Praise the Lord Our Ascended King!

We are taking a break from our series in Galatians this week because I felt burdened to share Psalm 47 together. In a way to get us thinking about Psalm 47 is to wrestle with this question. If I were to ask you who is the greatest ruler in history,(...) if you're a younger student of world history, you might immediately think of that guy named Alexander the Great because, well, the name tells you, right? He's the great one. If you're maybe a little more studied in world history, you might say, well, I don't know, Caesar Augustus and the whole Roman Empire. That was, you know, it was almost a thousand years of rule there at some level.(...) If you are a student of the East, you might say, Qin Shi Huang, the emperor who united China.(...) And maybe then you'd look at Genghis Khan, who the great Mongolian warlord who basically conquered all of Asia and the Silk Road while he was at it. But Psalm 47 begs to differ.(...) Psalm 47 begs to differ. It declares that God is the greatest ruler in all of history. And not only the past, but the present and the future until he comes and makes all things new. The question for us is today, do we believe it? So would you please open your Bibles to Psalms, particularly Psalm 47, stand with me. And we're going to read this together in a dynamic way. I'm going to read the first two verses. You're going to respond with verses three and four. And we're going to read this in a call and response fashion. Okay. So I will begin reading Psalm 47 to the choir master, a Psalm of the sons of Korah. Verse one, clap your hands, all peoples shout to God with loud songs of joy for the Lord. The most high is to be feared a great King over all the earth church. He subdued peoples under us and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us. The pride of Jacob, whom he loves. Verse five, God has gone up with a shout, the Lord of the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God. Sing praises. Sing praises to our King.(...) For God is the King of all the earth.(...) Verse eight, God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. 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.(...) Let's pray. Lord, we exalt you

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in our worship in music and our worship in reading your scripture and in prayer and the giving of our tithes and our offerings. We are called to worship you with every ounce and minute of our lives.(...) And you call the nations to honor and to glorify you.

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May they do so. May you continue to bring revival.(...) May you continue to do the work, the resurrection work of taking dead hearts and making them alive in Christ through your spirit. May you get all the glory for the way that you will work in our lives today

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and tonight and on a week to come and weeks and months and years. We pray all these things in the name of our King Jesus. Amen.(...) Please be seated.

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Well, we just practiced the entire point of the sermon,(...) praising the Lord, our ascended king. There's an air on the back of your bulletin. It's Psalm 47, not 147. Note that.

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If I could mic drop, I would, but this doesn't really have the same effect. If I drop it, it's not very loud and it's actually really expensive. So I guess I got to go through the rest of the sermon.(...) Psalm 47, like many of the Psalms, as we learned in our prior series in the Psalms, there's a prescription. Now in your Bibles, if you have like I do an ASV or maybe you have an NIV or even the old King James, the editors, the English editors of the Bibles often put headings, suggested themes for different books. But that's not what we're talking about here in the Psalms. What you heard me read first to the choir master, a Psalm of the sons of David, or sons of Cora, excuse me, that's in the Hebrew. That's actually written in the Bible. That's actually inspired and therefore God's word. The title that is written over my Psalm 47 by the human editors, God is king over all the earth. That's not scripture. That's just a suggested summary of the text. So good to know if you're unfamiliar with your Bible. So we learn that the Psalm is dedicated or purpose to the choir master, the choir director, no doubt one of the Levites responsible for the church choir, if you want to call it, the temple choir.(...) We know nothing else for sure about this Psalm's purpose other than like most of the Psalms, it's a poem and it's meant to be sung.(...) And we know who wrote it. One of the sons of Cora, a little research in 1 Chronicles 6 and other places in the Old Testament will tell you that the sons of Cora were a clan of Levites, particularly set aside by David for the music that happened in the tabernacle and then the temple, in the sanctuary.(...) When God's people gathered together, the sons of Cora were responsible for helping God's people sing.(...) The next question is, well, why? Why did the sons of Cora write this Psalm and does it have a particular purpose?

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Again, first, remember every Psalm is meant to be sung.

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They're poetry. It's meant to be sung.(...) If you are an old Presbyterian and I have one in my office, you have a Psalter that is all 150 Psalms put to music.(...) My sister attends a church where they sing the Psalms every Sunday.(...) Two, our Psalm is, as you remember from the earlier series that we had, and if you are unfamiliar, you want to go back, take a look on our website or on YouTube, and you can go back to the earlier part of this year and look at our series and the Psalms. There are always, there are different types of Psalms. Just as you wouldn't read the history in Joshua in the same way that you would read the poetry in the Psalms, there are even different types of Psalms. There are Psalms of praise.(...) There are Psalms of lament.(...) There are Psalms that cry out for justice, and there are Psalms that give thanks and more.(...) There's a long tradition of seeing Psalm 47 as an enthronement Psalm, a Psalm dramatizing God's rule as king over man and creation.(...) God's rule as the great king over all the other kings and his creation. Psalms 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, those are also enthronement Psalms. If you want to reference that again, Psalm 93 and 96 through 99, they fit into that category.(...) Our Psalm fits that category pretty okay, except those Psalms look forward in a future tense to God's enthronement. Our Psalm talks about it in a present tense, the here and the now. God, according to Psalm 47, is enthroned. God, according to Psalm 47, rules the nations now that he is the king over all the presidents, over all the magistrates in our world.(...) Again, the question for you and I is do we believe this and does it show in the way that we live?(...) The psalmist doesn't ask us to believe. Notice he commands us, verse 1, "Clap your hands, all peoples.

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Shout to God with loud songs of joy." Two imperatives.(...) Clap, that's a command. Shout, that's a command.(...) Did you notice? I love how God does this. Kent and I did not talk about what songs to choose for this Sunday. Song, our second song, "At Your Name," our third song, "Great Are You Lord." Both use these words to shout God's name out.(...) God is glorified when we clap our hands to him.

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He must not have been a Baptist.(...) God, yeah, thank you, somebody actually woke up. Please, go get more coffee if you need it.(...) Okay, God is glorified when we shout his name.(...) So as a former choir member in my solemn robes, that makes me feel a little uncomfortable. We're supposed to be kind of reverent, put together, not move a whole lot.(...) But if you and I were to travel to Africa, oh, you see the saints worship differently there.(...) They shout, they clap. They're very physical. And I have a feeling we'll see a whole lot of that in heaven as well.(...) It is good and glorifying to God to be full-bodied, noisy worshipers.(...) Now notice, this isn't, though, directed just to us.

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Clap your hands, all peoples.(...) Shout to God with loud songs of joy.(...) Again, all peoples, all peoples here, or peoples in singular or in just the word, is repeated twice more in the psalm that you and I just read. And it's synonymous with the nations, which is also mentioned a couple times in our psalm. If you fast-forward to the New Testament, it's the same idea as the Gentiles.(...) So this psalmist, the son of Korah, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is commanding all the nations

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to clamp their hands, all the nations to shout out praises to God.(...) All the peoples of the earth, every image-bearer on every continent in every language is being commanded here to praise the Lord with their hands and their heart.(...) Does that surprise you? It kind of does me a little bit. The psalmist isn't asking, he isn't suggesting, he's ordering everyone to praise God. Why? Well, look at verse 2.(...) The Lord,(...) and remember, readers of the Bible, when you see Lord in small caps,

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that is a way of communicating that the actual Hebrew is Yahweh, God's covenant personal name(...) that he only shared with Israel, his covenant people.(...) So shout to God in a general title sense, that is God's title, of course, but that's not his name. When you see Lord, that's his name.

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For the Lord,(...) the Most High, is to be feared a great king over all the earth.(...) This God, this Yahweh, this covenant maker,(...) is the Most High God.

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There is no God higher than our God in the Bible. So by biblical definition, he is the only God.(...) And therefore, he alone is to be feared.

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The nations who worship other false gods, which we know are demons disguised, wanting to attract worship to themselves away from the one true God, these nations who are worshipping in ignorance are called to worship Yahweh, because he alone is God.

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And he is, notice, the great king over all the earth.(...) So when I ask that question, who's the greatest ruler in all of history? There's your answer. God, he is the great king(...) over all the earth.(...) And it's worth remembering, we are democratic people,(...) part of a democratic republic.(...) We get to choose.(...) Not here.(...) God is king. God is God.(...) Whether you choose him or not makes no difference to him in the sense of his rule.(...) We all will be accounted or called to account, and all,(...) everyone will bow their knee and recognize that he is God, whether in worship or in horrifying fear.(...) He is the great king, not elected,(...) not chosen, but succeeded by right of who he is. So how much more does our God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, and the creator of every creature on the earth, past, present, future, how much more does he reserve the right to rule what he has made?(...) And if he holds the right to rule, then he also holds the right to judge. No wonder the psalmist commands everyone to worship God,(...) for it's in their best, it's in our best interest to do so.(...) Verse 3,(...) "He subdued peoples under us," this is Yahweh, "and nations under our feet," verse 4, "he," Yahweh, "chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves."(...) There's a soft lie about God and our culture. It's kind of like, I think of it as like a hallmark lie.(...) It's that God is really like a benevolent grandpa.(...) So we have two grandchildren, my little Winnie and little George, and I love them. And I'm a gentle grandpa to them,

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they're not old enough to really be at risk of a "spanking" yet, that'll come.(...) But I do reserve the right to not change their diapers, amen? I am done with that.(...) But that joke aside,

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I will be that, I hope, that nice grandpa who gives them a little candy, doesn't mind if they're a little naughty. You got to go home to mom and dad anyways, right? Some of you, yeah, you do this to your grandkids and then send them home to torture their parents, okay? But our God, friends, is not like a benevolent grandpa. He's not hard of hearing.(...) He doesn't overlook sin,

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and he's always loving,(...) never grumpy,(...) always just. So there's a hallmark lie

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captured in our culture that reduces God's might and his justice and his holiness and his love(...) to something, well, that looks like us.(...) But that's not what we see here. This is the God who subdued peoples under the Hebrews, the Jews.(...) This is the Lord who punished the Canaanite peoples

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for their false worship, their false gods, the false gods of Baal or Baal and the Ashtorep poles that caused them to go into prostitution and to sacrifice their own children.(...) This is the God who warned them and then punished them for their false worship and for not worshiping and loving him who had made them. And at the same time as he's punishing in the book of Joshua, this is recorded, if you want to go back and read it. It's not easy to read. But again, God is just unlike us. He is both punishing the Canaanites for their evil worship and idolatry, and he's also blessing the Israelites by giving them the promised land.(...) That's what the psalmist is remembering here. God subdued the Canaanites under us, those nations under our feet, and he chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves. Now remember, we have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and we've been learning this in Galatians, haven't we, that Abraham is the father of faith.(...) Well, that's Jacob's great-granddaddy.(...) And so God is being faithful to the promise that he gave Abraham

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to Jacob and to Jacob's descendants. Remember from Genesis 22 and then later in Genesis 32, God promises that the descendants of Abraham and the descendants therefore of Jacob will be as numerous as the stars above and the sand below.(...) That's what God is doing, and that is what the psalmist is remembering here in verses 3 and 4.(...) God is acting out of his covenant, his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom he loves.(...) And you and I, as children of Abraham, through faith,(...) become grafted in, become adopted in as sons and daughters of his love through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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God loves his people and has committed to them in the Old Testament and in the New. And we come now to verse 5, the apex of the psalm. If you and I were to graph or to chart the poetry, sometimes your English teachers have you do that. You would see with me, and I can't really do it here without a screen and a dynamic writing utensil. But verse 5 is the heart of what this psalm is about. God has gone up with a shout,(...) the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.(...) Trumpets in the Old Testament and the New are often for battle or for victory and often associated with the Lord in his triumph.(...) God has gone up with a shout. Going up is the idea that as a king or queen in our age, you go up the steps to your throne.(...) Right? You're going to be seated on the throne above the people because you are quite literally their ruler.(...) God is our ruler and so therefore he ascends in the majesty of his glory. Think of Isaiah chapter 6,(...) the angels at the throne saying holy, holy, holy, our God majestically,(...) Jesus majestically ascends to the throne after ascending into the heavens.

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And he is seated and the trumpets declare.(...) Now this is also, if you have your Bibles opening, you look at your references, you'll notice that 2 Samuel 6.15 is probably in that margin or on the side margin of your Bibles. It's a good reference.(...) This won't be on your slide probably but 2 Samuel 6.15 says this, "So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn."(...) Almost the exact same Hebrew at the end here.(...) The Lord with the sound, the shout of the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Same idea, one word is juxtaposed but the exact idea is really here. So it may be that the psalmist is remembering when David brought the ark finally into Jerusalem, into Zion and God began to dwell again with his people in that special place that he promised.(...) The psalmist may be remembering that but there's certainly more I think that he says here as well.(...) Because Psalm 47 doesn't picture the Lord as merely reigning in just in Zion, just over his people in the royal city of David but as ruling as what does he say next, as a king of all the earth.(...) And so again,(...) again we have in response to our present reality a call to praise our God, our King,(...) our Jesus who is ascendant to the right hand of the Father.(...) Verses 6 and 7,(...) sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises to our King, sing praises for God is the King of all the earth, sing praises with a psalm. And in the Bible,(...) repetition is not like a mantra that you would have in Hindi or in Islam where it's trying to coerce God into doing something.(...) Okay, that's why these false religions often repeat the same words over and over and over and over again.(...) No, no, no, when we see repetition in the scriptures, it's to amplify what is true, it's to amplify. So we are that much more called to sing,(...) to sing, to sing. And I know some of you say, "Pastor, I can't sing, you don't want me to sing." I get it.(...) But God doesn't. Sing,(...) sing,(...) sing, he's worthy of even your most discordant voice.(...) And if you can't move your lips because of a disability,(...) because of some other condition, your heart can sing and it can sing and it can sing

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to our King,(...) the King of all the earth.(...) And this is what we do every Sunday, isn't it? We practice our praise.(...) Every Sunday we gather to sing. Now we call worship, again, narrowly sometimes, singing. And that's fine. That's absolutely fine. It is very true. Worship is, of course, more broadly everything that we do with our life, Romans 12, 1, and 2. But it is good. And we practice it every Sunday. We practice worshiping God.(...) And some of us even practice it during the week. We turn on that Christian radio station or we pull up that Spotify playlist that has songs from church or praise albums.(...) And we sing. And some of us sing for just such beautiful, practical reasons. We sing to get our day started right.(...) We sing to fight against the discouragement that's tending to creep into our hearts.(...) We sing because we're forgetting who God is and we need to be reminded.(...) And that's why we practice it every Sunday.(...) Friends, we're going to be doing it for all eternity.(...) We're going to be praising God for all eternity because He is infinitely worthy of our praise. He alone is worthy of our praise. So we practice as a church early and often

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praising God, singing to Him. And that's what the Psalm is commanding us to. Notice again, verse 6, sing praises.(...) Sing praises. That's the imperative.

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It's a command.(...) Last but not least, verses 8 through 9, the psalmist closes by reminding us of what we have already covered. But this is poetry again. It's repetitious. It's meant to elicit an emotional response and an intellectual one too, but an emotional one too. Verses 8 through 9, God reigns over the nations. God sits on His holy throne. Notice present tense,(...) present tense.(...) So imagine if you were in a country that was at war, like several countries in our world, let's say Ukraine.(...) Okay, and there was a major structure, part of their capital building struck by a Russian bomb or missile or whatever.

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Probably on a human level, it doesn't feel like God's reigning.(...) It probably feels like God forgot us.

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Imagine being in a country where you're not sure whether your house will be standing the next day. Does God still reign?(...) Is God still seated on His throne?(...) You see, the Psalms remind us that we can't just judge whether that's true or not by our experience about what our human eyes see. We need eyes of faith like Abraham. We need to remember what is ultimately true here in the Psalter and in the scriptures and in reality.(...) In the real, real, God reigns. He is still on the throne. Should our country be invaded, God is still on the throne. He hasn't dropped the ball. He reigns over all the nations,(...) but He is patient.(...) We are not. He sits on His holy throne,(...) though some presidents and pundits think they do.(...) God laughs, He mocks. The princes of the people gather as the people of the God of Abraham. And this is a beautiful vision.(...) What is happening and will happen that final day as the princes of the peoples, the nations gather as the people of the God of Abraham? Well, that's part of our story, isn't it? We weren't born members of the tribe of Israel, the Jews of the covenant. Most of us are Gentiles here, but we have been brought in. We are part of that people coming into and being part of from the outside into the inside, the people of the God of Abraham.(...) And last but not least, the second half of verse 9, those same princes who gather, those same presidents and monarchs of our day,(...) they will bring their shields of the earth to God because really they belong to God. He has put rulers in their place.(...) Sometimes it's, we get what we deserve. Other times we wonder why this ruler is here or there or whatever. But nevertheless, their rule is temporary but appointed.(...) Other passages in the New Testament remind us of this, I think of Romans 13.(...) God is still sovereign over the nations, even if it feels like chaos. And this is part of why I brought this psalm for us today.(...) I want to remind us that God reigns as a king, not like

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Shakespeare's King Lear raging against the world, not like a power-hungry modern-day president of several of our nations in this world, but in holiness. He plays the long game in perfect love and justice. He reigns even if we cannot see with our present physical eyes.(...) We can know through faith that He is still on the throne,

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that He is still just. And then in the end, He will bring justice because the King of kings and(...) Lord of lords, Jesus,(...) is coming back. Amen, church?(...) He's coming back.(...) He has not left us without hope. He has not left us without a promise. He is ruling in heaven as we speak, and He will come again to rule the new heaven and the new earth.(...) He is the prince of princes, the one who came into our world,(...) the one that Philippians 2 said took on our flesh, humbling Himself so that He might be exalted above every name.(...) He is the one who is and will gather the nations as the people of Abraham. So, in closing today, as we reflect on Psalm 47, and as you maybe read it again this week,(...) look first to your own heart.(...) Are you ruling your own little world?

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Have you forgotten that God is the one who's in control?(...) Are you trying to save yourself(...) or save somebody else and forgetting that God is the one and the only one who can save?

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Have you forgotten that He calls you to an account for how you live your life?(...) Who's on the throne of your heart?(...) Globally, as I listen to the news almost daily,

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whether it's your Fox News or your CNN or your BBC or New York Times, if you're like me and you keep seeing tragedy after tragedy and natural disaster after natural disaster, pictures of wicked leaders meeting with one another and injustice on our own soil and all these things, all these things, I can just be full of despair.(...) I lose sight quickly. Wait, God is still on His throne. He hasn't dropped the ball. He hasn't forgotten. He is reigning and He will reign.

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Brothers and sisters, if you're getting caught up in that news cycle and getting wound up, can I make a humble suggestion?(...) Read your Bible first when you wake.(...) Turn off your devices. Scripture before screens.(...) Scripture after screens.(...) Scripture above screens.

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Screens aren't bad. You can read your Scripture on it. I do sometimes.(...) But watch your heart.

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Last,(...) be reminded that God is seated. God is enthroned. God is ruling. And He wrote His own song. I mean, His own story, excuse me. So we know how it ends. So by way of application this week,

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turn to Revelation at some point in your devotions this week.

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Turn to Revelation. And if you want to do it now, you can. I'm just going to remind you of what many of you already know.(...) Revelation chapter 19 through 22 is how this story, this world, is going to end.(...) We can cheat and look at the end of the book. You know, you're not supposed to do that in your English class, right? But you can do that with the Bible. So let me just remind you of what many of us know, but maybe some of us have forgotten.(...) Chapter 19,(...) the subheading suggested here says, "Rejoicing in heaven over the marriage supper of the Lamb."(...) There is a great wedding coming.(...) There's a great wedding where Jesus is the groom and we, church, are the bride. At the end of chapter 19, after this beautiful supper, is the horrible judgment

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where Jesus is the rider on the white horse.

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And He treads the winepress of God's wrath.(...) His robe is dipped in blood. He can judge and He will because He is just.(...) Those who have gotten away with evil

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and thought, "Ah, I cheated God."(...) Oh, no, no, there'll be a day.(...) There will be a day.

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Then there's a thousand years.(...) And finally, the defeat of Satan, chapter 20.(...) And then the last(...) of the judgments, the judgments of the great white throne

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where death and Hades and all those who are condemned to hell are thrown in the lake of fire.(...) There's finally, finally justice.

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In verse 21,(...) there is finally the world in the heavens as it was meant to be before Genesis 3, the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem. In chapter 22, the river of life, you and I will no longer have bodies that decay, minds that forget, eyes that fail, ears that cannot hear,(...) consciences that are seared by sin and guilt and shame.

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We will no longer shed tears for the loss of loved ones and the innocent.

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We will be full of joy, a joy that never ceases. And a hope that is no longer by faith, but by sight.(...) So brothers and sisters, if you need in your hearts to be reminded that what Psalm 47 is true, that God is reigning on his throne, I encourage you to read Revelation 19 through 22 in your devotions today.

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Let us read together out loud. Someone asked the slide. Go back to the very beginning. Let us practice what we're preaching here today. Let's read together again. Psalm 47.

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Clap your hands, all peoples shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High is to be feared, a great king over all the earth.(...) He subdued peoples under us and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves.(...) God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God.(...) Sing praises to our King.(...) For God is the King over all the earth.

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God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. 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.(...) Let's pray.(...) You are highly exalted.(...) There is no one worthy,

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more worthy of our praise and our adoration than you.(...) You are seated.(...) You are reigning. You see us now as we are, truly.(...) And you sent your Son to save us. And then after his victorious resurrection from the dead,(...) over sin and death, you brought him back to you, a victorious King of kings and Lord of lords, to sit at your right hand and to rule.(...) We ask, Father,(...) that you would send your Son quickly, that you would come. That you would come. We need patience. We ask for that Spirit. Give us patience to wait, to be faithful, to trim our lamps, to be ready, to be not caught sleeping or in sin.

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But we do ask that you would,(...) as you promised, not tarry but come and come quickly.

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This is not heaven. This is not even close to heaven. Even our best days are fraught and wrought with suffering and hardship.(...) We long to be united with you. And I pray for those who(...) are hearing these words and are just wondering, are they united with you? I pray that that would be a firm yes through your work of conversion in their hearts. I pray you will continue to draw men and women and children to follow you, Jesus, to be adopted through your blood into the family of God,(...) brought into the people of faith the promise to Abraham.(...) Be glorified in the rest of our service this morning, Lord, in our meal together and the way that we offer our bodies and lives as instruments of worship to you this week.(...) We pray these things in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.(...) Amen.