Psalm 47
The Psalms
Psalm 47
Crucified, risen, ascended
Psalm 47
1 For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm.
Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. 2 How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth! 3 He subdued nations under us, peoples under our feet. 4 He chose our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loved. Selah
5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets. 6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. 7 For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise.
8 God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne. 9 The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham, for the kings of the earth belong to God; he is greatly exalted.
______________________________
Psalm 47 – Crucified, risen, ascended
(Verses 1-4) All nations on earth are told to shout with ‘cries of joy’ and clap their hands to God. He alone is to be worshipped: not self, not man, not idols, not religion, but God alone. When the Bible teaches that God is three Persons in One, and One God in three Persons, it is introducing us to this unique God. He is ‘awesome’. He is the ‘great king over all the earth’: little wonder that the Bible says, therefore, that Jesus is ‘Lord of Lords and King of kings’. (Revelation 17:14, 19:16). He has an agenda, to make His people finally victorious whether Israel, God’s earthly people, or Christians, God’s Heavenly people. He chooses for us our inheritance in Heaven because He loves us. We shall reign with Him over nations. Every loving Father likes to think he has made the right long-term decisions and choices for His children. Why? Because he loves them. Our Heavenly Father—who is perfectly one with the Son and the Spirit—wants the very best for His spiritual children, only even more so. We should stop and think about that most wonderful truth, rather than just take it for granted.
(Verses 5-7) One of the truly significant miracles achieved by the Lord Jesus Christ was His ascension from earth to Heaven. We often do not hear it referred to when considering the gospel. I think that we tend to assume it at times when we just refer to the resurrection. Jesus died on the cross as our perfect sacrifice, to bear our sins as sinners and be judged for them in our place as our perfect penalty-taker and substitute. His resurrection from the dead demonstrates Jesus’ power over death. It also shows that God the Father, in raising His Son, Jesus, from the dead, was fully accepting the substitutionary death on the cross of Jesus in our place. It also confirms that, through the Holy Spirit, risen Jesus dwells in the heart of each believer. But when He ascended from earth to Heaven, that sinless body, broken on the cross for our sins and raised from the dead with ‘the power of an endless life’, actually took its place in Heaven. It is that same resurrected and ascended body that Jesus possesses in the Glory. The same Lord Jesus will return in that same glorious body when He comes back once more to earth as ‘Lord of Lords and King of kings’. That is why we are told to praise Him as God! Jesus really is ‘King of all the earth.’
(Verses 8-9) Our King Jesus is on Heaven’s ‘holy throne’, over all nations, peoples and those saved by faith, like Abraham. He is ‘greatly exalted’. (The Hebrew word for ‘exalted’ and ‘ascended’ is the same. Is Jesus your King? If not, why not bow your heart and bend your knees to Him, now?