Fire On Your Head

“The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble;
He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake!
The LORD is great in Zion,
And He is exalted above all the peoples.
Let them praise Your great and awesome name;
Holy is He.” -Ps. 99.1-3

How delightful and awe-striking that we should be invited to commune with the God who shook Sinai, and whose presence causes the heavens and the earth to tremble!

Psalm 99 sounds the note of a most happy contradiction, that God is utterly holy, that creation itself cannot bear His presence, but that He calls us to press in, not only to a slight experience of His presence, but into a living communion with Him. He wants us to be “among His priests,” and to “call on His name.” He will purge and purify the sin from our lives, and enable us to walk on the heights of worship and true praise. All of this catapults the Psalmist (and those who hear him rightly) into an outburst of joyous declaration, “The LORD reigns!” Are we being gripped and thrilled along with the Psalmist?

Hear Spurgeon:

Let the chosen people feel a solemn yet joyful awe, which shall thrill their whole manhood. Saints quiver with devout emotion, and sinners quiver with terror when the rule of Jehovah is fully perceived and felt. It is not a light or trifling matter, it is a truth which, above all others, should stir the depths of our nature.

(The Treasury of David: Vol. 4, Charles Spurgeon: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1881, p. 385)

The Psalmist uses language that resurrects thoughts of the Sinai theophany (when the Lord actually appeared on the mount), but gloriously engages all the saints with a call to the same kind of worship that Moses himself experienced.

The portrayal of the divine epiphany exhibits the features of the Sinai theophany. When God appears in his majestic power a tremor runs through the whole world; the nations tremble and the earth quakes- an involuntary indication of the terrible and sublime power of the God of Mount Zion over the whole world. The poet discerns the holiness of his God in this pre-eminent and comprehensive power which causes everything that is created to tremble. And the involuntary witness which the trembling nations and the quaking earth bear in the presence of the holy God constrains the poet, too, to call upon all men to praise the holy name of God, the revelation of which had taken place in the course of the theophany and which is therefore present in the poet’s mind in all its greatness and terrifying power. Fear and trembling and respectful joy here jointly represent the spiritual atmostphere which is created in the congregation by the advent of God.

(The Psalms: The OT Library, by Artur Weiser; Westminster Press, 1962; pp. 641-642)

Whatever induced this burst of joyous praise and reverent worship in the psalmist, it brought to him the same sense of awe that he imagined to have been the experience of Moses and the ancient Israelites at Sinai. He was gripped with the fear of the Lord, gasping over the glory of God’s goodness, and he called out for the saints to tremble, praise, and worship. He was seized by a “fear and trembling and respectful joy” as his heart was jolted by the holiness and mercy of the Lord.

I think it’s fair to say that the common boredom, dullness of heart, moral compromises, addictions to entertainment, paralyzing depressions, and other ailments in the Body of Christ can all be attributed to the fact that we are not setting aside ample time to behold the God of Sinai, the God of the Psalmists, the God of the prophets and the apostles, the God of creation.

Oh, friends! He reigns! Clear the debris and clutter from your schedules. Plow through the blockades that keep you from the secret place. Shut off the computer if need be. Unplug the T.V. Take the phone off of the hook. Nothing else is more crucial than this: That we, as the people of God, would come into the vital revelation of the greatness of God in His holiness and love. Broken cisterns are easy to come by, but the fountain of Life can only be experienced when we forsake all the other diluted waters. God will meet you in the secret place, the reward will be beyond description, and your joy will be full. He waits for you, even now.

“Exalt the LORD our God
And worship at His holy hill,
For holy is the LORD our God.” (v. 9)