Praise the LORD from the Heavens (Psalm 33:1-22)
“Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise Him in the highest places. Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His heavenly hosts. Praise Him, O sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars. Praise Him, O highest heavens, and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He gave the command and they were created. He established them forever and ever; He issued a decree that will never pass away.
Praise the LORD from the earth, all great sea creatures and ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, powerful wind fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals, and all cattle, crawling creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young men and maidens, old and young together.
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens. He has raised up a horn for His people, the praise of all His saints, of Israel, a people near to Him. Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise Him in the highest places. Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His heavenly hosts. Praise Him, O sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars. Praise Him, O highest heavens, and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He gave the command and they were created. He established them forever and ever; He issued a decree that will never pass away.” God has created the heavens and everything in them, including all the heavenly hosts. When God’s creations fulfill their God-given purpose, they are giving praise to God by their very actions.
“Praise the LORD from the earth, all great sea creatures and ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, powerful wind fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, crawling creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young men and maidens, old and young together.” There is nothing on earth that that God has not created; therefore, God deserves praise from all his creation.
“Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens. He has raised up a horn for His people, the praise of all His saints, of Israel, a people near to Him. Hallelujah!” In the Bible, horns are a sign of majesty and power. God raises up a horn for His people to demonstrate that they belong to Him and that He is their Protector.
APPLICATION: In some translations, verse 8 reads, “Stormy wind fulfilling His Word.” On April 25, 1965, my family’s farm was hit by a tornado in the middle of the night. The vacuum in the eye of the tornado exploded a large barn over the heads of 40 feeder cattle, who were found calmly munching hay the next morning. A large two-car garage next to the house and all the things stored there were reduced to splinters. Out in the hog pastures, huge pull together hog houses were tumbled about. There were also weird phenomena such as straws being driven through wooden fence posts. These posts were made from trees harvested from hedge rows and the wood was so tough that we could barely nail staples into them to hold up woven wire fence. Ironically, the house was in such poor shape that once a few windows had been sucked out, there was no more pressure differential and the house was spared.
I was away on a trip with my high school band. The next day when we returned to the high school, one of the neighbors was picking his daughter and me. In typical laconic farmer fashion, our neighbor said, “Well, we had some wind out our way, and your family was hardest hit.” I didn’t worry until I saw one neighbors’ car upside down amidst the wreckage of their garage. Before the storm, our yard enjoyed shade from ten large maple trees and those trees and our barn could be seen for miles; however, when we topped the rise just east of the farm and I looked west, at first I didn’t see anything-no barn, no trees!
My family survived by sheltering in the basement, but this storm accomplished several things. We were in the process of buying the farm we had earlier lived on and renovating the house. Now we had additional reasons for quickly completing the house renovations and moving. The garage was full of books and other things we couldn’t fit into the house. When the garage was destroyed, we found we didn’t miss those things at all. We were already contemplating leaving the feeder cattle business, and this storm hastened that decision, a decision we realized later was quite wise. Some farmers who remained in that business longer later lost their farms when the price of farmland suddenly decreased by 50% overnight and banks called in the loans that had been secured with land as collateral. But after that, nobody in my family made any jokes about “heading for the storm shelter!”
When I was in surgery residency, we cared for a lady who had been riding in the back of a pickup truck when it crashed. Because we were concerned about chest injury, we got a CT scan. That CT scan revealed a mass that proved to be a thymoma, a very unusual tumor of the thymus gland and something that would have remained undetected had the lady not been involved in the accident. The lady underwent surgery and recovered nicely.
I have previously mentioned Chuck Colson. Colson was a lawyer who got caught up in the conspiracy to hide Richard Nixon’s wrong-doing and who went to prison. But it was while Colson was in prison that he became a Christian and it was those prison experiences that eventually led Colson to found Prison Fellowship. Over the years, Prison Fellowship has grown to become an international ministry to prisoners and their families. The Prison Fellowship web site says, “Prison Fellowship is the world’s largest Christian nonprofit organization for prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, and a leading advocate for justice reform.” All this happened because a smart Washington lawyer got hit by one of God’s stormy winds, and his life was changed forever.
Perhaps today you feel as if you are caught in a tornado. Events are swirling around you, you are confused and distressed, and you wonder how God can possibly make anything good out of this situation. Take heart! God can use those storms that are buffeting you right now to accomplish great things in your life. Perhaps you are clinging to something just as we were clinging to all the stuff in that garage. God knows you don’t need those things and He is removing them so that your life will be less cluttered. Perhaps you need to take your business in a different direction just as we did with our feeder cattle. God knows the end from the beginning and God can use His storms to force you to take a new path. No matter what you are enduring, you can still turn to God and say, “Hallelujah!”
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, many of us feel we have been in storms for so long that there is nothing left. But You are the God of the storms and You can use events that frighten us to strip away anything that is not of You. Help us to trust where we cannot see. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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