All right, Psalm 117, praise the Lord, all nations extol him, all
peoples, for great is his steadfast love toward us, and
the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord, and this is the word of the Lord.
All right. Good morning, Port City family
and friends. How are you doing this morning?
Good. My name is Kevin and I'm one of
the pastors here. I hope you guys are doing well.
Let me start with this. Delight, not duty.
Whether you're new here or have
been part of Port City for some time, our prayer is that Sunday
mornings would become a source of delight, not just something
that you do out of duty. If you're here today, out of
obligation because you feel like you should be or someone expects
you to be, I'm still glad that you're here.
So glad. But I also want to lovingly tell
you this. God is far more interested in
your delight in Him than in your duty to Him.
That's what we're going to talk about today.
Praise, true praise, doesn't flow from pressure, it flows
from pleasure in Him. Duty doesn't birth praise,
delight does. Psalm 1611 says you make known
to me the path of life. In your presence there is
fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures
forevermore. That doesn't sound like someone
who's not after your delight, does it?
Our God wants more joy for you. He wants more joy for me than we
want for ourselves. God is for your joy.
He wants you to find that joy can ultimately be found in and
only in Him and only in Him. If you're not feeling that this
morning, that's OK. I'm praying that as we open up
Psalm 117 together, God would stir up in us a deeper affection
and delight for who He is. Join me as we ask the Lord to do
just that. Heavenly Father, we thank You
for the gift of Your Word. God, as we open up Psalm 117, I
pray that You would remove any obstacles that would keep us
from seeing You as You are our highest joy and our greatest
good. Anything that I say, Lord, that
is not from you, I pray that it would fall away and be quickly
forgotten. Speak clearly.
God's stir hearts calls us to delight in you more.
Today in the beautiful and the powerful name of your son Jesus,
I pray, Amen. Think about a story that just
grabs you, Not one that you just enjoy, but one that speaks to
your soul in some way. Maybe it's a novel, maybe it's a
show or a movie. At first it just speaks to you,
but over time it starts to speak for you.
You hear the story and say, yes, that is beautiful, that's true,
it's good. I love that it's true and my
heart rejoices in it. For me, one of those stories is
wonder. I don't know if you're familiar
with the story. It's a book that turned into a
movie, but it's about this boy named August who has some
physical deformities and he leaves his home school
environment with his mom and he goes to school for the very
first time and it's middle school, nonetheless brutal.
So he's he's going about this adventure and after a difficult
year, he ends up winning over his classmates and he really
overcomes some significant personal obstacles.
At the end of year ceremony, the principal gives Augie the
school's highest award. And he says greatness lies not
in being strong, but in the right using of strength.
He or she is the greatest whose strength carries up the most
hearts by its attraction, by the attraction of his own.
That line gets me every time. I can watch that movie like 100
times and it would give me every time.
I believe the story is fictional, but the truth that it
shows is real. That story started to speak to
me before I ever really heard it and engaged with it, but now it
speaks for me. This summer we've been
journeying through the Psalms. Pastor Tanner said the very
outset of the series that our hope is that these Psalms would
not just speak to you, but that they would speak for you.
Psalm 117 does exactly that. It's rooted in a true story of
deliverance, and all the later generations didn't experience
that delivery first hand. They sang the song because it
became their song. You may not have walked through
the Red Sea, but you can still sing the song of salvation.
God's desire is that Psalm 117 would become your Psalm 2.
Psalm 117 is part of the halal psalms, which we've referenced
quite a bit. Psalms 113 through 118 make up
the halal songs. These were traditionally sung
during the Jewish Passover. Psalms 113 and 114 would be song
before the meal and then Psalms 115 through 118 would be sung
after the meal. So when Matthew 2630 says and
when they had sung A hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives,
it's referring to this very collection.
Psalm 117 was sung by Jesus the night that he was portrayed.
So Psalm 117 is a halal Psalm, but it's also the shortest
Psalm. In fact, it's the shortest
chapter in the entire Bible, just two verses.
But it's shortness is far outdone by its sweetness.
One scholar called it the peak of the halal Psalms, the high
point of the story, the goal of the discourse, the memorable
fault. In many ways, it is the very
climax of the song that Jesus sang before going to the cross.
Let's dive in and taste its goodness.
Psalm 117 gives us a very simple outline.
There is a call to praise in verse one followed by A cause to
praise in verse 2, a call, then A cause.
The first thing we encounter in Psalm 117 is a call to praise.
It says praise the Lord. As I mentioned earlier, Psalm
117 is one of the halal psalms, and the Hebrew word halal simply
means praise. 1 theologian described praise as boasting or
bragging on someone or something.
We used the word boast this morning in one of our songs, and
that's just a way to describe the act of praise.
These psalms were sung at Passover in celebration of the
God who delivered his people. They were bragging on their God.
In English we see the phrase praise the Lord both at the
beginning of the short Psalm and also at the very end.
Though the words are the same, the functions are a little bit
different. The opening praise the Lord is a
plea, a call to worship. The closing praise the Lord is a
proclamation, the actual expression of praise.
In verse one, the word describes an action.
In verse 2, it embodies an emotion.
The final phrase in the original Hebrew is Hallelujah, a deep,
heartfelt exclamation of worship.
To illustrate, think about the the words get out.
So there's two ways I might say get out.
One might be get out, like get out of the room, get out of my
presence. I might even point in a certain
direction. The other might be one that is
signifying surprise or excitement about something.
My wife might tell me something and I might say get out.
Those are two very different things.
That's what's happening with Praise the Lord in Psalm 117.
It functions both as a call to action and as an emotive
outpouring of joy. Let's continue looking at verse
one. Praise the Lord all nations,
extol him, all peoples. In Hebrew, this verse is a
poetic invitation. It's like a beautiful poem on
the cover of a wedding invitation.
But notice who this invitation is going out to?
All people, all nations. Don't think of modern
geopolitical nation states. Think of people, groups,
families, tribes, communities bound by a shared history,
culture and language. Defined this way, there are
about 17,000 people groups on the earth.
Here's 2 important observations. The first is that God desires
the praise of the nations. It's the first time in the Halal
Psalms that we see an invitation extended to all nations, but it
is completely consistent with the heartbeat of God throughout
Scripture. I'll just give you the bookends,
the beginning and the end of the Scripture in this regard.
At the beginning in Genesis 12, God calls Abram and makes him a
promise to bless him, and that in him all the families, all the
nations of the earth shall be blessed.
I'm going to bless you, Abram. I'm going to give you progeny, a
son through whom you will have ancestors.
This will be the son of your wife, Sarah.
And those ancestors, like the stars in the sky, will be more
than you can count. And through your family, all of
the families of the earth will be blessed.
God was going to bless not just Abram, but all nations.
And then at the end in Revelation 7, we see the
fulfillment of that promise. We read from Revelation 5
earlier, which also makes a similar reference.
Revelation 7 says a great multitude that no one could
number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and
languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and
crying out to crying out with a loud voice.
Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne into the
Lamb. God's promise to Abram will be
kept. Every nation, all the families
of the earth will be represented around the throne of God.
From beginning to end. God has always been pursuing the
nation's. All peoples have always been on
His heart. Second observations.
The nation's don't naturally desire to praise God.
They don't. Although God is for the nations,
the nations are not naturally for him.
Earlier in the Hillel Psalms, in chapter 115, the nations were
seen as mocking the people of God, saying where is their God?
Where is he? What's he doing?
Then in chapter 118, which we'll look at next week, there's a
picture of the nations surrounding the people of God
pressing in to destroy them. Think also of the nation of
Egypt that enslaved the Israelites for hundreds of years
and the Babylonians who captured them and sent them into exile in
a foreign land. These are the events that the
Jewish people had in mind when they celebrated Passover.
These are the events that the Jewish people had in mind when
they were singing this song. These Psalms celebrate God's
deliverance from the nations and then, astonishingly, invite even
those very nations to come and praise the Lord.
God extends friendship to those who oppose him.
In the 1950s, a group of five American missionaries, including
Nate St. and Jim Elliott, set out to share the gospel with a
remote and violent tribe in the Ecuadorian jungle, the Orani
people. This tribe was known for its
fierce hostility to outsiders, and many had died trying to
reach them. Despite the danger, these
missionaries believed that Christ had died for all the
nations, and they were compelled to go to share this gospel with
these people. They made contact slowly at
first, dropping gifts from an airplane and eventually landing
on a beach to meet the tribe. Not long after that, all five
men were speared to death by this tribe, the very people that
they were trying to reach. And that could have been the end
of the story, but it wasn't. Nate Saint's sister, Rachel St.
and Jim Elliott's widow, Elizabeth Elliott, returned to
the same tribe. They lived among the Arani,
learned their language, and eventually shared the Gospel
with the very people who had killed their loved ones.
And over time, miraculously, the tribe came to faith in Christ.
One of the very men who had killed Nate St. a warrior named
McCain, became a follower of Jesus and later a missionary
himself. He and Nate Saint's son Steve
formed a deep father like bond. Steve even referred to him as
Grandfather. An enemy had become family, a
murderer had become a brother. A life taken in hate had made
way for love, grace, and eternal reconciliation.
Because these missionaries understood something about God,
who longed to turn his enemies into friends in our sin.
I want you to know that we are by default, we are all enemies
of God. But you're invited in the words.
Nations and peoples include every single one of us.
Psalm 117 is a universal invitation to every man, woman,
boy and girl to praise the one for whom they were created.
We were hard wired to praise. We do it all the time.
We brag about all sorts of things.
We brag about our kids. We brag about our favorite
sports teams. We brag about our favorite
restaurants or vacation spots. Praise flows naturally from
delight. So the question is, do you
delight in the Lord? If your heart doesn't yet long
to praise God, know this. You're still being invited.
This song may not yet speak for you, but it is still speaking to
you. Secondly, you're invited.
You're called, rather, to invite others.
If your heart is already wrapped up in praising the Lord, Psalm
117 calls you to invite others in, all kinds of people in our
city and beyond, those who look like you and those who don't,
those who share some preference with you and those who don't.
Ask yourself, how can I more effectively brag on this God and
invite others to do the same? You're invited to worship Him,
but why should you? Why praise?
The psalmist gives us a clear reason.
It calls for praise. Look with me at verse 2 of Psalm
117. For great is his steadfast love
toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord. This verse gives us the reason
for praise. The calls behind the invitation
playing quietly in the background of this verse is a
foundational moment in Israel's history.
God's self revelation to Moses in Exodus 34.
Exodus 34, six and seven, says the Lord.
The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast
love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and
sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.
Visiting the iniquity of the Father's on the children and the
children's children to the 3rd and the 4th generation, this
psalmist is echoing the very character of God as revealed in
that moment. He praises God's steadfast love
and faithfulness not just as abstract ideas, but as the
defining traits of who God is. These aren't merely things that
God does who He is. His actions flow from His
nature. He does what He does because He
is who He is. Throughout Israel's history,
whether in Egypt or in exile in the wilderness, God's love and
faithfulness never wavered. He preserved his people, He kept
his promises, and he proved himself again and again to be
dependable. This is what theologians call
covenant faithfulness. 1 commentator put it this way.
These two attributes, love and faithfulness, are paired
together to describe the Lord as absolutely dependable to fulfill
His promises. Absolutely dependable to fulfill
His promises. That's what the psalmist is
celebrating, and that's the God to whom the nations are being
invited to give praise. As the psalmist considers these
characteristics of the Lord, notice a couple things he
meditates on. The 1st is the greatness of his
steadfast love. The psalmist begins with God's
steadfast love, a love that is described as great.
Other translations render it as unfailing love, faithful love,
or even grace. When we hear great, when I hear
great, we often think in terms of size, and rightly so.
God's love is vast. It's beyond measure.
You and I cannot begin to grasp its full scope.
But the Hebrew word also conveys more than just size.
It speaks of power, specifically overcoming power.
The word translated in great, translated great in verse 2 is
the same word used in Exodus 17, verse 11 to describe how Israel
prevailed in battle against Amalek. 1711 of Exodus says
whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed.
Israel was great. It's also used in Psalm 65 verse
3 where it says when iniquities prevail against me, you atone
for our transgressions. God's love is not just big, it's
strong. It prevails.
It triumphs over our enemies, It defeats despair.
It prevails over that which prevails over us all.
That's why we can sing grace, Grace, God's grace, grace that
is greater than all our sin. God's steadfast love is a
prevailing power in the lives of sinners from every nation, and
that power demands praise. Well, I love kid movies too.
Our kids are a little bit older, so we're watching some different
things in our house these days, but still got love for all the
the kid movies. One of the movies I love is
Avengers, and there's a scene in that movie where Loki, a
self-proclaimed God, is executing his plan to take over
the earth. He comes face to face with the
Incredible Hulk, who puts him in his place.
He comes and he picks up Loki and proceeds to just hammer him
on the ground like a dozen times.
Is wild. Just goes to town with him.
When Hulk is done, Loki's laying there stunned and he can't move.
As Hulk is walking away, he says puny God.
That's a picture of the prevailing love of God in your
life. He alone can defeat the lesser,
puny gods. These gods, whatever they may
be, dominate and control you in ways that you just can't seem to
escape. Maybe you're trying to escape
them this morning and you found that you just don't have the
power to do so. This Psalm reminds us that God's
steadfast love alone can prevail over your enemies.
Secondly, the endurance of his faithfulness is the second
meditation that we see from the psalmist.
He turns to God's faithfulness, A faithfulness that endures
forever. Genesis 15 is a place where we
find God making a covenant with Abram.
As a sign of that covenant, God instructed Abram to cut several
animals in half and lay the pieces opposite one another.
So cut in half, animals on both sides.
Then after a deep sleep had fallen on Abram, God alone, God
himself pass through, pass through the middle of the
animals. That's a way in, in those times
that a covenant would be established.
And what God was doing in that act was very powerful.
It was, it was, although it was symbolic.
He was saying may I be like these animals if I fail to keep
my promise. May I be like this if I don't do
what I say? And God kept his word.
He remained faithful to his people even when they were
completely and utterly unfaithful to Him.
And we see this all throughout Scripture.
Though Israel turned away again and again, God delivered them.
He delivered them from Egypt. He sustained them in the
wilderness, and he brought them home from exile.
His faithfulness endured. That's why Israel celebrated at
the Passover, and that's what the psalmist is celebrating
here, a God whose faithfulness is not momentary but eternal.
The prevailing power of God's love and the enduring nature of
His faithfulness find their ultimate expression at the
cross. Yes, this Psalm call recalls
God's deliverance from Egypt, but even more, it points
forward. It paints a picture of the kind
of God that he is. And it raises the question, what
would a God like this do to save people from all nations from the
ultimate slavery to sin, Satan, and death?
John 316 answers that question. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life.
The love and faithfulness the psalmist praises reaches their
highest expression when Jesus, the Son of God, died and for
sinners and rose again. That love prevails over sin.
That faithfulness endures forever.
So why praise? Because God's love is great.
It's prevailing because God's faithfulness is forever.
It's enduring because the cross is the ultimate expression of
both. Praise the Lord.
Imagine Jesus singing Psalm 117 with his disciples at the
conclusion of the Passover meal, following the very moment where
he instituted the new covenant in his blood.
He was about to demonstrate just how great God's love was in a
very personal and a powerful way as he prepared to endure the
cross. The praise that would one day
rise from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation that we
read about in Psalm, in Revelation 7, that must have
been part of the joy set before him that we read about in
Hebrews 12/2. Jesus was torn, separated from
the Father so that we could be brought near.
Through His blood. We are invited in into a new and
eternal covenant, into redemption, into delight, into
true life. Life rooted in a right
relationship with your Creator. First, John 419 says that your
love for God, to the degree that you have it, can only come from
first realizing that He first loved you.
While we were still sinners, while we were enemies of God,
Christ died for us. We find that it is actually
Jesus whose strength carries up the most hearts by the
attraction of his own. This can be your story.
Psalm 117 can be your story. God's love is not abstract.
It's personal. It's pursuing, It's prevailing.
His faithfulness has never failed his people.
And he invites you to drink deeply from the fountain of
life. The great Swiss theologian Carl
Ball, Carl Barth, when asked to summarize the most profound
theological truth he'd ever contemplated, answered simply,
Jesus loves me this. I know where the Bible tells me
so. So consider the love of God for
you. Contemplate His faithfulness and
receive the invitation. Come praise the Lord.
If you've never truly praised Him before, today could be the
day. If you see the greatness of His
love and faithfulness. Don't ways, don't wait.
Praise Him now if your heart has grown cold.
This text is a reminder love. Look again at who He is and
respond with praise. If your life has been changed by
Him, extend the invitation. Jesus commanded his followers in
Matthew chapter 28 to go and make disciples of all nations.
That's our call. You are now a part of God's
mission, calling all people to praise the Lord across the
street and around the world. Let's end with the words of
Isaac Watts echoing the global and eternal vision of Psalm 117.
From all that dwell below the skies, let the Creator's praise
arise. Let the Redeemer's name be sung
through every land by every tongue.
Eternal are thy mercies, Lord, Eternal truths attend thy word.
Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore, till Suns shall
rise and set no more. Praise the Lord, let us pray.
God, we thank you for your great steadfast love and your eternal
faithfulness. God, you have shown that to us
in so many ways throughout history, in our own lives, God,
but supremely at the cross. God, you have an overcoming
power over our sins that we just we don't possess.
Lord, our sins dominate us, God, and the penalty of sin looms
over us. God, if we are not in you, but
we thank you that you are a conquer God, You prevail over
these things and you invite us to worship you.
I pray that we do that this morning in Christ name, Amen.