The intelligent put their hope in their minds.
The self-righteous put their hope in their morality.
Marxists put their hope in revolution.
Capitalists put their hope in the free market.
Democrats put their hope in Biden.
And Republicans put their hope in Trump.
But friends: NONE of it has the power to SAVE you!
David says, “That is ALL... false hope”.
But v18: “MY eye is on the LORD! MY hope… is in HIS steadfast love”
He alone can save. And praise God, He HAS! Jesus SAVES.
And friends, when you REALIZE that, the natural response, the ONLY possible response, is heartfelt WORSHIP. And I know I don’t have a lot of time left to spend on all 8 of these defining characteristics of true worship, but let me at least fill in the blanks for you here and try and give you some personal application to chew on as you leave:
#1 - Because the Lord is GOOD, we respond with JOY.
-v1: “Shout for joy in the Lord”
-v21: “our heart is glad in him”
JOY - it’s a fruit of the Spirit. That doesn’t mean Christians will be happy all the time. But it does mean if you’re NEVER happy, you’re probably not a Christian. Because Christians are the most JOYFUL people on the PLANET! And why WOULDN’T we be?! Our sins have been FORGIVEN! We are adopted heirs of the Most High God! We get to spend eternity in Heaven with JESUS!
Man, if that doesn’t make you shout for JOY from time to time, you need to do some serious soul searching! Let me ask you: When was the last time you SHOUTED for joy?
When your husband proposed?
When your daughter told you she was pregnant?
When Guns ‘n Roses announced their reunion tour?
When the Blues won the Stanley Cup last year?
When the Cardinals won back in 2011?
When Freese hit the walk off homer to win Game 6?
Any of y’all lucky enough to be in the stadium that night?
Friends - THAT is what church should sound like on Sunday mornings! I mean, seriously! When God’s people get together, to collectively remember what he’s done for us? Saving us from an eternity of JUST punishment?! Adopting us into his perfect heavenly family?! Come on - we’re talking about a stupid BASEBALL game here; and some of us lose our ever-living minds over it; if I can’t get at least an “AMEN!” or two out of you in church, something is WRONG, friends!
Paul exhorts us in 1 Thessalonians 5:19 not to “quench the Spirit”; Listen: if God’s goodness does not COMPEL you to respond vocally and voluminously in worship - with “SHOUTS of joy”, with “songs of PRAISE”, then 1 of 3 things is happening: either 1) you’re quenching the Spirit; for some reason you are trying your HARDEST not to shout “Amen!”, NOT to break out in song with the rest of us during worship, and you need to let Psalm 33 be your spiritual Ex-Lax this morning and FREE you from your spiritual constipation and just let it OUT! Let the praises FLOW!
OR #2) you’re not engaging spiritually because there’s some mental or emotional or even PHYSICAL obstacle. Some of you are so physically TIRED that you’re not fully present in worship. Listen: if you worked the graveyard shift at the hospital last night, and came straight here because you love corporate worship with God’s people so much you couldn’t stand to miss it - God love you. We are glad you’re here and we will pray that you can stay awake. The rest of y’all need to get to bed earlier on Saturday nights and come ready to give the Lord your undivided attention in worship. This is the most important hour of your week. Amen?
Some of you find it hard to respond in worship because of something going on OUTSIDE in your personal life: you are still grieving a significant loss. You’re battling anxiety or depression. We’re just glad you’re here too. And we are praying for you too. But MY prayer, is that as you fix your eyes on the LORD this morning, that everything else in your life might get put in its proper perspective, and you might even be able to say with David in Psalm 34: “I will praise the Lord no matter what, at ALL times” (v1).
Because the only other, third explanation for why you don’t raise a shout of praise in response to who God is and what he’s done for you, if you’re not quenching the Spirit, and there’s not a mental, emotional, or physical barrier, is that maybe you’re honestly not really that excited, because you’re not really SAVED. Unsaved people don’t get excited about who God is, or what God has done for them, in the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that my father’s cardiac surgeon, who performed his emergency quadruple bypass surgery when my dad had a heart attack during a routine stress test 10 years ago - I’m guessing he’s on my dad’s Christmas card list now. And I’m guessing my dad gets choked up a little bit every year writing that card, realizing that this man literally saved his LIFE.
How about you? When was the last time you got choked up reflecting on the reality of the lyrics you were singing to the Lord during worship? The reality of the gospel you were symbolically partaking of during communion? The reality of the gospel I’m preaching up here? The gospel you’re reading every day in your own daily devotional time? Do you ever get choked up? I’m not talking about emotional manipulation. I’m not saying the GOAL of worship is to make you “feel a certain way”. The goal of worship isn’t YOU at all! It’s HIM! But if we could just get PAST ourselves for even just a moment, and allow ourselves to experience God as He really is, to encounter His gospel for the life-transforming good news that IT really is, we WILL not be the same.
We will RESPOND, #2 - with PRAISE.
-v1 says: “Praise befits the upright.”
I know I’m over time, so let me just list for you our remaining 6 responses of worship:
#3 - THANKS (v2)
-v2: “Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre”. Ellery was VERY confused by this one; she said, “No Daddy, it’s BAD to be a liar”.
I said, “This is a different kind of lyre, baby. It’s good. It’s like a harp they used to use to praise God.” She said, “Oh, then will you buy ME one.”
#4 - We respond with SONG. (vv2-3)
-vv2-3: “make melody… Sing to him a new song”. Every contemporary Christian musician’s favorite verse in the Bible. That’s good job security: it’s a COMMAND in God’s word: “Sing a new song.” They better keep churning them out.
-And playing SKILLFULLY too, v3. Don’t be offended if you try out for the church worship team and Scott cuts you; he’s just being biblical - you gotta be GOOD, play skillfully. We’re ALL called to raise a shout of praise, some of you just don’t need to do it into a microphone. Amen?
#5 - We respond with FEAR (v18)
-v18: “the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him”
Not fear like “Oh no, God’s holy and I’m a sinner - what’s He going to DO to me!” Romans 8 says there’s now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ (v1); 1 John 4 - “God’s perfect love casts OUT that kind of fear” (v18); instead, this is a healthy awe and respect and REVERENCE for the Lord. We do not approach the throne of the Almighty God of the universe casually. Hebrews 12:28 exhorts: “let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe”.
#6 - We respond with HOPE (vv18, 22)
-v18: “hope in his steadfast love”
-v22: “we hope in you”
That’s what this whole SERIES is about: deepening your HOPE in the Lord through the Psalms. And hoping in the Lord is really just another way of saying...
#7 - We TRUST in Him (vv20-21)
-v20: “Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.”
-v21: “we trust in his holy name”
Johnston explains (262): “The point of worshiping God with energy and joy is not just to feel good or to have an amazing experience. The end result of true worship is stronger faith. If you worship in spirit and in truth on Sunday, you are strengthening your heart to trust God in the coming week.”
And lastly, #8 - We respond in PRAYER (v22)
-that what v22 IS: “Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us”
It’s a PRAYER. And friends, may that be OUR closing prayer this morning: that God’s steadfast love, made MOST manifest in his sending Jesus to be the propitiation for our sins, be upon us. Amen. Let’s pray.