Sermons on Psalm 147:10-11
The various sermons below converge on a tight reading of Psalm 147:10–11: God delights in those whose fearing and hoping are not opposed but mutually forming, human strength and military security are exposed as misplaced reliance, and true hope is a grace‑given, active posture that exalts God rather than human performance. Each preacher locates the passage at the hinge of both doctrine and pastoral life—treating fear as reverent awe that preserves humility, hope as present and energizing (and sometimes as an ontological status grounded in resurrection), and grace as the means by which sinners come to delight in God. Nuances show themselves in metaphor and emphasis: one sermon uses an extended storm/expedition image to show hope penetrating paralyzing fear; another reads the verse as the grammar and pastoral key for Peter’s command to “fix your hope”; a third recasts fear as a sheltering, corrective mechanism that drives repentance and dependence; and a pastoral treatment reframes the text as liberating for those without visible vigor, affirming inward trust over external productivity.
Yet the sermons diverge sharply in what they make the passage primarily about. Some insist the chief point is God‑centered magnification—grace exists to display God’s riches through our hope—while others press a Christ‑centered ontology that ties psalmic hope directly to being “born to” living hope by the resurrection. Some lean exegetically into pastoral formation and disciplined cognition (girding the mind, sobriety) as the means of cultivating hope; others emphasize fear’s protective, covenantal function against misplaced securities. A sermon from Menlo Church approached the passage as a pastoral corrective for those lacking outward strength, privileging inward disposition over productivity; another treats it as a grammatical key to New Testament exhortation; another as a doctrine‑heavy vindication of God’s delight in creatures who magnify his glory—leaving the preacher to choose whether to emphasize God’s vindicated worth, ontological union with Christ, disciplined spiritual formation, fear as a safeguard, or the pastoral affirmation of the weak—
Psalm 147:10-11 Interpretation:
Hope and Fear: Embracing God's Love and Majesty(Desiring God) reads Psalm 147:10–11 as a tightly paired command and description in which fear and hope are not opposites but mutually penetrating experiences — Piper uses a sustained Arctic-storm analogy (expedition, cliff, finding a covert in an ice wall) to argue that hope "penetrates and transforms" life?threatening fear (removing the paralyzing element) while fear (awe of God's terrible power) preserves trembling reverence that strips triviality from hope; he further contrasts human reliance on “horses and legs” with the proper human response of hope in God because such hope magnifies God’s riches and glory, and he frames the passage within a God?centered doctrine of grace (grace defined as God enabling sinners to delight in God without compromising his glory).
Anchored in Living Hope: Embracing Eternal Assurance(Desiring God) treats Psalm 147:11’s affirmation that “the Lord takes pleasure … in those who hope in his steadfast love” as directly consonant with the New?Testament doctrine of living hope: being “born again to a living hope through the resurrection,” so that hope is both present (new birth gives current, energized life) and future (grounded in Christ’s resurrection and the promised imperishable inheritance); the sermon uniquely reads the psalmic commendation of hope as a descriptor of the converted person’s ontological status — you are “born to hope” because union with the risen Christ secures an unending, living hope.
Active Hope: Engaging Grace in Our Lives(Desiring God) treats Psalm 147:10–11 as the experiential hinge for Peter’s pastoral command to “hope” in 1 Peter: the key interpretive move is grammatical and pastoral — Peter’s main command is to “fix your hope completely” and the prior participial images (“gird up the loins… be sober”) are means to that command — and the psalm explains what pleases God (not human strength but hope in God’s grace), thus the sermon reads the psalm as normative: Christianity’s essential human response is not performance but wholehearted hope in God’s action, and that hope must be cultivated actively by engaging the mind with truth and guarding it from intoxicants.
Finding Delight in God's Fear and Hope(Desiring God) approaches the verse by excavating the apparent tension between fearing God and hoping in him: the sermon treats “fear” not as mere terror but as a biblically textured dread that, when properly rooted, makes God a sanctuary rather than an enemy — using concordance cross?checks, the preacher argues that biblical “fear” here means fearing the consequences of turning from God so that fear drives you back into hopeful dependence on God’s steadfast love; the negative clause about horses is read as a diagnosis of misplaced hope (trusting military power or human means) rather than divine antipathy to creatures.
Faithfulness Beyond Comparison: Embracing Our Unique Journey(Desiring God) applies Psalm 147:10–11 pastorally to people whose lives lack the culturally celebrated marks of strength or productivity (e.g., disabled mothers), arguing that God’s delight is not in visible vigor (the “strength of the horse” or “legs of a man”) but in the inward dispositions of fearing God and hoping in his steadfast love; the sermon reframes the psalm as liberating: a measure of faithfulness that honors God is inward trust and hope, not outward athletic productivity, so those limited in capacity are affirmed as pleasing to God when their hearts fear and hope in him.
Psalm 147:10-11 Theological Themes:
Hope and Fear: Embracing God's Love and Majesty(Desiring God) develops the distinct theme that divine delight tracks the revelation and magnification of God’s own worth — God delights in creatures who, by hoping in his love, function as demonstrators of his resources and glory; Piper’s theological emphasis is that grace exists precisely to magnify God by enabling sinners to delight in God, so human hope is valuable because it exalts God’s riches and vindicates his sovereign grace.
Anchored in Living Hope: Embracing Eternal Assurance(Desiring God) presents a theologically distinct tension?resolving theme: “living hope” is simultaneously an effect of new birth and an anticipation grounded in Christ’s resurrection, so the psalmic commendation of those who “hope in his steadfast love” is to be read as describing a union?with?Christ reality that secures present spiritual life and future imperishable inheritance — hope is ontological (you are born to it) and eschatological (it reaches to resurrection and inheritance).
Active Hope: Engaging Grace in Our Lives(Desiring God) advances the distinctive pastoral?theological theme that hope is the central commanded response of the Christian life (the “first command” in Peter’s sequence) and that cultivating that hope requires intentional mental discipline: girding the mind with truth and sobriety so that hope is not passive sentiment but a disciplined trust in God’s promised grace; thus theology and spiritual formation meet in a concrete program for cultivating the hope God delights in.
Finding Delight in God's Fear and Hope(Desiring God) introduces the important theological nuance that “fear of the Lord” functions as an instrument to safeguard hope — fear properly understood is not mere dread but a formative reverence that protects covenantal dependence, so the psalm locates God’s pleasure in those whose fear keeps them from misplaced securities and whose hope is focused on God’s steadfast love.
Faithfulness Beyond Comparison: Embracing Our Unique Journey(Desiring God) offers a pastoral theological correction: God evaluates faithfulness according to heart posture (fear and hopeful trust) rather than external accomplishments, so Psalm 147 becomes a theological warrant for varied forms of sanctified life — sanctification and faithfulness must be assessed relative to gifts, circumstances, and God’s purposes, not by standardized productivity metrics.
Psalm 147:10-11 Historical and Contextual Insights:
Hope and Fear: Embracing God's Love and Majesty(Desiring God) supplies cultural context about horses and warfare in the ancient Near East, citing Job and Proverbs to show that horses were the archetypal instrument of victory (Proverbs 21:31, Job 39 description of the horse’s battle?readiness), and thus the psalm’s “not in the strength of the horse” must be heard against a background where horses were a natural human confidence for victory — the verse therefore critiques cultural reliance on military or human means rather than denying created goodness.
Finding Delight in God's Fear and Hope(Desiring God) gives contextual explanation that the psalm’s negative clause should be read against common ancient expectations: trusting horses and strong men was the normal hope for victory, so the psalmist’s refusal to take pleasure in “horse strength” is culturally targeted at the common security practices of that era and thus underscores the distinctively covenantal trust God seeks.
Faithfulness Beyond Comparison: Embracing Our Unique Journey(Desiring God) uses the historical context of Proverbs 31 to show that the “virtuous woman” portrait represents the idealized, healthy, productive woman of the ancient world (able to rise early, work in the vineyard, etc.), and so Psalm 147’s valuation of inward fear and hope provides corrective context for those—such as disabled mothers—who cannot meet ancient (or modern) productivity norms; the sermon emphasizes that biblical virtue admits different forms across historical life?situations.
Psalm 147:10-11 Cross-References in the Bible:
Hope and Fear: Embracing God's Love and Majesty(Desiring God) weaves Psalm 147:10–11 with multiple biblical texts — he cites 2 Corinthians 3:18 to argue that beholding God’s excellency transforms us into his likeness (thus hope in God produces Godlike passion), points to Proverbs 21:31 (“the horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord”) and Job 39’s poetic catalog of the horse to show cultural assumptions about equine power, and reads verses 2–5 and 16–17 of Psalm 147 (God caring for the brokenhearted, scattering frost, naming the stars) to set up the paradox of God’s terrifying power alongside his tender care, using those references to show why fear and hope appropriately cohabit in the soul.
Anchored in Living Hope: Embracing Eternal Assurance(Desiring God) situates Psalm 147’s commendation of hope within the New Testament’s broader salvo on resurrection and union with Christ, explicitly linking the psalm to 1 Peter’s language (“born again to a living hope through the resurrection”), and then moving to Pauline texts (Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 15, Romans 11, and 1 Corinthians 3:21) to explain how Christ’s resurrection is “first fruits” guaranteeing believers’ future resurrection and inheritance; John 14’s promise about Jesus preparing a place is also invoked to reinforce the kept inheritance imagery.
Active Hope: Engaging Grace in Our Lives(Desiring God) reads Psalm 147 against 1 Peter 1:13 (the immediate context he is preaching on) and uses Ephesians 6:14 (Paul’s “gird up the loins with truth”) to show how Peter’s “gird up the loins of your mind” should be understood — the participial means precede the imperative to hope — so the psalm’s praise of hope is the theological content while Paul’s and Peter’s parallel language give pastoral method (engage the mind with truth and remain sober) for cultivating the hope the psalm commends.
Finding Delight in God's Fear and Hope(Desiring God) marshals a cluster of Old Testament cross?references to define “fear” and “hope”: Psalm 25:14 (friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him; he makes covenant known), Psalm 34:7 (the angel encamps around those who fear him), Psalm 103:11 (steadfast love as high as the heavens for those who fear him), and Isaiah 8:12 (do not fear what others fear but let the Lord be your dread), using each passage to argue that biblical fear produces covenantal intimacy, deliverance, and loving protection and thus coheres with hoping in God’s steadfast love.
Faithfulness Beyond Comparison: Embracing Our Unique Journey(Desiring God) applies the psalm alongside Proverbs 31 (the ancient model of industrious womanhood) and 1 Samuel 16:7 (the Lord looks at the heart, not outward appearance) and Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” language in 2 Corinthians 12 to argue that while cultural standards exalt physical vigor, Scripture values inward fear of the Lord and trust in his love and recognizes differing forms of faithful response shaped by circumstances.
Psalm 147:10-11 Christian References outside the Bible:
Faithfulness Beyond Comparison: Embracing Our Unique Journey(Desiring God) explicitly invokes C.S. Lewis’s caution about comparing believers to unbelievers when judging spiritual fruit — Lewis’s point (that outwardly better behavior in an unbeliever can reflect a more favorable temperament rather than greater sanctifying grace) is used to frame Psalm 147:10–11 pastorally: the sermon draws on Lewis to insist we must assess faithfulness relative to God’s gifting and starting point, so the psalm’s valuation of fearing God and hoping in his steadfast love vindicates varied, less?visible forms of sanctity rather than equating virtue with outward strength or productivity.
Psalm 147:10-11 Illustrations from Secular Sources:
Hope and Fear: Embracing God's Love and Majesty(Desiring God) employs a vivid secular expedition story — a Northern Greenland glacier storm, an exposed cliff, the terror of being buffeted and then finding refuge in a small covert in an ice wall — to make the psychological point that fear and hope intermingle (fear’s awe remains while hope removes death?threat), and he also uses modern secular analogies (tanks, bombs, corporate efficiency, balanced budgets, vaccines, education, eloquence) as contemporary equivalents of the “horse” that people might trust instead of God, illustrating the psalm’s timeless critique of misplaced human reliance.
Anchored in Living Hope: Embracing Eternal Assurance(Desiring God) uses everyday secular scenes to make the psalm concrete: a locker?room / gym image (bulking up and physical strength) to show that God is not impressed by bodily strength, and a market?and?finance image (stock market crashes, transient investments like Apple stock) to underline the sermon’s point that worldly investments cannot secure the imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance the psalm commends those who hope in God to possess.
Active Hope: Engaging Grace in Our Lives(Desiring God) offers cultural and personal secular illustrations to explain sobriety as a spiritual discipline: a choice between mountains and the ocean on vacation is used to show two different ways the world can intoxicate the heart — the preacher’s comic concern about provocative swimwear on beaches underscores the practical counsel to “be sober” (avoid anything that numbs the mind to the glory of God), and he lists a range of secular “intoxicants” (money, career, TV, hobbies) that can erode hopeful devotion.
Finding Delight in God's Fear and Hope(Desiring God) uses a down?to?earth childhood anecdote (a six?year?old boy running past a big dog, being told by a friend that staying put makes the dog comfortable) to model how “fear” of consequences can mean not fleeing but standing in a way that makes God (or the dog analogy’s friendly protector) into a sanctuary — the tale concretely illustrates the sermon's thesis that fear, rightly ordered, drives one back to hope.
Faithfulness Beyond Comparison: Embracing Our Unique Journey(Desiring God) uses the secularly familiar mental “scale” analogy (1–10 scale of patience/gentleness drawn from a C.S. Lewis caution earlier in the episode) to illustrate how outward comparisons mislead, and the sermon paints secular examples of normative productivity (homeschooling, vineyard work, vigorous mothering) to contrast with the quieter, inward fruits (trustworthiness, generosity, contentment) that Psalm 147 values; these everyday comparators make the biblical claim practically accessible to listeners.