DUNCAN/All peoples

If you have your Bible, I would invite you to turn with me to Psalm 117. It’s a short psalm but it’s filled with huge, worldwide truths. And as we read it, I want you to be on the lookout for three things.

First, this psalm gives an exhortation to the entire world. The psalm is not just an exhortation to the people of God gathered in one particular place for worship. It is an exhortation to the entire world, to all nations, to all tribes, to all tongues, and to all people. Second, there’s an exhortation for all people to worship God because of His love and His faithfulness. Thirdly, this psalm indicates that it is God’s plan that the nations will experience His love and His faithfulness, therefore, it is the duty of His people to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. 

Tell the Nations 

First, this psalm tells us that if we’re going to be obedient to its exhortation to the nations, we must tell them. How else will the nations know that God has exhorted them to praise Him? This is an expression of a desire that is rooted in the plan of God to bring all nations to Himself and under the headship of Jesus Christ and they must be told if they are going to respond to this exhortation. And what does that require? It requires worldwide witness. For us to respond to this psalm requires us to have a passion for worldwide witness, to bear witness to every tribe, tongue, people, and nation that God is God, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He alone is the name whereby anyone under heaven can be saved. Yes, the heavens are declaring the glory of God and yes, His line has gone out in all the earth as Psalm 19 reminds us, but this psalm is calling us to explicit testimony, to exhortation to all the peoples that they must praise the one, true God.

C.S. Lewis once said:

“You see, the world rings with praise — lovers praising their lovers, readers praising their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game; praise of weather, praise of wine, praise of dishes, praise of actors, praise of motors, praise of horses, praise of colleges, praise of country, praise of historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time the most balanced and capacious minds praised the most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised the least. I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise what they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ ‘Wasn’t that glorious?’ ‘Don’t you think it’s magnificent?’ The psalmist, in telling everyone to praise God, is doing what all people do when they speak of what they care about.” He continues, “I think that we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes our enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation.”

You see, the reason God seeks our praise is not because He won’t be complete until we give it; but because we won’t be complete until we give it. The psalmist is saying, “They won’t know true joy until they praise the One who’s more valuable than anybody else! They’re missing out!” You see, that’s the basis of world missions! We want everyone to join in the white-hot enjoyment of the worship of God, the only One who is eternally worthy of being praised. 

The Nations Experience the Love and Faithfulness of the Lord

But there’s a reason why the unbelieving world resents the idea of worship, and the reason is that they have never experienced God. They have not known God. They haven’t tasted and seen that the Lord is good. They don’t know the Lord’s covenant love, His steadfast love, or the old William Tyndale words, “His loving kindness.” They’ve never known the loving kindness of the Lord and they’ve never known the faithfulness of God; that God’s promises are “yea and amen” in Christ, that He keeps His promises to His people. The reason the unbelieving world is so grudging in its thought of worship is that they never ever experienced God, and that means, my friends, that if what this psalm exhorts to happen is actually going to take place, the nations have to experience the love and the faithfulness of God. Look at what verse 2 says — “For great is His steadfast love towards us.” In other words, God’s gracious, merciful love prevails. “And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” His promises always are kept. Until you have experienced God’s gracious and merciful love that prevails and embraced His promises that are always kept — until you are converted, you don’t want to worship Him! And so, this psalm requires that the nations experience this if they’re going to extol Him. That means there must be worldwide worship rooted in a changed life where we’re no longer worshiping ourselves or something else, but we’re worshiping God because we’ve tasted and seen that He is good. This psalm requires not only worldwide witness but worldwide worship for it to be fulfilled.

God’s Plan for the Nations 

Lastly, it requires that God’s people understand the scale of His plan from the beginning. In Jesus Christ, His purpose was not merely to bring Israel back from their idolatry, but to bring the people and the nations of the world away from their idolatry and back to Him. For Jewish believer and Gentile believer together to magnify the name of the Lord. That is His worldwide plan. And you see, in order to fulfill this exhortation in this psalm, believers must have a passion for God’s worldwide plan, for God’s worldwide worship, and for God’s worldwide witness. This psalm commits us to taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The day that a believer loses passion for worldwide witness to God, to Christ, and the Gospel, is a day when you have lost your passion for the very task which Christians are called to do. The day the American church loses its passion for worldwide witness will be the beginning of the end, not for God’s worldwide plan but for our joy in participating in it because He’ll find somebody else.

Doesn’t that excite you just a little bit? It does the psalmist! And that’s why he said, “Praise the LORD! All nations, praise the Lord — all peoples! That’s what I want to see and so I’m going to tell them and I’m going to pray that they experience His steadfast love and His faithfulness; His gracious, merciful saving love and His promises that never fail because I understand God’s worldwide plan.” In Christ Jesus, God has reconciled the world to Himself, and every tribe, tongue, and nation will praise with one voice. That’s something to praise God about. 

The Rev. Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III  is the Chancellor/CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary and the John E. Richards Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology. He is also currently serving as President of RTS Jackson.