The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Our God is a loving God, a God who cares for his people, as a shepherd cares for his flock. But he's also a God of power and might, and throughout history, he has at times displayed that power in awesome and frightening ways.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. The book of Hebrews says that our God is a consuming fire. While his grace and mercy are longsuffering, we would do well to remember that he administers perfect justice, and although his power is formidable, its righteous application should ultimately cause us to rejoice.

Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 97 and shows us that while God's awesome power might cause us to fear him, it should also be a source of comfort and strength to the believer.

Dr. James Boice: Now, we're looking during the last few weeks this congregation has been blessed by our study of the Psalms, and I hope that's true of you personally. I know that's the case of many because of the comments I receive. We're dealing with a section of the Psalms in which God is brought before our attention as the great King and Lord of the universe, ruling over all. It testifies to his sovereignty, and the Psalms have been cast in the form of instruction and example about how we should worship such a God.

There's a block of them that go together, Psalms 93 to 100, that have to do with the kingly reign of God, and many of these are explicit instructions of how we should worship him. Now, we're looking at Psalm 97 today, and we see at once that it's tied to the previous Psalm, Psalm 96, because it begins with two phrases that are found there: "The Lord reigns" from verse 10, and "let the earth be glad" from verse 11. It's a way of saying that they belong together, and as a matter of fact, that all of the Psalms in this block do cohere. They do go together.

Now, they have different emphases, of course. And although they're all talking about the kingship of God, they bring it to our attention in different ways. Just look at this immediate context. Psalms 96, 97, and 98 each hail God's coming as the world's King. But Psalms 96 and 98, that is the one that comes immediately before the one we're studying and the one that comes immediately afterwards, soar with delight at what is in store for the world when God returns. They are exuberant praise songs.

Psalm 97 is somewhat different. Psalm 97 is talking about the same thing, but it is stressing the frightening, even awesome side of God's kingly rule. This rule is still something to be joyful about; it's where the Psalm ends. But we're reminded as we go into it that God's rule will mean the confounding and judgment of all evil and the establishment of perfect righteousness. And to be confronted with such a glorious God is an awesome thing indeed.

Now, the Psalm is outlined in different ways. I find when I study the commentaries, sometimes they all more or less agree; the outlines are similar. Sometimes the outlines are very, very different. That's the case here, very, very different. Marvin Tate divides it into two sections, splitting it after verse 9. Derek Kidner, that I often quote, divides it into three sections. The last section is the same, but he splits up the first of Tate's sections, verses 1 to 5 and 6 to 9. J.J. Stewart Perowne and H.C. Leupold, older commentators, have four sections. Franz Delitzsch, one of the greatest of all the commentators, has five sections. The New International Version has five sections, but they're not the same as Delitzsch's sections. So, you look at those outlines, you have a great variety to choose from. Now, we work from the New International Version; it's a good way of handling it, and so that's sort of the way I'm going to go through it today.

One reason I have for following the New International Version is that I think it's right in setting verse 1 off by itself, that is more as a theme verse for the entire Psalm. It might even be looked upon as a theme verse for this entire block of Psalms, 93 to 100. It says, "The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad, let the distant shores rejoice." Now, when we talk about the reign of God, what we're really doing is talking about his sovereignty, and his sovereignty is the greatest of all his attributes.

This coming week, I'm going to be in Orlando for the Ligonier conference of the Ligonier Ministries. But preceding that, there's a conference, part of a seminar, that's being held with Russian pastors and leaders that have been brought over from that country. They're going to be introducing the new Geneva Study Bible, which will appear in a Russian version eventually, and we're taking time to teach some of the Russian pastors about the gospel and the teaching of the scriptures.

What I'm speaking about is the sovereignty of God because that's the key doctrine of all the other doctrines. I was surprised also when I finally got a printout of the list to find that the same evening after I teach in the morning, there's a banquet and Dr. Joseph Ton, whom we know very well, is going to be present at the banquet and he's going to speak on the same thing, that is the sovereignty of God. Because without the sovereignty doctrine, God really isn't God. A God who's not in charge of his universe, that does not determine all things according to the counsel of his perfect will, is no God at all. Something else is God, whatever it is that's actually determining what he does.

Now, sovereignty includes a lot of other doctrines. In order to be sovereign, God has to be all-knowing, has to be all-powerful, has to be absolutely free. He obviously has to be all-knowing in order to determine whatever comes to pass. He has to be all-powerful because even if he knew what was going on, he couldn't make it turn out the way he wanted it to turn out if he wasn't all-powerful. And he has to be absolutely free because it means that he's not under compulsion to do anything other than that which arises out of his own nature. So, when you talk about the sovereignty of God, you're talking about a very great doctrine indeed.

Now, let me illustrate why that's so important. There are other attributes of God that we might prefer to think about: his love, for example. And certainly, that's a very great thing to know about God, that God is a God of love. He's demonstrated it by sending the Lord Jesus Christ, his son, to die for our sin. It required an infinite love to do that. And yet the sovereignty of God is greater even than his love because if God were loving but not sovereign, he might very well, out of his loving nature, desire to save a large number of perishing sinners, but be unable to do so, lacking the power or the sovereignty to do it.

So, the sovereignty is that which gives substance and effectiveness to the love. Take the matter of justice. We talk a lot about justice today, and indeed the Psalm is going to talk about justice. We say, well, that's an important thing, that God is just and he's going to do what is right. Yeah, but you see, he might have a sense of justice and desire to do what is right, but if he lacked sovereignty, that is if he didn't rule over his own universe, he wouldn't be able to bring justice up and bring sin down. So, sovereignty really is the important thing to talk about.

Arthur Pink said that it gives substance to all the other doctrines. Here's what he said: "The foundation of Christian theology, the center of gravity in the system of Christian truth, the sun around which all the lesser orbs are grouped is sovereignty." Now, what we're going to see in this Psalm is that it also gives comfort and strength to the believer in every aspect of his life. Let me tell you a story to show how that goes right at the beginning.

There was a man who worked for Oliver Cromwell back in the days of Cromwell's rule of England. His name was Bulstrode Whitelocke, and he was an envoy to Sweden in the year 1653. He was resting at the village of Harwich in England before he was to sail to Sweden, and he was very distracted at the time because of all the terrible things that were going on in the country. He really was distressed for what was happening in England, so much so that he wasn't able to sleep.

He had a servant that was traveling with him, sort of a valet, and this man realized that Whitelocke was not able to sleep, and so he said to him, "Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?" And Whitelocke said, "No, of course not. Go ahead." "Well," he said, "Sir, do you think that God governed the world very well before you came into it?" And Whitelocke had to acknowledge that the answer to that was yes. "And," he continued, "do you think he will govern it quite as well when you are gone out of it?" And he said, "Certainly." "Well then, sir, excuse me, but do you not think that you may trust him to govern it quite as well while you are still living?" Whitelocke didn't have any answer to that, but we're told in the story that he rolled over quietly in his bed and went to sleep.

You and I look out at this world and we say things are just terrible out there. Yeah, but God has managed very well so far, and he will manage after we are gone, and certainly he is managing now. The great reformer and friend of Martin Luther, Friedrich Myconius, once wrote a letter to Calvin in which he was talking about the church's enemies and he said, "I'm glad that Christ is Lord of all, for otherwise, I should utterly have been out of hope." Yeah, but that's just it, you see. We look at the world, out of hope is exactly where we would be. But when we take our eyes from the world and look to God, the awesome God who's portrayed for us so vividly in the Bible, then our hearts find rest. And we say we may not understand everything that God is doing; certainly, we don't. Why should we? We're not God. But we can trust him because he's sovereign and the Lord indeed reigns.

Now, let's look at the second stanza, verses 2 through 6. This is the most unique feature of this Psalm in comparison with the other Psalms. What I mean by that is that the phrases that occur elsewhere in the Psalm are echoed in the other Psalms. We've already seen that about verse 1. But what we have in this stanza, beginning with verse 2, is unique to the Psalm. It is not, however, unique biblical language because elsewhere in the Bible where we have an account of a theophany or a visible manifestation of God, this is the very language that occurs.

And let me give you some examples. First of all, when God appeared to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, he did so in such an awesome display of his power and majesty that they were terrified. Even Moses was trembling, as it says in Hebrews. Here's the way the book of Exodus describes what happened, chapter 19: "On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder."

People might well have been terrified at a manifestation of the awesome majesty of God. Now, the same phenomena occurred later when Moses asked to know or see God. We find it in the description of God's appearance to Isaiah in the sixth chapter, other prophets such as Ezekiel in the first chapter of Ezekiel, or Daniel chapter 7, or Micah chapter 1. Or even in the other Psalms, you find similar language in Psalm 18 and Psalm 50, and it's there in Habakkuk 3, the last chapter, 3 to 15. Now, the point of all those passages is that a manifestation of the true God to people is awe-inspiring, even to the point of bone-shattering fear and trembling.

You see, when God appeared to the people at Mount Sinai, we're told they trembled. Moses said, "I am trembling with fear." Isaiah cried when God appeared to him, "Woe is me! I am undone; I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and mine eyes have seen the Lord, the God Almighty." Ezekiel, we're told, fell face down. Daniel turned pale. And Habakkuk, a minor prophet, wrote, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled."

You see, we forget about that aspect of Almighty God today because we're so glib and so superficial in all of life, including our Christianity. It says in Hebrews, "Our God is a consuming fire," and yet it doesn't seem to impress us at all that that's the God with whom we have to do. You see, what I want to say here is that the common likeness of many Christians today in approaching God is not a sign of their deep acquaintance with him, though they probably think it is, but actually of the fact that they hardly know God at all. We tend to treat God as some great heavenly buddy or our pal. And it's true that he's a God of love, but it's a holy, majestic love. It's true that he's a God of compassion, but it's a holy compassion, you see. The two Psalms before this that call upon us to fall down and worship God say that we are to bow down in worship and kneel before the Lord our maker because he's a great, great God.

Now, the next stanza in the New International Version is again just a single verse, verse 7. I think again that our translators were wise in doing this because this verse again is something of a theme of the other Psalms and something that deserves to stand by itself. It really says, in effect, that if God, this God, is the glorious God these manifestations that have been given to people show him to be, then he's the only God and he deserves our exclusive worship. It reads: "All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols—worship him, all you gods."

Do you understand how that works, if God really is that glorious? I was thinking of an analogy of something that would come closer to our experience, and the best I can think of is this: If you have an opportunity, as most of us don't, to visit and spend any time with the President of the United States, you go through some very impressive screening. First of all, they check your passport to make sure you're who you claim to be and that you're not a criminal or they have no adverse record against you. And then you meet, you assemble in a waiting room, and then you are escorted at the proper time through the hallways of the West Wing of the White House into the Oval Office. And there, in that awesome setting as you look through the window and can see the White House behind, you get to meet the President.

I've never actually met the President; I've been in the Oval Office, but I've never actually been there. But now imagine going through all of that, step by step, finally coming after all that awesome preparation and detection into the presence of the President of the United States and saying, "Now, are you the only President of the United States or is there another one around here that we should meet somewhere?" You know, it's the awesomeness of the office that conveys the uniqueness of the role. And that's exactly what the Psalm is saying here. When you think about the awesome, majestic, holy character of our God, you say, worship the Lord and him only shall you serve.

There is a problem with verse 7, and it's this: How can the Psalmist call upon the gods of the heathen, the idols presumably, to worship God? That's what he says: "Worship him, all you gods." Idols are nothing; they can't worship. And even if the Psalmist is thinking of the demon gods and goddesses that stood behind the pagan idols, how can he suppose that they, the demons, would ever praise the God against whom they've rebelled? It's an interesting question, it's one that is discussed at some length by John Owen, the great Puritan theologian, and he suggests three options.

First of all, the appeal could be to the nations that worship idols, with this meaning: "Worship him, all you who serve idols, turn from these false gods to the true God." That's the interpretation of the verse that is given to it by the rabbis, whose thoughts are preserved in the Jewish Targums. They understood that the gods of the heathen were nothing, and therefore they reinterpreted the Psalm to have a missionary meaning.

Here's a second possibility. The appeal could be to the magistrates or the rulers of the people, and that's because the word Elohim, which means gods plural, sometimes has that meaning. That's the way Jesus interpreted Psalm 82:6, for example. They were attacking him because he claimed to be the Son of God. They said it's blasphemy, and he said, "Well, haven't you read Psalm 82:6 where the word God is used of the magistrates? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came and the scripture can't be broken, what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why do you accuse me of blasphemy simply because I said I'm God's Son?" So, that's a second possibility.

The third, which Owen preferred and I think probably the New International Version prefers too, just because it gives us a straightforward translation, is that gods here refer to the angels. This makes good sense, and it might even be the case that this is the verse that's referred to in the better-known passage in Hebrews chapter 1, verse 6, which says, "When God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, 'Let all God's angels worship him.'" Now, the angels do worship God, of course. They do it constantly, the holy angels day and night. The problem isn't there; the problem is with us, we who are worshiping idols of one sort or another. What are our idols? Well, they're idols of self today; probably that's the greatest idol of all. Idols of power, some people sell their souls for that, or fame or sex or money. The people of the world sell their souls to these idols constantly.

The sad thing, of course, is that at times it seems that Christian people do the same. Why is that? Why do we appear to serve these lesser gods? I suppose it's because we know so little of the true God. We have so little sense of the awesome majesty of God, the very thing that the Psalmist is talking about. And the reason we have such little knowledge of the true God is that we have such little knowledge of the Bible. The Bible is where you find out about God, and the sad thing today is that people are biblically illiterate. Psalm 119 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you."

The fourth of these five stanzas returns to the theme of the preceding Psalm, and one that we've looked at several times already, that is the righteous judgment of God. Zion and the surrounding villages are rejoicing, and the reason they are rejoicing is that God has intervened in history to establish his righteous kingdom in some special way. Now, presumably, when the Psalm was written, that refers to some particular intervention of God in history for the deliverance of his people. Some people think, if they regard these Psalms as being late, that that may have been the return of the Jews from their Babylonian exile. We don't have enough information here to say what it was, but it was something historical.

But we have to say as we look at it from our perspective today is that although there may have been particular historical manifestations of the power and the righteousness of God, this world nevertheless is a very wicked place. And so what we look for is the return of Jesus Christ in glory and his millennial kingdom to be established at the end of the age. There's no such thing as perfect justice now. We want to have justice as much as possible, we work for justice, but we don't find it. Those who are strong have always oppressed the weak, and they will continue to oppress the weak. The unscrupulous will cheat the innocent. Murderers will go free, perpetrators of horrible acts will go unpunished. But when Jesus returns, there will be perfect righteousness. The helpless will be defended, liars will be confounded, and the guilty judged. And this will be a great cause for rejoicing by God's people. That's what the Psalm says: "Zion hears and rejoices, and the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments, O Lord."

I've talked several times about the joy that these Psalms show in the righteous judgment of God. We tend not to think of judgment that way because we see ourselves as those who are standing in the dock. We're on trial; what we plead for is mercy. We want to find it through Jesus Christ. But the Psalms approach it differently. The Psalms look at the injustice and evil in the world, and they're looking for God to come and judge it.

I suppose it's worth pointing out that that is the vision that we have given at the very end of the Bible in the book of Revelation when the saints are gathered in heaven and look down on Mystery Babylon, which is judged for her many sins, and rejoice in God's glory. They literally swell in praise of God's glory in judgment. That's one of the great passages in the Bible. It's a chapter, the only chapter in the New Testament where the word "Hallelujah" occurs.

We mentioned earlier in the service today that the session had a retreat this weekend, and we had a time in which the elders and the wives and staff people shared and got to know one another. And Marian had prepared a number of questions that we were supposed to answer to facilitate that kind of sharing. And one of the groups I was in, we had this question. It said, "What do you want Cora Hogg to say at your funeral?" And I said, "First thing that occurs to me is I want him to say we're all surprised he lived so long." But Cora Hogg was in my particular group and was far more serious. She said she'd already worked out her funeral arrangements; every time she goes to a funeral, she takes notes and puts down the things that are valuable. And she said she wants her funeral to focus on the word "Hallelujah."

And I pointed out that the only place in the New Testament that the word "Hallelujah" occurs is in Revelation 19, and it's "Hallelujah" over the judgment of Mystery Babylon. And as a matter of fact, I said, one of my favorite verses in all the Bible is in that particular chapter, and that's the one I will choose for the text. It goes like this: "Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever." I said, "I think we'll have to have a cremation." And she said, "I'm going to add a codicil to my will, and it's going to say if Jim Boice is still living, which I sincerely hope he will not be, I don't want him to have anything to do with my funeral." Well, the saints in Revelation rejoice in the judgment of God, and that includes us. One day we're going to be there. We may not think about it that way, but one day we're going to look at the holy, awesome, righteous God and we're going to say, "Hallelujah! He has put down evil." And the Lord our God omnipotent reigns.

Well, look, we come to the last stanza. These Psalms have a way of getting very practical, and that's what this last stanza does. It's an encouragement to those who are still living in bad times to hold fast to their profession. Because you see, it's one thing to say the Lord reigns, it's quite another thing to look out at the world and say he doesn't seem to be doing it very well. We don't understand what he's doing, but the evil is out there.

And here's a Psalm that says, look, hang on, do two things, verse 10: First of all, hate evil, that is put yourself on the side of God, and number two, rejoice in the Lord, verse 12. And note the sequence. If we do hate evil, God will provide us with, according to these verses, number one protection, number two deliverance, number three light on our pathway, and number four joy. So, the hatred of evil leads to rejoicing, which we are also told to do, and we will do both if we really know and love God.

And so the question: Do you know God? Do you love God? If so, you're going to hate evil. We don't naturally hate evil; actually, the opposite is the case. We love it, we're fascinated with it, and we love sin, and so we are increasingly drawn into it. Now, if that's the case, how do you know whether you really are responding in a right way, a godly way to the evil you see in the world?

The Puritans were very concerned about that type of question, and one of them, Richard Sibbes, wrote an interesting study. It was connected with this Psalm, one of the great Puritan divines. He pointed out that hating sin is a proof of our conversion and it's very important for us to know whether we actually are converted. The Bible says make your calling and election sure. So, he says, how do we know if we really do hate sin in a Christian way that gives evidence not of a just kind of a self-righteousness that we might have—we don't like people doing bad things—but whether we have that God-given hatred of that which is opposed to his own nature?

And he gives a number of interesting points. It goes like this: Number one, we will know that we hate evil if our hatred of sin is universal. And he means as the one who hates sin truly will hate all kinds of sin, not merely be selective, hate some things but not others. Number two, if our hatred of sin is fixed. There shouldn't be any appeasing of sin or compromise with it, but rather an abolishing of the thing that's hated. Number three, if our hatred of sin is a more rooted affection than mere anger. Anger can be appeased, he says, but hatred remains and opposes the hated object.

Number four, if we hate sin wherever it's found. We must hate evil in others, in the world, but most of all, we have to hate it in ourselves. Sibbes said, "Anybody who hates a toad would hate it most in his own bosom." Some of us are severe in censuring others, but we excuse things in ourselves. Number five, if we hate the greatest sin in the greatest measure, that is our hatred of sin should be proportionate. Great sin should be hated even more than lesser ones. And finally, number six, if we can be reproved for sin and not get angry. You see, if we truly hate sin, then we'll welcome whatever help we may get in dealing with it and driving it from our lives. Puritan divines said, "Those who swell against reproof do not appear to hate sin."

Well, we look at the very last verse and here's what it says: "Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous," that is you who hate sin, "and praise his holy name." It's where the Psalm ends. It began by calling upon the people of the whole earth to rejoice in God's rule; it ends by calling upon us who know him and hate evil to lead the way in this worship. And so I ask the question, shall we not do it? If we don't praise God joyfully, who will? If we don't do it now, when will we?

Let's pray. Our Father, we're thankful for these passages that point so much to your nature and link our worship to that which we know you to be. You are indeed a sovereign, holy, majestic, righteous God, and we are none of those things. We are weak and sinful and not at all majestic. And so we bow before you and we worship you and we desire that the knowledge of yourself as the true God might be spread abroad in the earth. We pray that you'll make us faithful as we try to fulfill our part in doing that because of our love for you, which we have through Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church.

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