Tell the nations
about His splendor! Tell all the nations about His amazing deeds! – Psalm
96:3 (NET)
Why does the Psalmist
implore the people of the Creator God to “tell the nations” about Him? The
given answer is “For the Lord is great and certainly worthy of praise; He is
more awesome than all gods” (96:4). Along those same lines, the Psalmist
goes on to exclaim, “For all the gods of the nations are worthless”
(96:5a). What gods were those? Well, the history of religions
throughout the world shows us the answer, as we see men worshiping the moon,
the sun, the stars, the planets, comets and even the sky itself, ascribing
divine powers and attributes, mythologies and legends, to such things.
Indeed, with an
appropriate sense of wonder and awe, men looked to the heavens and imagined
that the things that filled their view, and even the things that filled the
sky, such as lightning and thunder and even the rain itself in some cases, were
there to be worshiped, though this be inappropriate. The correct response would have been to
ascribe praise and worship to the one that created these things, setting
celestial phenomena in motion. It is with such thoughts in mind that we
hear the Psalmist saying, “but the Lord made the sky” (96:5b). We can
hear the writer mocking the idea of worshiping the works of the hands of their
Creator God and saying, “You think thunder and lightning is impressive?
You think that the sun and moon are to be worshiped because of the light that
they give?” His rejoinder to that is “Majestic splendor emanates from
Him” (96:6a).
As we move through
this Psalm, and if we are to hear it rightly, it is incumbent upon us to recognize
the underlying emphasis on the covenant. The covenant, of course, as Scripture
presents it, was for the purpose of causing the Creator God’s chosen
people---the ones that would come to have this Psalm as part of their Holy
writ---to be a blessing to all peoples. The insistence upon the telling
of His splendor and the telling of His amazing deeds was partly for the purpose
of dragging men away from the idolatrous worship of the creation rather than
the worship of the Creator, and to re-direct them from the ongoing
self-subjugation of divine image-bearers to that which was not created in the
image of the Creator God, with that inappropriate subjugation being yet another
part of evil’s distortion of God’s good, created order.
From the moment that the
Creator God metaphorically laid hands upon Abraham (Abram) and set Him apart
for His covenant purposes, that same God intended the message of His covenant faithfulness
to be shed abroad to all the peoples of the world. This can most
assuredly be seen in the strategic positioning of Abraham, in the land of
Canaan at the crossroads of the world, that would enable him to interact with all
the peoples of the world as they crossed the sands of the middle east. At
least part of Abraham’s message, as the recipient and bearer of the covenant,
was to be the testimony of the promises of His faithful God that had laid upon
him a responsibility to be a blessing and to reflect the glory of the Creator
God into the world (not unlike the charge that was understood to have been
given to Adam---remember, the Psalmist and those that would hear this Psalm,
would do so with the stories of Adam and Abraham as part of their collective
memory and self-understanding).
Unfortunately, as
time progressed, and even though the position of the covenant-bearers would be
unchanged, this message became isolated. The message of the providential
Creator God became restricted. This God’s people, Israel, who were charged
with being light-bearers for the purpose of the increase of God’s glory, became
veritable cities on a hill that were actually hidden, and candles that had been
lit and actually placed under a basket (to borrow New Testament imagery that
fell from the lips of Jesus). This happened in spite of their possession
and memorization and recitation of Psalms such as this one, in which God’s
all-nations plan and intention is clearly set forth.
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