Psalm 47 is a psalm about the reign of God. In some sense, Psalm 47 answers the call of Psalm 46 to the Israel and the nations to Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth (46:10). Psalm 47 presents the God who is exalted in all the earth.
The Bible gives us two views of the reign of God. On the one hand, God’s reign is eternal and absolute. As R.C. Sproul said, If there is one maverick molecule running around the universe somewhere, then God is not sovereign. If he is not sovereign, he is not God.1 On the other hand, the Bible speaks of the coming reign of God in history. If fact, Jesus us taught us to pray, Thy Kingdom thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Mt. 6:10), that is that the eternal reign of God would fully and finally come in history.
Psalm 47 affirms both the eternal reign of God and his coming reign in history. The coming reign of God in history is what we refer to as the Kingdom of God.2 The kingdom of God is a world historical movement, following the fall of Adam, in which God works to defeat sin, death, and Satan and bring humanity to submit to the Son. So God said to the Son, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool (Ps. 110:1).3
In the person of Jesus Christ, particularly in his resurrection and his sending of the Spirit, the life of the age to come, that is, the Kingdom of God, has broken into this present age. Jesus proclaimed, good news of the Kingdom of God and called on people to repent to prepare for it. Jesus demonstrated the power of the age to come in his life and ministry.
That God reigns eternally and his reign in coming in history represents no change in God. The outworking of his eternal kingdom in history is not an afterthought in God, but simply the temporal expression of his eternal reign. It is inevitable. That his kingdom is coming does not make him king but rather his kingdom is coming because he is king. We can illustrate this with creation. God is not the Creator because he created all things, but because he is the eternal creator it is inevitable that he created all things.4 Because God is simply being who he is, his interaction with the world represents no change in him but simply is the revelation of his eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20).
I know listening to that is like smoking a firecracker. It blows your mind. But I raise the issue because as Luther said to Erasmus, Your thoughts of God are too human.5 In our day, we have lost a sense of the transcendent. God has become so immanent, so near, that he is about to disappear. This loss of a sense of the transcendent has left our society without moral and ethical underpinnings. We are adrift on the sea of anything goes. We pull the threads of our unraveling society by cheering on evildoers with phrases like, the heart wants what the heart wants, you can’t help who you love, it was merely adultery, porn addictions like its cigarettes or something. If I have left something out, just fill in the blank.
To that world, the Psalmist says, God reigns. He reigns eternally and his reign is coming in history. Obviously, God could have remedied the fall in an instant, however, he chose to reveal is eternal reign in time in the drama of salvation history.6 This is the subject of Psalm 47.
The psalm divides neatly into two sections: the one calls on the nations to recognize and respond to the mighty acts of God in history past that reveal his eternal reign and the other calls on the nations to praise God for moving history to the fullness of his coming reign at the end of the present age.
The unveiling of the Kingdom of God in history is good news. In fact, in this world plagued by sin, suffering, and death, it is the best news humanity could hear. It is right and fitting to recognize the work of God in history. When we recognize his rule in history, we find that he is absolutely praiseworthy.
You could respond, I don’t see it. Where is the evidence that God rules? What kind of rule does he have anyhow? Given what has happened to me, what is good about his reign? How can he be trusted? What reason have I to praise him?
What I want to argue is what we need more than anything in this dark and chaotic world is a vision of the exaltation of God. I want you to see that God sent his Son right into this hell-pit of a world and evil men took him did to him unspeakable crimes and nailed him to the cross to suffer and die alone. But in that very same event was the outworking of God’s eternal plan for the Son of God to die for sin (Acts 2:23). In him you have a Savior to whom you can bring your pain, who understands the agony of your soul, and who will show you that in pain and shame you have experienced, He has worked to bring you to faith in his Son, so that you might reign! He will not only cause you to rise above your pain, but he will make you reign with him.
There are two views of history. We can view history, even our own personal history, from the perspective of this present evil age. Or we can view history through the eyes of faith and see history as the canvass on which the grand drama of salvation is painted by the finger of God. Only God can take this wreck of a world and the mess of my life and make a Kingdom of light and joy out of it.
The psalmist argues in this first section of the Psalm that the peoples have reason to praise because of the way God has shown his kingship in history, particularly the history of Israel.
A. Call to Praise (1)
This section begins with imperatives calling on the peoples to clap and shout (1). The call to the peoples is pervasive and global in this psalm. The psalmist uses peoples (ammim) four times (1,3,9x2) meaning all heritages: for example, Hebrews, Arabs, Africans, Europeans, Asians, etc. Two different words are translated nations in verses 3 and 8. Nations (le ummim) in verse 3 is ethnic groups, and nations (goy) in verse 8 is geopolitical entities that are made of many ethnic groups, families and extended families. People of all ethnicities, heritages, and geopolitical entities are called to join together in praise of YHWH.
The psalmist calls on the people to clap and shout , to erupt in spontaneous praise with loud songs of joy (1). Clap and shout with a joyful voice. This is unfettered, unhinged praise. If we have a proper sense of who God is, joyful praise is the only fitting response. The best way to illustrate this is with the spontaneous cheers that erupt in a stadium when the home team makes an outstanding play. We cannot help but clap at greatness wherever and whenever we see it. In fact, you can’t take your eyes off of it but to see if others are enjoying it as well. In the 78th Iron Bowl, with 1 second on the clock Alabama attempted a field goal to clinch the win. Auburn fielded the ball in their own end zone and returned it the length of the field to take the win. To watch that highlight is still exciting.
B. Reasons for Praise (2-5)
Then the psalmist gives the reasons the peoples should clap and with loud songs of joy (2-5). Who God is in his person, the LORD Most High…a great king over all the earth (2), has been shown in history in his mighty acts (3-5).
1) His Person
The LORD Most High…a great King over all the earth (2) evokes the awed fear that calls for spontaneous, unhindered praise. It is interesting that Psalm 46 says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea (1-2). Because God is our refuge, we don’t fear though the world as we know it passes away. Yet here, because God is King, we are to fear. This is no contradiction, but it tells us the proper direction of our fear. To come to know, feel, and sense the God-ness of God, His absolute rule and power, gives that feeling of walking into Notre Dame for the first time. There is an overwhelming sense of awe. This is the highest moment of humans. It’s the moment you know why you were made. You were made to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
In Psalm 46:4 God is called Most High. Most High seems to be used most often when the people of God and the nations are in view.7 Here in Psalm 47, in view of the nations among whom God will be exalted, YHWH, the LORD, is designated Most High. This psalm is answering all the pagan cosmologies of the peoples of the world, confessing that YHWH, the God is Israel, has no rivals.
He is a great king. This the boast made by Sennacherib’s general to king Hezekiah when he had Jerusalem surrounded: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: “On what do you rest this trust of yours?” (2 Kgs 18:19). That night the angel of the LORD struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians (2 Kgs 19:35). YHWH Most High is a great King over all the earth. Is he not praises worthy? He has no peers. There is only room for one great king in the universe.
2) His acts (3-5)
He subdued peoples under us and nations under our feet (3). In the two big bookend events of the OT, the exodus and the return from exile, God did not raise an army but by himself to make himself known brought his people into the Land. Those are praise evoking events. Aaron’s sermon from 1 Samuel about the Philistines capturing the ark illustrates the point well. God does not need propped up. He doesn’t need help. He is not looking to be saved. Rather in these events the Kingship of God is seen in history, and they anticipate and foreshadow the coming reign of God.
In addition to the exodus and the return from exile, there is the Conquest, which is really the completion of the exodus.8 In the Conquest, the military capability of Israel was never in view. They could not beat the smallest army in Ai or less off the largest army they faced. They were more like the Continental Army facing the British. There was nothing special about Israel. What set them apart was that God chose the Land and set his love on Jacob (4). We don’t have time to unpack this but simply to let the Scripture speak: it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples (Deut. 7:7). God, however, once again in history demonstrated his eternal Kingship in the Conquest of Canaan.
In looking at the overall Conquest in verses 3 and 4, the psalmist sums up his argument in verse 5 by using the language of the first and last events that established God’s Kingship in Canaan. God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet (5). This recalls Jericho, the first battle of the Conquest, that consisted in Israel marching around a city and then shouting and blowing trumpets, and the walls came tumbling down (Josh 6). That was the first blow.
Then, there was a Jebusite city called Jerusalem that Israel could not conquer (Josh 15:63), that is, until David, God’s representative King. His first order of business when crowned king was to take that Jebusite city and make it the capital of the world (2 Sam. 5:1-10). He conquered that city and, then, went for the Ark that had long been in the house of Abinadab (1 Sam 7:1-2; 2 Sam 3:6ff). The Scripture says, David and all the house if Israel brought the ark of the LORD with shouting and with the sound of the horn (2 Sam 6:15). The psalmist uses same words from those two texts, shouting and trumpets, to serve notice that the God who reigns in heaven, reigns on earth, and he is establishing his Kingdom.
That is reason for the nations to clap and shout (and you and me). This text shows us that God chose Israel with a view to the nations. He chose them to save the world, that is, in the progressive unveiling of God’s salvation-historical plan to establish his Kingdom in history, the first decisive blow against sin and death and Satan and everything that opposed God was the establishing of his theocratic Kingdom is Israel. That represents and foreshadows God’s plan to establish his kingdom in this world. That is good news to the nations! The Kingdom is good news!
The reign of God in history compels the nations to erupt in unfettered praise. This is the biblical-theological foundation for all missionary endeavor. This the reason you plant the church, attend the church, serve the church, give to the church, and love the church—it is locus of the power and experience of the age to come in the present time.
As the first section began with two imperatives of praise (1), the second section begins with 5 imperatives, the same imperative repeated over and over (6,7). Four times in verse 6 we are commanded to sing praise (6). In case we missed it, the same imperative comes for a fifth time in verse 7 when we are given the reason for praise: For God is the King of all the earth.
The spontaneous clap and shout of joyful praise in verse 1 is given content in verse 7. We are to sing praises with a psalm (7). The psalm (maskill) is didactic or teaching poem. This is the doctrinal content of praise. At some point our unfettered praise (1) has to take on teaching truth to be sustained. We could say verse 1 is the noise of praise and verse 7 is setting it to music. Content is not to tame our praise but it is the fuel of praise. You see, if our hearts are dead, cold, and unmoved, we have missed the truth of who God is.
The doctrinal content of praise is the eternal kingship of God. He is the King of all the earth. The very reason we sing praise is God is King of all the earth (7). The present tense verb indicates the eternal Kingship of God.
God reigns (8, Elohim malak) is a perfect tense and has the sense of God has begun to reign or God has become King (8). The psalmist used the present tense in verse 7 to denote the eternal Kingship of God and the perfect tense in verse 8 to denote the coming Kingdom of God that will never end. Over against the eternal rule of God in verse 7, the psalmist points to the coming reign of God as reason for praise as well. The one implies the other. The one is the inevitable outworking of the other.
The psalm looks first at events in history past to the psalmist, namely the history of Israel and the realization of God’s Kingdom in the promise Land (1-5). In the second section, he looks to the future. He is showing us that past events point to the future, So if the Kingdom was seen at the highpoints in Israel’s history, the Kingdom must surely be coming in its fullness. From our vantage point, some of what was future to the psalmist is past to us, which gives us all the more reason to pray for and look for the Kingdom to come in its fullness. The coming reign of God is possible because of and is the outworking the eternal reign of God—the sovereignty of God over all things.9 Every victory in history demonstrating the Kingship of God was a foretaste of final victory.10
In the person of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, the reality of the age to come has broken into the world. The resurrected Christ sits on the throne as God works in the world to subdue all his enemies and put all things under him. In the present time, in this age of grace, the invitation is going out to the peoples of the world to gather in the latter day people of God, the church. In the community of the church, every tribe and tongue gather as the people of God of Abraham (9).
God told Abraham to look to the east and west and the north and south, as far he could see he would give it to him and his offspring (Gen 13:14,15). He promised offspring as numerous as the sands of the sea and the stars in heaven (Gen 13:16; 15:5). He promise him that kings and nations would come from him (17:6-7). How did Abraham understand those promises? Abraham believed God promised him the world (Rom 4:13) and his offspring are those, who like him, believe (Gal 3:7).
We can look at the world-political landscape and see powers lifted up in pride and trusting in the security of their might and conclude that the Bible is filled with fanciful language that is devoid of meaning. How could the representatives of the peoples ever gather as the people of God? We reason it cannot not happen. That is the same view the Canaanites and later the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans had.
But they didn’t understand that they were characters written into the grand drama of history where the God who reigns eternally will reign in history and is working in history to gather a people from among them for himself. God scattered the nations at Babel and confused their language, they he might gather them together in his Son and give them one voice of praise. Psalm 47 looks to that day because God Reigns.
This is the deep-rooted foundations of all our missionary endeavor. The process of gathering has begun. The people of the God of Abraham are the nations who come to Christ. 11