Mightier Than the Noise: God Over All Text: Psalm 93:3-4
Introduction: A World of Noise
We live in an age of perpetual noise. The television is always on, the internet is always buzzing, and the talking heads are always shouting. Our political discourse is a raging sea, our cultural debates are a pounding surf, and the anxieties of men are a constant, chaotic roar. Everyone with a smartphone and an opinion can lift up his voice, and the collective sound is one of fury, confusion, and rebellion. The nations rage, the peoples plot in vain, and the floods of human opinion and political turmoil lift up their voice against the Lord and against His Anointed.
This is not a new phenomenon. The psalmist lived in a world that was just as loud, just as chaotic, and just as rebellious as ours. The pagan nations surrounding Israel were not quiet neighbors. They were roaring seas, their kings were proud waves, and their idolatries were the pounding surf that threatened to erode the covenant faithfulness of God's people. The ancient world, much like our modern one, was filled with the sound of men trying to shout down the heavens, trying to make their own noise louder than the voice of God.
Psalm 93 is a throne psalm. It begins with the unshakable declaration, "Yahweh reigns" (v. 1). This is the foundational truth of the universe. Before we get to the noise of the opposition, we must be grounded in the reality of the King. His throne is established from of old; He is from everlasting (v. 2). This is the quiet, eternal, bedrock reality upon which all the sound and fury of human history breaks and dissipates. Our text today describes the nature of that fury, and then puts it in its proper, subordinate place.
The Text
The rivers have lifted up, O Yahweh,
The rivers have lifted up their voice,
The rivers lift up their pounding waves.
More than the voices of many waters,
Than the mighty breakers of the sea,
Yahweh on high is mighty.
(Psalm 93:3-4)
The Rebellion's Roar (v. 3)
The psalmist now turns his attention to the opposition. He describes it with a powerful, three-fold poetic repetition.
"The rivers have lifted up, O Yahweh, The rivers have lifted up their voice, The rivers lift up their pounding waves." (Psalm 93:3)
In Scripture, the sea and the floods are often used as a potent symbol for the raging of the godless nations, for the chaos of political upheaval, and for the arrogant rebellion of men. Think of the flood in Noah’s day, a judgment on a world that had lifted up its voice against God. Think of the Red Sea, the might of Egypt, which God crushed. Think of the sea monster Leviathan, a symbol of the proud and beastly empires like Egypt, which God cuts to pieces (Is. 51:9-10). The sea is the untamed, chaotic element that only God can master.
So when the psalmist says the rivers, or floods, have lifted up their voice, he is describing a rebellion. This is not a nature documentary. This is a description of cosmic treason. The "rivers" here are the forces of historical chaos. They are the Assyrian armies, the Babylonian hordes, the Roman legions, and in our day, the secularist mobs, the godless ideologies, and the proud pronouncements of autonomous man. They are loud. Notice the emphasis on sound: they have lifted up their "voice," their "pounding waves" make a deafening roar.
The rebellion of man is never quiet. It is boastful, arrogant, and loud. It writes manifestos, it screams slogans, it fills the airwaves with its propaganda. It wants to dominate the acoustic environment, to create so much noise that the quiet voice of God's truth cannot be heard. This is the strategy of the enemy: to intimidate and overwhelm the saints with the sheer volume of the opposition. The rivers lift up their voice, and they want you to think that their voice is the only one that matters.
And the psalmist addresses this reality directly to God: "O Yahweh." He is not hiding from the noise. He is not pretending the threat is not real. He is taking the sound of the rebellion and reporting it to headquarters. He is acknowledging the fury of the enemy while standing firmly in the presence of his King. This is what faith does. It looks the raging sea in the face and says, "My King can handle you."
The Sovereign's Supremacy (v. 4)
After describing the loud rebellion, the psalmist immediately pivots to the ultimate reality. The comparison is stark and absolute.
"More than the voices of many waters, Than the mighty breakers of the sea, Yahweh on high is mighty." (Psalm 93:4)
This is the central point of the psalm. The noise of the rebellion is real, but it is not ultimate. The power of the enemy is formidable, but it is not supreme. The psalmist takes the loudest, most powerful thing he can imagine in the natural world, the combined roar of "many waters" and the "mighty breakers of the sea," and he says that the Lord is mightier. The Hebrew is emphatic. It is a declaration of incomparable power.
Yahweh is "on high." He is not down in the flood, struggling to keep His head above water. He is enthroned far above it. The chaos that seems so overwhelming to us is, from His perspective, a puddle. The mighty waves that threaten to swamp our little boat are, to Him, nothing more than ocean spray. He is not troubled by the waves; He walks on them. When Jesus slept in the boat during the storm, and when He later walked on the water, He was demonstrating that He is Yahweh on high, the one to whom this psalm ultimately points. He is the Lord of the storm, not its victim.
The might of the Lord is not just a little bit greater than the might of the sea. There is a category difference. The power of the sea is a created power. The power of the nations is a delegated and permitted power. The power of God is original, inherent, and absolute. All the fury of men and devils is just so much foam and fury, signifying nothing in the end. It is a loud boast that will be silenced. God's power is the ultimate reality that will have the last word. The world, which seems so unstable, is "stablished, that it cannot be moved" (v. 1), precisely because the One who is mightier than the waves is holding it all together.
Living Above the Noise
So what is the application for us, who live in our own age of roaring rivers? It is twofold: do not be intimidated, and do not be silent.
First, do not be intimidated. The modern world is very good at making noise. It wants you to believe that its rebellion is winning, that its voice is the voice of history, that its waves are washing away the foundations of the faith. It wants you to cower, to compromise, to trim your convictions to fit the spirit of the age. But this psalm tells us that all that noise is temporary and finite. Yahweh on high is mighty. His throne is not in jeopardy. His purposes are not being thwarted. The sound you hear is the death rattle of a rebellious world order, not the birth pangs of a new one that can successfully challenge God. Therefore, we can have a quiet confidence in the midst of the storm. Our King is on the throne.
Second, do not be silent. The rivers lift up their voice, and so must we. But our voice is different. Theirs is the voice of chaos; ours is the voice of praise. Theirs is the sound of pounding waves; ours is the sound of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We do not fight their noise with more noise of the same kind. We overcome their chaotic roar with the ordered beauty of worship. We answer the rage of the nations by singing, "Yahweh reigns."
When the world is at its loudest, the church must be at its most lyrical. When the waves of godless culture are at their highest, our worship must be at its most robust. We must joyfully declare that our God is "mightier than the noise of many waters." And we know the end of the story. The day is coming when every rebellious voice will be silenced, and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). That is a flood of a different kind, a flood of glory, and it is the only one that will last forever. Until that day, let us stand on the rock of our salvation and sing confidently into the storm, knowing that the One who is on high is mighty indeed.