out our Bibles. We're going to continue looking at Psalms this summer. We've been looking at various Psalms and today we're going to turn our attention to Psalm 29. Psalm 29. The title of this message is A Worship Storm. And last week before the service, I'm like, Pastor Derek, we should have switched and I should have preached on the storm last week. But it turned out, at least for us here, not to be that big of a storm. Nothing like the one that's described actually in Psalm 29. So as you're turning to Psalm 29, I wanna read you the first couple of verses of Psalm 28. It says to you, oh, Yahweh, I call my rock. Do not be silent to me. And then he says in verse two, hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to you for help. So there's a crying out and all through Psalm 28, there's this plea for God to hear. And then that Psalm. 30, it begins with the psalmist praising God for hearing. I will exalt you, O Yahweh, for you have lifted me up. You have not let my enemies be glad over me. O Yahweh, my God, I cried to you for help and you healed me. He says he heard. So these Psalms run together. Psalm 28, Lord hear. Psalm 30, I praise you for hearing. So what do we expect to find in Psalm 29? The Lord coming in answer to his prayer. So with that in mind, let's stand together and let's read Psalm 29 and look at this worship storm. Worship storm. Psalm 29 in verse number one says, Ascribe to Yahweh, O sons of the mighty, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name. Worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness. The voice of Yahweh is upon the waters. The glory of God thunders. Yahweh is over many waters. The voice of Yahweh is powerful. The voice of Yahweh is full of splendor. The voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars. Indeed, Yahweh breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Syria like a young wild ox. The voice of Yahweh hues out flames of fire. The voice of Yahweh causes the wilderness to tremble. Yahweh causes the wilderness of Kadesh to tremble. The voice of Yahweh makes the deer to calve and strips the forest bare, and in His temple everything says glory. Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood. Indeed, Yahweh sits as King forever. Yahweh will give strength to his people. Yahweh will bless his people with peace. Amen. Let's pray together. Oh, Lord God. We thank you that you do hear when your people cry out to you. And you do speak and your voice is powerful. Your voice is mighty. And Lord, we pray today that your spirit might bring these words powerfully to our hearts. That the truth expressed in Psalm 29 might lead us to worship you, our great and almighty God. That when we're waiting for answers, we might worship you as the one who will come and will answer. When we receive blessings in the past that we may not forget about them, but we may worship and honor you. Lord, we thank you for giving us this passage of scripture that invites us in to worship you, to behold your glory and to consider it. And we pray you might help us now to focus our attention on you and your glory as revealed in this psalm and to worship you. We pray in Jesus name, amen. Amen, you can have a seat. You know, we're used to calling songs a worship song, but this storm is actually intended to provoke us to worship. I'm grateful that the storm that was coming our way last week was mild. for us. It did interrupt our fellowship that was planned, but it didn't cause a whole lot of damage right here in this area. I know there was flooding and some people certainly did suffer as a result of the storm, but I think at church it turned out to be just a light rain here that didn't go away. When I was a teenager in Georgia, we had a hurricane come up through the Gulf of Mexico and go into Georgia right over our town and then kind of park. in North Georgia, and just proceed to dump rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and that flooded everything south of there. Our family evacuated from our house and had to, we lived on a hill, and so we were actually living in the street at the top of the hill, waiting to see what the floodwaters were gonna do, if we needed to drive the RV we were staying in away that we had borrowed from a friend of my dad's to wait out the storm. It was a horrific storm, horrific flooding. They called it a 500-year flood, which I still don't quite understand, but it's a really big flood that supposedly only happens every 500 years. And this flood was devastating to our area. Our house actually remained dry in spite of our property being the banks of the river because of the slope that we were on. I remember as a kid, my dad always saying, oh, we live on one of the highest spots in town. And we were like, eh, I don't know. I mean, it's all pretty flat around there. But it turns out that we lived on one of the highest spots in town. because people literally miles from the river were flooded with lots of water in their homes while we were dry. It was a huge, devastating storm. And the kind of storms that we experience regularly in the South, the thunderstorms, the lightning, are things that I have hardly experienced at all. in California, just a little glimpse of the kind of storms that we would have, and the tropical storm warnings, and the tornado warnings, and the tornado sirens going off, and going and getting in your bathtub, and waiting till it passed, and having a tornado tear off the top of a tree in our yard, and our house was safe, but I remember visiting some people that came to visit our church, going to their home and talking to them, and hearing their story, and a year before their mobile home that they lived in was picked up by a tornado and wrapped around a pine tree across the street up in the air and they both survived through that because they fell out of the house onto the ground before it got wrapped around the pine tree. That is a powerful powerful storm. So if you're thinking about powerful storm and you're envisioning last weekend, I want you to think about a bigger storm than that as we look at Psalm 29. One thing about the storm, you've heard the expression, the call before the storm. I remember this so vividly as a child in Georgia, walking through the woods next to my house. There's several, I don't know how many acres worth of woods next door to our property. And I would go out and play in there. And it would always be weird to suddenly have it be really quiet. What's going on? What's wrong? Something is about to happen. And in South Georgia, it was very common to have a huge thunderstorm blow in in an afternoon and have lightning and wind and rain and all kinds of chaos and then have it be gone in like a very short time. And whenever a storm front was rolling in, it would get quiet. because the animals, I think, had more sense than I did as a little boy, and they knew it was coming, and they're hunkering down. The squirrels were getting in their nests, and the birds were flying to a place of safety, and everything was settling down because a storm was coming. And I kind of feel like that's what's going on in these psalms. Remember Psalm 28, the psalm was crying out, Lord, where are you? Answer. Help, it's quiet, it's silent. That's not what we want to hear when we pray, right? We wanna go to the Lord in prayer and we wanna feel like he hears us. We wanna feel the comfort of his presence and we wanna pick up our Bible after praying and feel like God's just speaking directly to us and giving us exactly what we need. But sometimes it just seems quiet. Sometimes, though, that quiet is just the preparation for what's about to come. And Psalm 29 blows in like this mighty storm, and it's a storm not meant to cause fear for God's people. It's a storm not meant to say there's chaos and lack of control. But it's a storm that is meant to provoke us to worship as it gives us just the tiny little visual of the power of the voice of the Lord, a tiny glimpse of the power of our God. And he gives us in the psalm a storm to provoke us to worship. So I want you to see three truths in this passage, and the first one is a call to worship in verses one and two. You'll notice right away that it's repetitive. There is this word at the beginning of the first three lines, ascribe. Some translations say give. Ascribe or give to Yahweh, O sons of the mighty. He's saying, take this and write it down for Yahweh. This is how our Lord is. Write it down this way. Ascribe this to Him. And then the call goes out to the sons of the mighty. They're called to give Him glory and strength, give Him the glory of His name, and worship Him in the splendor of his holiness, the sons of the mighty or the mighty ones. This is actually the short form of the Hebrew word Elohim. It's El, you sons of God. It could be translated sons of the gods even. In some places in the Old Testament, this word is used to refer to the gods of the pagans. So in the Old Testament, we'd know the name Baal or Baal if you want to pronounce it more Hebrew style. Those names are names of the gods of the Old Testament we're familiar with. And now when God refers to them, he's not calling them like their actual gods. You know, it's not like Yahweh is Zeus and all the other gods are like underneath him. There's not some pantheon of gods under him. But the people worship these as gods, and so they're called the gods. The sons of God is a term that's used to describe angels in scripture. The sons of God throughout the Old Testament is used to describe angels so this term is used of the false gods it's used and when it says sons of gods as the angels but this is a call for the mighty ones the mighty ones to worship god it's a call saying the angels need to worship god It's a call to say anyone that worships these false gods that think they're so mighty. No, those need to bow to Yahweh. He is the king of kings, right? They need to crown him with many crowns. There is no competitor to our God. We're called to worship him above all. Now, it is one thing to impress someone who doesn't know what they're doing, right? If someone doesn't know what's going on, they have no idea, for example, how to use their phone other than to hopefully answer it when it rings. And whenever it has a problem, they run it over to anybody else to take it and do something with it. And then someone with just a minimal knowledge of the phone can take it, tap a few things, fix the problem, and hand it back. And if you're the person who doesn't get tech at all, you're like, wow, you're really a tech whiz. You're so helpful. I'm going to come to you for everything. So, impressing someone who doesn't know anything about it is one thing, but if you go to a job interview, say to work at one of these wireless carriers, and you're supposed to know all about the phone, and you impress the person who's interviewing you. that they look at you and they go, oh, wow, you really know what you're talking about. You understand all the in and outs. You are the perfect person to work here because you know all about it. Don't you wish that was the case when you went to the wireless place? But never mind. If you impress someone who knows what they're talking about, then it's like you feel good, right? If you impress someone who doesn't really know anything they're talking about, you're like, ah, that's OK. It's kind of that way when we look at Psalm 29, because he's saying, you sons of the mighty, you angelic hosts, you need to look at Yahweh, and you need to see, and you need to praise him for his glory, and his might, and his majesty. Now, bear in mind what happens in the Bible anytime They all bow down in fear. That's why the angel's favorite thing to say apparently is do not be afraid, right? That's like the first thing out of their mouth. No, hi, how are you? Just do not be afraid. It's gonna be okay. I'm not here to destroy you because there's this majesty and there is this supernatural awe that an angelic being brings when they step into the room. And David, the psalmist here, says, think about the most impressive, amazing beings in the universe. And now I'm going to call them to worship Yahweh because He is glorious. It's like right at the start, this call to worship is to say, our God is really amazing. I mean, as much as you could imagine what it would be like to be awestruck in front of something supernatural, Yahweh is so great that all the things that cause you awe are in awe of Him. He is so far beyond anything else that all the sons of the mighty need to worship Him. What do they need to give to God? It says they need to ascribe to him glory and power in verse 2. Glory refers really to God's importance, his majesty. Strength refers to his power. The glory of God is something that at times is described as visible, right? In the Old Testament, the glory of God rests over the Ark of the Covenant. It rests over the tabernacle in the wilderness. It also has connotations to do with the king and the king having the glory of God. The strength that he says to ascribe to God is going to show up in the psalm as we read about his strength really on display in verses three through nine. And really those verses do describe his glory and his strength in just a little way. So we're to give God what his due is. That's the first call of this worship psalm, to give God what he deserves. If you were in the presence of someone who was absolutely amazing, how would you respond to them? How would you react to them? I mean, sometimes in life we get to meet someone who we really look up to. Maybe it's someone famous or someone important that we're just amazed that we would get to be in their presence. I don't know if you've ever got to have any experience like that. I don't think I really have got to meet anyone super famous or someone that I really kind of idolized and then got to be in their presence. But I've seen people do that. You know, they might blush, they get red in their face, and they get kind of really excited or really nervous in the presence of someone that's so important to them, and they don't know how to act or how to respond. God's presence in Scripture is so awe-inspiring. We've got multiple visions of God's throne room in Scripture, and each one of them is just Blindingly beautiful, the scene. Indescribably beautiful and amazing. And the psalmist is here pleading for the mighty ones. And certainly if the mighty ones are to worship God, all of us are to worship God and see him in his glory and his strength. It says, ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name. What is the name of Yahweh? It's more than the Hebrew letters that form it. Your name tells everybody who you are. Your name provides your reputation to those who know you. Give God the glory that he deserves. You know, when you receive something good, give God the glory that he deserves. Don't think that you've achieved something because you're so smart or you're so talented. Give God the glory. Give him the praise. Ascribe that to the Lord. The good things in your life that you've received, say, God, thank you. As you sit to a good meal, give thanks to God. He has given it to you. As you sit on your padded pew in a nice air-conditioned building where it's very comfortable, even though it's supposed to be like 100 degrees outside, give God the glory. It's His might, it's His power, it's His goodness that has given us every good thing. When we draw our breath in the morning and we rise from our beds, we give God the glory because he is the one who gives us life and breath and all things. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name. So he goes ascribe, ascribe, ascribe, and then worship. Worship has this idea of bowing down before God. We give him the credit that he deserves, and this worship is the climax of what God deserves. We give him the glory and honor that he deserves, the glory of his name, and then we worship him. We bow before him. We all should. We all should every day give God the glory that he deserves. This is the call to worship. It says to worship him in the splendor of holiness. This is this visible holiness, visible glory of God that's on display. Say, how is God's glory on display? Well, in verses three through nine, it's not by some shining being in the sky. It's not by seeing a vision of a 900 foot Jesus or anything like that. The glory of God that the psalmist sees on display is described as a storm. Have you ever thought about seeing God in a storm? I mean, you can see the glory and majesty of God in all of his creation, in all of his ways. If we stop and look and think about it, we can see God's hand at work, God's voice speaking powerfully in so many different ways. So the psalmist calls us to, calls us to worship him. and the splendor of his holiness. It's so much that it's too much for our eyes to take in. It's too much for our tongues to describe. God is so great that even the glorious angels worship him. He is absolutely unique. So verses three through nine gives us the cause for worship. We're invited to come and worship Him and now we're brought face to face with a little glimpse of His glory that should cause us to worship Him. This is where I'm gonna need you to use your imaginations a little bit. Not that I'm about to make up a bunch of stuff, okay? We're not gonna have story time, but we're looking at a storm moving off the ocean, onto the land, through some mountains, through a valley, through another set of mountains, and out into the wilderness past there. And that's what happens in verses three through nine. And for you to really grasp it, you've got to picture it. You've got to imagine it in your mind because this is what this worship song in Psalm 29 is trying to get us to do, to see this worship storm. Witness his glory and his majesty. Verses 3 and 4 says, the voice of Yahweh is upon the waters the God of glory thunders. Yahweh is over many waters. Now you'll notice something in the psalm very clearly that happens a lot in psalms and that is there is a repetition but then the repetition gets stronger. So in the psalm we'll see the voice of Yahweh over and over again. And it's right at the start of the sentence. It's being repeated. But the power of it is compounding and the way it's described will be said one thing and then more intensely. So here this voice of the Lord is pictured seven times like thunder rolling through the storm. I can remember as a kid sitting in the bathtub of my house, fully clothed with no water in it, with a storm passing through and feeling the thunder literally shake our house. Feeling that power. That's something I haven't felt out here. I felt the earth shake from earthquakes, right? So you can identify with that. There's the power behind there. And so the psalmist is picturing this mighty storm and the thunder rolling in in waves. And he says, the voice of Yahweh is like that. When God speaks, he speaks powerfully. He says his voice is upon the waters, the God of glory thunders. The waters can refer to any kind of waters, but here it's talking about the Mediterranean Sea. So if you put on your imagination here, you've got the Mediterranean Sea and the land of Israel is over here. Well, at least in my mind it is. I guess I'm backwards. Mediterranean seas like this, Israel's over here, the many waters, the voice of the Lord is the storm coming towards the shore. And this is an image of what's really chaotic. You know, a huge storm is not, well, there are people, right, that are storm chasers. You probably have watched some show on TV where someone's trying to chase a tornado or chase a storm, or there's the reporter standing there on the seashore waiting for the hurricane to come in with everything looking chaotic and wild behind you, and they're standing there saying, everyone needs to, you know, evacuate and hunker down, and you're like, are you there? I mean, couldn't you say that from somewhere safe? Why do you need to do that? Just CGI some storm in the background. No, I think they do that sometimes too. But there's danger in this chaotic storm. Because when a violent storm is rolling in, you know something as a little human being standing there with that coming. You know you can't control that. You know it's more powerful than you. You know you need to seek shelter. It's a chaotic and a dangerous thing. This is the image that the psalmist gives us of God's mighty power. You say, I don't know that that's really that comforting, right? To think about a chaotic, crazy storm that has the power to like wipe everything out and bring destruction, why would that be comforting? Well, friends, it's a reminder to us that our God is not under our control. Our God is not accountable to us. He is not beneath us. We do not demand of him. We do not control him, direct him. He's not just there to serve us. No, he is over us. He's beyond us. He's beyond our ability to control. We are called to worship him because he is great. He is powerful. And David takes this language of the storm, powerful and full of majesty as a symbol of the glory and strength of God. And then he takes us in verses five through nine. He takes us on the storm's path. And here is where he shows us a witness to the Lord's power. He says the voice of Yahweh breaks the cedars. All right, cedars are large trees, right? He says, this is the storm that breaks the cedars. It shatters them, breaks them. When we have storms around here, we have tree limbs fall down. I mentioned to you as a kid, there was a pine tree in my backyard, very tall, I'm not sure how big it was. In Georgia, where I grew up, we lived on about an acre and a half, two acres worth of property, and it was full of trees. Pine trees, oak trees, hickory trees, sycamore trees, I don't know, all kinds of trees. A lot of trees. Very large trees. The kind where you have to go to the park to see them out here. They were all in our yard and then there was woods right next door with way more. So this huge pine tree that is very, very tall. I'm not sure how tall it was. As a kid it seemed like it would go up to the heavens, you know. If you've ever been up to see the redwoods, in Sequoia National Park and you go and you look and all you can see is trees above you. Well, there's so many trees in the forest and in parts of our yard that it was sort of like that, not as big as the Sequoias, but huge. And to see a tree that big snapped off maybe 15, 20 feet above our house. And it's just like from me to the back wall of the church away from our house, actually away from my bedroom, which was on the back part. That was awe-inspiring. It was shocking to walk outside and to see that. And then you've seen reports on the news of different places where maybe a tornado sweeps through and like the block is leveled because everything is torn up. He says God's voice speaks in power that breaks the cedars. And then here is where he repeats it and intensifies it. He says, indeed, Yahweh breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. Now, this is something fun for you to look up on your phone later, not right now, but Google the cedars of Lebanon. And what you'll see when we talk about the Cedars of Lebanon is they're still famous today, the Cedars of Lebanon. They were in Bible times, they were where Solomon would get much lumber to build the temple after David would come from this area. So these Cedars of Lebanon, some of you are on your phone, please tell me you're not looking them up right now. No, they're huge. So David is saying, look, the voice of the Lord is powerful, not just to snap the little fruit tree in your yard, but powerful enough to take the biggest, most impressive, strongest looking tree you've seen and break it in pieces. Not blow a few limbs off, but shatter it. That's the power that we're talking about. He says, when we talk about God's power, this is what we mean. Witness this power. So the storm has moved off the sea, it's hit the shore, it's hitting Lebanon, which is north of Israel, where Jerusalem would be. Part of it is land promised to the children of Israel, but it's going, hitting that area. It's hit the trees, it's hit the famous cedars of Lebanon, and it is absolutely causing devastation. And then he moves on in verse six. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox. So a couple of locations, Lebanon referring to this area. It's still the Lebanon mountains. There's two ranges of them there together along the coastline. And then he uses the word Sirion, which is not a word you're familiar with. If you've studied Bible geography, you might recognize the name Mount Hermon, or you might not, but this is Mount Hermon. It's a mountain in that mountain range up there. Back in Deuteronomy 3, 8 and 9, it says that Sirion is the a name that the Canaanites used to call Mount Hermon. So that's what they called it. So David is using the name that the pagans of this area called that mountain, and he's demonstrating the might of Yahweh there. Now the Canaanites, the foreigners who did not worship Yahweh, they worshiped Baal. And Baal was depicted as a god that was riding on a storm. There's various images of him clearly portrayed as a storm god standing on the waves and having a spear of lightning flashes in his hand. So that sounds a lot like Zeus. Well, maybe there's some similarity there. He's got maybe a club in his hand or thunder coming with him. And the idea is he's the God that conquers the chaos of the storm. So they would pray to him when there was no rain, that he would bring the rain. And when rain came, they would give him glory that rain had come. And so their worship was built around calling out to the God of the storm to take care of them. And this is the region that David chooses to use to tell us about Yahweh's power and might. He calls the mighty ones to come and worship. Come and see. You guys that worship the other gods, come and see who is truly the Lord of the storm. His name is Yahweh. He rules over it all. And he has this storm coming right through their region and he calls out to show the might and power of God. So Sirion is on the interior range of mountains. So you've got the coast, you've got the mountains, you've got a little valley, and you've got more mountains. And here on this mountain is now where the storm has come all the way through. What do we know about storms when they come off the sea and they come to the land? eventually they weaken, right? And if they run into forests, that tends to slow down the winds. If they run into a mountain range, that tends to slow down everything. And actually the storm can be trapped by the mountains and then just flood everything below it and not go any further. But this storm is not a storm that's going to be stopped by Cedars, not even the Cedars of Lebanon. It's not going to be stopped by the first range of mountains, and then it's going to blow through and hit the second range of mountains, and the large, most prominent, well-known mountain there, it's going to be so powerful that it's still causing chaos there. This is no ordinary thunderstorm that's blown in. David uses it to say Yahweh is greater than anything you've seen before. Now, back to verse six, he says he makes Lebanon skip like a calf, skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. So here's another fun thing you can do is you can Google or look on YouTube for videos of calves skipping. It's really fun. It will bring a smile to your face. Might be the most encouraging thing you see online all week, but you'll see these young calves literally flying around, skipping, hopping everywhere, like going crazy. Because that's the picture that the psalmist uses of this storm. It's coming in, it's bringing devastation to the trees, and it is freaking the animals out, if we want to say it like that. It's causing all kinds of chaos. The storm is one that is stirring everything up. And verse 7 says the voice of Yahweh hues out flames of fire. If you're picturing lightning in your mind and a storm, I think we're on the right track here. It's like a blade of fire flying out. There's this storm and its power and might. And a lightning bolt is an amazing, amazing thing. I'm told the average lightning strike is about six miles long, and it can reach a temperature that is greater than 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It can pack anywhere from a million to a billion volts of electricity. Imagine if we could figure out how to harvest lightning. Man, we could power a lot of stuff. This is the voice of the Lord. I remember other times seeing in our yard and in our area around places where lightning had struck. We had lightning strike one pine tree in our yard and it like twirled around the tree and it stripped the bark like it was making curly fries out of the tree all the way down to the ground and cracked. And other trees would be smashed because the lightning struck them and hit them. There's so much power. And the psalmist is saying, when you see this power, you are seeing just a little glimpse. You're getting a little picture of what is too great and too glorious to wrap your mind around. You're getting a picture of the might and power of God. It's like this lightning striking. In verse 8, he says, the voice of Yahweh causes the wilderness to tremble. All right, if we're following a normal storm path, we're going off the sea, through the mountains, we're destroying the cedars, we're going through the valley, we're hitting the big mountain in the next range, we're causing everything there to be crazy in fear, and then we're going out past the mountains and we're not dying in the wilderness, the storm isn't, it's still going strong enough to make the wilderness to tremble. This is a mighty, mighty picture. This wilderness, he goes on to say, the wilderness of Kadesh. Kadesh may sound familiar to you. And when we read it here, what usually comes to mind is Kadesh Barnea, which is where when the children of Israel were going to the promised land, They camped there, they sent in the 12 spies, and you know the song, 10 were bad and two were good, and they decided there not to trust God, not to obey him. That's at the far south of Israel. I don't think that's what's being talked about here, even though it's what comes to our mind. Kadesh is a common name that would be used of anywhere that was a holy place, and in the context here, when he's directly appealing to those pagans in the north that don't worship God but worship Baal. I think he's just saying here this storm is going to sweep through your area. It can devastate everything. Even your holy places that are far off will tremble under this storm. It is a powerful, powerful storm. Listen, who is going to escape this? If you live on the coast and you see it coming and you retreat to the mountains to escape it, you're not gonna make it there. If you run through the valley and you go over to the next set of mountains and hope to escape it there, you're not. Even if you go out to the wilderness and you seek some holy place of refuge, it will still tremble there. When the voice of the Lord speaks, it accomplishes his purpose. Remember, that's the text we read at the beginning of the service today from Isaiah 55. God said his voice will go out and it will accomplish what he pleases. It will accomplish the matter that he intended it to accomplish. There is nowhere to escape from God's voice. Now in Psalm 28, David was pleading for God to help, God to rescue, God to deliver. And here his voice is portrayed in its glory and majesty as this relentless, overwhelming storm that strikes fear and terror everywhere it goes, and there is no place far enough to run from it. David could take comfort in his worship, take comfort in knowing that God was for him. And if God is for us, who can be against us? Verse nine goes on to describe the voice of Yahweh. It says, makes the deer to calve, makes the deer to give birth. And the idea would be it's prematurely, right? The storm is so startling and so frightening that the animals are popping out their babies too soon. It strips the forest bare. So it's gone through the mountains, through the trees, into the wilderness, and all along its path, it's stripping bare. It's bringing devastation. This storm, this one who sends the rain, it's not Baal. It's the Lord. These pagans are crying out to what they think is God, but Yahweh here is making himself known in the power of the storm. The one who sends the rain is the one who reigns and rules over all. You remember the story of Elijah? Elijah and the... You're all like, oh yeah, Elijah, that's a big story. What part are you talking about? You're talking about the time where it's not raining. There's a time for several years where there's no rain because it's judgment on God, on the people, the northern kingdom of Israel, which, by the way, is up in this region we're talking about. It's up in this area where there's no rain. And Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, not the same mountain referenced here, but a northern mountain just south of this area in our psalm, and he confronts them there. And you remember the story, I think. If not, here's the really quick version. All the prophets of Baal spend all day crying out to God to send, crying out to God, no, crying out to their God, Baal, to send fire down on the sacrifice, because that was the challenge. The prophets of Baal are going to build an altar and then ask their God to rain down fire from heaven, and then Elijah is going to do the same. The prophets of Baal do it all day, and then Elijah comes along, briefly prays, fire comes down from heaven, and the altar is consumed, and the people who are there watching say, Yahweh, He is God. He is the Lord. Like Baal can't help. Baal can't send fire from heaven. Baal has not been sending the rain. And then Elijah goes off and he prays and God sends rain. The one who brings what the people need is the one who's over all. And David says, hey, Yahweh is the one in control of the storm. Yahweh's power is what's seen in the storm. The power is not some chaotic evil that Baal has to help overcome. No, the storm demonstrates the mighty power of God. What happens? What happens when the power of God is seen and recognized for what it is? Well, the end of verse nine says, in his temple, in his temple, everything says glory. Glory, they speak of His glory. They're doing exactly what verse one calls even the mighty ones to do, to ascribe glory to God. What is all this power and might of God? How does this help us? Should we just, next time there's a storm, should we go out and say, God, praise you for being mighty? Well, you can do that. But the comfort that David gets from this scene of God's glory is really described in verses 10 and 11. And this is where I want you to see our final point, the comfort of worship. Verse 10 says, Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood. Now back in verse three, it says the voice of Yahweh is upon the waters, but here it says he is sitting on the flood. What exact flood are we talking about here? Well, the only time this term is used in the Old Testament is to refer to Noah's flood, or rather the flood in Noah's day. Whatever the flood may be, floods are devastating and terrifying. Floods can sweep whole houses away in a moment and sweep people away to be lost forever in the waters in a hurry. Whatever kind of flood you want to imagine, the biggest one is clearly Genesis 6-9 where all of earth is described as being flooded under the waters and the only safety was found in the ark with Noah and his family there. The greatest flood you can imagine, David says, Yahweh sits on it. And in the legacy standard, it has sat enthroned. over the flood, and it's italicized there. So when you're reading through the Bible, the italics aren't there for emphasis. They're there to indicate the translators are supplying these words to try to bring out the full idea of what is being said. He's sitting in the sense of a king sitting on the throne. So the chaos of the flood that seems like it's out of control and that it's doing whatever it wants and bringing destruction everywhere. David says, you know who is over all that? Yahweh is. What's uncontrollable to me, what's frightening to me, what's devastating to me, Yahweh controls. He reigns over it. All kinds of things can come into our lives that seem chaotic and out of control. The Lord is over those. And he is in ways that we do not even understand. He is working even through those. And we can trust him. David knows and takes comfort that the Lord rules over all the waters, all the floods. Now, in particular, for David, who has just really strengthened the kingdom that was established under Saul, and now he's strengthening it, strengthening it, I can't even say that word, strengthening it, there we go. He's doing that, and this storm is blasting the location of the enemies of Israel right now. Those that do not worship him, that's the path of the storm. The devastation that it's bringing, the inescapableness of the storm is going through the place of David's enemies. Remember what he's praying for in Psalm 28? Lord, are you hearing? Are you helping? And here comes something that no shield of the enemies of Israel is gonna defend against. They can throw their spears up into the wind if they want, but it's stupid and foolish and pointless. The comfort from this storm for David is that God will overwhelm his enemies, that there is no one who can fight against God. But what happens when rain falls on the mountains? It ends up down in the valleys. It ends up down in the rivers. What does that water do way down the line in the river? It brings life. It gives strength. Look at Psalm, look at verse 10 to 11. Yahweh sat enthroned over the flood. Indeed, Yahweh sits as king forever. There's your repeating and intensifying again. He's enthroned. Yeah, but he sits as king, not just over the flood, but forever. And he says, Yahweh will give strength to his people. Yahweh will bless his people with peace. The same strength of God that's on display in that storm. David takes comfort that God is going to give that strength to his people. So are you weary? Turn to the Lord. Do you lack strength? There's all the strength of the Lord, which we get just a tiny glimmer of in this mighty storm, that he says he will give strength to his people. What a comfort. I don't even need the strength of that storm. I just need a little strength. This is our king, though. This is what makes God the perfect king. He's not like a king like on earth. Even as we read in the beginning of scripture today, his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. He's not like an earthly king who seeks to use those under him for his advantage and for his enrichment. No, he uses his strength to bless his people. That's a model for any of us to have any position of authority or leadership to use that to bless those around us instead of using it to enrich ourselves. Yahweh reigns to bless his people. Romans 5, 8 says, when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. When we had no strength to stand before God because our sins were many, Christ died for the ungodly. He died to give his people strength. He died to give us forgiveness. He died to bless his people with peace. The strength that God is worshiped for is the strength that he gives his people. He's going to bless them with peace, empower them with it. Peace is more than more than the absence of attack. It's a sense of well-being and prosperity that's kind of all inclusive. He's blessing them with shalom is the word, blessing them with peace, prosperity. God uses his might to do this. So you can find yourself with the strength of the storm supplying your needs and blessing you, or you can find yourself in the path of the storm, unable to escape it, unable to avoid it. If you reject Yahweh as the God over everything, the storm is coming, and it is relentless, and there is no escape. You need to repent and you need to run to the Lord. And if you run to the Lord, that strength is not something to fear. That is something to bring comfort because God lays down his strength to purchase our salvation, to take the wrath that we deserve, to absorb the hit of the storm himself so that we can escape it. Praise God for his wonderful salvation. I pray the next time we have a big storm, you'll remember Psalm 29 and its words will lead you to ascribe to our God glory and honor and you might worship him in the splendor of his holiness. Let's bow our heads for prayer. Oh Lord, we thank you for giving us a glimpse of your power and might. And Lord, we know that a storm, even the most fantastic storm that we have record of here on earth is just a tiny, tiny, tiny demonstration of your might. Because you are so great and so glorious that the most majestic beings ever seen by human eyes bow to you and say, holy, holy, holy. There is none like you. God, we worship you. Not just because of your might, but because of your goodness. That as king over all, you give strength to your people. And you bless your people with peace. So I pray now that if there's anyone here that is running from you, Lord, I pray they would see there is no escape. Instead of running from you, they need to turn to you and believe that you truly are the king and that you will forgive them. You will cleanse them, you will accept them as your own, and you will give them strength. because Christ has died to pay for the sins of all those who put their trust in him. Oh, we praise you for this, in Jesus' name, amen, amen.