Praise the Lord, All You Nations!
A Study of Psalm 117
Review: Only a few days before my wife, Katrina, went to Heaven as I was helping her into bed, she started saying something. She was reciting a stanza of a hymn by Charles Wesley. She said, “My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad the glory of Thy name. A few days later, we all circled around her and sang that great hymn, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise. The glories of my God and King, the triumph of His grace.”
My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad
The glory of Thy name.
Jesus! The name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease.
‘Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
‘Tis life and health and peace.
A few days later we sang this at her funeral.
Well, on the night before He died by crucifixion, the Lord Jesus and His disciples sang a selection of hymns together. It was the closest He would come to having people sing around His deathbed, as it were. Matthew and Luke both tell us Jesus and His disciples sang in the Upper Room, and the songs that were sung on that occasion, around the Passover meal, were Psalm 113 through 118. These are called the Egyptian Hallel songs.
When I learned that, I wanted to see exactly what Jesus would have been singing on that never-to-be forgotten night. Those songs present for us the progressive elements of the Gospel. I’m surprised I’ve never seen this before.
Psalm 113 is about the almighty God humbling Himself to come and care for us, and there’s the strong hint of the incarnation there.
Psalm 114 is about redemption.
Psalm 115 is about the life of faith.
Psalm 116 is about victory over death.
The almighty God of time and eternity humbled Himself and became a man to redeem us by grace through faith and to give us victory over death and everlasting life.
Now we come to Psalm 117, and the theme of this little song is the worldwide scope of the Gospel. This is a message, not just for Israel or the Jews, but for all the world. This is the shortest chapter in the Bible. Two very brief verses, only 29 words in the New International Version, and fewer than that in the original Hebrew. It is the Old Testament Great Commission.
Scripture: Psalm 17
Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.
1. Invitation
This little song has several parts to it. First, an invitation to the nations. Notice that the song opens and closes with the words “Praise the Lord.” But the meaning is different. This phrase is used in a different way each time. At the opening, this is an invitation. We are inviting the nations to praise the Lord—praise the Lord, all you nations. We are inviting the Russians to praise the Lord. We are inviting the Chinese to praise the Lord. We are asking the people of Nigeria and Brazil and America to praise the Lord. We are calling on them to acknowledge Him, to honor Him. Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol Him, all you peoples.
2. Explanation
The second part of the song is an explanation. Why should the people of Russia and China and Nigeria and Brazil and America praise the Lord? Because He loves them and has made promises to them, which He will keep.
Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us [us human beings, us who populate the nations], and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
First, great is His love toward us. Love is an inadequate translation, and, in fact, it is very difficult to translate the Hebrew word hesed. It means covenant love. Imagine a couple falling in love. They go out to eat. There is a candlelight on their table. The moon is full as they walk out of the restaurant. They feel full of the feelings of lovey-dovey love. But two months later they stand before a preacher who leads them and their wedding vows. Suddenly the groom is exercising more than lovey-dovey love. He is saying, “All that I am and all that I have is yours, and it is yours forever, as long as we’re alive. I am committing all I am and all I have to you.” That is covenant love; and that is the kind of love this verse is talking about.
Great is his commitment of total love towards us.
And the word faithfulness has to do with God’s commitment to keep every promise He has made. The most wonderful genre of Scripture are the promises God has given us. He has given us so many promises that we can never encounter any difficulty without there being promises there to bear us through them. When we talk about God’s faithfulness we are talking about His absolute commitment to keep every syllable of every word of every promise that he has ever made to us
Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us [us human beings, us who populate the nations], and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
3. Celebration
The last phrase in the verse is celebration: Praise the Lord! This time the phrase is used as an acclamation, an exclamation! The writer just shouts it out! He says, if I may paraphrase: “I am an Old Testament Jew, but I am inviting the people of Russia and China and Nigeria and Brazil and America to praise the Lord and extol Him, because He loves them—every one of us—and He has made promises to us that are eternal in nature, and He will keep them. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise! Praise the Lord, Hallelujah!”
4. Confirmation
So we have an invitation, an explanation, and a celebration. We also have a confirmation of the missionary nature of this Psalm in the book of Romans. When Paul wrote to Rome, he had one thing on his mind, which was reaching the world with the message of Christ.
Look at the way Paul opens this book in Romans 1:1-5: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.
Paul said that the Lord has promised through the Old Testament prophets to bring a Messiah into the world as a channel for our salvation, and that he—Paul—had been appointed to take this message to the Gentiles, to the nations.
Look at Romans 3:29: Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised (the Jewish people) by faith and the uncircumcised (the Gentiles, the nations of the world) through the same faith.
Let’s turn over to Romans 10, verses 12 and 13: For there is no difference between Jew and Gentiles—the same Lord is Lord of all and riches blesses all who calls on him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
The invitation goes out to the Gentiles, to the nations, to Russia and China and Nigeria, and Brazil, and America. Paul continues with his teaching all the way to his climactic finish in chapter 15. There are sixteen chapters to Romans, but the last chapter is an epilogue full of personal greetings. The actual body of content ends in chapter 15. And at the conclusion of all his teachings and arguments he simply erupts in a procession of passages from the Old Testament, showing that God’s love and faithfulness is available to all the world. Look at verse 9 and following:
As it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing praises to your name.” Here he quotes from 2 Samuel. Again, it says, “Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people.” [And that’s a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy]. And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; let all the peoples extol him.” And here he quotes from Psalm 117—the short, little missionary song that Jesus sang on His final night.
5. Proclamation
The next day, Good Friday, He gave His life for us. The next day, Saturday, His body rested in the tomb. And the next day, Sunday, the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, was when He arose. Now what do you think was on His mind coming out of the grave?
Mark 16 tells us how Jesus rose from the dead early on Sunday and appeared to Mary Magdalene. Then He appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And that evening He appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room. He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel all creation” (Mark 16:15).
Go into the world, to the nations, and take the Gospel to every creature. But He said something else that night. Look at Luke 24. Just like Mark, Luke tells how Jesus rose early in the morning, how he appeared to the women, how He appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And that evening He appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room. What did He say, according to Luke? He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:46-48).
To all the nations, he said. But that’s not all He said that evening. Look at John 20. John also tells how Jesus rose early in the morning, how He appeared to the women, and then that evening He appeared in the Upper Room to His disciples. What did He say to them? Look at John 20:21: “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
Jesus must have talked quite a bit about His plan for the disciples to take the Gospel to the entire world. Mark quoted a bit of that message; Luke quoted a different part; and John yet a different part.
Sometime later, the risen Christ met the disciples again on a mountainside in Galilee. What do you think was on His mind? What did He want to say to them? It’s very likely this is the occasion when, as the apostle Paul told us, the risen Jesus appeared to and spoke to 500 people. Look at Matthew 28:16-20: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’”
He expanded on the message He had given them on Easter evening. What happened next? Well, a few days later the disciples saw Jesus again, this time they were walking with Him on a road on the Mount of Olives. Acts 1:6-9 says, “Then they gathered around him and asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them: ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
What was on our Lord’s mind when He rose from the dead was exactly what He had sung about the night before His crucifixion: Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.
That’s what He talked about on the evening of the first Easter, and three of the disciples remembered various sentences. That’s what He spoke about mid-way through His 40 days of post-resurrection appearances, and Matthew ended his Gospel with that version of the Great Commission. And that’s what He spoke about just before He ascended back to Heaven at the end of His 40 days of post-resurrection ministry.
And consider this. Jesus spoke these words by singing them on the night before His death. He sang this as a sort of Old Testament Great Commission. He was giving us the Great Commission even before His death and resurrection. The Scottish preacher, Andrew Bonar said, “Let us…recall this song to mind…. In so doing, we are using words which the Master used in the Upper Room…. For it is He specially who is the speaker [in this call to praise].”
God always had the whole world on His heart.
I listened to Christopher Ash’s sermon on Psalm 117, and he told the story of a play on London’s West End. The play opened with a table in the middle of the stage and two men sitting on either side of it. There was a phone, and the play began by the phone ringing and one of the actors picking it up and speaking into it. Those were the first lines of the play. On one particular night, the actor forgot his opening lines. He drew a total blank when the phone rang. His mind went paralyzingly empty, and he could not remember the first lines of the play. He looked at it a moment, picked it up, handed it to the other actor, and said, “It’s for you.”
Then Christopher Ash said, in effect, “That’s the Gospel message. It’s for you!”
And it is for you. And it’s for you, China. It is for you, Russia. It is for you, Brazil. It’s for all the world. Our job is to do whatever part the Lord has assigned to us.
Recently I read the autobiography of the Korean evangelist Billy Kim, whom I had known about for many years. His journey toward Christ began when some American soldiers asked him to be their houseboy during the Korean War. One of them had such a burden for the poverty-stricken Korean lad that he sent him to America to be educated at Bob Jones Academy in South Carolina, and there Billy became a Christian. He later returned to Korea where he became a very effective evangelist.
In his book, Billy talked about traveling to Havana in the summer of 2000 to attend a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance. Billy always had the lost on his heart, and on this trip he carried a heavy burden for Fidel Castro. The possibility of actually seeing Castro was remote to impossible, but Billy prayed for a chance to witness to the man. He even brought with him a special Spanish copy of the Bible to give to him. When it seemed that no meeting would occur, Billy gave the Bible to a high-ranking member of the government to pass on to Castro. Yet every morning while he was there, Billy prayed, “Lord, please lead me to Castro so that I may share the Gospel with him.”
On the very last day of the conference, a Communist official summoned Billy to the presidential office, and he was ushered in to see Castro in his trademark khaki military uniform. The two men talked for about ten minutes, but Castro remained standing and Billy expected to be ushered out quickly. But then Castro invited him into his inner office. Someone gave the Bible back to Billy and he was able to personally hand it to the Cuban dictator. Castro said, “When I was young my mother spent a lot of time reading the Bible to me.” The two men talked for over two hours, and Billy was able to present the Gospel of Christ to the man. The next day, Castro sent workers from the government-run media to the conference and the closing meeting was broadcast all across Cuba.
No one knows if, perhaps on his deathbed, Fidel Castro responded to the Gospel he heard that day. Won’t we be surprised if we find him among the multitudes to greet us when we arrive in New Jerusalem?
Few of us will be able to share Christ in personal conversation with a world leader, but we can all share it with the world around us. We share it when we give to the Lord’s work, when we witness to our friends and neighbors, when we invite others to church, and when we pray for missionaries around the world. And we can tell them one thing about the Gospel that they badly need to know—It’s for you!
6. Exaltation
Let me end with a final observation, which I will call “exaltation.” Psalm 117 doesn’t actually call on the nations to be saved. It calls on the nations to praise the Lord for His great love and eternal faithfulness. Salvation is not the final result. The final result is coming into a life of praise.
John Piper brought this to our attention a number of years ago in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad, which he opened with these words:
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over and countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.
Worship, therefore, is the fuel and the goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.
The world cannot be happy if it isn’t full of praise for the Lord, nor can any of us. The shortest chapter in the Bible has one of the biggest messages of Scripture: Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.
Conclusion
I want to close today by inviting you to offer the prayer with me, the one that resides deeply in my heart and memories.
My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad
The glory of Thy name.