Ps 115

Gloire

(Psalm 115)

Jason Procopio

Introduction

• The story of the Old Testament is basically a story of divided allegiances. 

• God creates a people, and makes a covenant with them, and tells them that if they will be faithful to his covenant, he will be their God, and they will be his people.

• The people, despite having all the proof they needed of God’s goodness, struggle for the entire length of the biblical story to remain faithful to God. They are constantly pulled in other directions by other, manipulative desires.

• Psalm 115 is, in some ways, serves as a kind of key to interpreting the Bible. 

• It does not lean heavily on theology or even on biblical history. 

• It simply gives us a key for understanding the root of every one of our problems—literally—and helps us see just how incredible God’s plan to get us out of that problem was. (Come back to this.)

• We’ll begin by reading the entire psalm together, and then we’ll take it in two separate pieces, to see what the psalmist is trying to teach us.

The Foolishness of Idolatry (v. 2-8)

• The question he asks in v. 2 is scene-setting. Apparently Israel’s not doing too well at the time this psalm was written (as was often the case); and Israel’s enemies are mocking them.

• They look at the current state of Israel, and assume their God is absent or fictitious.

• But the psalmist turns it back on them with the simple retort of v. 3 (we’ll come back to that later), and then proceeds to methodically dismantle the gods of the mocking enemies.

• Important to note: the God of Israel actually forbade the people from making a statue of him (see the Ten Commandments), for this very reason: no one would be able to say about him what the psalmist is about to say about the idols of the nations.

• The foolishness of the idolatry of these pagan nations is evident in that they give their worship to inanimate objects.

• V. 4: They are the work of human hands. How could you worship something you yourself made?

• V. 5: They have the form of a living being, but only the form: they don’t speak, don’t see, don’t hear, don’t smell, don’t feel, don’t walk—they make no sound. This is the very definition of an inanimate object. 

• Now, it’s one thing to admire an inanimate object; that’s why people go to the Louvre. We can admire, be impressed by, something someone else has made with their hands.

• But no one would go to the Louvre and actually speak to the Mona Lisa. No one would sing to the Venus de Milo. No one would actually pledge their loyalty to the painting of Lady Liberty leading the people. 

• When you go to the Louvre, you admire the genius of Da Vinci, of Alexandros of Antioch, of Delacroix. You don’t worship the works themselves, but their creators. 

• And that, right there, is the heart of what idolatry actually is.

• In Paris you don’t see a lot of people worship idols like the psalmist describes—you don’t see people actively revering statues. (Although those who worship the relics in Catholic churches come awfully close.)

• What you do see is people worshiping created things, giving themselves over to things which have been made by someone else.

• People give themselves over to their bodies, or their sense of style, or their pasttimes.

• They devote their lives to their children.

• They give their lives to their career. 

• They devote themselves to satisfying their own desires for sex or entertainment or food or ideals.

• But every single one of these things—our bodies, clothing, pasttimes, kids, careers, sex, entertainment, food, ideals—all of these things come from God. They are all created things.

• None of these things have life in and of themselves. 

• Our children would be lifeless husks without the breath of God in them. 

• Our ideals would be pointless ideas if they didn’t spring from the image of God in us. 

• Our careers aren’t alive; they can’t speak to us or guide us.

• Our style has no life of its own. 

• Food sustains life, but our food can’t talk to us or hear us.

• You see what I’m getting at. All of these things we see people working toward—which we find ourselves working toward, putting our time and our energy toward building—all of these things come from God. And pursuing created things rather than the Creator is the essence of idolatry, the essence of foolishness.

• And the foolishness of idolatry becomes even more evident in v. 8: Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. 

• All those who trust in things which have no life in themselves…find themselves ultimately drained of the life they had. 

• It’s like drinking Coke on a hot day. (And this is hard for me to admit, because I’m an American, and I love Coke.) 

• You’re hot, you’re miserable, so you stop at a café and you get a Coke. It feels wonderful—it’s hot, it’s refreshing, it’s sweet. 

• But what do you find just a few minutes later? You’re thirsty again—and weirdly, even more thirsty than you were before. So, if you’re dumb, you have another one. And another. And another. Your thirst never leaves, but in addition to your thirst you now have a fairly persistent brick in your stomach, a nauseating feeling that won’t go away…until you buckle down and actually drink some water.

• The things we pursue to find our life drains us of the life we had to begin with. When we trust in these things, we become like them—appealing in the short term, perhaps, but ultimately empty.

• We mustn’t think that Christians are immune to this. In some ways the idolatry trap Christians fall into is worse than the trap everyone else falls into, because we're aware of the problem, and we think we’ve managed to avoid it. 

• We come together every Sunday to worship God; we sing his praises; we say, “Lord I give you my heart, I give you my life…” And we think that SINGING it means we’ve DONE it.

• But what happens just after? 

• We go back to our lives, pursuing the same empty pleasures as before, thinking all the while that we’ve dodged the bullet of idolatry because we sang a few songs and prayed a few prayers.

• If you read the Bible you’ll very quickly see that God reacts more violently against the sin of idolatry than he does to any other sin.

• Why? Because it’s the ultimate affront to him. It’s taking things that God made—things that are good, yes, but which are, ultimately, corrupted by the sin in this world—and making them stand in for God. 

• God is the good Father who wants only good things for his children…and who is beyond frustrated to see his children wasting themselves on things which are only a pale imitation of his goodness.

• He is the good Father who hurts to see his children wasting themselves on foolishness.

• So what does he do? He reveals himself to them, in his Word and in his creation; and he blesses them beyond all measure, so that their eyes may not stop at the creation, but be lifted up to see and worship the Creator.

The Nature of God (v. 1-3, 9-18)

• V. 9 begins a litany of exhortations and reminders to the people of Israel. 

• Listening to it read aloud, the repetitions remind us that this is a song—a song the people would sing to one another to remind themselves of what is true. 

• (v. 9-11)

• We hear them identifying the people who would be present when this song is sung: 

• Israel = those born into the nation of Israel

• The house of Aaron = those who serve as priests, intermediaries between the people and God

• “Those who fear God” = those who perhaps aren’t Israelites by birth, but who acknowledge and fear the God of Israel.

• And what do they tell each other?

• That God is their “help” and their “shield” (v. 9-11) 

• He is their help—every good thing comes from him. Everything worth celebrating, everything worth loving. Everything worth being happy about. It all comes from him.

• He is their shield—the Israelites suffered often, and greatly. But looking back on their own history, it was easy to see that even their suffering, in God’s hands, was not for nothing. 

• Their suffering was used by God, over and over again, to bring them back to him. 

• And when they were with him and in him, he protected them from the plagues he unleashed on the Pharaoh in Egypt, and the danger of defeating armies on multiple occasions.

• All their good came from God, and their only hope of safety in the face of danger was God.

• What else? V. 12-15: he blessed them. And he would continue to bless them.

• That is, he didn’t just give them what they needed; he gave them abundantly more than they needed, and certainly more than they deserved. 

• V. 14: He made a great multitude, a true nation, out of one family, as he had promised to Abraham. 

• V. 15: Reminded that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, the people remember that God is sovereign over heaven and earth, and thus can bring every resource at his disposal to bear in favor of his people. 

• V. 17-18: They are promised eternal life in him. There will never be a time when they do not sing his praises, extol his name and his grace to them. 

• And all of this is promised to anyone who fears him, without distinction—both the small and the great (v. 13).

• The children can have the same assurance as their parents, because they are capable of the same reverence, the same “fear” of God.

• (“Fear” of God = a full conscience of who God is, and the proper, solemn respect given to his person.)

• This is what God does for his people—he helps them, he protects them, he blesses them.

• Which is absolutely shocking, because he is in no way obliged to do so.

• V. 3: Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. 

• There is nothing outside of God acting upon him, to make him, or to influence him, to do anything he does not want to do.

• God is the only being in the universe who is absolutely free to do all that he pleases.

• This means that no human being can bend God’s will in a direction he does not want to go.

• This means that nothing can frustrate his plans.

• No suffering can surprise him.

• No outrage can hurt him.

• If God truly does “all that he pleases,” then we can rest in the assurance that everything he does, and everything he chooses not to do, everything he allows, and everything he prevents, is exactly according to his will.

• cf. Jesus: “Not one sparrow falls apart from my Father’s will.”

• This is what makes God stand out among all the other so-called “gods” of the nations. 

• They can’t speak, hear, move. They can’t respond to anyone’s prayers; they are created things. 

• But God is the Creator—the Creator of all things. He can do with his creation anything he pleases; and he does with his creation everything he pleases.

• Which is why v. 1 is the summary line of this entire psalm—it is both the application and the root of everything we’ve seen here.

• The contrast between God and the idols of the pagan nations is meant to shock us, to rouse us from our stupor, to turn our eyes away from created things and point them to the Creator.

• “Glory” = public recognition for the greatness of who he is. The people know who God is, and want the world to know as well.

• C.S. Lewis: those who are transfixed by a sunbeam coming through the window only feel half the wonder they should feel, unless their eyes are drawn up to the sun which causes it.

• All glory belongs to him—for everything that happens, and everything that we do for him. Not to us, but to your name bring glory.

• We need to understand something here—and if you remember nothing else from the message today, this is what you need to remember—if you are a Christian, the desire behind v. 1 should be the driving force that shapes every single aspect of your life.

• It shapes every desire, every reaction, every initiative, every song, every moment of joy, every loss, every struggle, every victory.

• The fundamental desire that drives the Christian is the desire that God be glorified.

• God’s glory in the present

• It may be hard to see it. But there are some really easy ways to do so. 

• Look up at the sky. There it is (Psalm 19.1). 

• Put your hand on your chest and feel your own heart beating, your own lungs breathing. There it is (Hebrews 1.3). 

• Look at another human being. There it is (Genesis 1.26). 

• Look at an animal: watch a police officer on horseback—or good grief, watch someone walking their dog and you’ll see it (Genesis 1.24-25)!

• Look at a baby whose life the Lord formed in its mother’s womb. There it is (Psalm 139.13-16).

• God’s glory is on display everywhere around us. And the fundamental problem of humanity is that we don’t want to see it, and even when we do, we don’t want to acknowledge it.

• That is our fundamental problem, because that is why we exist—we were created by him, and for him (Colossians 1.16).

• If you have no desire to see God’s glory, your happiness in this world will always be dependent on your circumstances. 

• But if your desire is to see him glorified, and you know that God will glorify himself in all things (because he is in the heavens and does all that he pleases), then your joy will be unshakable, steady and firm—a rock in the middle of the waves.

• That is why we exist today, and that is why we will exist for all eternity. This is what we will be doing in heaven (Psalm 115.18). If you have no desire for God’s glory, you will not enjoy heaven.

• Heaven is where we will see God’s glory, not only displayed in nature, but most ultimately in Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1.15). 

• God’s glory is most powerfully on display in Jesus’s person and his finished work—God made man, who took on our sins and suffered in our place, so that in all things he might be preeminent (Colossians 1.18), that we might forever see the glory of God manifested in him.

• Jesus Christ will be such a display of God’s glory that in heaven we will need no sun or moon, for his glory will shine so brightly it will light up the new heavens and the new earth (Revelation 21.22-23). 

Conclusion

• The application to this text is unbelievably simple.

• Contemplate his sovereignty (v. 2-3).

• Contemplate the foolishness of idolatry (v. 4-8).

• Contemplate the goodness and faithfulness of God in the past (v. 9-11).

• Contemplate the promises of his future grace to us (v. 12-17).

• And in the light of all of these realities, pray that our first and only driving desire would be to see and celebrate and love God’s glory, now and forever (v. 1, 18).