Psalm 33 This is a general hymn of praise and thanksgiving. No one is sure who wrote though some think it was David since he wrote Psalm 32 and 34 and this is in in the middle.
1 Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.
4 For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.
5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars he puts the deep into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
10 The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
11 But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance.
13 From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind;
14 from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth—
15 He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.
16 No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength.
17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.
18 But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
19 to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.
20 We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
22 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.
SECTIONS:
I Call to Praise (1-3)
II Causes for Praise (4-19)
III Conclusion of Praise
THEME: Praise and thanksgiving and appreciation for what God has done. We have much to rejoice about. Each day we are given a chance to praise and honor God for all he does. And every night we can thank him for his blessings.
QUESTIONS:
What are some ways to praise God?
What are the reasons to praise God?
What does it say about the plans of the Lord and what does that man to you personally?
What nation is blessed?
Who are the eyes of the Lord on?
How do we wait for the timing of the Lord in verse 20?
What would the psalmist say to someone who said they won a battle because of the size of their army and the strength of their warriors?
https://bible.org/seriespage/psalm-33-key-thankful-heart
A story is told of a newly-elected politician who had just arrived in Washington, D.C. He was visiting at the home of one of the ranking Senators. The two men stood looking out over the Potomac River as an old, rotten log floated by. The older Senator said, “This city is like that log out there.” “How’s that?” asked the younger man. The Senator replied, “Well, there are probably hundreds of bugs, ants, and other critters on that old log as it floats down the river. And I imagine that every one of them thinks that he’s steering it.”
Proud man thinks that he is steering the course of history. But the Bible is clear that God sets up and takes down the most powerful kings in history for His own sovereign purposes. Whether it was Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, or Artaxerxes, God used them to further His purposes for His chosen people. Of course, none of those men knew God or were seeking to follow God. They were making decisions that they thought would further their own agendas. But behind the scenes, God providentially used their decisions to further His agenda. They were responsible for their decisions and they will answer to God for those decisions. And yet God used those decisions to implement His own counsel and plans.
We see this plainly illustrated in the most important event in human history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This was Satan’s and proud man’s most serious attempt to cast off God’s rule. Yet in Acts 4:27-28 the early church prays, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.” These self-centered, proud rulers were responsible for crucifying the Lord’s Anointed One. And yet, in so doing they inadvertently carried out God’s eternal plan of redemption. God nullified and frustrated their plans and established His plan.
Our human tendency, even as redeemed people, is to perfect our methods and then to trust in them. We live in a day that is awash in methods and techniques for how to live the Christian life or how to have a happy family or how to build a successful church. Of course, many of these methods are helpful because they are based on Scripture. Granted, God’s normal way of working is not through faith plus nothing, but rather through faith plus using certain methods or means to accomplish His will. But the ever-present danger is that we plug in the methods and trust in them to work, instead of using the methods while we trust in God to work. The psalmist is saying that God does not work through man’s strength or schemes, because then man gets the glory.
God looks with favor on those who fear Him and trust in Him to deliver them from overwhelming situations. In other words, God’s means of working is not to find people with slick methods and bless them, but rather to find people who trust in Him and bless them.
Note that these people are not described as strong and self-sufficient. In fact, they’re in grave difficulty. They are facing death and famine (v. 19). People who learn to be thankful must first learn to trust in God. And people who learn to trust in God must at some point be stripped of every human prop so that they look to God alone for deliverance. As Paul put it (2 Cor. 1:8b-9), “we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.” George Muller said (A. T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol [Revell], p. 437), “It is the very time for faith to work, when sight ceases. The greater the difficulties the easier for faith. As long as there remain certain natural prospects, faith does not get on even as easily … as when all natural prospects fail.” Hudson Taylor said (source unknown), “You have proved the sufficiency of God only when you have trusted Him for the impossible.” God works through helpless people who trust in Him.
Verses 18-22 are filled with synonyms for trust in the Lord: “fear” (v. 18); “hope” (vv. 18, 22); “waits” (v. 20); “our help and our shield” (v. 20); “our heart rejoices in Him” (v. 21); and “we trust in His holy name” (v. 21), which means, “in His holy character.” The psalms, which emphasize praise and thanksgiving, also emphasize trust.
The Hebrew word for “trust” occurs more frequently in the Psalms than in any other place (50 out of 181 times). Again, it’s not that methods are wrong, but rather that trusting in methods is wrong. Our trust must be in God alone. “What a pity it is that this earth, which is so full of God’s goodness, should be so empty of his praises, and that of the multitudes that live upon his bounty there are so few that live to his glory!” I hope that that cannot be said of us. As God’s “righteous ones,” let’s lean hard on Him to work through us for His glory.
My summary from dtk-kids.co:
Story of Gideon and his army from dtk-kids.com: The story of Gideon starts with God being very unhappy with his people, the Israelites. God saved the Israelites from Pharaoh by leading Moses and the people across the Red Sea. But, hundreds of years had passed since then. Throughout all of God’s miracles the people had experienced, they still did evil in the eyes of the Lord. There were consequences for this. God didn’t bless them but gave them into the hands of their enemy, the Midianites
The Midianites stole or destroyed all their crops and animals. The Israelties had to hide from them in caves. After Israel had nothing left, they finally cried out to God for help. God heard their cry and had a plan. He came to Gideon to help save the Israelites. But Gideon felt he wasn’t strong or brave enough to do it. God promised Gideon that he would be with him and help him defeat the Midanites. The story goes on quite a bit but in the end God tells Gideon he wants him to cut down the size of his army (which had 32,000 men) so that God would get the glory and the people wouldn’t think it was their own strength or size of their army that won the battle. Instead they finally would realize it was God alone.
So Gideon does what God asks. He tells his army that any man who is scared would be allowed to leave. Half the men decide to go. But God thinks the army is still too big. Soon it is cut down to only 300 men. (the Midianites had 135,000 men). But in the end the Israelites do win, in spite of having only a few men left to fight, because God was faithful. So all of Gideon’s concerns that he wasn’t a leader, that he could not have heard God correctly, that he wasn’t strong, or that they’d never win did not come to pass.
I’m so like Gideon sometimes. Did I hear you correctly God? You want me to do what??? You can’t mean me. And how can I be sure I’ll really be able to do what you ask? All kinds of doubts and fears start coming. But God is entirely faithful. And sometimes he likes to use the weakest to confound the wise. Sometimes he just wants to show me how he will come through for me or that I’m stronger than I thought because I have the Almighty powerful God on my side.
In the past I’ve thought of “waiting” as wasted time, like waiting for a plane to take off or waiting in line at the grocery store. This kind of waiting requires little action on our part; it’s mostly a matter of biding our time. It’s also paired with frustration and impatience.
This isn’t the kind of waiting that David is referring to in this psalm or that Isaiah said could “renew [our] strength.” On the contrary, impatient waiting tends to leave us physically and emotionally exhausted. Often, I’ve been guilty of this type of waiting.
I like to think of waiting in terms of a waiter at a restaurant. In this sense, to wait on someone is to serve them. A good waiter gives his/her customers excellent care and attention by checking in often, learning their desires, and attending to them. When I adopt this attitude towards God, it adds purpose to the time I spend waiting for a particular blessing. Time seems to pass more quickly when I am working to serve God.
The same amount of time will pass whether I am squandering it in anger and impatience or using it to serve the Lord. It helps if I remember that because our Father’s greatest desire is to bless His children with what will ultimately help us be happy, He will not only give me what I need, He’ll also give it at the time that is best for me. Shifting my attitude from “just waiting” to “waiting on God” has shown me that waiting can be a good thing. This perspective has opened my eyes to the many gifts Father has given me.