Praise the Lord
Dr. Alan Strange
This sermon on Psalm 117 emphasizes the universal call to praise God for His steadfast love and enduring truth, highlighting that all nations and peoples are invited to worship Him. Listeners are encouraged to understand their role in spreading this message of praise and to reflect on the nature of God’s love, which transcends their struggles and shortcomings.
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Psalm one seventeen, that’s our text. Short but sweet. Variations on this sentiment have been expressed time and again with reference to Psalm one seventeen. The shortest psalm in the Psalter, or chapter in the Bible, if you will, only a psalm away from the longest, Psalm one nineteen, which has a hundred and seventy-six verses. So short that some have sought to attach it to what precedes or follows, some have sought to attach it to one sixteen or one eighteen as if it could not properly stand alone, though it begins and ends with a call to praise. While perhaps used as we do the doxology, many Hebrew scholars have speculated, and there is some evidence that this was used in temple worship as a kind of doxology. I mean, we say “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him.” They would probably say this is short. It’s something that could be sung in that fashion. But it’s complete unto itself, I would argue, and contains a world in its brief scope. Expansiveness is often necessary and helpful in many respects, so is brevity. Short in expression, yet with a theme and application as wide as all of creation. This is Psalm one seventeen, near the center of all the word, calling on the whole world to engage in the central occupation of eternity – Praise the Lord. That’s the central occupation of eternity, and here we’re called to praise the Lord.
So the theme of the Psalm is evident. God, like the Psalmist, commands universal praise. He is both the reason for and the cause of praise. The call to praise, that’s our first point. And the second is the cause for praise. Well, the call to praise sounds in verse one. “Praise the Lord, all you nations, all you Gentiles.” The word there in the Hebrew is “goyim.” That’s probably a Hebrew word you know – “goy.” You’ve heard that word. And that means nations. “Extol him.” That’s a parallel word to praise or laud him, in various translations. “Extol him, all you people groups, all of you ethnicities.” This is a call to praise that we’ve already said is universal. Let’s note two things particularly about the scope and the purpose of this divine call – this divine, universal call to praise. Let’s think about its scope and its purpose.
First, the scope of the call to praise. It’s to all Gentiles. It’s to the nations, the Goyim. It’s to the whole world, in other words, not just to the Jews. And you might say, “Well, we know that. Everybody knows that,” but this is what we call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. So this is something quite remarkable when it was said. We get so jaded. You know, as you’re reading the Bible, I’m so happy you’re reading the Bible. You’ve read the New Testament. You’re going to meet together as a congregation reading the Old Testament. And let me encourage you all – let me encourage you. And I’m sure your pastor Israel would agree. Let me encourage you to try to read it with fresh eyes. And what do I mean by that? Stop reading it like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” That’s not the way to read the Bible. Yes, I mean it. “I know all this.” Well, if you’re going to pick it up and say, “I know all this,” don’t bother. Seriously, don’t bother. Read it as it would be freshly received by its recipients. So when you read in Psalm one hundred and seventeen, think, “Wow. This is to the Jews who have a lot of problems with all the nations around them, and who are happy that God should bless them, but they don’t want God to bless the nations.” Really, generally, they were enemies. So this is remarkable. And that’s the way you need to read the Bible. When it says “Praise the Lord, all nations,” you’re like, “Thanks be to God. He’s going to send the gospel global. He’s going to send it everywhere.” But boy, the first people that heard it, that wasn’t what they had in mind. We often rightly recognize that in the Old Testament before Pentecost, God’s gracious salvation came largely to ethnic Israel, though there were previews of coming attractions, right? You can think of the faith of Rahab. She wasn’t a Jew. You can think of the call of Ruth. She wasn’t a Jew. You can think of the repentance of Nineveh under Jonah’s preaching. All these people are not Jews, and so I call that a preview of coming attractions to borrow a word from film trailers, you know, “preview of coming attractions.” It’s rated G. Don’t worry. General audience. This verse highlights a very direct Old Testament reference to the glorious reality that God’s eternal purpose was not simply to bless the Jews. Listen to me. But through them and Messiah, the Christ of God, to bless the world. God’s eternal purpose was not simply to bless the Jews, but through them, through Messiah who would come from them, to bless the whole world.
Thus, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, picks this up in Romans fifteen. We just read it. I just read to you Romans fifteen, and verse eleven. It wasn’t versified. I mean, you didn’t see the verse markings. But I was doing this, if you happen to look at me, verse eleven is the verse that picks up Psalm one seventeen. Verse eleven of Romans fifteen, Paul quotes our text: “Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol him, all peoples.” And Paul says, “That’s what I’m all about. That’s what’s happening now. That’s the good meaning of the church of what’s happening now.” Most of you have no idea what that’s about. That’s Flip Wilson. You don’t even know who Flip Wilson is. Some of you do. You’re laughing. You remember him. But the church of what’s happening now, this is the good meaning of that. This is the good meaning of that. That this was missed by the Jews of the Old Testament, though it’s right here. It’s right here. We’re not making something up. It’s right here in the text, but it was missed by the Jews of the Old Testament. But even of the New, do you remember Peter? He fell into a trance and saw a vision. And the Lord said, “Take and kill and eat.” And there was all sorts of unclean animals. And he says, “Lord, I’ve never done anything. I’ve never eaten anything that’s unclean. No way.” Now, you’re not really supposed to say that to God. You’re supposed to do what he tells you. And the Lord says, “Don’t call anything unclean that I call clean.” And it says very clearly that he did that to show him that the Gentiles, the nations that have been regarded as unclean, are not regarded thus any longer. That the gospel is for them, that the work of God is for them. And so he obeyed and he took the gospel to Cornelius. But it took him a while to learn the lesson, didn’t it? Because remember, Paul writes about this in his epistle to the Galatians. Paul is there in Galatians. Peter comes in and he’s having fellowship with Paul and hanging out with the Gentiles, and then certain Jews come in who think that you shouldn’t and you should maintain the food laws and all this separateness. And Peter’s like, “Oh, I’ll go over here and meet with my Jewish brethren. I wasn’t really hanging up with those guys, did you not? You’re confused.” He put on a bit of a show. Well, what did Paul do? Paul called him on it. Paul said, “Hey, Peter. Knock it off. Stop it. Stop it.” The middle wall of partition, Ephesians two, that separated Jew and Gentile has been brought down. Stop acting this way. The gospel is now for all peoples. You read that in your verse. It’s the Great Commission. And what does it say? “To all nations.” The gospel is going to the world. And Peter knew that. He was supposed to know that, but it took a while, didn’t it?
That highlights Peter’s acting like that highlights for us that our problem isn’t the truth or our proclamation of it. Peter had proclaimed it; rather, we fail to believe and live out the truth. This takes time. It takes time in our lives. In other words, all of us as Christians would say, “We should love the Lord our God with all our being and our neighbor as ourselves,” yet we fall short of that, don’t we? We know that’s what we should do. We know that’s the truth. But does anybody here do it perfectly? If you think so, you need to come talk to me. You’ve not understood anything that’s gone on in this service if that’s what you think. Only Jesus did. And it’s our trust in him that saves us. It takes time in our lives, in history, all outworked by the Holy Spirit. You see the scope; we’re talking about the scope of this, is all nations and all people groups.
Spurgeon says this about this verse: “We know and believe that no one tribe of men shall be unrepresented in the universal song which shall ascend to the word of all. Individuals have already been gathered, and this was spurted back in the nineteenth century, more so for us now. Individuals have already been gathered out of every kindred and people have been taught by the preaching of the gospel. And these have right heartily joined in magnifying the grace that sought them out and brought them another savior. These are but the advance guard of a number which no man can number, who will come ere long to worship the all-glorious one.” This is being fulfilled. This is being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit and the work of the church. Let us dedicate our time, treasure, and talents to this highest of tasks, crying to the Lord in wrath to remember mercy and to revive us until the completing of this sacred task. This is the labor. This is the work. This taking the gospel to the worlds. This verse that you’re memorizing, this is the work. Let us not be distracted from it by lesser things. Seek first his kingdom and its righteousness, and all else is consequential. I’ve been having to deal with a lot of folks. Lately, I’ve done some talks about Christian nationalism. There’s a lot of confusion out there, and there’s a lot of people who act like politics, Christians, is going to save us, and a certain kind of right politics is going to save us. Politics are consequential to the faith. That should not be your central focus. Your central focus should be God. And if your focus is on him, your politics will be righteous and for him. But that’s not the central focus. And a lot of people are very confused these days. You need to keep your focus on what your first is. If you’re saying, “What first?” it’s your memory first. It’s not mine, right? The Great Commission. You said it at the beginning. Great. So we say, the call to praise arises from a particular purpose. We’ve been thinking about the scope of that call, how universal it is, but it also arises from a particular purpose.
We should praise God first of all, listen to me, because it’s his due. As the psalmist declares, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” Even the inanimate creation is to give him praise. Psalm this seems to keep falling. Sorry about that. Psalm nineteen one says, “The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows his handiwork.” All is to give him praise. Why? Because he’s worthy. So we should in everything that we do, Paul says, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should seek to glorify the Lord. Thus, we praise him with our lips and our lives. This is a call to love him and a call to love one another. How do we praise him? With our lips and with our lives. We praise God. We praise the Lord. As I said earlier, by keeping his commands in the sense that we seek to love him and love our neighbor as ourselves. So we praise him firstly because it’s fitting. As Leslie Allen put it, “The primary rationale of the summons in verse one is not contemporary missionary intent nor eschatological hope of conversion, but the preliminary truth that Yahweh deserves the praises of the whole world no matter what.”
You said, “Yeah, yeah, no.” Well, okay. You said, “Praise the Lord,” but I’m really going through difficulty. Since I last saw you, my wife has died. She’s with Jesus. She’s at rest. I’m very grateful for that. Her life was a wonderful testament to him, but I miss her. It hurts. So I don’t have anything to praise the Lord for. I have more than ever to praise him for. Where are we going to learn this lesson? Things are going well, praise the Lord. Things aren’t going well, he said, “No, no.” And as she lay down, funeral services online, if you want to hear it. But as she lay down, at one point, I said, “What can we do?” And meaning, like, I’ve done all this stuff for her physically as I was caring for her. And I was like, “We’re in this situation. What can we do?” And she, in great weakness, this was just weeks before she died, maybe two or three weeks, she said, “Wait on the Lord.” I turned away from her to put down these things that I was wiping her mouth with, and I said, to heaven, “Do I have faith?” Wow. Here she is in great pain. She’s dying. And she doesn’t say, “Well, I’m not going to praise the Lord,” nor does she say, “Well, just take me, Lord, now.” We don’t dictate to the Lord. She said, “Wait on the Lord.” And if somebody dying can say, “Wait on the Lord,” you can wait on the Lord. You can wait on the Lord. We do it. We glorify him. We praise him because he deserves it. This should and does fuel our missionary efforts. Absolutely. This should fuel our missionary to enlist others to join us. Now, I mean, I have this in my notes. It’s a challenge for the new year. I say, “Tell twenty others my lips and lies, and this will spread it.” Look. There’s some of you who say, “You know, I’m going to tell more than that already.” I doubt that, that many of you are going to say that, but some may. And you may say, “That’s too many.” Start somewhere. If you’re not sharing the praise of the Lord with those around you, start it somewhere. Just start doing it. And say, “Well, how do you do it?” Well, it’s with your life. I mean, you can tell whether somebody’s praising the word or not. It doesn’t mean I’m calling you to have a different temperament or personality than you have, but I’m calling you just in terms of who you are. See, again, we use all kinds of excuses. “Well, I’m a Midwesterner. I’m Dutch. I mean, we don’t really do that.” Excuse me. You do what God says to do. I mean, anybody can say, “Well, we don’t do, you know, it’s like the Lord says, be generous with all.” And you’re like, “Well, I’m a stingy person, so that doesn’t apply to me.” Excuse me? This is a universal command. Nobody gets out of it. You have to think about how it works out in your life and make sure that you’re praising the Lord. It does point to the eschatological hope that a myriad will join us in the praise of our Lord, and we’ll be together in heaven praising him. And we can never exhaust that praise as the old hymn writer says, “If each of us have a thousand tongues to sing our great redeemer’s praise, praise the Lord all the nations extol him all peoples.”
Well, this is the call to praise we’ve been thinking about. Let’s consider in verse two the cause for praise. And I know you have in your versions the ESV as I read it to you. “Great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” I actually prefer other versions here in terms of the translation. I think it’s a better translation than ESV here. The NKJV, for example, has “for his merciful kindness, not that hard.” I’m happy with covenant or steadfast love. That’s fine. But it says, “for his merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever.” I think that’s a better translation than faithfulness. The underlying Hebrew word is “emet,” which means truth generally. So I think it’s “the truth of the Lord endures forever.” Praise God. We’re going to think about these two things then, his steadfast love and his truth.
Praise him for his steadfast love, his merciful kindness. The word here, covenant love, his unfailing covenant love, the word here is another Hebrew word that you’ve heard before, “hesed.” Maybe they didn’t aspirate it so much. That’s the way you’re supposed to. “Hesed. Hesed.” But “hesed.” It’s like you’re harrowed up here clearing your throat while you’re trying to sing. His steadfast love. One commentary rightly knows that this might be translated. This word “hesed” might be translated, “His never failing covenant love towers over us.” His steadfast love, great is his steadfast love. So this commentator says, translated “his never failing love, covenant love towers over us.” It overshadows, think about this, it overshadows our sin. You need to know this in all of your struggles. His never failing love is greater than your always disheartening lack of love. We realize, as I said earlier, we realize that when we come into worship, we confess this in worship that we lack in love. That disheartens us. Here’s what should hearten you. You’re not looking to yourself for salvation. You’re not relying on yourself. You’re looking to him. And his love towers over your failures. Towers over them. This “hesed,” this covenant love, steadfast love, the same particularly in his justifying the ungodly, in his adopting rebels like us, in his sanctifying and preserving those who so often fail, truly only those thus redeemed can and will praise him. I mean, it’s the redeemed who are going to praise him. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. He has never, Ephesians one says, not loved us. That eternal love of his is based on his good pleasure. It’s not based on your faith foreseen or your good works foreseen. No. It’s based on the fact that he loves you. He chooses to love you. And his love, as the hymn writer says, will never let you go. He will never, no, never, no, never forsake. Will you keep quoting hymns? Will the hymns and songs of the faith teach us these things? That he will never, no, never, no, never forsake. That’s “hesed.” Even though we’re slow to learn and rebel often, we need patience with each other like he has with us. We need patience. Husbands and wives, you need patience with each other. Parents, you need patience with your children. Children, you need patience with your parents and with each other. We need to have open hearts to each other. So if somebody blows it, somebody messes up, and we all mess up, we all blow it. It’s not like, “Well, that’s it for you.” Because if we come and treat each other that way, God could have done that to us a long time ago and sent us away. But what does Paul say? “Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” That’s the pattern. Our hearts should be open to each other in these ways.
Jesus said it on the cross. I often think of how the thief on the cross, the one who trusted him, it was after he said that remarkable fourth word. Can you imagine what well that was that fourth word is, “Why, why have you forsaken me, Father?” But he heard him say the next word, “Father, forgive them. Forgive them for they know not what they do.” He says that from the tree. And you can imagine that thief thought, “Who talks like that?” In the flesh, we would be saying, “Damn them all. Kill them all.” That’s not what he says. “Forgive them.” This is why we’re to praise the Lord. This is a reason. His steadfast love. This is all the more remarkable in the light of the fact that the truth of the Lord endures forever. That’s we’re taking that translation. The truth of the Lord. The truth is that God is holy, unalterably so, and that we as fallen are sinful. Just given those facts, think about that. He’s holy. We’re sinful. Just given that, truth doesn’t appear to be something to which we should appeal or which we could celebrate. I mean, if that’s the truth, that means we’re in trouble. No guilty criminal wants the truth. I, a lawyer friend once said, if I were guilty, I would want, he said, “If I were not guilty, I would want a bench trial because a judge can see you’re not guilty. And if I was guilty, I would want a jury trial because the jury may not see that you’re guilty. You may be able to deceive them.” In other words, the guilty parties, people who are really guilty, don’t want the truth to come out, and we’re guilty. So why do we appeal to truth? Because truth is this, we can praise the Lord that his truth endures forever because he doesn’t save us by denying his truth, but by fulfilling it in the person and work of Christ. Because God both loves us and is committed to truth, this means that all blessings come to us at a great price. Christ must die, and so must we. Both are good, but they’re costly. Never forget this. This is not some generic thing, but it’s all tied to Jesus. Again, what we’ve been saying in the whole service is, “Jesus paid it all.” And the fact that he paid it all, that’s why the truth is our friend because in him, we’re righteous. In him, we have a holy standing before a holy God.
Jesus is the real cause of our praise. We can sing this. We can call for universal praise because of Jesus. It’s Jesus and his person at work alone that “hesed,” steadfast love, and “emet,” that truth, mercy, and truth are brought together. Jesus is the truth. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” who alone paves the way. It’s a new and living way, Hebrews says. By his active obedience, his keeping of the law, and his passive obedience, his dying on the truth. He has paved the way to life. Psalm eighty-five ten, maybe you were hearing that in your head, brings it together. Psalm eighty-five ten says, “Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed.” How does that happen? It only happens because of Jesus in his person. Mercy and truth have met together. If you’ve just got truth, we’re in trouble because we’re guilty sinners. But because of God’s mercy, Jesus paid it all. Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace. If it’s just a matter of righteousness, we’re in trouble because we’re not righteous. But because of the shalom of Jesus, because of what he’s done for us, we have that righteousness. What a description of the person of our Lord. The word become flesh. Full of grace and truth. He’s full of grace and truth. Who’s doing and dying brings mercy and truth, righteousness and peace together.
This is why he, this is why I don’t want to get far afield here. But this is why he’s likened particularly in the book of Hebrews to Melchizedek. He said, “What’s that got to do with it?” Well, Melchizedek. What does his name mean? Melchizedek. That’s what Melchizedek is. Melchizedek in Hebrew means king of righteousness. But remember what he was king of? He was king of righteousness, king of Salem, the old version say, which is “shalom.” The word is “shalom.” It’s not saying he’s king of cigarettes. You know, you might think of sailors, you know, whatever. No. King of “Shalom.” Righteousness. He’s the king of righteousness, and he’s the king of peace. It all comes together with Jesus. Jesus fulfills all righteousness for you. And because of that, you can know peace with God, and you can know the peace of God. You can have “Shalom.” But the only way to have “Shalom” is because of what Jesus did for you. Because he loved you and died for you.
This is the calling and message of the church. It is this, Psalm one hundred and seventeen, that we’re to be living out, patiently looking to him and to be declaring to the world back to your verse. We’re to be living this out, and we’re going to go tell it on the mountain. Go tell it on the mountain. This is the calling and the message of the church. We need to be living out our praise to Him for His grace and truth. So the church isn’t about self-help or how to better yourself or to be successful. Now, that sort of stuff never seems to end. That isn’t what the church is about. What it is about is the simple truth that with lips and lives, we’re to be about calling all, including ourselves, to be on the right side of history, giving due praise to our Lord for who he is and what he’s done for us in Christ.
This is a great way to begin a new year. We’re still early enough to talk about the new year. I think you can talk about it in all of January. And so you should think about how will I share the praise of the Lord with others? And how shall I let this form my thoughts, form my life in the year to come. My life should be about praising the Lord. And some of you have had great suffering. Some of you have had great difficulty. And the Christians that I’ve ever known who have gone through the deepest waters, praise the Lord the most. Because a lot of times we get so attached to the things of this world. We get attached to the things and to the stuff, all of which is perishing. All of which is perishing. You know that old thing that some have said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Wrong. No, no. He who dies trusting Jesus wins. Amen.
Father, we praise you. Help us to do so really throughout the whole course of our lives with everybody about us. Just natural to who we are. Make us those who give you thanks and give you praise. We pray it all in Jesus’ name. Amen.