Psalm 47. So if you would open God's Word there, we are now going to hear the Word of our Lord from Psalm 47. 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. Sing praises to our king, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth. Sing praises with a psalm. 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. Thus far, the word of our God. Let me pray before we begin. Our gracious Father, we thank you once again for your word, and we pray now that you would open our understanding, that you would illumine our hearts and minds by the power of your Spirit, that we might not be blind nor deaf to what you have to say to us. And we pray, Lord, that you would show us not only your greatness, but also that you would show us Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. I don't know how many of you have stuck with the Olympics after an inauspicious beginning, but there have been some great competitions over the last week, and maybe you've seen some of that. The stadium's full, whether it's swimming or basketball, or whether it's the running events, crowds cheering, shouting, and of course you know what the Bittners are watching. We're watching the running events, and we've enjoyed some amazing performances this last week. But what has struck me most as I've watched those is not just the sights, all the colors and people wearing and waving flags, wearing national colors, but the sound that even as you watch, you can hear the deafening roar in the stadium. And one of the athletes who ran in the men's 1500 meter final about a week ago said it was the loudest, most electric race he'd ever run in. And it was so loud that he couldn't find his pace internally. It was just an amazing sonic blast as he went around the track. Well, there was something else a few months ago that caught my eye as I was reading a report about a concert tour. Now, I don't want to step on any toes here. I'm not a Taylor Swift fan. I don't know if there are some. Don't put your hands up. I don't really want to know or care to know. But if you were reading about Taylor Swift's world tour, which by any worldly standard has been an amazing success this past year, you might have read that back in April, May, during the concert she was giving, there was so much clapping and jumping and dancing that seismologists actually registered a mini earthquake from the concert stadium. And this has happened more than once, we're told. The sound so loud that it registered on the Richter scale for those who were paying attention. Why do I mention the Olympics, a concert like that, and the sound? It's because, as you'll see and maybe you heard as we began reading this psalm, this is a psalm that is loud. It's noisy right from the very beginning. It's a psalm full of sound, the sounds of praise, the sounds of glorifying God. As we come to this psalm, of course, it's nothing like a passing Olympic competition. It's nothing like that ecstatic experience for those Swifties in the stadium. But there is a sound here that we need to pay attention to and to see why the psalmist draws our attention to the noise that is to issue in praise of the God, the great King over all the earth. So that's one of our tasks this evening. As I mentioned, at Mission Villanueva, we've been working our way through these psalms, and there are several big themes that emerge in book two of the Psalms. And in fact, there's even like, there's even a sort of storyline that develops in book two of the Psalms. One of those themes that emerges is that God is the great king. You can't read these Psalms without noticing that God is presented as the great king. So you've got your Bible open perhaps. If not, you could turn there and you can see just by flipping a page or two forward and backward. Psalm 45 shows us the wedding of the great king. And it's glorious. It's beautiful. What a celebration. And then in Psalm 46, we hear about the city of this king who is the Lord of hosts. Living water, praise, and even a stillness in the presence of the majesty of this king. And if we were to jump ahead to Psalm 48, which we sang earlier, we learn even more about this city of the great king. This city has a name. Its name is Zion. It's on the great mountain of God. And we get a virtual tour of Mount Zion and the city of the great king in Psalm 48. But Psalm 47 comes right in this flow. And in Psalm 47, the focus is on the exaltation, the exalted glory of the great king. And what it teaches us, and actually what it models for us in the way that this psalm unfolds, is that the more we learn about the exalted character of God as the great king, the more it should elicit our praise. The more we know of God who is exalted over all, the more our minds and our hearts should be stirred up to praise him. So we realize there's a story that's developing in these psalms. There's a kind of movement here. The king who establishes his unshakable reign, who takes his seat on his throne in his unconquerable city, who ascends on high to that city, subdues his enemies before him, and there reigns with great glory and power. That's the vision of God that these psalms hold out to us, and the psalmist wants us to see that vision, even better, to hear that vision, to understand and to respond with praise, but not a praise that is merely expressing ourselves, not a praise that's merely driven by an emotional response, although certainly our emotions are involved, aren't they, when we sing praise to God? They should be, but that's not what drives it. Psalm 47 reveals to us that when we hear about the exaltation, the exalted nature of our God and King, we have reasons, we have a basis for praising Him. And so our task this evening is to look at what this psalm holds out to us, to understand those reasons, and then to respond as we are intended to respond to this great and glorious King. What is the subject of this psalm? It's unmissable. The subject of the psalm is God himself, isn't it? Just have a look right there from the very beginning. Verse 1, shout to whom? To God. Verse 2, the Lord, the Most High. Verse 5, God. Verse 7, verse 8, 9, God. God is absolutely central. His name is repeated. His name is varied. Various titles for God are given to us because God is the central character of this psalm, just as God is intended to be at the center of our praise and our worship. And you know this, but the psalm reminds us of this. Biblical praise, biblical worship is God-centered. It's theocentric, if we want to use that kind of language. it's not anthropocentric, it's not focused on us, it's not focused first on our responses or anything about us, it's focused on this God, this great and glorious King, his power, his majesty, and all that he has done in his works of creation, of providence, and of redemption. And Psalm 47 insists that we keep God at the center of our worship. But not just God in vague or general terms. The psalm gives us specifics about God, specific names, titles that reveal his glorious character. Who is he in verse 2? What do you see there? He is the Lord. And perhaps boys and girls who are here tonight, you see that too, that even if you're looking in your Bible, probably you see all capital letters, L-O-R-D. Why is that? That's because we have here a translation of the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh, when we see those capital letters in Lord. This is Yahweh, who's the great king. It's not Baal, the god of the Canaanites. It's not Marduk. It's not any of the other false gods of the ancient world. It's the true and the living God that we praise. It's Yahweh. It's not Allah. It's not Vishnu. It's not any of the other false gods of the modern world. The God who is worthy of praise, the only God who is worthy of praise and devotion, is this God, Yahweh, the Creator, the Almighty, the one who delivered his people in great power from Pharaoh's bondage in Egypt. But there's more, isn't there? Do you see it in verse 2? What else is he called? He is the Most High. In fact, I normally tell my students, don't mention any Greek or Hebrew from the pulpit, but I'm breaking my own rule tonight, and I'll tell you why. Because some of these names you will have heard. You might have even heard them in songs that are sometimes sung. You might have heard them in other Bible studies or sermons. And so I want to help you connect those dots if you've heard these names before. The Most High God, this is the name of God, El Elyon. And do you know the first time where we hear this name of God in scripture? It's in Genesis chapter 14, where Melchizedek, the king who comes out from the city that would become Jerusalem to greet Abraham, says to Abraham, blessed be Abraham by God most high, possessor or creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God most high who delivered your enemies into your hands. See what the psalmist is doing? He's bringing in not just names and titles for God, but he's reminding us. He's reminding us of who God is by what he has done and how he has been named and how he has demonstrated his power in the history of the scriptures. What did God do there in Genesis 13 and 14. He provided victory for his people. He subdued his and their enemies. It's a way of reminding us of that powerful, exalted nature of our God. And so as verse 2 of our psalm says, he is to be feared. He's terrible in his majesty. He's irresistible in his power. No one stands before him. His glory and his greatness are over all. So we see God from the very beginning is the center, the subject of this psalm. He's Yahweh. He's the most high. And then finally the psalm gets very specific and fits this into that unfolding story, if you will, of book two of the psalms. He is king. He's the great king. Look especially at verses seven and eight. For God is king of all the earth. God reigns over all the nations. God sits on his holy throne. This God who's triumphed over all of his enemies, he's taken his seat on a holy throne. And the Psalms remind us he is the great king. But people of God, it's not just that this Psalm focuses us on all of these qualities and characteristics of our God. it is that and that's a wonderful thing because sometimes we don't meditate enough on who our God is do we we we name him we call upon him we speak of him often without really pausing to think about who he is in the ways that he has revealed himself to us in the scriptures But there's even more here in the psalm than just a reminder, a fresh revelation from God of who he is. The entire form of this psalm, as it's originally composed for us, emphasizes the exaltation of the Most High, the Great King. It does so by repeatedly using a term that doesn't doesn't translate in a transparent way for us as we move our way through the psalm. So once again, I'm going to try to help show you how beautifully, how intentionally this psalm is composed and persuade you that in fact, yes, from beginning to end, the psalmist wants us to know that God is highly exalted. Let me show you three variations of the same kind of, the same basic Hebrew form in this psalm. Verse 2, we get it in the most high. Verse 5, we're told God has gone up. He's gone up high. He's ascended. And then in verse 9, as the psalm ends, he is highly exalted. From beginning to end, the psalm insists and it repeats and it presses upon us this fact that our God is very, very exalted. In fact, the last two words of the psalm in Hebrew are emphatic. It takes four words in English to do it. He is greatly exalted. So we have to pause if we're going to take on board what this part of God's Word is trying to teach us this evening and consider. What does it mean? What does it mean truly to say that our God is highly exalted? Well, it means that he's exalted as the creator of all things, higher than and other than all creatures and all creation. God is greater than you can conceive of, and yet he has condescended to reveal some of his greatness to us in his word. He made all things simply by the word of his power. He's exalted as the king over all of his subjects. What does a king do? A king rules over his subjects to provide them with peace. He exercises his great power to protect them, to uphold them, and he's exalted as a victorious king. No enemy can possibly stand against this king. In Psalm 48, the one which follows, which I promise I won't get too carried away and preach on, in Psalm 48, those kings of the earth who are enemies come and they stand at the base of Mount Zion and they tremble as they look upon the city on top of the mountain where the great king dwells. He is highly exalted, Psalm 47 teaches us. So we haven't understood this psalm until we've understood this. And when we understand this, when we begin to understand, to remember, to have an expanded understanding of who our God is, it should change our thoughts and it should change our hearts as well. normally we are so focused upon ourselves, our own needs. We look at our schedule for the week that's coming ahead. We look at the meetings that are on the calendar, the task lists that we have to make, the budget that has to be balanced somehow. And we're so focused on those things which, yes, we have to do, which are right before us, but we don't remember to meditate upon the greatness of our God. And Psalm 47 takes us by the chin, and it raises our gaze, and it says, remember, he is highly exalted. Sing praises to him. That's the right response. And how can we not when we've understood this psalm? But if the exaltation of the great king in this psalm were all that there was for us here, that wouldn't necessarily be good news for us, because sinners cannot stand in the presence of this exalted, holy, majestic glory. They will be consumed. They will be judged. They will be destroyed. There can be no standing before this glorious and exalted king unless you enter by faith in Jesus Christ. But do we have that in our psalm? Is there any good news here? Is there any gospel here? I think there is. I think there is. There's another emphasis, another repetition that we should notice and then see how this points us even beyond the psalm itself. And this is the other emphasis. Not only is God highly exalted, but his exaltation is for our salvation. His exaltation is for the sake of his people. This emerges several places. Look at verses 3 and 4. He subdues peoples under us and nations under our feet. He chooses our inheritance for us. Do you hear that repetition? We're not at the center. It's not all about us. It's all about him, but he is at work. In fact, he is exalted for the good of his people, for the sake of his people, for us. How can this be? It's because in the mystery of the power and the election of this great king, he placed his love upon us. And the end of verse 4 even begins to move us in that direction, doesn't it? The glory of Jacob, whom he loves. Who is Jacob? In the Bible, you know Jacob is another name for Old Testament Israel, God's old covenant people. And of course, the New Testament makes crystal clear for us that Christians, those who by faith in Christ belong to God, are grafted in by faith to that same covenant people. We too, those of us who have repented of our sin, who have placed our faith in Christ, we too are part of Jacob whom he loves. How can he love us? He can only love us for the sake of Christ. He can only love us because of the finished work of the one who perfectly kept that covenant in our place, the one who suffered and who shed his blood for the forgiveness of our sins, the one who rose for us, and then who ascended on high and was highly exalted. You see, the church fathers, who sometimes are a bit too quick to jump from the Old Testament to Christ, you can't really blame, don't really blame them too badly. It's a good thing to want to run to Jesus, isn't it? But sometimes we have to make sure that we're doing it in the right way from the right kinds of texts. The church fathers all went there from this text. And by the way, so did John Calvin. And Calvin's not known for jumping all that quickly ahead. So maybe we should follow their lead in this case and see that this is a psalm that in the whole wisdom, the whole counsel of God revealed to us in the scriptures, describes not only God the Father, but also God the Son, who is the highly exalted King. How was Jesus exalted? Well, he wasn't just taken directly up from this life, was he? Like some kind of Enoch experience. Jesus obeyed and suffered and died the death on a cross and that especially according to the gospel of John, that death on the cross was Jesus' own exaltation. That was his enthronement as king. Jesus says so himself in a passage like John chapter 12 verse 32. He says, but if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself. And John's gospel goes on, and Jesus goes on in that gospel to compare his crucifixion to an exaltation. So St. Augustine, the church father, says that Psalm 47 points us with its focus on the exaltation of the great king, points us to Christ ultimately. Exalted on the cross, even though they mocked him, says Augustine, even though they did not see him, Christ who was exalted on high ascended into heaven. And Calvin says this, this language, speaking of Psalm 47, Calvin says, is applicable only, only, I think he means ultimately, to the kingdom of Christ, who is called a high and a terrible king. Because of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, his resurrection to eternal life, his ascension to the royal seat of heaven, his exalted reign and rule for us means our salvation. So the psalm is true, and the psalm is fulfilled ultimately in our Lord Jesus Christ. His exaltation is for our salvation. And so Calvin ends this way. I like this phrase from Calvin on Psalm 47. He says, this psalm exhorts us to a joy more than ordinary, more than your normal run-of-the-mill kind of joy, more than your average kind of song of praise. This psalm stirs us up to sing with great joy. So that is the good news that we can glimpse in Psalm 47 if we see how ultimately it points us to the Lord Jesus Christ. But we have to end here, as the psalm does, by thinking about the response that it calls forth, this response of joy and of praise. That's what the psalm exhorts us to. If God's at the center as the great and glorious king and his salvation is for our exaltation, the response that must follow is a response of praise. Look at all of the commands, the imperatives in this psalm. Verse 1, clap your hands, shout to God with loud songs of joy. Verses 6 and 7. Sing praises. Sing praises. Sing praises. Five times. Sing praises. Do you get the point? Through repetition, the psalm makes it clear. But it doesn't just tell us to sing praises. It shows us how to do so in a way that is proper and honoring to this great exalted king. First, according to verse 7, we're supposed to sing praises how? With a psalm. So if you might have another footnote there, I promise it's the last mention of any Hebrew term here. I'm never going to do this. Well, never say never, but I will try never to do this again. Sing praises with a maskil. It's a Hebrew term that we get several times in the Psalter. In the King James Version, this particular instance is translated, sing ye praises with understanding, but more importantly, in the original, to sing a muskill. What's a muskill? Well, Dr. Vanny can clean this up after the sermon if I've made a hash of it, but a muskill is a musical term that appears in the Psalms. Some of you will have footnotes that says it's a musical, it's a liturgical term. Its precise meaning is debated, but it's clear in the contexts where it's used, in the psalms and elsewhere, that it at least can mean these things. It can be a skillful song, really well-crafted song. It could be a kind of song or poem that's set to music and given in a way, sung in a way that makes you think, engages your mind. It might even be a teaching kind of song that teaches you as you sing it. Now, of course, all the Psalms do this in various ways, but only some of them are referred to in this way. One recent scholar suggests that maybe what was going on here, maybe, is you've got choirs that are singing, not just in simple antiphony back and forth, but in a really beautiful, complex interweaving of songs of praise to God. Regardless of the case, this much I think is clear. It's a term that means you sing a song with understanding that engages your mind as well as your heart. In fact, it engages your mind, and that's how it engages your heart. The singers of a mosque like this are focused and attentive to what they're singing. They're learning from it. And so, yes, of course, when we sing, we can sing with passion. We can sing with emotion. We're right to raise our voices, maybe even clap our hands. I'll talk to the consistory afterwards about that one, all right? By the way, when we moved here from the Scottish Free Church that we belong to in the UK five years ago when we moved here, we had been taught in that congregation to sing largely a cappella psalms from the Scottish Psalter set to some beautiful Scottish and Welsh tunes. And one of our family's favorites was a setting of Psalm 51. And when we got here, initially we were so sad because in the Trinity Psalter hymnal, you all use a different setting for that psalm. It wasn't the way we were used to singing it. But you know what? As you move around the world, you realize that there are a variety of reverent, God-honoring, sometimes louder than others, ways of praising God faithfully, as we are instructed to by his word. But in this psalm, we're told to sing praise with our minds and our hearts, and we're given reasons. Do you see it? Verse 1, shout to God. Verse 2, because. Verse 6, sing praises. Verse 7, because. But every time we're commanded to sing praise, we're given reasons, theological reasons, reasons that we can hang our hat on, of the truth revealed about who God is and what he's done. But finally, we learn from this psalm that the best way to sing praise of this kind, the best way to do what this psalm is exhorting us to do is what we're doing together in worship this evening. Everything in this psalm is in the plural when we're addressed. Sing praises, Shout. It's all plurals. Why is that? Because the ultimate place to sing praise to the exalted king is right here, right now, on this day, the Lord's day, in covenant worship together. This is the ultimate place. Why? Because what we get here and what we get in the psalm is really just a glimpse of the future, of what we're going to be doing in the new heavens and the new earth. John glimpsed it in Revelation 19, for example, when he said, I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters. It's noisy. It's going to be going to be noisy, but it's going to be beautiful noise. Praise rising in crescendo to the great and exalted king and to his son, the lamb who was slain on behalf of his people. And we will be there together at the Wedding reception at the banquet, singing the praise of our exalted king. Brothers and sisters, his exaltation is for our salvation and it calls forth songs of praise from us. We want to give the Lord the best songs we can in this life. Sometimes it's a little out of tune. Sometimes our melody is a bit weak. Sometimes we have to sing with tears in our eyes, but we sing praises to our great and exalted King, along with the psalmist in Psalm 47. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we ask now as we cast ourselves before you humbly, knowing that you are so great and high above us, that you would indeed help us to know you more and to respond in just this way so that you might receive all the glory. In Christ's name, amen. Thank you.