Psalm 47

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.

1 Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!

2 For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth.

This psalm of enthronement follows a psalm that declared God’s absolute sovereignty over creation and over the nations. It’s fitting that we would now celebrate the kingship of God with clapping, shouting, and singing. These all suggest an emotional response to this good reality. Apparently applause is one of those culturally ancient and universal practices. There are only a few ways that we can make noise using just our bodies, and these are the big three -- clapping, shouting, and singing together. For those that think the worship of God should only be quiet and reflective, this psalm would say otherwise. This feels more like a pep rally or an athletic competition -- events where we are very comfortable expressing ourselves loudly. There are probably moments that we should do this in our gathered worship today. The reason for all the excitement is a simple fact: YHWH, the Most High God, is to be feared and respected and held in awe because he is a great king over all the earth. I would worry excessively about the state of our country and the world were it not for this one fact: God is king and God is good.The psalmist will elaborate on this further, but consider the two psalms that have preceded this one with their central message: God is with us. He is with us as husband is with his wife, faithfully dedicated to her well-being as ultimate. He is with us in battle as commander of the angelic host, laying waste to our enemies with a single command. He is with us as a political leader is with his city, dispensing wisdom and justice. He is a river, a fortress, a city in which we dwell secure. For all this and more we hold a pep rally in his honor, raucously celebrating the fact that He is our king and the final authority over all the world. This benevolent king commands creation and allows nations to rise and fall. He will outlast them all, and so will we if we are united with Him. 

3 He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet.

4 He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves. Selah

Not only is YHWH king of the whole earth, but he has shown special favor to his chosen people, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Jacob. This is stated in military language as the subduing of peoples and nations under foot. Israel was never a military powerhouse, but they occasionally had stunning military victories which they understood to be God’s intervention on their behalf -- the Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea, the blitzkrieg conquest of the Canaan, the stunning victory of Gideon and his 300 men over the Midianites, David killing Goliath with one smooth stone, the defeat of the coalition of three armies by Jeoshaphat without even raising a sword, the catastrophic destruction of the Assyrian war machine in the days of Hezekiah, and many more. In every case, these battles are portrayed as victories of God worked through men and women who simply took him at his word, trusted him, and marched forward to face their enemies. This is why the psalmist is careful to give credit where it is due -- to YHWH and his actions. This is not a celebration of the king, his generals, his army or his people. This is applause for the King who fought for his people and then gave them the land of those who were conquered. This is the heritage they have received -- both the land upon which they built the nation and the God who keeps it secure. Inheritance typically referred to land and wealth passed down from the previous generation, and here it is the land of Canaan, originally promised to Abraham and later secured by God in the days of Joshua and kept for the nation in the centuries that followed. When Jesus came as a guarantee of a better covenant, we became citizens of his kingdom and our inheritance is not land but God himself. The subduing of nations and peoples is the conversion of populations to faith in Christ, and this has been the work of the church for the last 2,000 years. Slowly but certainly spreading the good news of the kingdom to every land, subduing peoples under the lordship of Jesus Christ. The great empires of the ancient world are gone, but the church remains the largest government by far in the history of the world. Her security is not in the hands of her citizens but where it has always been, in the hands of God. So do not fear. 

5 God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.

The historical and culture reference here is to an enthronement ceremony. Kings in the ancient world were elevated to god-like status. As the agents and representatives of the deities of their nation, they mediated the power and authority of the gods. In something like a coronation ceremony, these kings ascended to their thrones as a symbol of their rule. Israel likely followed the same customs but with the understanding that the king was not God or even god-like in the same sense. There was no cult of emperor-worship or king-worship like we find in other ancient cultures. No, YHWH was the king, the great king above all Gods. And so this psalm celebrates the ascension of YHWH, taking his throne in heaven to reign over all the earth. This is accompanied by the music of a trumpet, the sounding of a horn, the loudest of the wind instruments to make it known far and wide and that YHWH is king. When Jesus ascended to take his place at the right hand of God, there were no trumpets, just eleven guys looking up at the sky. Such an ascension shouldn’t surprise us given the type of entry this king had into the world, born in a stable, laid in a manger. It’s not startling given the fact that he spent most of his life as a laborer in a backwater province of the great Roman Empire. His itinerant ministry focused on God’s care for the marginalized in society -- the crippled, blind, and deaf, the prostitutes and tax collectors, the Samaritan and the gentile. Indeed, it was a new type of kingdom with a new type of king. And so it required a new type of ascension as Jesus was elevated to the heavens while a few of his associates were left behind to carry on his work with the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the legacy that we have received. Follow our king by caring for the marginalized and preaching the good news of the kingdom until that one day when we will join him in the air. 

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 praises with a psalm! [maskil]

The second half of the psalm commands us to sing no less than five times! The first verse opened with clapping, shouting, and singing which can be loud and rowdy, but this is all about making music. The verb is one of intensity, and is most commonly translated as “sing praises”, make musical worship to God. The fifth statement specifically commands the singing of a maskil, a particular form of psalm. Unfortunately, we don’t really know what a maskil is. The object of our worship is God the King of all the earth. He is worthy of our worship because of who He is and because of the position that he holds. The command is stated five times, the repetition strengthening the urgency and intensity of the command. We see this echoed frequently in modern worship music. Leaders will urge the congregation to sing, lyrics will repeat phrases like this multiple times. In fact, modern worship songs are often criticized for their repetition. This psalm would suggest a biblical basis for repetition. There is the poetic power behind it as well as the rhythm that the repeated lyric provides. It’s also easier to memorize. Does this kind of energy describe the way that I worship? There are many ways to express our worship, but clearly loud and repetitive singing is one of them. We need not be apologetic about that, particularly when there is a biblical example of it. Let yourself go and worship God like you were at a pep rally or a football game. Shout at the top of your lungs, sing loudly and proudly. We shout and sing for far less worthy things.  

8 God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.

9 The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!

These verses describe the climax of the enthronement ceremony. God now reigns over the nations as he sits on his holy throne. The leaders of nations gather before him as the people of the God of Abraham. Formerly pagan kings and princes have been adopted into the family of Israel. The “shields of the earth” refers to the kings of the earth. Even those who have not assembled as the people of Israel are still under God’s sovereign leadership. He reigns above it all. This song of celebration was just beginning to be fulfilled when it was originally penned. If the context is the same as the previous psalm, it’s likely that it was written following the dramatic defeat of the Assyrian army in 701 BC. As word of this event spread it is likely that other nations took notice, and they left Israel alone for another century. It’s possible that there were even conversions as the princes and kings of the nations invited YHWH into their pantheon of Gods. I don’t know of any evidence of this, but it seems likely. Like the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea and the conquest of the land, the unstoppable advancement of the nation of Israel, led by her God, put fear in the hearts of other national leaders. It’s easy to see how this psalm could have been written in that climate. However, the psalmist was unknowingly directing our gaze to a far more significant future event that would fulfill this promise in a way that he never imagined -- the peaceable conquest of the nations through the advancement of the gospel. Jesus is the enthroned king in this psalm, and the princes of the nations now bow before him. This began in the book of Acts with the Ethiopian eunuch, the Roman centurion, the churches in Antioch and Asia Minor, then Athens and eventually Rome. The unstoppable advance of the church is one of the most fantastic events in history, and in the last two thousand years innumerable peoples and nations have bowed the knee to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The church today is a rich tapestry of color and culture, united around a common allegiance to the One who is highly exalted. And even today, while the nations rage, and kings spout arrogance, remember that they too all belong to the LORD. He is highly exalted.