The God of Unshakeable Devotion (Psalm 117:1–2)

One of the earliest life lessons I learned is that size does not matter when it comes to the power of being knocked out. I was reminded of this again preparing this study. Our psalm proved it once more. Psalm 117 is short, but it delivers a knockout punch. No wonder, because God is its author. It is a glorious song, where God calls all people to praise him for his unshakeable, eternal devotion to his people. I want us to look at God’s unshakeable devotion to his people, which is clear from this text.

In v. 1, we see the God of all nations: “Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples!” The psalm starts with a beautiful instruction to bring praise to the Lord. This word can also be translated as “hallelujah”—it’s a halal psalm: “Hallelujah to the Lord, all nations.” This is a beautiful picture of radiance. It is the same picture as when Moses went up the mountain to meet with the Lord. When he came back down, his face was radiating God himself, so much so that the people asked him to veil his face. This is what the psalmist is saying: We need to radiate God. All nations, radiate God; praise him in this way.

The word has a second meaning: boasting. We need to boast about the Lord. A classic example of this is when the Egyptian people came to Pharaoh and boasted about the beauty of Sarah. Genesis 12:15 says, “And when the princes of Egypt saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh”—they boasted. I can clearly remember the first time I laid eyes on my wife. I drove back to my friends in Pretoria and gushed about her beauty. That is what the psalmist is saying: Praise the Lord, boast about the Lord, bring him praise.

The psalmist calls for praise and reflection on God’s majestic revelation—his creation, his redemption. And he says, “All people, boast about the Lord. Bring him praise. Sing hallelujah. Radiate this.”

Now, it’s interesting: Every time they use this praise in the hallelujah sense, it would be someone from the nation of Israel calling the covenant-keeping people of God, the covenant community, to come and praise the covenant God. He says, “Come, come reflect on who God is, the one who brought you out of Egypt. Bring him praise.” But now, the psalmist is saying, “Praise the Lord, you covenant people of God,” and he links it to all nations. How beautiful is this? From the Old Testament, the psalmist reflects back, saying all people need to praise our God. That’s how majestic our God is—you all need to praise God. He includes Gentiles (“nations”) in this psalm. “You Gentiles, come in,” he says. “Come and recognise our covenant Lord as God, and give him all honour with us, the covenant people of God.” He brings the Gentiles into this covenant relationship, calling all people—non-Hebrews—to praise God.

We know that God called Abraham when he was still a Gentile, to bring about this covenant people to himself. We see in Genesis 12:1–3:

The nation came from God picking Abram, choosing him as a Gentile, to bring about his plan. This was before God brought the law and all the traditions and requirements to be part of his nation. He called Abraham, a Gentile, to say, “Abraham, I want all people all over the world to worship and praise me.”

Paul quotes this specific verse in Romans 15:11. He includes the Law and the Prophets and also the Psalms to represent this unanimous, glorious testimony of the entire Old Testament, to say that even the Old Testament reflects this wonderful thing: All nations need to praise God. He includes the Gentiles with his people, Israel.

And then we read the last book in the Bible, Revelation, saying these same words. Revelation 7:9–12 says:

That’s what God wants. From Genesis to Revelation, to 2025, until 3000—that’s not a prophecy—he wants all people to bring him praise. What a thought!

Sadly, the Jews forgot that God is a God who commands all nations to worship him. Paul himself affirms this in Ephesians 3:6: “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Even he had to remind Jewish Christians back then that Gentiles are a part of the covenant people. God had revealed this to Peter in Acts 10 and reiterated it in the church council of Acts 15. But it was a truth with which Jewish Christians struggled early on.

Sadly, in the same way, people have decided that the God of the Bible is the God of the Western world. Nothing could be further from the truth. The psalmist reminds us that God is the God of the whole world. He is not only the God of the white man. He is the God of the Chinese, the Europeans, the Indians, the Africans, the rich, the poor, the educated, the uneducated. He wants all people to bring him praise. He wants all people to radiate who he is through the diversity of what he has created. Here is the God of the whole world, and he deserves to be praised by everyone.

God is so magnificent that he requires all types of people—all tribes, tongues, and nations—to bring him worship and praise, to radiate and boast about who he is. If the psalmist is calling Gentiles to bring praise to God, this assumes that they know God, the covenant-keeping God, as their God. They gave up their false beliefs, they gave up all their idol worship, and chose to worship Yahweh, the true, creator God. No one can praise God with an idolatrous mouth and an unbelieving heart. He alone is worthy of praise.

We must also appreciate that the psalmist does not instruct praise in Jerusalem. No, he simply says, “Praise God.” Praise him wherever you are. We need to remind ourselves that God is missional. He wants people all over the world to worship him. It gives us a responsibility that through our praise and through us radiating who God is, all the people outside would see who he is.

We know that God called and saved Abram by faith. Romans 4:20–21 says, “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” Because God cannot lie, and because he wanted all peoples to praise him, he saved Abram. And the rest is history. It was through faith that Abraham was saved, and through him the seed was brought into saving his people.

And this is also why John can say in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” And bring him praise. It is through Jesus who saved us Gentiles.

Imagine if Jesus came only for the Jews. Praise God, he came for the Gentiles too. Through his saving grace, he restored the relationship with God the Father. And it is because of this restored relationship that we can and should boast, saying, “This is my God, who brought me out of Sheol,” as our psalm says. Nobody praises him there. We praise him. He brought us out. Dead people cannot praise. He made us alive to praise him because he is worthy, and he will hold us fast to praise him. We need to radiate and boast about this.

Who should we do this about? Consider the call of Isaiah 40:9–12:

That is our God. He did not just create you—he measures every drop of water in his hand. The dust—he measures that. He weighs the mountains in his scales. That is our God. How can we not radiate him? He saved us to do this. This is the Lord the psalm is calling to praise: the almighty creator God.

But why do we get to praise him? Why do we get to radiate him? The main reason to bring him praise is that he is a covenant-keeping God. He is the one who shows his people unshakeable, forever love. Let’s look at that in v. 2: “For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD!”

The psalmist gives us this reason, and this is the key of the psalm: It is because of his everlasting and unshakeable love towards us that we can and should bring him praise. It is because of his steadfast love towards us. “For great is his steadfast love towards us.” God saves the nations because of his steadfast love, and his steadfast love is why we should praise him.

This word—“great”—is a beautiful word. It tells us about God’s love that covers us. It’s the same word in Genesis 7:18, where the waters cover the earth. The God who measures the water in the palm of his hand, sends all this water to cover the world—that’s how big and magnificent this love is. All that water covers; that’s how much love he has. All of that covers us.

In Psalm 65:3, it says, “When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions.” “Atone” translates the same work: cover, overwhelm. It is this covering love that we can’t even measure, that covers us and forgives our sins. God’s steadfast love covers and overwhelms us.

Brother, sister, it is this kind of love that should help us boast, radiate. The world should see God’s steadfast love radiating through is as we invited them to experience the same forgiveness we have received in Christ. His love covers us, saves us, redeems us, recreates us—not just for ourselves, but to radiate to all the nations. It is not by our works that we are saved. We cannot buy God’s favour to save us. It is his love that covers us, that saves us. When we confess that Jesus’ life covers our sin, he will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

His love not only covers us, but “the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.” That’s why I love the Psalms, because he just repeats what he said before. It’s almost like a mirror. This faithfulness endures forever. His faithful love is unshakeable. It holds you up; supports you. It is because God is a faithful God who cannot lie. He made a promise: “Here is my everlasting love, which will cover and save you.”

We read in Lamentations 3:22–24:

Brother, sister, can I encourage you, every morning you wake up, to reflect on this covering, great, majestic, forever love, praising God, radiating who he is? That is what our souls must do—radiate God’s love.

Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Every morning it’s new. Forever. It is in this that we place our trust to save us from death and bring us to life. God is a steadfast, true, constant God. He supports you. He covers you. He loves you.

This is why Jesus started most of his statements with regard to truth by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you.” He cannot lie. We can trust his word. He loves us forever.

Can you say that you have found this great God’s magnificent, never-ending, covering love? Can you, deep in your soul, say that God’s love is great, that it holds you? Can you say that it is true? Can you say that you believe in God’s unshakeable love for you, holding you fast no matter what doubts come? I hope you still have this high view of God and the gospel that saves.

It is so easy to forget this, brothers and sisters. We can recognise the need to praise God, gather with the church, and read the Bible every day. But does it stir you? Do you radiate this love through your day-to-day devotion to him? Do you thank him for the saving, covering love every day?

This reminds me of Aesop’s fable about the big ox. He walked to the watering hole—magnificent animal, broad shoulders, big horns—and little toad jumped up to this magnificent big animal and said, “You look magnificent. I want to be like you.” The toad puffed himself up, and he puffed himself up more and more, because he wanted to be like the ox—until he popped.

The moral of the story is that if you want something great for the wrong reasons, it brings destruction. It destroys. The pride filled the toad, and he was destroyed.

I fear Christian society has become like the toad—only expanding in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Knowledge is good, but instead of growing in the knowledge and then applying the knowledge to your life, you apply the knowledge of who God is.

Consider, for example, the great truth of God’s omnipresence. Do you live that? When you scream and shout at someone, when you gossip about someone, when you watch things that you shouldn’t, God is there. Can you see how theology and living can be separate? And that would be like the frog. “I read, I learn, I know.” Do you know what? About who? And why do you know? Knowledge needs to filter through into our lives, like this great covering love. How does that affect our lives?

We’ve lost the deep, rich truth of the gospel. Brother, sister, we wouldn’t have theology—the study of God—if he did not save us. Some have become so familiar with the gospel and grown in their knowledge that they have forgotten to live for God in thankfulness for this great love that they have experienced. It is all about you and me and how much you know, instead of learning about God and letting that affect your life, your commitment to the body, your own devotion.

God never changes. He changes us. And if God changed you through steadfast, covering, awesome, great love, your life should show that change, making him first in your life, bringing praise in everything you do.

But how do we appreciate the fact of this great, everlasting love that we get to radiate? We must appreciate this truth. What did God give us?

He set apart a specific day for his praise. So gather. He gave us his word to know him more intimately. So read. He gave us a means to talk with him. So pray. He gave us a meal to remember him and what he has done for us. Eat and drink. He gave us a family to be part of. So love one another. And it is through this love that we’ve experienced that we should show one another and the world. He gave us his Spirit to enable us to resist temptation. So fight.

That is how we radiate God’s never-ending, all-consuming, great, covering love. All this and more is available to us to bring him praise. All of this is free. Brother, sister, we shouldn’t do this out of duty. We should do it as we grow in our desire for him and in our affection to him, out of our thankfulness for his devotion to our lives. Out of us should grow this wonderful, all-consuming knowledge, and it should change our lives.

He is the one who covers us with his steadfast love. And if he covers us, we should radiate that. God calls us to bring him praise because he is the one who expresses this great steadfast love. Family, we get to worship this awesome God every Sunday, every day, through your own devotions. He has covered us with his amazing love, and we get to praise him. He invited us—this almighty creator—to praise him.

Let us stop being more concerned about our day-to-day lives—and I’m not dismissing the troubles in life—but let this consume those troubles. See those troubles in light of God’s covering peace and love.

We need to be careful how we treat the gospel. It’s not a light thing. It is our life. We shouldn’t let the gospel bring death instead of life. The greatest sin ever committed by men in the lands where Jesus is preached is the rejection of salvation by the cross. It’s the greatest thing ever. And you cannot experience this awesome love, the covering love, the safety that it brings, the joy that it brings, if you reject the cross of Jesus.

Don’t let today go by without bowing your knee before our great creator who wants to save. He wants to save. Can you see how this small psalm packs a punch?

The great multitude of believers throughout the ages, saved by the blood of Jesus, have the privilege to fulfil their purpose and joy in bringing God praises right now in heaven, repeatedly, every day, in perfection—just worshipping him. They recount his unshakeable love, bringing him praise repeatedly, over and over.

Let me encourage you to do the same—today, tomorrow, and until he calls you home. Hallelujah—praise our God.

AMEN