Why Do We Sing in Church?: Psalm 33

Show Notes

Episode 526: 
In this episode, Chris and Jeff dive into Psalm 33, one of our favorite psalms, which emphasizes God's role as the Creator and the importance of trusting Him. We explore the idea that while God is capable of miraculous acts, such as healing and provision, it doesn't mean that every believer will experience these miracles in the same way. We reflect on the significance of worship and how it serves as a witness to those who do not yet know Christ.

What is The Bible Guys?

Whether you’ve been following Jesus for years or you’re just starting to ask questions, there’s a seat for you here.

Join Jeff and Chris for honest conversations about Scripture, faith, and the everyday stuff we all navigate. With humor, personal stories, and plenty of back-and-forth, The Bible Guys explore what the Bible says and how it connects to your life.

Subscribe, bring your questions, and get to know the Bible one conversation at a time. Head over to TheBibleGuys.com for more information!

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Good morning, everybody. I just want to announce that Jeff had a bad traffic experience getting here. No, it was a NonStop bad It wasn't a bad experience. It was forty four minutes of bad experience. So my question is, maybe you're listening to the Bible Guys on your way to work, and maybe you're in traffic right now. Yeah, so we're hoping we're bringing you good news. That's right, right, Yeah, so just shake it off, that's right, shake it off, shake it off. Yeah, that was not what I was thinking. I was not thinking. Yeah, Taylor Swift. Oh well, at least you get the reference. That's good. Hey, welcome everybody to the Bible Guys. I'm Chris, this is Jeff, and we are starting our day with a segment. You know, the segment's called I. Just now Opened up. Bags. Yeah. So that's our only segment that has its own theme something. Yes it does, and we stole it from Blues. Super sophisticated. Again, we don't know why you people, isn't. All right? This is Sandra M. And Sandra M asked the question and she says, did you have any nicknames growing up? And if you did, what was your favorite one? Wow? Now your nickname was my favorite one growing up. You already told this before, but not, I don't think on the podcast, I had a. Bunch of nicknames. What nickname did I tell you? Oh? The goofiest one that was so good? Come on forse fire. Nope, no Booper, but Booper Yeah that's it. Yeah, Booper. Yeah, that's hilarious. That's great, that one. Yes, that's great. Yeah, that was my mom. That's my mom. Call me? Okay, nobody just loved to call me then, So how do you spell that? I have no idea what is it? I don't think Booper Booper Booper? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where it came from, but it's my whole life. Oh did you say forest fire? Yeah? I guess that makes sense. Yeah, the kids call me fort and then what else? Anything else? Sir? A lot of guys called me sir, MVP. Yeah, I don't know those pretty much it. Yeah, well, I did a lot of fighting when I was a kid, so people didn't call me many things. Right, right, that's funny. I had older brother maybe just once, but it didn't catch up, right, I had. Older brothers with the reputation, so nobody called me anything either. But because my family used to call me Chrissy, oh yeah, because it was chuck you down, he told me Jimmy yeah, and so I had no choice. So that was my mom still, I tell you, I think I made reference to this. It was like not even like maybe ten years ago, and my mom referenced on Facebook and she said Chrissy and I called her up and I said, Mom. You can't do that. You can't do my mom in front of my five thousand friends. And then but you know, I think my favorite nickname I didn't have too many nicknames, uh, but my favorite nickname that I did have was my dad. Called me fur. Christopher. Oh Christopher, call you fur? Yeah? And he would and he would walk in a lot of times and he would say, and I'd be sad. When I was sad, he'd come in. He'd sit down next to me and he'd say Christopher. And then I had this thing where I said, what a fur and he'd say, what's. Your frown in for? So anyway, that was that was sort of something. So my mom called me Booker, which was a sign of affection. Uh huh. My dad called me jughead because he spent most of his time frustrated with me. Okay, jug head head. He still calls me jug head. My dad's eighty six years old. I'm fifty three and he calls me jug head. That's great. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure I have any nicknames besides that. Oh, my last name, I was thinking of Chris. Growing up in college, I had Uh. I was only known as Dago, which is right, Yes, I forgot about you, which is a slur for Italian. Uh and uh. Anyway, but my my my buddy Jeff and Norm, my buddy's Jeff, Norm started it. When I first got there, nobody knew my name. So years later, ten years. Later, I was invited back to be the keynote speaker at Baptist Baba College during fellowship week. No, it was during alumni days. So you were known by a slur, a racial slur. Oh yeah, In fact, Kenny Gilming. Uh. They said, hey, the keynote speaker is Chris Sarba, And he said Chris Sarbaugh. He goes, I don't know a Chris. He said, I remember a gym's arba he and I remember a Diego' zar ba and uh so everybody just they only knew me as Dago and nobody nobody knew my first name. Nobody, nobody knew it. You could have gotten away with so much stuff. Well, imagine imagine going through four years of your life and every person that you interact with at college referred to you as your nickname. There you go, good job, that was me. That's fantastic. And then and then when I got to my Uh, I don't think it's. Great that they called you a racial slur, but yeah, they fantastic that. You got back back in the ages of college, nobody cared. Because all the college shows movies always have those guys that have the nicknames. Oh yeah yeah. And then and then when I got Atlanta, right right when I got to Atlanta, I I made sure that name went away because I was tired of it. And I said, I want to be called Chris again. So like it's a wonderful life. I just want to go back you. Clarence helped me, well, well, Chrissy, we are so glad that you're with us, Okay, and uh yeah, well, hey, that was kind of fun. Thank you Sandra for digging up all that trauma from our childhood. Right and then orbs z Man Oh yeah, yeah, well yeah with the Z, I figured you'd have tons of like Z type name. I spoke at a retreat one time and they stood up there, they introduced me, and they all brainstormed on these ridiculous names, and they came. Up with like ten names per session. Oh wow, and I. Remember it was ridiculous. And one of my favorites was they said Zarbie's roast beef sandwiches, and then one of them was he said, he goes, it's not your ball, it's zar ball. That's awesome. Yeah, it was funny. Okay, Well, we are in Psalm chapter thirty three today, so if you survived those last few minutes, we are in Psalm thirty three, which is one of my favorite psalms. To be honest with you, from a worship perspective and from an understanding of David's view of God is pretty fantastic. So because God's creator, He's worthy of all of our trust and praise is kind of the note here. So I'll just read the whole chapter. Psalm chapter thirty three says, let the godly sing for joy to the Lord. It's fitting for the peer to praise him. Praise the Lord with melodies on the lear. Make music for him on the ten stringed harp, sing a new song of praise to him. Play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy. For the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything he does. He loves whatever is just and good. The unfailing of the Lord fills the earth. The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born. He assigned the sea its boundaries and locked the oceans in its vast reservoirs. Let the whole world fear the Lord, and let everyone stand in awe of him. For when he spoke, the world began. It appeared at his command. The Lord frustrates the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes. But the Lord's plans stand firm forever. His intentions can never be shaken. What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance. The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race. From this from his head thrown, he observes all who live on the earth. He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do. The best equept army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior. Don't count on your war horse to give you victory. For all its strength, it cannot save you. But the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love, and he rescues them from death and keeps them alive in times of famine. We put our hope in the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In him. Our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. Let your unfailing love surround us. Lord, for our hope is in you alone. Well, there you go, there you go. You stole it from me. I did all right, I did well. The first thing I want to say is Verse number nineteen is not a ironclad guarantee that all believers will be delivered from death and starvation. Right he rescues those. He rescues them from death and keeps them alive alive in times of famine. It is a proclamation that God works miracles, and only God can do such things, because it would be the exact same thing where if, for instance, you and I saw God kill somebody for cancer from cancer, and let's just say it was a miracle, we would say He's the only God that can heal you miraculously from cancer in the way that we saw, you know, And it doesn't mean that he heals everybody from cancer. It just means that, Wow, that is the God who does great things. Just in the same way when it says he is the God who parts the Red Sea, he doesn't part the Red Sea for everyone, right, He hasn't part the Red Sea constantly. He is the God who has the power and has demonstrated his awesome ability to part the Red Sea in this miracle. You know, it's an encouragement to know that God is able to do miracles at any time. And so we just need to never give up hope. We need to pray, and we need to be faithful and believe that God can and will, you know, uh do great things when we just continue to pray and just be faithful. Did I tell you about this guy that I went and prayed for in the burn unit. Yes, you told me, But I don't think you talked about it on here. So there's a guy that works with my son, Matt, and he had an accident at work, you know, electricly. My son's studying to be an electrician, and so this guy had a little bit of an explosion. It was actually quite a big explosion, and he was thinking about they were thinking about giving him skin grafts, and he had burned his arms and they were bandaged from his fingertips all the way up to maybe his you know, biceps. And he's laying in the burn unit and. Anyway, you know, people, can you imagine being in there, You know, you'd be scared. You'd be scared about your future, whether or not your nerve endings would ever work again, whether or not you. Can continue in the trade. Not to mention all the time off of work and the you know, providing for the family and all these things. And so he's laying there in the burn unit, you know, and thinking like, I don't know how long I'm going to be there, and all these kinds of things. So we went there and and so I prayed over him and prayed a very strong prayer, and it was a great time together. And he and his wife were there and so I left and and the all of a sudden, we hear, uh, he's doing great. And the text, you know, and now listen, this is take it for what it's worth. This comment right, so that but this, this is the text that came in. The text came in and she said to my wife. She texted my wife and she said, when your Chris came down and prayed over my mat she said, all of a sudden, everything took a onet eighty and he just got better and the doctors are amazed, and all of a sudden, the next text is I can't believe it, but they said, no skin grass, And all of a sudden, the next text came in and they said. He's going home. He's doing so good. He's going home. And we're like, what. All of a sudden, the next text came in. There's a picture he's approved of driving. His fingers now move, I'm like, and it's like what, So, all of a sudden, he's you know, now he's back at home, and uh and this is going on currently right now. And last week, yeah, this is like last week. And uh so anyway, again, you know, she says, she says, when your Chris comes right, you know. That's that's the funny part. Hey, maybe I should go pray over people. More off, but that walk the hallways of the hospital. Right, But that's not that's not the emphasis of the story. The emphasis of the story is, uh, you know, I actually prayed, and I said, I pray that there might be such a miraculous healing that the doctors would be amazed, and that we would have no choice but to give you all the honor and the credit and the glory. And uh. And I think that's exactly what's happening right now. I think that's what the doctor said. I think that that's what they attributed to. Well, hey, it's a power prayer, that's what they said. They said, we get prayed over. This is it. And I'm telling you, it's just. A great experience to see when everybody is amazed. Right. So that would be equivalent to Psalm thirty three. I could say, God, you are the God who heals. Yeah, in the midst of the burn unit, right, yeah. Yeah, he spoke and everything changed. That's right. That's that's that's what he's singing. Here is the power of God. I think that one of the great ones for a king to be writing in these days for him to say, we're not trusting in our best equipped army. I'm not trusting in my war horses, right, they can't save me, which is. A symbol of strength, earthly strength. Right. Well, he's talking there, I'm not trusting in my nukes right right, I'm not trusting in my in my abrams tanks. I'm not trusting in my F thirty five fighter jets or my BE three bombers. He said, I'm there is no hope for me if I'm only relying on the on the very best that men can come up with. Right, And so he's saying, you know, the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love, and he's the one who rescues us from death and keeps us alive in times of famine. So we put our hope in the Lord. He's our help and our shield. And also I cannot put my hope and money right right, there's strength and wealth, isn't there? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. So you were a worship leader. You studied, you studied a lot of this right when you were in college, you you really broke down like the intricacies of worship which we touched on a little bit last week. Yeah, well, these first five verses are really significant right with regard to worship. So he's making a big deal about let the godly sing for joy to the Lord. You know you and I have talked you in your past. You some of the ministries you worked in, or a ministry significant ministry worked in, elevated all of the things necessary to capture people's attention, which is really important to me too. I think that's super important. But sometimes on occasion would minimize worship, corporate worship right right in the strength. So then when you came to Heritage and you began leading our arts team and our worship team and our our teaching team, everything that's happened on stage early on, I talked about the idea that I think that worship is one of the great witnesses to people who don't yet know Jesus. Right, So I don't believe that lost people can worship, but they can witness godly people worshiping and realize, man, there's something missing. This was just on the testimony video. Do you remember the testimony video on Sunday? Oh you didn't see. It didn't get out? Yeah, we had a difference. She attributed her coming back to heritage as a person who doesn't know Christ. To a worship song. Yeah, she said. She came in, sat down, looked up, and they were singing a certain song. She knew the song, she knew the date, and she said, and I knew right there, I had to come back. I'm telling you lost people cannot worship, but when they see godly people worship, they realize those people have something I don't have. Yeah. Right, it's one of the few things that we truly have. If you're truly a godly person and you're truly worshiping God, you have something that the rest of the world does not have and they can barely fathom. We should do a series own worship. Yeah, we really should. Yeah. And so here it says, let the godly sing for joy to the Lord, and then it's fitting for the peer to praise him. Now, you and I, in and of ourselves are not godly people, and neither any of our listeners. Hate to break it to him today, right, and none of us are in and of ourselves pure. Right, we're talking about the depravity of man. Right, right, that's right, we are. We are sinners. And so we don't deserve to stand before a holy God. But because of Jesus, because of God's grace, only God's grace, he makes it possible for us to be godly in Christ and for us to be pure in and through Christ. And so what he's saying here to you know, we're New Testament Christians, and as New Testament Christians, what he's saying to us is, because of Jesus, you can stand and you can sing for joy, and you can praise him. And then he goes on. He says, hey, praise him on the leer, which is like a little guitar, right, Praise him on the harp, which is going to be string tarp. That's gonna be the other guitar, you know, in our situation, sing a new song of praise to him, play skillfully. So you know, as a musician, I've always worked hard to get better and better musicians, and to work harder and harder at getting better and better at our craft and all those kinds of things. And here's why, it's not just that you have a desire to be in the band. You should probably be pretty good at it, right, and you should be getting better. You should be better tomorrow than you wore three weeks ago. You should be better, you know, next month than you were ten months ago. You should be constantly improving. So play skillfully and sing with joy. Other translations say play skillfully with a loud noise. Right, So God's like, get after it. Don't just play at this thing, get after it. And then he talks about then it's the word of the Lord that holds true. It's not our opinions about God. It's God and his word that hold true. When Paul gives the gospel and in Corinthians, he said, he talks about the reserve, you know, the price that Christ paid on the cross and his resurrection according to the scriptures. That is what he said. So we don't just invent our own fantasies and our own satisfactions and our own hopes in our worship. Instead, it's according to how we already know the truths of God. Right, And so it's through his word. And so even David is saying, here, God's word holds true. We can trust everything that he does, and so you know we should lean into that and celebrate him enthusiastically through all those things. So, yeah, that's what this whole passage is there, that's those five verses. Yeah, and you know, I love the fact that he goes on for twenty two you know, well we labeled them as verses. Yeah, right, but most of a page. By the way, do you think this was a song? All of them were. Yeah, yeah, all one hundred and fifty songs were songs. Yeah. These these had charts, right. So they would they had. For those of you who have ever been part of a liturgical church, a church that has a liturgy that on this week every year, we talk about the resurrection on this week every year, we. Talked, Yeah, I've definitely seen that, right, Yes. So the the Israelites use specific psalms on specific days, and then when there were specific events, they used specific songs. But they were all the songs. It was like there was a designated song for every event in the Israelite life. Yeah. Yeah, So what I was gonna say is, so this this covers you know, the instruction to play, to sing to, you know, skillfully worship and then and I love how it sort of takes a turn in verse number six where he talks about creation and it's and it's just a reminder of who God is in our lives, and he says, the Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word. And all the stars were born. He assigned the sea its boundaries. Isn't that great? He as signed the sea its boundaries and locked the oceans and vast reservoirs. You know, it's you know what it reminds me of Genesis. I think it's one sixteen where it says he created the universe, and then there's and then it's a tag at the end of the sentence he goes, and all the stars also, yes, oh you know, you know, just those billion, trillions and quadrillions of stars. Oh yeah, and the stars also, and that too. Yeah, that too. And you know God and his and his majesty. I think, I think at times when we consider God for our lives, sometimes we can get so focused on ourselves we forget just who it is that we're praying to. We forget just who it is that you know that that controls everything, and that is He's the God of the universe, who the Word says merely spoke. He didn't lift a finger, he didn't bat an eye. I watched my son and I watched last night an old nineteen seventy seven movie, Oh God with George Burns. You remember that. We watched that last night and guess what. It's not biblical, not at all in Hollywood. But however, uh touch blasphemous. Yeah, yeah, however, there was a there were some moments in there, right, there were some moments in there where, uh, you know, you sort of saw you could preach from that, you know, and because you know there's God interacting with man. And one of them was he said, create a miracle, and then he made it rain, and he didn't. He made it rain inside the car, and so that's raining inside the car. And then John Denver is the guy, you know, John Denver goes, you didn't. Even bat an eye, you didn't even lift a finger. And then and then George Burns looks over and he goes, Rain's not that hard, Yeah. Not for God? Right, right, Well, that's that's the kind of stuff that you know, you can look and go that'll preach. Right. So even though it's you know, it's the same thing as Bruce Almighty, right, sure, like it's it's just like this great movie about God that you can preach from. But it's like it's not exactly. So he's using the first chapter of Genesis, which they all would have known well as as Jews. Right, yes, and he's kind of he's kind of artistically or poetically referencing this and then like using that phrase like you said, he merely spoke, But then he his conclusion is because God can just merely speak. Verse eight says, let the whole world fear the Lord and let everyone stand in awe of him. That is the essence of real worship. Right, So praise, Remember, praise is thank you God for what you did. You're so good to me. Worship is standing in the fear of God and standing in awe of Him and going, you are God like and I am not right. And so there is a certain amount of reverence in our I don't think that God's mad at us having fun and laughing. And you know that's a big premise of this show, is right, fun and practical way is just looking at the Bible and God created our humor and God created those things. But there are some very important moments in our life when we need to pause and we need to be reverent people and have the fear of God. A healthy fear of God in us, not terror necessarily, but this respect and reverence for Him in that and it's it's not because we're terrified of him. It's because, dude, he merely spoke and everything exists. And so there's a note, and I think this is a great way to kind of tie this up. The note in the Life Havecation Study Bible says God is not just the coordinator of natural forces. He is the Lord of creation, the Almighty God. And because he is all powerful, we should refere him and all we do. That's right. Isn't that a great good thing? He's not just the coordinator of natural forces, right, He's the almighty God. He's the author of all forces. And if God is forced, who can be against us? How great is that? Right? So that's why the Bible at the beginning, that's why David saying, Hey, we need to be godly people, we need to be peer people. We need to lean into this relationship with him because we have the author of all of creation, the most powerful one in existence, on our side. That's great. We trust him. Well, that's a good place to wrap up, and we will see you next time, hopefully. All the Bible gush