All right, 1 Chronicles chapter 16. We are looking at the Psalms this evening, but I’d like to begin with 1 Chronicles 16. This is a passage you may remember that I took that first Sunday to introduce the study of the Psalms. This is that passage where David is bringing the ark back to Jerusalem to the tent that he has prepared for it there. We have the story of it back in chapter 15 and then the arrival now in chapter 16 and the celebrations that marked that day. It was a festive occasion; it was attended by music and singing of all kinds. And this was the occasion when David now has instituted psalm singing to be associated with temple worship.
Enough for the context, I think. Let’s look at verses one to four. 1 Chronicles 16: “And they brought the ark of God and set it inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before God. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord. He attributed to all Israel, both men and women, to each a loaf of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisin.” And now verse four: “Then he appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord to invoke, to thank and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.”
You don’t have to read the Psalms very far at all before you realize that there are different types of Psalms. We might call them different genres of Psalms. This has been recognized since the earliest days of the Christian church. People began, Christians began studying the Psalms. They recognized that there are different types of Psalms. There are different words, there are different themes, there are different moods in the Psalms—different types of Psalms. There are lament Psalms, some that are given to lamenting, complaining even. There are some Psalms that are just given to praise. There are Psalms that are given to repentance of sin. There are Psalms that are given to giving thanks, and they’re all about thanking God. There are various kinds of Psalms, and students of the Psalms have recognized that for centuries; that’s nothing new.
But about 100 years ago, a man by the name of Hermann Gunkel, who was a critical scholar—a man thoroughly affected by critical scholarship—as far as I can tell, not a believer, following critical presuppositions of various kinds, he dismissed the superscriptions as unhistorical. He denied the Davidic authorship of the Psalms. He put all the Psalms at a much later date because of critical presuppositions regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch and so on like that. He was thoroughly affected by critical scholarship. But it is one of those occasions when someone on the other side of the fence has actually provided something very helpful in the study, in this case, of the Psalms. He is the first man in the history of the church to provide a careful analysis of these different kinds, these different types of Psalms.
You might find it interesting, some of you are familiar with the Grimm brothers—the Brothers Grimm from Germany—and their works in literature and things like that. He was influenced by that and just the recognition that there are different forms of literature. And we have that in English, of course. If I were to get up here and start off by saying, “Once upon a time,” well, you’d recognize immediately now we’re into fairy tales. Or for you to read something that says, “Whereas, whereas, and whereas, be it resolved that,” well, you know you’re into a legal document. If you see a piece of literature and it starts out with “To whom it may concern,” well, you know you’re reading a form letter. Or if it’s “Dear so-and-so,” and then at the end, “Sincerely,” you’re dealing with a personal letter. These are forms of literature that we’re all familiar with.
Well, what Hermann Gunkel did was apply that idea to the study of the Psalms. And he began to notice—and he’s the first one to provide an objective analysis of the Psalms in that way—showing that there are distinct forms or Psalm types that we find. Now, his book on it is just a real labor to read. It’s encyclopedic, typically German in its detail. It’s just a real labor to read through. But the analysis that he gave is thorough, hence what we call today “form criticism.” Look at the forms of the Psalms, and there are ways to recognize that certain of the Psalms—and this is not true of all of them—but certain of the Psalms follow distinct form types that evidently the psalmists had in mind and followed.
I want to say up front that the psalmists did not follow these forms slavishly. There are mixed types. Some of them you can’t discern any type at all, but there are discernible distinct types of Psalms. And he is—Hermann Gunkel is—the one who first pointed that out for us. And for all of the problems that he has in his scholarship, that has been a helpful analysis in the Psalms. And so for the coming weeks, I want to look at some of that with you because I have found it just enormously helpful when you read through the Psalms to recognize, “Okay, here’s this,” and you recognize here’s this Psalm form, this type, and it helps you analyze the flow of thought in the Psalm.
So when you look at the Psalm and you read through it, what’s this about? If you can determine that form, it will help you immensely understanding what the Psalm is all about and the psalmist’s flow of thought. So we’ve looked before at other matters of how to understand the Psalms. We’ve looked at poetry; I’ve emphasized in particular, beyond the figures of speech and things like that, that you have to read carefully and slowly in the Psalms. This is not narrative. This is not something where you read straight through to get the point. You have to read reflectively and take your time and read it again. And in particular, notice how there’s a first line and a second line and how the second line relates to the first line. Sometimes it’s a triad—there are three lines. And how do the second and third line relate to the first? And you’ve got to think when you read through the Psalms. It’s poetry. It’s meant to be terse and cryptic and full of symbolism. And that parallelism is extremely important.
We also saw then next that to understand the Psalms, we must recognize the focus on the Davidic King—that primarily the Psalms are not about you, they’re not about me, they’re not about my personal struggles; they’re about the King, his struggles, his praises. And so we are to picture, when we read the Psalms, the gathering of the congregation of Israel at the temple, singing around the King, the praises of the King. Psalms are largely by David. They are about the Davidic King, either David or one of his successors. And we need to recognize that.
And last time we saw that we must recognize the temple setting of the Psalter. And that is just pervasive in the Psalms—that there’s this temple setting, there are references to the temple worship and the liturgy of the temple throughout the Psalms that we tried to show last week. Well, now what we’re going to do is try to look at these psalm types, and we’ll spend some weeks doing this and I’ll help you recognize them. I have found this enormously helpful in reading the Psalms with a better understanding.
Today, all I want to do—we’ll end up with Psalm 117 and we’ll spend a few minutes expounding that—but before that, all I want to do is help you, give you some ways to recognize at a glance what form of psalm you’re looking at. What’s interesting now is 1 Chronicles 16 in verse four. Centuries before Hermann Gunkel, David had divided the Psalms among distinct types. Notice verse four: “Then he appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord.” And here we are: “to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.” Here are three different psalm types. Now, Hermann Gunkel came up with five. They can be collapsed, I think, into these three.
Bruce Waltke says that one day he was reading his Hebrew Bible. He came across this verse. He said, “I almost fell out of my chair.” He said, “I’ve been reading Hermann Gunkel. David had that long before you did.” Here it is. And actually, this shows up in some of the commentaries now—commentaries on 1 Chronicles 16. I’ve seen this observation show up and I think—I think all of them got it from Bruce Waltke, although none of them yet that I’ve seen have given him credit for it. But I know that some of them at least got it from him because they are former students of his. That’s pretty much a giveaway.
But here he noticed, and he was the one who brought it to my attention, here David has given us three classes of Psalms: to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel. And then the following verses, you have Asaph who’s appointed as the music leader, and you have these institutions of singing that accompany temple worship throughout now the life of Israel at the temple.
Now, before I go any further, I’ve got to deal with a translation issue, and some of you with an NIV have probably already noticed it. The ESV that I have here, verse four, reads: “to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.” If you have an NIV, you’ll notice it says: “to extol, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.” So in the ESV translation, you have three different types of Psalms. In the NIV translations, you have three different types of praise. So, there is a difference. The question is: who’s right?
And again, Dr. Waltke has argued, I think, very effectively that the ESV has it right here. And I think you can demonstrate that pretty easily. The Hebrew word here has a causative stem. It’s the Hiphil stem. It means “to,” and it comes from a verb “to remember.” So, it means “to cause to remember” or “to remind.” So it is to remind God, as it were, of a need—hence, petition, or the ESV, “to invoke,” a petition to ask God.
Now, one of the, I think, giveaways that that is the correct way to understand it is that in both Psalm 38 and Psalm 70, you could look into the superscription there, and the same word appears. And interestingly, the NIV translates it “a petition,” which is what the ESV has back in 1 Chronicles 16—to invoke, it’s a petition. So I think the point is pretty clear that—I don’t know why the NIV translated it that way, I’m sure they have good reasons that I don’t understand—but I think Dr. Waltke has argued this well. I’m convinced of that: that the ESV has it right to invoke or to petition God.
So we have three different types of Psalms now, as the ESV has it: to invoke, to thank, and to praise the God of Israel. Three different types of Psalms: petition, thanksgiving, and praise. Petition (to invoke) is your petition Psalms or, if you’d like to say, that’s the lament Psalms. The lament Psalms all are petition Psalms. They’re calling on God to help, to deliver, to save and so on. So we have the petition to invoke, and then you have thanksgiving, and then praise. Three different types of Psalms. Petition, thanksgiving, and praise. Petition—that’s your lament or your complaint Psalms. It’s even your imprecatory Psalms. And then you have the thanksgiving psalms, giving God thanks for his work among his people. We’ll see some of that in a minute. And praise psalms, where they praise God as the creator and so on.
To Invoke, To Thank, and To Praise the Lord
So the three types that we’ll look at—and I think we can determine these forms and types of psalms in the Psalter. Now there are other minor types of Psalms and we’ll note them as well as we go along. There are Songs of Zion, Songs of Trust; there are Wisdom Psalms or Torah Psalms, Historical Narrative Psalms, Messianic Psalms, Pilgrimage Psalms. There are various types and not all of them have a distinct form. But these we do have a form for that are helpful to recognize. Again, I want to emphasize not all of them have the distinct form and sometimes they’re mixed. Sometimes it’s hard to discern. The psalmist did not follow these slavishly, but yet there is enough to show that they definitely had these forms like we might have—I think a parallel might be how we do a limerick. There’s a distinct meter to it. There’s a form to that. They have it in the Psalms as well.
Now again, the value of recognizing this before we go on—I just want to emphasize that we won’t get into a lot of that tonight—but one of the values of this to me has been, “Okay, I see now the flow of thought in the Psalms.” When I read this Psalm and I see that form, I see those three steps or five steps or whatever it is in the form that helped me see what’s in the psalmist’s mind as he writes the Psalm and to follow his train of thought then.
Now, what I want to do now is just give you some quick ways to recognize these different types of Psalms. The following weeks we’ll do more with that, but just quickly how to recognize them.
First of all, the praise Psalms. These are psalms of descriptive praise, they’re called; psalms of general praise; they’re also called hymns. These are psalms that offer praise to God, typically as creator, redeemer—praising God for his great attributes, for who he is. They’re often designated a song or a psalm, and often there are musical instruments associated with it, a note of rejoicing. These are praising God for who he is and for his great acts in history. They’re often called praise. You often see the word praise in these psalms, as we’ll see.
Now the identifying mark—here’s how you notice a praise psalm. The identifying mark in a praise psalm is the call to praise. So the praise psalms don’t just praise the Lord. The praise psalms begin to call on you. Look at Psalm—I have it on your outline—Psalm 95: “Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord.” See, he’s calling the congregation to praise. “Let us make joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.” So he’s not yet praising; he’s calling the congregation. This is the call to worship. He’s calling the congregation to come and praise, and that’s the first mark of a praise psalm.
Psalm 96, he’s calling the congregation: “Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth.” You see the command, the imperative here. “Sing to the Lord, bless his name, tell of his salvation, declare his glory among the nations.” Psalm 98 calls the congregation again: “Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.” Famously, Psalm 100: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness, come into his presence.” So you have this marking the praise Psalms—that it’s a call to the congregation. Give praise to God; he’s deserving of it. Psalm 103: “Oh my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name.” Psalm 113—I have these on your outline: “Praise the Lord.” And there’s—the Hebrew there is a word that you know: Hallelujah. It’s not Hallelujah-Yahweh, that’s the long form, just Hallelujah, the short form for God’s name. Hallelujah means—Hallelujah means simply: “Praise the Lord.” It’s a command. “Praise the Lord. Praise all ye servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord.” And then Psalm 117, we have it again: “Praise the Lord all nations, extol him all peoples.” So there’s the mark of a praise psalm. Now there’s more to mark it; we’ll see that later. But there’s your first way to recognize it. These psalms that call people to praise are the praise psalms.
Next, the petition or lament psalms. Petition or lament Psalms. General description there: these are just what it says. It’s a plea to God for help. Usually it’s in life-threatening circumstances. This is where the psalmist is lamenting his situation, his circumstances. Usually his life is in danger. People are against him. He has enemies that want to kill him, that want to dethrone him. And he goes to God lamenting. And sometimes we can even call these complaint Psalms—complaining of the circumstances that he’s in. And sometimes the complaint is so strong that we call it a protest. “This isn’t right that I should be suffering like this. It isn’t right that they should be opposing me like this. It’s wrong that they do this. It’s not right that you haven’t helped me yet.” That kind of complaint and that kind of tone that you see. So you have these different terms that we use: lament, complaint, protest. And that’s really determined by the different tone that you have in these Psalms. But what you have in all of these lament Psalms is a petition. “Deliver me, help me, save me.” And so there’s how you mark what a petition psalm or lament psalm is—not just by the tone, but by this form.
There’s often some call for the destruction of the enemy. So we get to an imprecatory psalm in these lament psalms. But the first identifying mark of the lament or the petition psalms is what I have there on your outline—oh, I don’t have that on your outline, I should have. Oh yes, there I do: the opening direct address and often an introductory cry for help. The first thing you’ll see is a direct address. “Oh Lord,” “Oh shepherd of Israel,” “Oh God.” A direct address to God, and that marks these lament Psalms. So Psalm 3:1: “Oh Lord, how many are my foes?” There you have the direct address and already an introductory lament. Psalm 5: “Give ear to my words, oh Lord, consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God.” There’s a direct—he addresses God directly and there’s the first mark of a lament Psalm or a petition Psalm. We haven’t even got to the petition yet in some of these, although often in the beginning of these Psalms, there will be a brief, “Oh Lord, save me.” Something like that. But the direct address identifies these first. Psalm 10:1: “Why, oh Lord, do you stand far away?” It’s a familiar note in the lament Psalms. Not only that his enemies are many and that they are strong, but that God doesn’t seem to help. And he’s complaining about that. So Psalm 10: “Why, oh Lord, do you stand far away?” He addresses God directly, “oh Lord,” and then the lament. Psalm 22, another famous one: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 80: “Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock.” So for our petition or lament Psalms, they’re marked first of all—there’s more, but first of all—by this direct address. And often with that, an introductory lament or a plea for help, which we’ll see in later weeks.
There’s a third kind of psalm, and that’s this one of grateful praise, or a psalm of thanksgiving. These psalms give praise to God. It’s a sort of a subset of praise psalms, but it’s a specific kind of praise. It’s praise for what God has done. One helpful way to think about these psalms of grateful praise is to think of them as the aftermath of the lament psalms. So in the lament or petition psalms, the psalmist will complain and lament his situation, cry to God for help, “deliver me.” And now in these psalms of grateful praise, the psalmist will say, “I cried unto the Lord and he heard me.” And so it’s the aftermath. And it’s a psalm not of God’s greatness and his attributes and his creating of the world and all of that, like in the praise psalms—that you’ll find in some of it—but primarily these psalms are given to individual thanks and praise.
And the identifying mark of these psalms of grateful praise or thanksgiving psalms is the introductory or the opening proclamation of praise where the psalmist expresses either his intent to praise or the praise itself. So these Psalms are marked by, “I will praise the Lord,” that kind of tone. Psalms of grateful praise. So the thanksgiving Psalms typically start off with a note saying, “I will praise God.” So Psalm 34: “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall be continually in my mouth.” Psalm 30: “I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.” So you can see how this is sort of an answer to the lament psalms. In fact, some of the psalms are exactly that. We will see in the superscription a psalm of lament written in a certain circumstance. And then we’ll find a psalm of grateful praise in the superscription giving the same historical location as that lament psalm. And now he’s saying, “I cried to the Lord and he helped.” The person when he cries to the Lord asks for help. And now in the thanksgiving Psalm, it’s individually oriented, not just general praise, but individually oriented. “I cried to the Lord and he saved me.” Psalm 92: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord.” Psalm 116: “I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.”
A Sample Praise Psalm: Psalm 117
All right, we’re going to see more of that, and I think it will help you identify the Psalms, and then the more that we see, I think will help you understand the Psalms better as you read through them. Now, one of the things that I have found, as I’ve said, enormously helpful, is to recognize the form of the Psalms, so you can follow the psalmist’s flow of thought. We’ll see more of that in the coming weeks, but here I just want to introduce the praise psalm. And for that, let’s look at Psalm 117.
Psalm 117. This provides a nice, crisp example or sample of a praise psalm. And I want you—and here we can discern the form of the psalm very easily. Before I read the psalm, I’ll give you the three parts that are typical of a praise psalm. First of all, the psalmist gives a call to praise. We’ve already seen that. And then there’s a reason or cause for praise. Why should I praise the Lord? And then typically there’s a renewed call to praise. So you have in a praise psalm, you typically have a call to praise, a cause for praise or a reason for praise, and a renewed call to praise.
Now see if you can see that here in Psalm 117. First of all, the call to praise: “Praise the Lord, all the nations. Extol him, all peoples.” There’s the call to praise. “For great is his steadfast love toward us.” That’s a cause for praise, a reason for praise. So first, the call to praise: “Praise the Lord.” Why? “For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” Call to praise, then a cause for praise, and then it ends up with a renewed call to praise: “Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.”
So there’s the flow of the thought of the psalm. I found this tremendously helpful. What is the psalmist saying? Well, he’s calling to praise because specifically, “Great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” And after saying why we should praise God, he once again gives a call to praise: “Praise the Lord.” Again, the psalmists are not slaves to these forms, and not all of them are this crisp and nice, but there are a lot of them that follow forms like this. And it’s just so helpful, I think, to recognize that in your reading. I’ll have more of that in the coming weeks, but let’s spend the rest of our time now here in Psalm 117.
Notice again the call to praise, verse one. Actually, the whole Psalm is given to praise, but what we have here is a call to praise. “Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol him, all peoples.” Calling people—you can imagine here the worship leader, or perhaps the king himself, standing in the congregation at the temple, calling people to come and give praise to God. “Let’s come together and praise the Lord.” That’s the idea. So he’s calling people to praise.
Verse two, why? What’s the cause for praise? “Because great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” So here are two of God’s attributes. By the way, that little conjunction at the beginning of the verse, “for,” is another signal for these praise psalms. It’s introducing the cause for praise. You’ll see that often. Sometimes it’ll be “who” instead of “for.” “Praise the Lord who did this and who does that and who is like this.” But often it’s this “for,” the signal that this is a praise psalm.
So praise the Lord. He calls people to praise the Lord. Why? First of all, because of his steadfast love. “Great is his steadfast love toward us.” Now God’s steadfast love—this is a key word in the Psalter. This is—some of you may be familiar with the Hebrew word, hesed. That’s this word here. It’s translated in other versions as God’s “tender mercies,” his “covenant faithfulness.” We don’t have an exact equivalent in English, but it speaks of God’s loyalty to his people, his affection for his people, his love for them, but it’s a love that gives them the help that he’s promised to give and all of that. And he’s rejoicing here that this covenant loyalty God has given to us. “Great is his steadfast love to us,” that is, Israel. God has made promises to us, and he’s kept those promises. Not only does he have steadfast love toward us, but he’s saying, “great is his steadfast love toward us.” That God has manifested his covenant loyalty and love for Israel in marvelous, stupendous ways, and he’s done it over and over again. So great is his steadfast love. From the exodus to the taking of the land and to God’s many interventions in the history of Israel and preserving them against their enemies and providing for them, he has shown his steadfast love. We have here something of a note of God’s electing grace, his affectionate loyalty to his people, his commitment to them. All of that are the connotations of this word, “steadfast love.” And so the psalmist calls people to praise God because of his steadfast love toward us.
And then he gives a second reason, verse 2b: “and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” Faithfulness—his truthfulness, his commitment to his word. God says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. He’s faithful to that. It’s something—it’s a bit redundant actually to praise God for his steadfast love and then to praise him for his faithfulness. There’s just a bit of overlap there. But you do that in the Psalms. You want to keep up the idea of God’s commitment to you. So you praise him for his steadfast love, and now for his faithfulness, which is very much the same. And then he says, “his faithfulness endures forever,” which is really redundant. His steadfast love, okay, that endures by definition. He’s faithful, that endures by definition. But now he says it: “it endures forever.” There’s no end to it. And in fact, these two terms—God’s steadfast love and his faithfulness—these two terms become key terms that are used together more than a dozen times in the Psalms and often in the Prophets. It works back actually to Exodus 34 and verse 6 where, at Moses’ request, God appears to Moses. Remember Moses hides in the cleft of the rock and the Lord appears and pronounces his name: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger.” And then we have these words: “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” That pair of words becomes extremely important running through the Old Testament. One of these Christmas seasons, I’m going to preach a Christmas message on Exodus 34 in verse six and show all of that points through the canon till it crashes in the incarnation of Jesus.
But all of this then in verse two, the cause for praise, is expressing the psalmist’s confidence in God’s love for Israel, his chosen people. God has committed himself to us, and he’s proven it over and again, and we ought to give him praise for it. So he’s expressing his confidence with regard to God’s love for Israel. And yet, notice verse one: “Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol him, all peoples.” Now that’s important on a couple of levels. One, God is creator of everyone. He’s everyone’s God, whether they recognize him or not. He’s the creator of all. He’s the judge of all. He’s the ruler of all. And the psalmists talk about that. They speak of God’s greatness over all the earth and his lordship over the nations. And they all owe him praise. In fact, I think I’ve mentioned this before—I love the way Isaac Watts picks up this notion in some of his Psalms that he has put into English, some of which we still sing today. He was famous for putting the Psalms into a meter and then to rough paraphrase with their Christocentric focus in light of New Testament truth and so on. But often he will pick up this notion of all of the peoples praising God because he is deserving and they owe him praise. And his expression in a few of his Psalms that he has put to music is: “pay your praise to God, pay your praise to him.” I love the way he’s captured that. You owe this to God, all the nations do, whether they are Israel or someone else.
So it’s important on that level, calling all the nations to praise because God is deserving of it—he’s their creator. But there’s more to this than just that. Throughout the Psalms, there is this forward-looking—let’s call it an eschatological prospect—when all the nations will give praise to God because he is their Redeemer also. That looks back to Genesis chapter 12 and God’s promise to bless all the families of the world in the seed of Abraham. It looks forward to the book of Revelation, when every tribe and kindred and tongue stand before the throne and sing praise to the Lord Jesus. And the psalmists often have that prophetic outlook, and they’re calling the nations—picture this, here they are at the temple in Jerusalem, and he calls all the nations to come and worship God with them. Like in Psalm 100: “Enter his courts with praise,” the courts of the temple. How can they do that? They’re out and about, they are not believers in Yahweh, and yet they look ahead to a time when they will, in fact, bow in praise to God because through the seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ, they will be saved, and the world itself will come and bow before the Lord Jesus.
This is cited in the New Testament in a couple of places—in the book of Romans. Actually, it’s Romans 15; Paul cites Psalm 117 here and other Old Testament passages to speak of the unity of the people of God in Christ and united in singing praise to Him. So this is one of those Psalms where—I was telling my wife this on the way up—it’s one of the Psalms where I could stop and explain it to you pretty simply in three, four, five minutes, pretty easily. Or I could take a couple hours and expound all the biblical connections that come from it and that it ties into. And it’s just a marvelous song calling the world to praise God because of His steadfast love—that is, all the world one day will recognize that God is steadfast in His commitment to His chosen people and in His saving and His faithfulness to them. And so the overall message of the psalm then is just calling the world to praise the Lord, a praise that is due him because of his steadfast love and his faithfulness.
And so the psalm ends with a renewed call to praise: “Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.” The Lord is worthy of it. And one day the entire world will sing it. And I would like us to end with singing number three in your hymnals, which is a song that is simply this psalm, Psalm 117. It’s number three, the second tune. Let’s stand together as we sing.
“O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Eternal are thy mercies, Lord, eternal to attend thy word. Alleluia! Alleluia! Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore, till suns shall rise and set no more. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Hallelujah, hallelujah.”