Psalm 47
1 Clap your hands, all you nations;
shout to God with cries of joy.2 For the Lord Most High is awesome,
the great King over all the earth.
3 He subdued nations under us,
peoples under our feet.
4 He chose our inheritance for us,
the pride of Jacob, whom he loved.5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy,
the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises;
sing praises to our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth;
sing to him a psalm of praise.8 God reigns over the nations;
God is seated on his holy throne.
9 The nobles of the nations assemble
as the people of the God of Abraham,
for the kings of the earth belong to God;
he is greatly exalted.
Sing Praises to God Our King
Here’s a controversial question: How many of you have started listening to Christmas music?
Where I come from, there’s a rule of thumb that says you can’t listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving. Of course, there, Thanksgiving isn’t in October; it’s this coming Thursday. I don’t think that rule would work here.
I’ve heard of people who use Remembrance Day as the unofficial start of the holidays. After that is when you can start to put up your tree and decorations. For others, you have to wait for Advent to begin, which is a week from today. Still others say December 1.
I don’t know where you land on the spectrum, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter. There’s no one right answer. But what I want you to think about is how you feel whenever you first start playing Christmas music. Doesn’t it put you in a mood? How would you describe it? Merry? Jolly? Nostalgic?
Music has a certain power. Sometimes you search Spotify or your CD collection to find music that matches your mood. Other times your mood is manufactured by the music you’re listening to, i.e. you begin to reflect the music. And in our psalm for the day – Psalm 47 – we find a little bit of both.
Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.[1]
There are times in a believer’s life when this is the natural reaction. A baby is born and you clap your hands. A friend gets married and you shout for joy. These are happy times that call for happy music. Music can be the perfect expression of how we’re feeling.
But what happens when you read these words, and you don’t feel much like clapping or singing? You’ve had those days, haven’t you, e.g. days when you’re glad to be wearing a mask so that you don’t have to try to fake a smile; days when you don’t turn the camera on in your Zoom meeting; days when you just want to stay in bed and not see or talk to anyone? How are you supposed to clap and shout for joy then?
In moments like that you can let the music alter your mood. You can reads words like these and remember:
For the Lord Most High is awesome, the great King over all the earth.[2]
Happiness comes from knowing that God is King over all.
Where I come from, there are a lot of people who are pretty happy about the apparent results of the most recent presidential election. To be fair, there are about as many people who are equally upset. But that’s politics, right? Not everyone agrees, e.g. on the proper way to handle coronavirus, climate change, health care, snow removal. They’re divisive topics and before you know it factions are formed. You have differing opinions on what should be done but only one course of action can be chosen, so no matter who is in charge or what happens, half of the people are going to be happy and half are going to be mad.
But the Lord Most High is the great King over all the earth, and that means that all nations can clap their hands and shout to God with cries of joy. It doesn’t matter what political party you find yourself most aligned with. It doesn’t matter who your premiere, prime minister, president or prince is. God is King over all:
God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne.[3]
There is no seat that is higher than God’s. He is at the top of the food chain. He has almighty power and authority. Sometimes, when I’m feeling crappy about what’s happening in my economy or country, it’s easy to feel like everything is out of control, but God is still sitting on his throne. Nobody can overrule or undermine him. God is sovereign over all.
He subdued nations under us, peoples under our feet.[4]
The kings of the earth belong to God.[5]
We could walk through the pages of Scripture and find example after example of nations whom God used like pawns on a chess board. He used Egypt to incubate the Israelites so that they could grow from a family of 12 brothers into a nation of more than 2 million people. He used defeats at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians to teach his people repentance. But then he used the Persians to send his people back to rebuild his Temple and reform their ways.
God is King over all the kingdoms of the earth, and that hasn’t changed to this day. You may be unsettled by the reports you hear in the news. This week alone, I got no fewer than 5 different messages of gloom and doom for Christians because of what’s happening among the people in power – a great reset of the global economy, directed attacks on religious freedom, campaigns against Christian churches, wars and rumors of wars that signal the end is near.
I have no difficulty believing any of them to be true, but I can still clap my hands and shout to God with cries of joy, because God is seated on his holy throne. None of the things that happen in this world go unnoticed or unchecked by the King over all the earth. If any of these warnings come to pass, they will ultimately serve the purposes of our sovereign God.
And I get it. It’s scary. I don’t want any of these things to happen. I can get butterflies in my stomach too when I think about the evil things that do happen in this world. But that’s why I appreciated our Gospel Lesson for today and its picture of a King unlike any we’ve seen before.
In Matthew 27, we saw Jesus stripped naked in public. We saw him beaten again and again – a crown of thorns pounded repeatedly into his scalp and skull with a staff. We saw him mocked and ridiculed and spat on. We even saw him led cruelly away to be crucified for crimes he didn’t commit.
It’s not exactly a sight that inspires applause. It doesn’t make me want to dance or sing for joy. At least, not at first. At first it makes me want to weep over the power that the forces of evil in this world wield, that they can even treat the Son of God with such open contempt and unbridled hatred.
But when I think about what that moment really meant, my mood begins to change. Even in that darkest moment when it seemed like the devil had won, that the kings of the earth had had their way with the Son of God, God was orchestrating every little bit of it to show his love to the world.
What I mean is this: The Roman soldiers didn’t seize Jesus against his will. It’s not as if they had more power than he did. As hard as it may be to believe, he wanted to be beaten and mocked and killed, because that’s the way he could save you.
You know, I read the words of Psalm 47 sometimes – “clap your hands,” “shout for joy,” “the Lord is awesome,” so, “sing praises to him,” – and I have to admit that I don’t always feel that way. I’m not always thankful for all the blessings he gives me day after day. I can say that God is King over all, but I know I don’t always feel it in my heart; I can let my fears overwhelm my faith. I see the sources of sorrow in my life and others’ and I’m not always ready to admit that God is awesome.
But that’s our problem, when we feel that way, not God’s. It’s our lack of faith. It’s our inability to fear, love and trust in God above all things. It’s so tempting to put your trust in the democratic process or the collective goodwill of our community, or our own strength and influence, when all the while we’re forgetting who really is King over all.
It’s Jesus! He definitely didn’t look like it in Matthew 27. He didn’t look very regal while he was being ridiculed by the Romans. They meant it as a joke when they knelt in front of him and said, “Hail, king of the Jews!” But that’s who he was, and as the sovereign King over all, Jesus submitted himself to suffering to show that he’s not only sovereign, but that’s he’s your Saviour.
By going to that cross and dying for sins he did not commit, he was really taking your place. He was taking on himself the punishment for your sins. In short, Jesus was choosing you:
He chose our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loved.[6]
Rather than leaving us to suffer for our sins, i.e. rather than allowing hell to be our heritage, Jesus chose heaven for you. That’s your inheritance because of his sacrifice. You get all the rights of the firstborn of God because God gave up his Son for you, i.e. because God loves you. You are his pride and joy. You are the ones he loves.
So, when you don’t necessarily feel like clapping your hands or shouting to God with cries of joy, remember the power of music not just to reflect your mood, but to alter it. As you sing words like these in Psalm 47, God is reminding you that he is King over all. He has all power and authority over everyone. No rogue government can overrule him. No nation can rise up against him. But far more than being just sovereign, he is also your Saviour, who loves you. He is your Saviour who uses his sovereignty for your good, to forgive your sin and to gather you, with people from every nation, around his holy throne in heaven.
And do you know what we’ll do when we get there? We’ll sing:
Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.[7]
When that day comes, we won’t have to “fake it till we make it.” On that day we won’t have to alter our mood by putting on a certain kind of music. When we get to heaven, we won’t be able to contain our praise for Christ our King.
Until that day, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. There will certainly come times when you don’t feel like clapping or shouting for joy but read psalms like this one and remember why the Lord Most High is awesome. It’s not just that he is sovereign. It’s that he is your Saviour. Sing praises to God our King; sing praises. Amen.
[1] Psalm 47:1
[2] Psalm 47:2
[3] Psalm 47:8
[4] Psalm 47:3
[5] Psalm 47:9
[6] Psalm 47:4
[7] Psalm 47:6