This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Psalms” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 27, 1987.

Tonight our scripture reading is from Psalm 148. And then we will be reading from Psalm 29 as well. Psalm 148. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights. Praise Him, all His angels. Praise Him, all His hosts. Praise Him, sun and moon. Praise Him, all stars of light. Praise Him, highest heavens and the waters that are above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He has also established them forever and ever. He has made a decree which will not pass away.

Praise the Lord from the earth. See monsters in all deeps, fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged fowl, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, both young men and virgins, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord. For his name alone is exalted, his glory is above earth and heaven. And he has lifted up a horn for his people, praise for all his godly ones, even for the sons of Israel, a people near to him. Praise the Lord. Then from Psalm 29. Verses one and two. Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name. Worship the Lord in holy array.

Our God, your people truly would look to you for strength. And Lord, in you there is strength sufficient, adequate. We pray, our Father, that you will grant your people that strength in abundance, that while they abide in this world, they may turn to you and find you faithful, true. We pray, our God, that our experience with you would be full and complete, and that we would rejoice continually in the word that you have said you sent to.

Our own thoughts centering Christ your son our savior to the glory of your name. We have been talking about Psalm 29, and we have been reviewing it in terms of its overall theme, some of the development that we find in it, how it presses on to its conclusion, the affirmation of the kingship of the Lord.

This psalm is a beautifully constructed psalm. At the center of it, and if you have a New American Standard, at least that’s the one that I’m familiar with most, maybe some other versions have parceled out the psalm in terms of its unitary sections, but in the New American Standard you will find that verses three through nine are set off by themselves. You have fifteen lines of poetry there which speak about the sevenfold voice of the Lord. We’ve counted them before. This fact has been pointed out to you in the messages that have been given previously. These repetitions of the phrase, the voice of the Lord, have been viewed as peals of thunder, reflective at least of those peals, and the background of this center section for the psalm being that of a thunderstorm, and seeing the Lord there in the midst of it. Of course, we have concluded that.

The portrait of God here far exceeds what you would find in any thunderstorm, be it as fierce a thunderstorm as this creation has as yet experienced, but nevertheless. The psalm ends, verses 10 and 11, as it begins in the first two verses, with a four-line stanza. Two four-line stanzas, one at the end, one at the beginning, serve as sort of bookends for the psalm as a whole. They are set off by themselves. The opening stanza is before us this evening, verses one and two, and it revolves around an imperative.

It revolves around a command. That command is to ascribe, or as the King James puts it, to give. A command to give. Or, translating it a bit, to attribute to. Thinking of the command, this command that is spoken here, is spoken with consummate, complete authority. We are hearing the voice of someone whose authority is extraordinary. And just how extraordinary this voice is, and its authority, is brought out by the second part of the first line. That part of the first line that reads, O sons of the mighty, O sons of the mighty. The question, however, is this.

Who are these sons of the mighty? Some Some have said that they are to be thought of as human beings, distinctively described as sons of the mighty because of their unusual prowess and stature. Therefore, these sons of the mighty would be kings, princes, rulers in the world. maybe comparable to those that are described in Genesis six, verse two. The so-called mighty men of old, the men of renown in Genesis six, four. The sons of God who looked upon the daughters of men and saw that they were fair. These men of old who seemingly strutted through the world, across the earth, asserting their power, their importance, and their will upon others.

Now, this may not be out of line. You see, with the sweep of the entirety of the Because, you see, the psalm ends in verse ten with a consideration of the Lord as king, and he sat as king, or was enthroned as king, at the flood. You recall that Genesis six begins the account that descends into the story of Noah and the flood. Well, if this is the case, then the thought expressed, according to some, seeing these as being human beings, extraordinary human beings at that, the thought expressed would be parallel to what we find in Psalm 2, turning back to that Psalm, verses 10 and following.

Now, therefore, O Kings, show discernment. Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence. Rejoice with trembling. Pay homage to the Son lest he become angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are they that take refuge in him.” One can see that here, Fox may well rush on to the imagery of the flood as well. Now, support for this interpretation, this approach to the sons of the mighty, is found in passages that sound quite similar.

Take, for example, Psalm 96. A familiar psalm, which begins with that marvelous statement, sing to the Lord a new song. Well, as you run down to verse 7 in that psalm, you have language that nearly parallels exactly what we find here at the opening of Psalm 29. Ascribe to the Lord. So it begins there, verse 7.

But then it says, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Sound familiar, a scribe to the Lord, the glory of his name, bring an offering, come into his corpse. Of course, courts worship the Lord in holy attire tremble before him all year. Then it goes on to among the nations. The Lord reigns, etc. Again, reflection upon the incomparable glory and power of God, and the fact that the Lord, he himself, is king.

But you will note what has changed as we have moved from Psalm 29 to Psalm 96. The phrase, the sons of the mighty, is replaced. It is replaced by the phrase, O families of the peoples. So in Psalm 96, references made to the peoples In Psalm 29, so it is said, reference is made to their leaders, to those who are over them. So taking them together, you have king and peoples considered. Of course, as we’ve already intimated, this approach to the sons of the mighty squares well with the overall tone of the psalm.

If kings and princes are in view, they are deliberately then set in contrast with the one who is truly king. The one who is truly the Lord. You see then, the psalm’s intent is to magnify the Lord as king. who certainly has no earthly equal. No human ruler, no earthly potentate, is his equal.

And though they may wish the world and its peoples to serve them, and think that they are at the center of the revolutions of this earth. Both they and their people, here by this psalm, are called upon with this consummate command to serve the only true sovereign.

That’s one approach to the sons of the mighty. And it certainly is capable of bearing a great deal of weight. But others have seen in these words, the sons of the mighty, more than a reference to earthly rulers. In fact, their vision has been directed elsewhere, and they would have our vision directed elsewhere also. They have picked upon the oddity of the Hebrew expression that is used here, and they have transferred the scene in view before the psalmist from one of the earth to that of the heavens, so that the sons of the mighty are not so much human beings, but rather angelic creatures. Now, in interpreting the sons of the mighty in this regard and along these lines, thought has diverged in two directions. The first is that which takes the reading here quite literally. You will see the translation of the literal meaning of the Hebrew in the margin of the New American Standard Version.

It reads, that rather than the sons of the mighty, we have here the sons of the gods. The reference then is thought to be to supposed deities, those whose worship arose in the ancient world, and arose through a perversion within the mind and practices of men, as they twisted a proper understanding of angelic beings, and then began to worship those beings as if they were deities, even associating them with heavenly bodies, such as the moon and the stars and the sun. The plurality of the heavenly host And the defection of some of those heavenly hosts under the leadership of Lucifer, Satan, led in the earth to a doctrine of multiple gods and even competing gods.

In keeping with this interpretation, the stress of the psalm as a whole, then, is thought to fall upon the mythological point. Not the great storm gods of the pagans. Not even Baal, the great storm god of the Canaanites. Not the foolish claims concerning their power and their supremacy. Rather, the created order, instead of belonging to them, belongs to the true king. the Lord of hosts, that one described in this psalm and extolled here.

That’s one line dealing with the interpretation that the sons of the mighty are angelic beings. The other line taken by those who feel that the sons of the mighty are heavenly beings, is that the angels of God are here considered in the light of their holy service unto God himself.

In mind, you say, is then something comparable to what we find expressed in Hebrews the fourth chapter. I’m sorry, Hebrews the first chapter, the last verse, verse fourteen. Where in speaking about the angels, in contrast to the sun, the writer says, are they not all ministering spirits set out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation. The important phrase there being ministering spirits. The thought is also expressed in Psalm 103. At the conclusion of that song, you have these words.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all. Bless the Lord, you his angels, mighty in strength to perform his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all you his hosts, you who serve him, doing his will. Bless the Lord, all you works of his, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul.” This thought is also expressed In the psalm that we read tonight, Psalm 148, verse 2, praise him all his angels, praise him all his hosts.

And taken together in view is a vision of the heavenly hosts absorbed in praise. Those angelic beings created by God, still loyal to him. who are rendering faithful service to him, absorbed in praise to him. But as we think through these various options before us concerning this phrase, the sons of the mighty, it’s almost as if we don’t have to come to any firm conclusion as to who is in view. In fact, it seems as if what we have here is an all-encompassing directive, written compactly, to be sure, concentrated in this phrase, the sons of the mighty, but encompassing all of those that we have spoken of under that heading, sons of the mighty. As the sweep of Psalm 148 certainly intones, as Psalm 103 certainly has in view, as any number of Psalms places before us, no man, no human being, no creature, no creature is excluded. Kings, rulers, peoples, families of the earth, demonic principalities, the angelic host, all are called upon to ascribe, that is, to attribute to the Lord all glory, that is, all wealth, all riches, anything and everything that defines greatness.

That is to be ascribed to God and to no one else. Let him who glories, glory in the Lord. The force and power of that word glory, I cannot overemphasize. We have lost contact with that word, for we have translated it into merely praise. Glory means praise. Giving glory to God means giving praise to Him. No!

At root, the word glory has in view wealth, riches, everything that defines your greatness, your value, your significance, your importance. That is what glory is in the ancient world. A man who was glorious, or who had glory, had a great deal of wealth. He had a great deal of riches. much that told the world of his significance, his importance. He realized the first time the word glory is used in the Bible.

It’s not used with regard to God at all. It’s used with regard to Laban and the fact that his sons were afraid that Jacob was going to steal their glory from their father. Now that’s what it means to give glory to God, to ascribe or attribute to God glory.

Everything, everything is called upon to attribute to the Lord all glory, whatever we have, whatever defines our importance, even in our own eyes, our importance before the world. We ascribe that, attribute that to the Lord. It is His. It belongs to Him. And we ascribe to Him, we attribute to Him all strength, that is, all power, whatever energy we have within ourselves that accompanies our glory, both to gain it and to maintain it. We attribute it to him.

We usually think about the power of the resurrection as the last consideration when it comes to energizing forces. That’s not the case with the Apostle Paul. It’s the first Every other consideration of power and strength in the world is derivative from a reflection upon an extension of the resurrection power that is found in Christ, in the Spirit, who gives life. not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. It’s a different world. What the psalmist is talking about is a whole different world. Recognize, you see, then, that all of these things that are spoken of, that can be subsumed beneath glory and strength, they have their source in God.

They belong to Him, just as His name makes clear. His name is Lord. His name is Yahweh, His name is Jehovah. He has that grand covenantal name which, when explicated, comes close to meaning, I am that I am, I will be what I will be, no one defines me, I am self-defined and utterly self-sufficient. that one who by his grace has made himself known by his mighty works. And in this case, as the sweep of the psalm makes plain, the mighty work in view is his mighty work of impending judgment.

Impending judgment. Do you see why it’s important to give all glory and strength? To ascribe and attribute to Him all that we are. The judgment is coming. In the light of his judgment, then, give him glory and strength. Adore him in the robes of holiness with that adornment made plain now through the visitation of Christ and specifically the descent of the Spirit. That adornment of which Paul speaks of when he talks about that which is to dress up the inner man, the hidden interior quality, the fitting creatures properly acknowledging their Creator. And now, we are prepared to hear much better the force of the authority of that imperative of which we spoke at the outset of the message. You see, the psalm repeats at the beginning the imperative, the command. Ascribe to the Lord! Ascribe to the Lord! Ascribe to the Lord! Worship the Lord!

The imperative there We now better able to understand the authority that is at work in the opening part of this song. You see, it is not enough to consider those addressed. It’s not enough simply to exegete the sons of the mighty, those to whom the psalmist is speaking. For you have to go on and consider the one who speaks. Who is it? that speaking here.

Well, at the first level, you see, and I don’t shy away from the superscription of the psalm. The psalm is noted as a psalm of David. That’s how it’s described and identified in the mind of the faithful. That’s how it has been recognized. It is first of all seen as a psalm of David.

David is speaking the Lord’s anointed at work in him. is that wish, that desire, that all creation acknowledge the true God. His desire arises out of his own practice. He is not here speaking as one who has no acquaintance of that of which he speaks, as if he has failed himself to ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. No, no, he has in fact done that.

His heart is even now preparing itself for worship in robes of holiness. Before him there lives the priest. Before him there lives the priest, and that priest has special access to God. He enters into the tabernacle, and there he appears before God. But, see, David wishes for himself that kind of ready access to the presence of the Lord in the roads of holiness.

It is here then that the authority, the authority of this one who speaks, is catapulted into realms far beyond the ordinary boundaries of his domain. not just the Jews, not just other nations, not just earthly creatures, but all, even the heavenly creatures.

This man, seemingly in fulfillment of all that could ever be expected of man, in terms of that dominion promised from the very beginning, this man, is expressing a consummate authority by which men and angels are to be compelled, commanded, constrained of man. The anointing of the Lord. Well, of course. You see it, don’t you?

Understand that this one who speaks, speaks with the spirit of one far greater than himself. He speaks with the spirit of the ultimate sign of righteousness. the ultimate king the ultimate anointed one in the voice then of David we hear the voice of his greater son from whom now there issues a universal call to principalities and powers think about efficiency to principalities and powers and even those that live beneath their gates. To ascribe to, to attribute to the Lord, glory and strength. Well, there are other factors to be considered here in these two verses. We can think of how the greater son is the one who issues the call, the universal call. It goes out from him, ascribed to the Lord. But we can also think of how he himself is the Lord, to whom glory and strength is ascribed, attributed in the act. that finally, and even more marvelous yet, is the fact that this command is not just upon the lips of David, nor even, if I can speak this way, simply upon the lips of Christ.

You see, the people, the people were to sing the song. So that the command that is issued here by the Anointed One is a command in which those who belong to the Anointed One share. They too command kings and people, and angels, and principality. They too. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Our Father in Heaven. How magnificent the opening of the song.

And Lord, we pray, in keeping with the Spirit of Christ, that our own desire will be that all glory and strength would be ascribed to you. There is much in our lives which would contradict, but there is nothing in the life of Christ that contradicts at all. And therefore, Lord, we pray, that your grace would encourage us to look unto him and to live in and from him that you may be glorified by us, your people.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.