A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day.
1 It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High, 2 proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, 3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp. 4 For you make me glad by your deeds, LORD; I sing for joy at what your hands have done. 5 How great are your works, LORD, how profound your thoughts! 6 Senseless people do not know, fools do not understand, 7 that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be destroyed forever.
8 But you, LORD, are forever exalted. 9 For surely your enemies, LORD, surely your enemies will perish; all evildoers will be scattered. 10 You have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox; fine oils have been poured on me. 11 My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries; my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes. 12 The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; 13 planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. 14 They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green,
15 proclaiming, “The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
Psalms 92 is a song for the Sabbath Day. This is the only Psalm that is designated for the Sabbath Day. Sabbath comes from the word Shabbath which means a day of rest or to rest from labor. The Sabbath was observed on the seventh day.
Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the LORD in all your dwelling places. - Leviticus 23:3 ESV
Fun fact: Psalm 92 may exhibit an arch-form structure with verse 8 appearing at the apex of the arch. Clues to this structure include: (1) each verse in the psalm has two lines, but verse 8 only has one line; (2) verse 8 is positionally at the center of the psalm—the 108 Hebrew words are equally distributed on either side of the two central words of verse 8 (“exalted forever”); and (3) the name Yahweh occurs in verses 1, 8, and 15 with the remaining four uses equally divided in the lines preceding and following verse 8. If Psalm 92 exhibits an arch-form structure, then verse 8 is given special emphasis since it is at the apex. Thus the psalmist accentuates the sovereign position of God in destroying the wicked and exalting the righteous above their adversaries (cf. Jonathan Magonet, “Some Concentric Structures in Psalms,” The Heythrop Journal 23 (1982):365-76)
The “Lord” is mentioned seven times. The number 7 used in the Bible often denotes completion or perfection. In Genesis, God rested from all His work (completion) on the seventh day. We are commanded, as part of the Ten Commandments, to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. While, as Christians, we do not observe the seventh day, it is the concept of the Sabbath that we are called to keep. Things or time become holy because God puts His presence in them. By keeping the Sabbath, we are coming into the presence of God. It is good for us to rest from our making (creating), or working with the creation, lay our burdens down and appreciate what God has done and is doing in us. Jesus said “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28) We can only find true rest in God.
The focus of this Psalm is verse 8. 8 But you, LORD, are forever exalted. To exalt is to raise God to the highest place in our lives. We do this by recognizing that He is already higher than anything else in the universe. God is greater, bigger and more powerful than anything. In the Bible, when people or angels see God, they fall to their knees in worship. It is hard for us to imagine all that God is, but we can proclaim all that we know to be true about Him. We can exalt Him by worshiping Him.
This is a Psalm of worship. The Hebrew word is shachah meaning to bow down. Worship is declaring the greatness of someone or something. According to Webster’s Dictionary 1828, worship is to honor with extravagant love and extreme submission. It is the act of giving up your own glory to make sure everyone knows that the thing being worshiped is so much greater than you. Another worship definition: bowing down in homage and laying down/giving up something you care about to honor God.
Jesus says God is seeking out true worshipers. It’s exciting that God pursues you if you worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:23) But what is true worship? We come to church, a worship service, but are we really making it about God and not about us. Worship is not based on feelings. By bowing down and offering myself as a servant, giving to God my time, my talents, my treasures, I am recognizing how majestic and worthy of praise He is. In order to worship God, we must know Him. We can know him through the Bible and prayer.
The writer says “It is good to give thanks to the Lord.” It should be an honor and pleasure to worship, not a duty. It brings pleasure to God as well as a pleasure to us. The core of everything that we do should be worship, not just on the Sabbath. We should do it because it helps us forget about ourselves and focus on God.
The act of worship can be anything that honors God. Worship takes many forms but the first should be to give thanks; acknowledging God for who He is and for what He does. Verse 15 indicates that one of God’s purposes for exalting the righteous and destroying the evildoers is so that the righteous would praise (proclaim) Him.
Verses 6 & 7 speak of what happens to evildoers. “The wicked should understand that this world provides the best they will ever experience, and the righteous should know that this world provides the worst they will experience.” (enduringword.com)
My initial draw to this Psalm was (selfishly) because of verse 14
14 They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green,
…mostly the staying “fresh and green.”
The original language reads literally, “they will bear fruit even in gray hair.” The Hebrew verb translated here as “bear fruit” is used in Scripture metaphorically with the meaning “grow, prosper, flourish.” I like this because I like being active in the church and in life. Covid-19 made me more aware of this when I couldn’t go to church. But this was not the most important thing to God. God instead took me to the worship aspect of this Psalm. He showed me that I don’t quite have worship in its proper perspective. Worship is my opportunity to not think about myself and how the church meets my needs, but to worship God for all that He is and thank Him for all that He is.
We are never too young or too old to worship and find rest in God. And just a reminder, if you don’t rest you will get gray hair sooner than you expect. While you are resting, you might as well worship God so that you may be planted in the house of the Lord, and flourish in the courts of our God.
I come back to the heart of worship
It’s all about you, All about you Jesus
I am sorry about the thing that I have made it.
(Matt Redman)
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