Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

I LET THE WHOLE EARTH SING - 1-6 Command to God’s People

“Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Sing to the Lord; bless his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.” (1-3) Three different times we are commanded to ‘sing’ and to ‘proclaim’ the good news of Christ to the world. There is an obvious foreshadowing of the Holy Trinity in these triplet verses. The psalms become more New Testament in character the closer they were composed to the birth of Jesus. The ‘old songs’ of the church cannot completely express the ‘new things’ God does as history progresses. The Song of David on Mount Zion cannot fully convey the joy of the miraculous return of the Jews from Babylon so the Holy Spirit calls for the musicians to reconstruct a new song on the foundations of the old. We are never commanded to sing an old song in Scripture, as that will happen naturally; we are commanded to press in to the new song and new things God is doing. This Psalm reveals a powerful agent God has for the evangelization of the world; bringing heart- felt worship together with the message of Christ’s salvation! It is to be a daily passion to worship and witness, we are to tell others of miraculous things Jesus has done with music and message. It is a story and a song for ‘everyone’; Jew, Gentile, all religions, all races, all ages and all cultures as there are no barriers to limit the sweet melody of the good news of Christ and his salvation. Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! He is to be revered above all the gods. The gods of other nations are merely idols, but the Lord made the heavens! Honor and majesty surround him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.” (4-6) As the salvation of Yahweh revealed in Jesus Christ is opened up for all the nations of the world, the question of worship is addressed. Is the Lord merely a ‘bigger’ god in a pantheon of all the gods and idols of the nations or is he exclusively god? The psalmist makes it very clear that Israel’s God is the one true and supreme deity as he make a play on words in verse 5: “the ‘elilim’ (non-entities, nothings) of other nations are merely idols, but ‘Elohim’ (mighty God) made the heavens.” (5) As Paul carried the good news to the Gentile world, he confronted the same issue with the truth of this psalm: “Well, we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God and no other. According to some people, there are many so-called gods and many lords, both in heaven and on earth. But we know that there is only one God…” (1 Cor. 8:4, 5) In contrast to the degrading worship of the elilim of the Gentiles, Elohim has the attendants of ‘honor and majesty’ and ‘strength and beauty’ accompanying him in his sanctu- ary. There must be these characteristics in both the music and the manner in which we worship God. “O nations of the world, recognize the Lord: recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong. Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come to worship him. Worship the Lord in all his holy splendor.” (7-9) The NIV version of verses 7 and 8 bring out the worship of the Trinity: “Ascribe to the Lord, O families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name…” As in Psalm 95 this is a ‘Venite’ (Latin for ‘come’) not for the Jews but for the Gentiles to come and worship the God of Israel. The offering they are to bring is not the animal sacrifice but the grain/thanksgiving of- fering (Hebrew- ‘Minchah’) because the blood of Christ has been offered for them. It is prophetic of the bread of the table of the Lord. The psalmist is pleading with the nations to make the worship appropri- ate to the greatness of the Lord. The small, angry gods of the nations received small, begrudging wor- ship but now the families of the earth are invited to experience the grandeur, strength and holiness of Israel’s God. The danger we have today is to make his praise too small in proportion to who he is and what he has done. II LET ALL THE EARTH TREMBLE - 7-10 Command to the Nations

“Let all the earth tremble before him. Tell all the nations that the Lord is king. The world is firmly es- tablished and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly.” (9, 10)

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