Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 117 | Date: June 14, 2026 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Psalm 117

Turn with me, if you will, to Psalm 117. Psalm 117. This is the shortest of all of the Psalms, just two verses. Shortest, if you will then, shortest chapter in all the Bible. My wife asked me this week, and I told her I was preaching from Psalm 117. She asked, “Are you preaching a whole sermon from just two verses?” And I said I was. And she said, “Oh, we’ll never get out of Psalm 119.”

Psalm 117 is one of my very favorite Psalms. This is one of my very favorite Psalms to sing. We’ll sing it after the message this morning. “Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol him, all peoples. For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.”

You’ll notice then, this is a praise psalm, and typically in a praise psalm, we have an opening call to praise: “Praise the Lord.” And then there’s a renewed call to praise at the end: “Praise the Lord.” And in between we have a cause or a reason for praise. So there’s the call to praise in verse one: “Praise the Lord all nations, extol him all peoples.” And then the cause or the reason for praise: “For great is his steadfast love toward us and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” And then he closes again calling the people to praise: “Praise the Lord.”

The flow of thought then of the psalm follows that form. First of all, he calls us to praise, and then he tells us why in verse two, and then he concludes by calling us to praise again. All right, let’s take it through in that order then.

Verse One, We Have The Call To Praise

“Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol him, all peoples.” To praise and to extol the Lord is to ascribe glory to him, to exalt him, to tell of his greatness, to tell of his worth. And so we have these two lines of verse one that are nearly synonymous, but the second line adds an important detail that we’ll have to notice in order to understand the thought of the psalm. “Praise the Lord all nations.” And then the second line, “extol him all peoples.”

Nations, we understand as sovereign nations today. There are something like 195 sovereign nations in the earth. “Extol him all peoples,” and it’s plural. This would refer not to national groups as such, but to people groups as such, not just nations. So for example, in India, there are how many different people groups in India? In China, we have the same thing. How many different people groups? Many times with their own language in India and so forth. We have a missionary serving in Papua New Guinea. And it’s not just to the nation as such, but to a particular people group within that country.

And so he calls us in the first line, “all nations come to praise the Lord.” And not just all nations, but he heightens it a bit in the second line, “all peoples,” all people groups come and praise. Now what’s significant about this is that these calls to praise and these praise hymns have a temple setting in Jerusalem. Ordinarily, the psalmist will call the nation, Israel, to come and praise the Lord. He calls the faithful to gather around as the king leads them in praise, and they come in Israel to praise the Lord. But here—and this is not unique in Psalm 117, we have it in others like the 100th Psalm as well—but here he’s not calling just Israel to praise.

Here he calls the Gentiles of all nations to come and praise the Lord. And in fact, he calls the Gentiles of all people groups, of all linguistic, of all cultural groups, all different kinds of people—all the nations, come and praise the Lord. So here we have God through the inspired writer calling the nations and all the peoples of the world with all of their distinctions, all of them collectively, to come and praise the Lord.

I think this is a good time to mention something that I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet in this series, and that is a famous passage from C.S. Lewis regarding the Psalms. It is something you may have heard of because John Piper has popularized it in his ministry over the last several decades. C.S. Lewis in his Reflections on the Psalms famously confesses that he was for a time puzzled by this aspect of the Psalter where God calls men and women to praise him.

And in fact, he calls us to praise him with vigor and with enthusiasm. And so C.S. Lewis said the question arose in his mind: why does God call us to praise him? Is that narcissistic? Does God somehow need us to praise him? That God is somehow lacking and needs for us to fulfill something about him so that when we praise him, he’s better off? And after some reflection on that question, Lewis determined that it’s only appropriate that we praise the Lord.

And here’s his famous passage. He says, “What do we mean when we say that a picture is admirable? The sense in which the picture deserves or demands admiration is this: that admiration is the correct, adequate, or appropriate response to it; that if paid, admiration will not be thrown away. And if we do not admire, we would be stupid, insensible, and great losers.” His point here is really a very simple one. If we don’t admire something that is truly admirable, we are the losers for it.

It doesn’t take anything away from the object that is truly admirable, but it says something about us if we do not admire it and recognize its beauty and its glory. And so a failure to appreciate beauty and the enjoyment of it says something more about us than it does about the admirable object.

So for example, with the family, and for the first time, you stand at the shore, and you see the oceans, and you see the waves coming in, and it’s just awesome. And you have to say something. Or you’re with the family, and you go to the Rocky Mountains, and you see this majestic mountain range. It’s not enough just to stand there and gaze. You’ve gotta say something. You go, “Wow, isn’t that beautiful?” Or if you stand in front of the Niagara Falls, you look at it, you’ve gotta say something. This is true on every level. A delicious meal, you’ve got, “Oh, this is good.” Or a guy falls in love with a girl: “Man, isn’t she gorgeous? Isn’t she wonderful?”

There’s something about when we find something admirable and praiseworthy; we are not satisfied until we express that praise. We are lacking. We’re not content until the recognition is expressed. And that’s what Lewis is after here. He says that there’s somehow something about us that we have to say it. We have to express the praise. And so he says that the appropriateness of the praise entails a demand to express it. And we’re just not satisfied until we do. Lewis draws this out then in respect to God.

He says, “He,” that is God, “is the object to admire which is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience. And in the end, we have lost all. The incomplete crippled lives of those who are tone deaf, or have never been in love, or never known true friendship, or never cared for a good book, never enjoyed the feel of the morning air on their cheeks—these are all faint images of it.”

In other words then, the assumption in this call to praise is that God is truly glorious. And so praise is not just deserved, there’s a sense in which it’s required. We’ve got to acknowledge that or it says something about us that we are lacking. That he is the object of praise above all others. He’s superlatively glorious.

And if we fail to recognize his glory in a joyful expression of that glory, then we are the losers for it. And our own joy will never be complete. And so it’s not that God needs our praise. It’s that we do. It’s not that he’s not happy until we praise him. It is that our joy is not complete until we do. It completes our joy. We’re kind of a shrunken, diminished people until we recognize the glory of God and give him praise for it.

All right then, and so the psalmist here is saying simply that because God is supremely glorious, all the world must give him praise. It’s not enough that the psalmist give him praise. Now, in fact, the psalmist will give him praise, and in some of the psalms, the psalmist calls himself to praise: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.”

But that’s not enough. It’s not enough that the temple choirs sing God’s praise, although they were appointed for just that. And David appointed Asaph to oversee the musical guilds and to sing God’s praise. But that’s not enough. It’s not enough that the nation of Israel be called to praise the Lord, although they are called to do just that.

And what the psalmist is telling us here is that God is all-glorious and so the whole world must give him praise. “Praise the Lord, all nations; extol him, all the peoples.” And so in that sense then, this psalm has something of a missionary outlook. And this is important for understanding what the psalmist is writing about. It is for their sakes, for the sakes of the nations and the people groups—it is for their sakes that he calls them to praise the Lord. And in fact, this is God’s plan for the nations: that he will bring them all to praise him. He’ll have all, in the end, all people groups extolling his name.

And this is in that sense then a motive, one of the great motives for evangelism and foreign missions. There’s no religious pluralism here. All you nations, all you people groups, you’ve got your gods. You praise them. That’s nothing. You will not find satisfaction. You will not find something truly glorious until you come to recognize God in his glory and to praise him accordingly.

Today, there are something like 12,000 people groups in the world. About—the last number I could find—about 3,000 of those people groups still have no access to the gospel. Now these are smaller people groups, of course, like the one I mentioned with our missionary in Papua New Guinea. Major nations have all received it, but there are something like 3,000 people groups in the world that have no exposure to the gospel.

But God has a purpose in history that he will bring all nations and all peoples to worship him. You remember he said that way back in Genesis chapter 12. In Genesis 1 to 11, we have the nations in their rebellion against God and going their own way and they’re all in darkness and they’re all lost. And we come to Genesis 12.

And God calls Abraham as one out of those nations. And he said, “I’ll make a nation from you. And in your offspring, all the families of the world will be blessed.” The prophets echo the same thing. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. And the psalmist recognizes then when he writes all of this, of course, that when Israel sings this psalm, this universal call for the nations and the people groups of the world to praise the Lord, to praise Yahweh, he recognizes that for the moment, only Israel is singing this and no one else. But when he writes, and when they sing, “Praise the Lord, all nations; extol him, all peoples,” it is not empty rhetoric. This call to praise, built into it, is a prospect that is rooted in God’s global saving purpose.

And in that sense, this is a missionary song. It’s a song to be sung out of conviction and out of anticipation and recognizing that God has promised to save the world through Abraham’s offspring. And in fact, it is not enough. It’s not enough that he saved them from their sins; he’ll bring them to sing of it. And so in Psalm 67, for example, the psalmist writes, “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.”

Verse Two, The Reason For Praise

All of that then brings us to the second verse, the reason for praise. You’ll notice the first word of the verse, “for,” that’s generally the typical signal that now he’s going to explain. Why? He’s calling us to praise. Why praise the Lord? Why should everyone praise him?

Verse two: “Because great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” Now we have two lines to this verse as well, and in each of the lines the psalmist highlights one attribute of God. Notice in the first line, “great is his steadfast love toward us.” His steadfast love.

Now that’s that word we keep coming across in the Psalter so often. This is the word—the Hebrew word even—that has become rather popular even in English-speaking circles: hesed, his steadfast love. Actually, it’s translated in various ways in the various translations. And even in our translation, it’s rendered in different kinds of ways. This is an attribute of God that’s celebrated throughout the Psalter. And the reason it’s translated in different ways is because there’s no single word in English that corresponds exactly to this Hebrew word “steadfast love.”

This word, as it’s used in the Old Testament so many times over and again, has connotations of God’s love, his affection, his committedness, his resolve to help his people—all of that is part of the connotations of this word—but also God’s constancy in it, that he not only loves his people, and that he not only is committed to them, but he’s committed forever. There are covenant overtones to this. Some people have said, maybe we should translate this “his covenant love.”

It’s a committed kind of love. So God is kind to his people, he has affection for his people, and he’s bound himself; he’s bound himself. But he’s not just bound himself out of obligation; he’s bound himself in affection for his people—he loves them. And so we translate it as “steadfast love.” Some have suggested maybe we should translate this “God’s stubborn love,” which suggests exactly where we’re getting with how this word is used. God is stubbornly loyal to his people. He’s committed to his people in affection and stubbornly.

So in a way that overcomes even their waywardness and their rebellion and their sin. Despite all of their failures, he keeps on showing them kindness and he keeps on showing them his affection and he keeps on protecting them. In fact, that’s the sense that we have here in the first line.

“For great is his steadfast love.” This word translated “great” is typically the word that’s used in the Old Testament for God’s power, God’s might. Isaiah chapter nine, for example, “the mighty God.” It’s used in the sense of a hero, a mighty warrior. Great is his steadfast love.

It’s strong. But in fact, here in this verse, it’s not the adjective. It’s the verb. It’s the verb form of it. So his mighty love, his steadfast love prevails over us. It’s an active sense. His steadfast love prevails over his people. And that’s the sense of the preposition as well. “Over us”—he prevails over us with it. It’s not just that God’s love is big and that it’s strong, but it’s strong and powerful in an active sense. It prevails over his people. And so God’s steadfast love then, he’s saying, has had real meaning and real expression in the experience of his people. It’s not just an affectionate disposition. God’s steadfast love for his people has made a real difference.

In his people, he has chosen us. He’s made us his. He’s made us a nation. He’s protected us. He overthrew Pharaoh. He brought us through the Red Sea on dry ground. He brought us into our land over all of our enemies. He’s defeated our foes. He’s given us a king and he’s defeated all his enemies. God’s love prevails over us in that sense. And then he adds in the second line, another attribute of God.

“The faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” This word “faithfulness,” and a related word that’s used something like 60 times through the Psalms, has the idea of firmness, what is steady, and the idea that it’s reliable, it’s trustworthy, or faithful. You can depend on it. It’s also translated “truth,” “truthfulness.” And then he says, “the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” I’ve pointed this out to you before. When you say “the faithfulness of the Lord endures,” and if you say “the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever,” you’re really being redundant in a compound sense.

To be faithful is to endure. And if you’re really faithful, you’ll endure forever. But this is how we do it. In normal discourse, in poetry especially, we pile it up. We’re redundant to draw attention and to stress the point. And so here’s what he’s saying. He’s underlining God’s trustworthiness, his reliability.

And then in fact, if you want redundancy, it’s coupled often in the Psalter with God’s steadfast love. So we find often in the Psalter these two terms, “God’s steadfast love” and “his faithfulness,” brought together scores of times throughout the Psalter, scores of times throughout the prophets, and in fact—wish I had time to draw it out—we’ll find it in the New Testament, coming to a grand climax in the incarnation of Christ. He’s the very incarnation of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. And so if you say God has steadfast love, you’ve already said that he’s faithful. And if you’ve already said he’s steadfast love, you don’t need to say his faithfulness endures forever.

But that’s the point. He’s underlining God’s trustworthiness, his affection, his kindness over his people endures and it endures and it endures. It’s kind of like that—I think I’ve mentioned this before as an illustration. It’s like that love song from Lionel Richie: “You’ll always be my endless love.” That’s altogether redundant. If you’ll always be my love, well of course it’s endless. And if you’re my endless love, of course you’ll always be my endless.

But we do that to draw attention, to emphasize the truth of what’s being expressed. And that’s what he does here so often in the Psalter. “Great is his steadfast love and his faithfulness endures forever.” God is not a fickle God. He’s committed himself to his people, and we can take that to the bank. In fact, this coupling of these terms, God’s steadfast love and his faithfulness, reaches back to Exodus chapter 34.

You remember the people of Israel had rebelled and Moses wants God to commit himself to continue to be their God and not forsake them and not abandon them and destroy them because of their rebellion. And then he asked God, “Will you show yourself to me? Reveal—show me your glory.” Remember Moses goes and he hides under a rock as God passes by in some manifestation of his presence and he reveals his glory and he declares his name to Moses. Revealing his glory, he declares his name: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

That coupling of terms is celebrated throughout the Psalter. This is the kind of God we have who’s committed himself to us in love forever. And this is the ground of his people’s confidence. So then it’s for these two twin attributes of God that the psalmist calls all people to give praise to the Lord. Verse one: “Praise the Lord all nations, extol him all peoples.” Why? Verse two: “For great is his steadfast love and his faithfulness endures forever.” And now there’s more to see here. Notice the specific focus. Verse two: “Great is his steadfast love toward us.”

Who is the “us”? Pretty clearly it’s Israel. He’s Israel’s God; he’s committed himself to them. So the psalmist calls all peoples the world over to praise the Lord because of his faithfulness and steadfast love to Israel. Now why in the world would they do that? Why would the people groups of the world praise the Lord because he has committed himself to Israel and is faithful to them?

And the answer to that takes us into the whole story of the Bible. And that is: what God does for Israel, he does for the benefit of the entire world. He does for all the nations. This is the story of the Bible. We have it in Genesis chapter three, where it begins, where we have humanity in rebellion against God. We have the following chapters with the rebellion of the nations. And then in chapter 12, as I’ve mentioned, God calls Abraham and says, “In your offspring, I’ll bless all the families of the world.” And that’s the Old Testament hope. We have it over and again, that God is going to bless the world. He’s going to bless the nations through Abraham. Abraham will have a seed. He’ll have a son by the name of David. And God makes the promise to David. There’ll be a king in Abraham and David’s line who will bring this blessing to the nations. And this is the hope that shapes Israel throughout the Old Testament. And then we come to the New Testament. We come to the Gospels. And this is the turning point of history. And that’s the significance of Matthew chapter one, verse one.

“The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” Jesus himself will say, “Salvation is of the Jews.” One from within Israel will come, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and he will be the world’s savior. And so because of God’s steadfast love to Israel, because of his faithfulness to them, the world has a savior. Now the early Jewish Christians had a hard time adopting that kind of global outlook. We read of it in the New Testament in several places over and again. But this was the very purpose of the nation of Israel: that through Israel, God would bring a redeemer for all of the nations.

And this then is the ground of missions. I want you to see that. Keep your hand here, we’ll be back. But look at Romans chapter 15. And I want you to see where the Apostle Paul quotes this verse from the Psalms. Romans 15, I’ll begin with verse 8: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised.” Christ was a servant to Israel. Christ became a servant to the circumcised. Why?

“To show God’s truthfulness,” that is his faithfulness, “in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written.” And here he cites three different passages from the Old Testament. First of all, from Psalm 18: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing your name.” And again it is said—and here he quotes Deuteronomy 32—”Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again—and here he quotes Psalm 117 in verse one: “Praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples extol him.”

So Christ has come through Israel as promised so that the world will have a savior. This is very simply the Great Commission, where Jesus comes then and says, “Make disciples of all the nations. All authority has been given to me. I’m the universal savior. I’m the one qualified to judge and to save. Go make disciples of all the nations.”

This is what Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection. He says that in Luke chapter 24, verses 46 and 47: “Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and that he should be raised again the third day in order that repentance for the forgiveness of sins might be proclaimed to all the nations in his name, beginning at Jerusalem.” This is the programmatic statement of Acts chapter one, verse eight. Just before his ascension, Jesus says, “You’ll be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

And so we have on the one hand in the Psalms, psalms like Psalm 114, where the world is called to come and tremble before the Lord who is the judge. All peoples everywhere accountable before him, tremble before him in fear. And then on the other hand, we have psalms like Psalm 117, which present for us the opportunity for the people to approach him with joy, with confidence, singing in devoted praise.

Who Is The Worship Leader?

All right then, let’s take another question about the psalm, back to Psalm 117. Who is the worship leader here in Psalm 117? Who is the one calling them to praise? Now you know that when the preacher asks the “who” question in church, the answer is likely Jesus. But let’s see what’s going on here. There’s no superscript. There’s no author identified for us.

But who is this calling the nations to praise? In the ancient Near East, generally, it was the king’s responsibility to call the people to praise. We have records of that in the pagan nations around Israel. It was the same in Israel. The king was responsible to lead in praise.

We see that in a big way with David, of course. First Chronicles 15, 16, and later in First Chronicles as well, David brings the ark to Jerusalem, he appoints choirs to sing, and he appoints these various guilds, and he has this elaborate system of praise, and he leads the people in praise. We find the same thing later in 1 Chronicles. In 2 Chronicles we find King Hezekiah doing the same, writing a psalm and leading the people in praise. So that together the king and his people sing the praises to the Lord God who has made them his.

Now, we might wonder or just imagine how David, much less any of his later sons, could lead in the singing of Psalm 117. “Praise the Lord all the nations, extol him all the peoples.” How could David lead in that? David was a great king, but he never saw anything close to what this psalm calls for. Not even his immediately neighboring nations praised the Lord. They knew nothing of him. David’s son Solomon had a magnificent kingdom, renowned for it. We know of it, for example, with the Queen of Sheba, who came to see the glory of it. But Solomon never saw anything close to what this psalm calls for. His neighboring nations did not come and praise the Lord. And in fact, Solomon himself became apostate.

David’s sons in the line after him, one after another, we read of them in the Old Testament. One king after another, “he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” He did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord. They never saw anything like what the psalm calls for. We have a couple of kings in the Old Testament that did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. They didn’t see anything like what this psalm calls for. The nations were lost. They knew nothing of Israel’s God. And so we might wonder then, how did Israel itself sing this psalm? Is this just devotional excess? That never happened, but it sounds good, let’s say it. At its very best in ancient Israel, this psalm could only be sung in anticipation. It has built into it a forward kind of look.

Now, as I’ve mentioned in this grouping of psalms here recently, Psalm 117 is part of what’s known as the Egyptian Hallel. This is a grouping of psalms, Psalms 113 to 118, that were brought together to sing praise to God, especially at Passover time, to sing praise to God particularly for his deliverance of his people from Egypt and from their slavery. This is part of the Egyptian Hallel, sung at Passover. In Matthew chapter 26, we find that after Jesus had observed the Passover meal with his disciples, they sang a hymn and went out into the Mount of Olives. This is one psalm that the Lord Jesus sang the night before his death.

So imagine then how Jesus sang this psalm. What was going through his mind as he sang this psalm? “Praise the Lord all nations, extol him all peoples.” And then he goes to the cross, offers himself as a sacrifice for sins, for the sins of his people the world over. Jesus said that, John chapter 10: “Other sheep I have, they’re not of this fold, I must bring them.” In a graphic way, in John chapter 12, Jesus says, “If I be lifted up”—as he spoke concerning the death he would die—”If I be lifted up, I’ll draw all peoples to myself.”

And so here Jesus sings this song: “Praise the Lord all nations, extol him all peoples.” And then he goes out to the cross to secure its prospect. There he dies in the place of his people, sinners the world over, offers a sacrifice to God on their behalf, secures them for God, and makes them worshipers. For centuries, this song had been sung only as a hope, and then the Lord Jesus sang it and he secured the prospect of it. One day, one day, men and women from the world over, from every nation and every people group around the globe will sing the praises of God because Christ has secured them for just that.

The Apostle John gives us a glimpse of it in Revelation chapter seven. The picture there is of the new heaven and the new earth. These who have been saved out of the tribulation, the great tribulation, he calls it. “I saw a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.'”

And so Psalm 117 is a call to the nations to sing God’s praise. And the Psalm is just brimming with anticipations that one day they will. That’s wonderful to imagine. Imagine it, one day, men and women from all over the globe, from every tribe and language and people group, join together in the praise of our triune God through the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus. What we’ll sing is, verse one: “Praise the Lord, extol him.” Why? Well, because verse two: “Great is the Lord’s steadfast love toward Israel. His faithfulness endures forever.” God promised—God promised that he would bring blessing to all the families of the world through Abraham’s offspring. And we’ll say, “Here we are.” All of us Gentiles will say he’s kept his promise to Israel and he’s brought a savior to the world, the Lord Jesus Christ.