“The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.”
-Psalm 29:4
Oh, I love this picture of God’s voice in Psalm 29:4. The potency of God’s voice just immediately takes my mind back to the very beginning of the Bible. You remember the phrase that’s repeated over and over and over again? Well, there’s a couple of them. But there in Genesis chapter one. “And God said” And God said. And God said. All of creation begins with the word of God, the voice of God. He speaks and light appears. God speaks and a world and planets and stars are formed. And, God speaks and oceans appear and mountains appear and valleys. God speaks and animals exist just because He spoke. He just said it.
The same voice that spoke the world into existence speaks to us through the pages of the Bible.
This Verse Shows the Power of God’s Voice
The other day my seven year old daughter, she asked me, “How did God create the world?” And I sat there for a second, and I said, “He spoke.” She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “He just said let there be, and fill in the blank, and it was.” I said, “That’s pretty wild, isn’t it?” She said, “Yeah.” I said, “This is the power of God’s voice. He speaks, and creation comes in to being.” Now let that change the way you view the Bible.
When you open up your Bible, this is the voice of the Lord speaking. The same voice that caused the Heavens and the earth to come into existence is the same voice that is speaking to your hearts. The pages of that book. Oh, be in awe of the Bible. Be in awe of the voice, the word of God. And read it, and meditate it. Just like we’ve seen in Psalm chapter one. Meditate on it day and night. Let it soak in to your life, change your heart and mind and life.
Psalm 29:4 Praises God’s Word
Oh God, we praise You for Your voice. We praise You for Your word. It is powerful. It is full of majesty. Your Word is glorious. Your voice has power to do far beyond what anyone could even imagine. Oh God, we praise You then for putting Your voice to paper, for giving us Your word, for revealing who You are, and how You have worked in the world, through these words that we now pray according to. So God, we pray that You would help us to listen to Your word. Help us to memorize Your word. It’s powerful. It’s full of majesty. Help us to hide it in our hearts. Help us to obey Your word. God, help us to walk in step with Your word. Help preachers to preach Your word, to not preach their thoughts, their ideas, their opinions. God, help preachers to preach Your word.
Lead Your church by Your word. Cause Your word to be made known in the world. Oh God, I pray for the Lampung Abung people in the remote mountains of Sumatra, Indonesia, where Your word is not yet gone. They’ve not heard the good news of Your grace, the powerful, majestic Gospel. God, we pray for the spread of Your word among the Lampung Abung in those mountains in Indonesia. God, for the spread of Your word all around the world, we pray. In the mouths of servants and missionaries who are taking it, churches who are sending them for the spread of Your word, to the ends of the earth. God, we praise You for Your word. We pray that You would help us to hear it, obey it, and proclaim it with power and the majesty that it warrants. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
