The Fixed Word and the Fitting House Text: Psalm 93:5
Introduction: The Unbudging Foundation
We live in an age that is pathologically unstable. Our culture is built on the shifting sands of sentiment, personal preference, and the latest moral fads cooked up in the diseased imaginations of tenured radicals. Everything must be questioned, everything must be deconstructed, and nothing is allowed to stand firm. The modern man prides himself on his open-mindedness, which is really just a euphemism for having a head full of holes. He believes in nothing, which means he will fall for anything.
Into this swirling chaos of relativism and rebellion, Psalm 93 speaks a word of absolute, bedrock stability. The first four verses of this psalm establish the uncontested reign of Jehovah. He is clothed with majesty and strength. His throne is ancient, from everlasting. The world He made is established, and it cannot be moved. The floods of chaos, the roaring seas of human rebellion, may lift up their voice, but the Lord on high is mightier. He is not nervous. He is not wringing His hands. He is enthroned above the tumult.
Our text today is the conclusion of this majestic psalm. It is the logical and necessary result of the first four verses. Because God is the unshakeable King, two things follow as surely as day follows night: His Word is unshakeable, and His house must be unshakeable in its character. This final verse gives us the ground of our certainty and the goal of our worship. It tells us what God has said and what God's people must be. It is a declaration about divine revelation and divine requirement. If God's throne is fixed, then His truth is fixed. And if His truth is fixed, then the kind of people who worship Him must be fixed in their identity. You cannot worship an unchangeable God with a changeable morality.
The Text
Your testimonies are very faithful;
Holiness befits Your house,
O Yahweh, forevermore.
(Psalm 93:5 LSB)
The Sure Word of the King
The first clause establishes the absolute reliability of everything God has to say.
"Your testimonies are very faithful..." (Psalm 93:5a)
The psalmist, having just contemplated the eternal throne of God and His power over the raging nations, now turns to God's speech. Because God is who He is, His Word is what it is. His testimonies are His declarations, His statutes, His commandments, His promises. It is the sum total of His revealed will. And what is their chief characteristic? They are "very faithful." The Hebrew word here means sure, trustworthy, reliable, and established. It is the word from which we get our "Amen." When God speaks, it is done. His Word does not wobble.
This is a direct assault on the central lie of the Garden, "Has God indeed said?" The serpent's strategy from the beginning has been to cast doubt on the reliability of God's Word. And modern man, in his sophistication, has swallowed this lie hook, line, and sinker. We are told that the Bible is a collection of ancient myths, that it is culturally conditioned, that it contains errors, or that its moral commands are outdated and barbaric. But the psalmist declares that God's testimonies are not just faithful, but "very faithful." They are not mostly true. They are not true for their time. They are the fixed standard of reality for all time because they are spoken by the eternal King.
We must understand the ground of this faithfulness. God's Word is faithful because He is faithful. He cannot lie. It is against His nature. As He says in another place, "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" (Numbers 23:19). Our faith does not make God's promises true. Our faith is the response to the objective, pre-existing truth of His faithfulness. We do not live "on faith," as though our subjective feeling were the foundation. We live on God's faithfulness. Faith is simply seeing that the foundation is there and building upon it.
This means that when God testifies about creation, it is true. When He testifies about the nature of man as sinful, it is true. When He testifies about the coming judgment, it is true. And when He testifies that salvation is found through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, alone, it is absolutely and eternally true. You can build your life on this. You can build your family on this. You can build a civilization on this. In fact, you cannot build anything lasting on anything else.
The Fitting Worship of the King
Because God's Word is sure, it creates a certain kind of people. The second clause describes the necessary character of God's dwelling place.
"Holiness befits Your house, O Yahweh, forevermore." (Psalm 93:5b)
The word "befits" means it is fitting, it is appropriate, it is suitable. Given who God is, and given the nature of His Word, there is only one possible characteristic for His house: holiness. Anything else would be a grotesque contradiction. You cannot have a holy God and an unholy house, any more than you can have a square circle. It is a category error. It is an aesthetic and moral monstrosity.
Now, what is this "house"? In the Old Covenant, this pointed most directly to the Tabernacle and later the Temple in Jerusalem. This was the place where God's presence dwelt in a special way. And so, the entire Levitical code was established to teach Israel this one lesson: God is holy, and you must be holy to approach Him. There were laws about clean and unclean, sacrifices for sin, and careful rituals for the priests. The lesson was one of separation. Holiness was set apart. To touch the unclean was to be defiled.
But we live in the New Covenant. Where is God's house now? The apostle Paul tells us in no uncertain terms. "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple" (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). The house of God is the Church of Jesus Christ. It is not a building made of brick and mortar; it is a people made of living stones (1 Peter 2:5). We, collectively as the church and individually as believers, are the house of God.
Therefore, this declaration applies directly to us. Holiness befits the church. It is our proper adornment. It is the uniform of the kingdom. But we must be careful here. The holiness of the New Covenant is not just the separational holiness of the Old. It is a conquering holiness. When Jesus, the Holy One of God, touched a leper, He did not become unclean; the leper became clean. When He touched a dead body, He did not become defiled; the dead body came to life. The holiness of Christ, which is now our holiness by the indwelling Spirit, is an invasive, triumphant, cleansing holiness.
This means the church is not to be a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners who are being made saints. We are to be a holy people, which means we are set apart from the world in our fundamental identity and purpose. We do not take our ethical cues from the world. We do not bend our knees to the idols of the age. We are distinct. But we are not to be a people in a holy huddle, afraid of contamination. We are to be a holy army, moving out into the world with the good news of the gospel, bringing the cleansing power of Christ to bear on every area of life. Our holiness is not fragile. It is formidable.
Forevermore
The final phrase of the psalm anchors these two realities in eternity.
"...forevermore." (Psalm 93:5c)
This is not a temporary arrangement. God's testimonies are not just faithful for a little while. Holiness is not fitting for His house for just a season. This is the permanent state of affairs. The Word of the Lord endures forever, and the holiness of His people will endure forever. The modern church is tempted to think that we can negotiate with God on these points. We think we can "update" His testimonies to make them more palatable to the spirit of the age. We think we can redefine holiness to make it more comfortable for our sinful habits. We want to put an expiration date on God's commands.
But God says "forevermore." His truth does not change with the times. His moral law is not subject to revision by committee. The sexual ethics of the Bible are not going to be renegotiated. The exclusivity of Christ is not going to be softened. His Word is fixed. And therefore, the call to holiness is fixed. The church must look like her Lord. She must be adorned with the beauty of holiness.
This is not a burden; it is our glory. In a world of lies, we have the sure word of truth. In a world of filth and degradation, we are called to a beautiful holiness. And this is not something we achieve in our own strength. It is a gift of grace, purchased by the blood of Christ and applied by the Holy Spirit. He who is faithful in His testimonies is the same one who makes us holy for His house.
Conclusion: A Sure Foundation for a Holy People
So what does this mean for us? It means everything. Our entire Christian life is built upon this foundation. Because God's testimonies are very sure, we can trust them with our lives, with our families, with our future, with our eternity. We do not need to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine that blows through our culture. We have an anchor. We have a plumb line. We have the infallible Word of God.
And because holiness befits His house, we have our marching orders. We are to pursue peace with all men, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). This means we are to be a people of confession and repentance. It means we are to be a people who take sin seriously, both in our own lives and in the life of the church. It means we are to be a people who are joyfully and radically different from the world around us, not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of being like our Father.
The King is on His throne. The floods of rebellion are nothing to Him. His Word is sure, and His purpose is to have a holy house where He can dwell with His people forever. Let us therefore believe His Word, and let us therefore be His people. Let us be the house that befits such a glorious King.