Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Last month our very own Wally Hurd was honored at the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France.

He made the trip with several other WWII veterans who participated in Operation Overlord, the invasion of Nazi-occupied France that proved to be the turning point in the war against Germany.

(Mom and Dad are pretty sure they saw Wally on some of the TV coverage, sitting behind President Trump!)

The Punxsy Spirit published a number of articles documenting Wally’s trip, one of them describing his reception at a parade in the town of St. Mere Eglise.

Bob Lott, who acted as Wally’s escort on the trip, said,

This passion that the people of Normandy have for our World War II veterans is something that we Americans do not and cannot understand.

The French have been free for 75 years and they truly understand how they became free and who to thank.

And they are sure to teach that history to their children.

(Punxsutawney Spirit, 6/11/2019)

Wally is loved and praised by the people of France because he represents their liberation from the Nazis.

But to this day, Wally has never gone to a D-Day celebration in Germany, has he?

It wouldn’t be a good idea, would it?

Because just as 75 years is not too long for France to forget that Wally was their liberator, so 75 years is not too long for Germany to forget that he was their conqueror.

Even though the United States and Germany are allies today, they can never celebrate June 6th the way the French can.

Because liberators are praised; conquerors are only tolerated.

I think what we can draw from that illustration is that

Our acts of praise can never be separated from our reasons for praise.

And I believe this truth is at the heart of Psalm 47.

If you’re looking for repeated words, phrases or ideas to help you understand the point of a passage of Scripture, then it’s pretty clear that this psalm is a “praise psalm”:

Verses 5-7 are the high point of the song—a crescendo of praise, like a tent pole that holds the rest of the psalm up.

On either side are statements of why we should praise Him; on what basis do we offer God praise?

On the surface, these verses almost sound like one of the modern praise and worship songs that you hear nowadays—songs that repeat a word or phrase over and over again to create some kind of emotional high” Sing praise, sing praise, sing praise, sing praise!!”

It’s like the old farmer who visited his granchildren’s megachurch in the big city, and came the next day to tell his wife about it.

“They don’t sing hymns there, they sing these things called ‘praise songs’”.

When his wife asked him to describe the difference, he said, “Well, if I were to say to you, ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn!’, that would be a hymn.

But if I said to you, “Martha / Dear Martha / The cows / The brown cows / The black cows / the red cows / the white cows / the cows are in the corn / the high corn / the sweet corn / oooooooo / the tall corn / don’t you know / the corn / Oh yes they are / in the corn / yeah / the cows are in the corn” —that would be a “praise song”!

But the message of Psalm 47 is not just “Praise God”!

The psalmist here goes to great lengths to explain why God is worthy of our praise.

I say that because of the end of verse 7 -

The word “psalm” there at the end of verse 7 is the Hebrew word maskill, which, you’ll remember from a couple weeks ago, means “skillful” or “with wisdom”—a maskill is a psalm that is skillfully and wisely written—written to instruct through worship.

So the end of the verse can be translated, “Sing praises with understanding!”

Mere repetitions of “praise God, praise God, praise God” without understanding—separating the act of praising God from the reason for praising Him—is (in one writer’s words) like “trying to eat a bread sandwich”!

(John Stott).

The psalmist wants us to understand that

When we praise God, we must always include a “because”.

We must always include the reasons He is worthy to be praised.

And here in Psalm 47, the psalmist gives us three reasons for praising God—We praise Him because He reigns over the world, we praise Him because He has conquered His enemies, and we praise Him because He has shielded His people.

Let’s look at each of them for a moment:

I.

We Praise God Because He Reigns over the World

This psalm makes it clear that God is not just the God of the Israelites alone—He is “a great king over all the earth” (v.

2).

He is to be praised with the understanding that He is “King of all the earth” (v.

7), and that “He reigns over the nations”, and sits on “His holy throne” (v.

8).

There is no way to get out from under His authority, there is no jurisdiction where His law does not hold sway, there is nowhere you can apply for asylum from His reign.

It is not possible to demur, to say, “Oh, no thank you, I don’t have to participate—the authority of Yahweh doesn’t apply to me; I’m not one of His subjects!”

God is King over all the earth—and you are called to praise Him for that reason.

You cannot praise God rightly without acknowledging His authority over you.

And this leads us into the next reason God is worthy of our praise:

II.

We Praise God Because He Has Conquered His Enemies

Look at verses 3-4:

We saw this last time in Psalm 46, how God “utters His voice” and the raging, tottering nations that rebel against Him crumble:

The psalmist picks up that same thread here in Psalm 47, calling God’s people to rejoice over how He “subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet” (v.

3).

The psalmist probably has in mind here the way that God defeated the nations of Canaan for the Israelites:

The reason the psalmist praises God in verses 1-4 is because He did what they could not do for themselves: If it hadn’t been for Yahweh Most High, His people would never have been able to enter the Promised Land, and would never have received their inheritance there.

So we see that

You cannot praise God rightly without acknowledging His deliverance for you.

But if you look at these verses carefully, you will see something extraordinary: Not only is God to be praised by the people He delivered, but He is also to be praised by the people he conquered!

Verse 3 says

But in verse 1 we read:

Do you see this?

When the psalmist calls all the peoples to praise God for His victory, he is calling both the delivered and the conquered to praise Him!

To use our opening illustration, this would be like requiring German Normandy vets to travel to St. Mare Eglise to join the French in praising Wally Hurd for the D-Day victory!

Let that sink in for a moment—what this psalm requires is almost beyond comprehension: “You peoples that have been conquered by the might of the LORD—you nations that have been laid desolate by His mighty works—you peoples who have been thrown to the mat and toppled like a Jenga tower at His word—you peoples who railed against Him and rebelled against His reign, who have been trampled under the feet of His victorious people—join with His people now in glad and joyful praise for His victory over you!

It boggles our minds to hear this command from the psalmist, but it is written here as plain as day:

You cannot praise God rightly without acknowledging His victory over your rebellion.

And here we come to the absolute frozen outer limit of our own hearts’ ability to praise God—we can understand that we must praise Him for his reign, and it is easy to praise Him for delivering us from His enemies, for laying waste their rebellious plans and threats against us.

But there is simply no way imaginable for us to respond with genuine praise, joy, love and gladness to someone who has conquered us!

Think of it this way: Have you ever been on a sports team that has played in a big playoff game, or big tournament?

You made it all the way up to the championship game—and lost?

Ever been there?

(Or watched your favorite pro sports team lose the big game?)

Your opponents are going absolutely crazy in celebration, aren’t they?

Whooping and cheering, jumping up and down, hugging and high-fiving, crying tears of joy, breaking out the championship hats and shirts.

And at that moment where do you want to be? Anywhere but there, right?

You might mumble “Good game” to a few of them, give a couple desultory hugs and handshakes, but you just want to get off the field (or the court) as quickly as possible and try to forget the past couple of hours of your life.

Now picture your coach coming over to you and saying, “Go over there to the other team and celebrate with them!

Go enter into their joy, laugh and shout and sing with them!

Grab a t-shirt and hat and put them on, pose for pictures, run around the arena high-fiving all of the fans—celebrate their victory over you!

That is what the psalmist is telling the conquered peoples to do—to praise God for His victory over them!

How can this even be possible?

If we look carefully at the end of this psalm, I believe we find a clue.

In verses 8-9, we see the psalmist tell us that

III.

We Praise God Because He Shields His People

In the first four verses God is praised for conquering His enemies.

In verses 5-7 He is praised as He ascends His holy throne.

And in verses 8-9 He is praised for His reign—specifically, He is “highly exalted” because “the shields of the earth belong to” Him.

The idea here is that God is a King who shields His people—He protects them and delivers them from all harm.

So in some ways it is an echo of verses 1-4, where God is a King who subdues His enemies (and the enemies of His people.)

But there is an interesting twist in the beginning of verse 9—something that the psalmist says about “the princes of the peoples”—he writes that “the princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham”!

Throughout the Old Testament, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are called “the people of God”, the people that He personally chose out of all of the nations of the earth.

We see it, for instance, in Deuteronomy 32:

As His chosen people, the descendants of Abraham through Jacob enjoyed a unique covenant with YHWH, where He promised to be their God, and promised that they would be His people.

As His covenant people, they were protected and shielded and governed by His steadfast love.

But here in Psalm 47, the psalmist hints that there would come a day when it would not just be Jacob’s descendants that would enjoy that unique covenant-love and protection, but all the princes of the people would “gather as the people of the God of Abraham”!

That they would all enter into that covenant, that they would all become His people!

Centuries later one of the descendants of Jacob, the Apostle Paul, would write to the Gentile believers in Ephesus:

“The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham” because Jesus has gathered them!