Dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, short but sweet variations on this sentiment have been expressed time and again with reference to Psalm 117, the shortest psalm in the Psalter or chapter in the Bible if you want to look at it that way. Only a psalm away from the longest Psalm 119, so short that some have sought to attach it to what precedes Psalm 116 or what follows Psalm 118, as if it could not properly stand alone. though it begins and ends with a call to praise. And just some scholars, they got to do something, so they say dumb things like that. Oh, it probably goes with what comes before. You're just making this up, aren't you? Yes. Yes. It has a clear integrity, this song. Some, in fact, think that, little sounder scholars, think it may have been used as a sort of doxology in temple worship. You could see that, couldn't you? This has that feature. It's complete unto itself. It contains a world in its brief scope. Expansiveness is often necessary and helpful in many respects, at least people like me say that, and I'm sticking to it. Expansiveness is sometimes helpful, but so is brevity. Short in expression, yet with a theme and application as wide as all creation. This is Psalm 117. Near the center of all the word, and calling, notice this, calling on the whole world to engage, and make sure you don't miss this, in the central occupation of eternity. Praise the Lord. This is the occupation of eternity. This is what those saints who have gone on are doing. This is what we will be doing. And it's multifaceted. It isn't just saying, praise the Lord. but that is a grand and glorious calling. And so the theme of this psalm is evident. God, by the psalmist, commands universal praise. That's what we see here. God commands universal praise, and we see this theme developed in these two ways. The call to praise, first of all, and secondly, the cause for praise. So the call to praise and then the cause for praise. Well, the call to praise sounds right off the bat in verse 1. It begins, Praise the Lord, all you nations, all you Gentiles, the word there is goyim, Gentiles, nations, a parallel word is then used, extol him, some say laud him, various ways of translating that, all you people groups, all you ethnicities. And so we have in that first verse a call to praise that is universal. So let's note the scope and the purpose of this divine call. The scope and the purpose of the divine call. So first, the scope of the call to praise. As we say, it's very obvious. It's to all Gentiles, to the nations, the goyim. And I say it's obvious, but was it obvious to those who first heard it? Well, it had been said ever since the call of Abraham. When God began to call a particular people out, which is after the Tower of Babel fiasco, right? He begins with Abraham. He calls him out of Ur of the Chaldees. And he calls him to go from there, in Mesopotamia, over to what comes to be called Palestine. Israel, he calls him to go over there. And he tells him that this will be to him and to his seed, but he makes it very clear that he means not just his ethnic offspring, but that through his seed all nations will be blessed. That's very clear to Abraham. It's right there in the text. not just to the Jews. We often rightly recognize that in the Old Testament, before Pentecost, God's gracious salvation came largely to ethnic Israel. It did. It didn't come exclusively, but close to exclusively, to ethnic Israel. Yes, there were what I sometimes call previews of coming attractions in something like the faith of Rahab, Rahab is somebody who is outside of ethnic Israel, who adopts and believes their faith, throws her lot in with them. The call of Ruth, the Moabitess, she's outside of Israel. The repentance of Nineveh. Jonah, the reluctant prophet, finally stops running away and goes and preaches to Nineveh. He doesn't want to preach to Nineveh because, not because he thinks God is a harsh God. Jonah actually probably has a higher view of God than a lot of us tend to. Jonah actually believes the preaching of the word will bring about repentance. that his preaching judgment will bring repentance, and he doesn't want the Ninevites to repent. He wants them simply to be destroyed. But we see these kinds of little clues that this message, this salvation, is at some point going to go global. It isn't just for ethnic Israel. It is the case that through ethnic Israel, Messiah will come. Messiah will come. This, for example, is why they needed to maintain, and just this is a little aside, this is why they needed to maintain tribal purity and not have intermarriage between the tribes. And this is why you get things like you can't mix two types of materials. It's symbolic for tribal purity. Well, I don't get it. What do you mean tribal purity? He's from Judah. You can't have Judah intermarrying with Benjamin. because you won't have distinct Judah anymore. Just a little something there for you to think about. And so they maintained that until Shiloh comes to use the old, it's just very nicely poetic in the King James there, back in Genesis. So, The call is to all Gentiles, not just to Jews, though you can understand that in the Old Testament, largely, that's what it was. This verse highlights a very direct Old Testament reference to the glorious reality that God's eternal purpose was not simply to bless the Jews, but through them and Messiah, the Christ of God, to bless the world. And so this is what Paul, among others, but Paul picks this up. You heard Brother Shannon read from Romans 15. I don't know if you were following. But verse 11, he quotes several Old Testament passages. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. He's the one especially who will have as his call to bring the gospel of the nations, to go beyond the bounds of the Jews, and to go to the whole known world. And in Romans 15, verse 11, that was read by Elder Shannon, He directly and distinctly quotes verse 1 here. He quotes Psalm 117, verse 1. So he's saying, remember what was said back in the Psalms and in other places, prophets, But remember that Psalm 117? Here it is. And this is what God is doing. He is not just blessing ethnic Israel, but now He's gathering a people to Himself of every tribe and kindred and tongue and nation. He's blessing the world. That this was missed not only by the Jews of the Old Testament, it was largely missed. I mean, they had Psalm 117, they had all kinds of stuff. Now, you have to understand, there's a certain willfulness here. They didn't want to get it. In other words, it was like, yes, God, bless us, maximally bless us, give us everything we need, make us a great people, or them, just destroy them. I mean, you can understand that from a lot of points of view, from the point of view that these were enemies who wanted to destroy them. These were enemies who wanted to destroy them. From the river to the sea and more. I mean, you should be able to understand these things. So they're saying, No, get them first. Get them first. So we say, though it's right here, right? It's right here in this psalm that God is going to bless all nations and he calls all nations to praise him. He calls all peoples to extol or to laud him. That wasn't desired by the Jews. That wasn't understood by the Jews. But even in the New Covenant, remember Peter is Hungry, he's in a trance. And the Lord says to him, rise, kill, and eat. And Peter says, Lord, I have never let anything that is unclean touch these lips. No. Well, you really, you're not supposed to say that to the Lord. When he says, rise, kill, and eat, that's what you do. And he says, don't call what I call clean, unclean. And he taught Peter, you go to Cornelius, you give this Roman ruler, this Roman military figure, the gospel. And so of all people, it was Peter who took this. He wasn't the apostle to the Gentiles, but he took that to the Gentiles. But see, it took a while for him to get this though, right? Because we read in Galatia where he and Paul are having a grand old time there. And then some people come in, some of the Jewish party, who are saying, yeah, we're believers in Jesus, we're followers of Jesus, but if Gentiles are going to do that, they need to basically become Jews, or we're going to keep ourselves— there were different ways they would do it— but we're going to keep ourselves separate from the Gentiles, like we're supposed to. And Peter went over with them. Peter was over there eating with Gentiles, hanging out with Gentiles, And he sort of played like, oh, you didn't think I was with them, did you? No, I'm over here with you. And Paul brought him up short. Paul called him on it, right? Paul said, you can't do this. Wrong. The middle wall of partition has been broken down. We can all fellowship together, Jew and Gentile. You don't need to separate yourself. Knock it off, Peter. So we see here, even in the new, that there's this reluctance, this slowness. What we see here is really all of our problem, don't we? We fail to believe and to live out the truth. That's a challenge for us all. We may even know it. I mean, you understand that Peter knew this. I mean, he had taken the Gospel to Cornelius. The Lord told him, don't call him clean what I call clean. He knew this. It wasn't like he didn't know it. I'm sure you never do anything that you know you shouldn't do. No, he did. He did. It takes a while, doesn't it? It takes time in our lives, it takes time in history, all outworked by the Holy Spirit. This is helpful to remember. God's patient with us. He was patient with Peter. He was patient with the Jews who became followers of Christ, and then the Gentiles coming in. The whole Acts Council had to do with that patience and that careful working through things. But what we see here is the scope. We're talking about the scope of the call. The scope is all nations and all people groups in it. Charles Spurgeon says this, we know and believe that no one tribe of men shall be unrepresented in the universal song which shall ascend unto the Lord of all. Individuals have already been gathered, this is him speaking of the 19th century, individuals have already been gathered out of every kindred and people entombed by the preaching of the gospel, and these have rightheartedly joined in magnifying the grace which sought them out and brought them to know the Savior. These are but the advance guard of a number which no man can number who will come to worship the all-glorious One. to worship the All-Glorious One. This is what's being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is carrying out this work in the work of the church. Let us dedicate our time, treasure, and talents to this highest of tasks, this calling of the whole world to praise the Lord. Crying to the Lord in wrath to remember mercy and to revive us until the completing of this sacred task. This is the labor This is the work. Let's not be distracted from it by lesser things. Seek first His Kingdom and everything else is a consequence of it. A lot of Christians, conservative Christians, even Reformed conservative Christians have said, we really need to get our politics all right. Look, if our hearts are right, politics follow as a consequence of that. Our call as the church, as the visible body, is to be what the church is supposed to be, which is living for Him. The call to praise. We've thought about its scope. What about its purpose? It arises from a particular purpose. First of all, that all should praise God is His due. So the whole world is called to praise Him. That's the scope. Why? He deserves it. In the first place, it's just that simple. He deserves our praise. As the psalmist says, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Even the inanimate creation gives Him praise. Psalm 19.1 says, the heavens declare, the firmament shows forth. All creation proclaims Him. Why should not all men, as the crown of creation, be called to proclaim Him? And we say, why? Because He's worthy. So we should in all that we do, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should seek to glorify the Lord, which is another way. When we say, I want to glorify God, that's a way of saying, I want to praise Him. And maybe it's just highlighting that we are not only to praise Him with our lips, but with our lives. So we're not to praise Him just by what we say. We're not to say, praise the Lord and to live contrary to that. We're to say, praise the Lord and to call others to praise the Lord and live a life full of grace, full of peace unto Him. Thus we praise him, we say, because it's fitting. As Leslie Allen put it, the primary rationale of the sermon of the summons, excuse me, the primary rationale of the summons in verse one, the call to praise the Lord, is not contemporary missionary intent, nor eschatological hope of conversion, but the preliminary truth that Yahweh deserves the praise of the whole world. And again, from what we saw this morning, no matter what, no matter what difficulties you're encountering, this isn't to say, well, you know, when my bank account gets straight, when my friends who have left me come back, when all these good things happen, then I'll praise the Lord. No. You're to praise Him out of the pit, the psalmist says. You cry to Him, you cry for deliverance, but you cry and you praise Him. But because he does deserve it, right, this should and does fuel our missionary efforts. We say we don't do this in the first place because of contemporary mission intent or hope of conversion of those who are outside, but We do it and it does fuel our missionary efforts to enlist others to join us. And just let me say here, in the call to praise the Lord, now you may be stopping and thinking, okay, what exactly does he mean by this? How is this supposed to manifest itself in my life? Well, Peter says, be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you a reason of the hope that is within. You should be living in such a way is that you show, as we heard in the text, the end part of the text from Elder Shannon, this hope that you have. You should be evincing this. And you should say, okay, I think I'm gathering what you're saying. You say, with my lips and with my life, I'm to praise God and I'm to call others to the praise of that. Yeah, I can get why you're saying that. That's your personality. That's your temperament. I'm a Midwesterner. Whatever excuse you want to give, I don't have to do this. There are no excuses. You say, well, exactly how am I to do this in my life? You have to figure that out. You have to figure this out. You have to figure out how should my life be a paying of praise to my God. I mean, for one thing, you walk according to his ways. You walk as He has said to walk. You die to sin. You live to righteousness. Many people may have a quiet, reserved personality. I know people with quiet, reserved personalities who are full of the praise of the Lord. They're full of the praise of the Lord. So it's time to put the excuses aside. You don't ever get to say, well, this doesn't apply to me in God's word. I mean, there are things that don't apply. You're not called to go and baptize people. I understand that. But when Peter says, be ready to give an answer to any love, ask your reason for the hope. So be intentional about this. Think about this. How can I praise him more in my family, my extended family? Just the people that I know that I live with, the house that I live in, and the neighbors that are mine. How do I praise him at my work? How do I praise him at my school? How do I make my life a paying of praise to my God so that others will see it? and speak these words of praise. I don't know where you are. I have it in the notes here. I challenge, this is sort of a New Year sermon and we're getting a little long in the New Year, but I wanted to preach it anyway. I have it in the notes here. Make it your goal to speak to 20 people this year in this way. Now, for some people, that would be like, oh my goodness, are you nuts? I can't do that. You got to start somewhere. You know, Jeremy Chong spoke to 20 people coming here tonight. I'm just kidding, but... Okay? You have to start. And it's a blessing. Oh, what a blessing it is. It's what they need. It's what people need. People are dying all about us. We have what they need. And we're calling the world, we're calling them to join us in praising God. It's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. You say, well, we're actually calling them to die and all. Yeah, we're calling them to all of that, but remember what Brother Elliot said, he is no fool who gives up what he can't keep to gain what he can't lose. That's true. That's all we're doing ultimately. What we're called to give up is nothing worth having. In fact, it's killing you. We praise him because he deserves it, and it does fuel, it should fuel our missionary efforts. And it does point to the great hope of others coming to join us in the praise of our Lord. Think of it, others coming to join us so that we could never exhaust, if each of us had a thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer's praise. Because don't you have the sense, on a Lord's Day, you say, religious worship is giving God His due. But we just barely scratch that surface, don't we? He really deserves so much more than we ever start to give Him. That's why the songwriters write things like, A thousand tongues. I wish I could give Him more. I mean, when you really love somebody, I mean, we know this just on an earthly level. When we love somebody, truly, we feel like we can't do enough for them. We love to serve them. I mean, and how much more it is with our God. Praise the Lord all nations, extol Him all peoples. Well, we've been looking at the call to praise. Let's consider now in verse 2, the cause for praise. Now, you have it in what we read here, the ESV. You have, for great is this dead Fesselhoff toward us. I'm fine with that phrase. Don't have any problem with the way that's translated. And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. I take a little issue with that translation. I prefer this. And I think this is close to the way it is in the New King James. Some other versions translate it this way. For or because of his merciful kindness or his steadfast love, either one of those, is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever. The word there is a form of emmet, which is better translated truth, I think. So I would translate this, his steepest love is great toward us, that's fine, but the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise God for these two things, His steadfast love and His truth. Let's think just a little about them. His steadfast love, His merciful kindness. There's lots of ways of translating that word there in verse 2. I'll say it because I'm going to say two Hebrew words because I think these are words, I know the second one that I'll say in a bit is a word you've heard, shalom. You all know that word. But this word is chesed. Now maybe I overly ask, I'll say hesed, okay? But that's not the way a Jew would say it, but that's okay. Hesed. That's the word. Covenant faithfulness. Steadfast love. Merciful kindness. There are all these different ways. That's the grand word that describes God's love for us. That we sang about this morning. His love will never let us go. Remember? A love that will not let me go. That's God's chesed. That's his faithful covenant love. And what this says here is, great is his steadfast love towards us. One commentator notes that this could be translated, his never failing covenant love towers over us. Literally, in the Hebrew, you could say, his love towers over us. It overshadows our sin. You need to know this in all your struggles, in all your difficulties. His never failing love is greater than your always disheartening lack of love. We always lack love. We fall so short. And if that's what we're going to focus on, boy, that's disheartening. It's like, wow. But it towers over. His love towers over it. This hesed is seen particularly in his justifying the ungodly, in his adopting rebels like us, in sanctifying and preserving those who so often fail. You can see why I'm preaching this after this morning. Truly, only those who are thus redeemed can and will praise him. Who is to praise him? Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. That's who's going to praise him. If the redeemed won't praise him, who's going to? Think of this, our environs here. Here we are, sitting here, not far from the Orland Square Mall, the witch hat Lutheran church. Sorry, I shouldn't say that. Every time I see it, I'm like, hmm, very interesting. Here we are. Who's going to praise the Lord? It should be you. I mean, I'm not saying there aren't other Christians here. But you know, your attitude should always be, not, let somebody else praise the Lord. It should be, God in heaven, I'm so needy, I'm so weak, I'm so sinful, but if anybody in this room is going to praise You, let it be me. Let that be your attitude. Let it be me. Let it be me, because you can't speak for other people. Let everybody in the room say that. Make me that one who will praise you and who will call others to it. Truly, the redeemed need to say so. God has never, Ephesians 1, not loved us. He's always loved us based on His good pleasure, not based on faith foreseen or good works foreseen or anything. Rather, all kinds of bad things foreseen. His love, as we said this morning, will never let us go. He will, to take another hymn, never, no never, no never forsake. Even though we're most slow to learn and we rebel often, we need patience with each other. Remember I said earlier how the Lord deals with us with patience. Chesed really emphasizes that. His merciful kindness, His faithful love to the likes of us. We keep slipping and sliding and blowing it and not doing too well, and He keeps loving us. and calling us back to Himself, away with perfectionism. This is not the picture of chesed. Steadfast love is. Well, this is all the more remarkable, I think, in light of the fact of the second thing, that the truth of the Lord endures forever. I think that's a better translation. The truth of the Lord endures forever. The truth is that God is holy, unalterably so, and that we, as fallen, are sinful. That's the truth. God is holy. We're sinful. Just given these facts, truth doesn't appear to be something to which we should appeal. It doesn't appear to be something that we could celebrate, right? God is holy and we're not. That sounds like we're in trouble. That sounds like our goose is cooked. Well, it is, unless God makes some provision, and He does in Christ. He makes every provision. So, truth doesn't seem to be something that the guilty, no guilty criminal wants the truth. I've had lawyers tell me, if I were If I were on trial and I were not guilty, I would want a bench trial. Because the judge could clearly see that I'm not guilty, they don't have proper evidence, and so forth. He said, if I'm guilty, I want a jury trial. Not that the jury won't see that I'm guilty. They may well. But I have a better shot of fooling a jury than I do a judge. And many law, I mean, there's even a historic old phrase. In fact, Gilbert and Sullivan mention it in one of their operettas. He says, I'd never throw dust in a juryman's eye. You understand that's what many defense lawyers throw dust in the jury's eye. That means confusing the jury about the party that's on trial. That's what we do, because we are guilty. We're guilty. But we can praise the Lord that His truth endures forever. We can praise Him for His truth because He doesn't save us by denying His truth, but by fulfilling it in the person and work of Christ. Because God both loves us and is committed to truth, this means that all blessings come to us Not because righteousness isn't fulfilled, it is. Jesus comes and in His active obedience, He keeps the whole law for us. And in His passive obedience, He goes to the tree and He pays for our lawlessness. So God doesn't forgive our sin by just overlooking it. He forgives it because Christ paid for it. Christ Himself purchased our salvation. You say, well, that's very costly. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Christ must die and so must we. We must die. Both are good and both are costly. Never forget this. This is not some generic thing, but it's all tied to Jesus. God's covenant faithfulness, His love, His steadfast love, His faithful, His merciful kindness, coupled with truth. And the truth is, Jesus does for us what we could never do for ourselves. And this is why we have forgiveness. This is why we have salvation. We can sing and we can call for universal praise only because of Jesus. Jesus Christ is the cause. He's the real cause of all our praise. It is in Jesus' person and work alone that Chesed and In it, mercy and truth are brought together. He is the truth. Jesus is the truth incarnate, who alone paves the way. It's a new and living way that he paves by his sacrifice. He paves the way to life. Psalm 85 10 puts this beautifully, and you probably were thinking of this when I said mercy and truth. Psalm 85 10 says, mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed. These are things that seem opposite. Righteousness, because we're unrighteous, is not going to give us peace, but because Christ is righteous. And if you trust Him and Him alone, His righteousness, all that righteousness that He won on our behalf is accredited to us, our sin being accounted to Him. The glorious exchange being made, as Luther says. What a description of the person of our Lord. Mercy and truth met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed. The word became flesh full of grace and truth. So truth is our friend. Though it might seem at first blush, it's not. He's full of grace and truth, who's doing and dying, bring mercy and truth, righteousness and peace together. And here's the other little bit of Hebrew. Actually, it's going to be a couple of words. He is truly, and this is what Hebrews is all about, to speaking to all these Jewish folk who have come to trust Christ. And the question is raised, well, how can you trust him who does this so-called priestly work? And he's of Judah, not of Levi. And the answer is, well, he's a great high priest after the order of Melchizedek. He's not a Levitical priest. He's of a higher, superior previous order. And Melchizedek, the name is Melchizedek. Melchizedek. And Melchizedek means king of righteousness. And it says there back, if you go to Genesis 14, He's Melchizedek, He's King of Righteousness, and He's Melech Shalom. King of Salem, it gets translated in Psalm. Shalom, or it's really Jerusalem. But He's King of Peace. He's King of Righteousness and King of Peace. He's our true Melchizedek. This is the calling and message of the church. It is this Psalm 117, that we are to be living out, patiently looking to Him, and declaring to the world. We should be saying in every way that God enables us to say in our lives, and we should be supporting all those who say it in the most direct and explicit of ways. We should be praying for this. We should be doing it ourselves. We should be saying, praise the Lord, all nations, extol Him, all peoples. Great is His steadfast love toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever. He brings it all together. Praise the Lord. It's all in Christ. Not self-help, or how to better yourself, or be successful. No. That's not what we're about. What we're about is the simple truth that with lips and lives, we're calling all, including ourselves, to be on the right side of history. We hear liberals use this all the time. Don't you want to be on the right side of history? I sure do. And if your trust and faith and hope is in Jesus Christ, you're on the right side of history. It might not look like it to the world. It might not look like it to you because we're persecuted. We prevail in weakness. As did Jesus. We don't prevail by playing the world's game. Stop it. Stop it. If you think we need the world's coming at us, we've got to come back at them in the same way, you don't understand the Christian faith. That isn't the Christian faith. Jesus says, turn the other cheek. He says all kinds of things. You're like, how can I do this? Well, you can't in the flesh. But this is what the Christian faith is. He prevailed when it looked like he had been utterly defeated. Christians don't prevail in this world by beating our chest like the world does. We prevail by living as we're to do, as followers of Christ. This is what should set the plate for us in all the days to come. Let's pray. make us followers of the Lord Jesus truly. Those who are humbled. Those who minister in weakness. Those who don't seek to lord it over others as Jesus said. Gentile world leaders do that. But where to be last. Help us to realize that kingdom greatness is a four-letter word that's L-A-S-T. Grant us this in Jesus' name. Amen.