The God Worthy Of Psalming And Hymning: Psalm 113 (Part 1)

by on December 14, 2024 | Comment

Praise Yah, praise you servants of YHWH, praise the name YHWH.

2May the name YHWH be blessed from now and to forever.

3From the sunrise until its descent,
praised is the name of YHWH.

4Exalted above all nations,
YHWH, his glory is over the heavens.

5Who is like YHWH, our God?
Who ascends to sit?

6Who bends to look on the heavens and the earth.1

Introduction

Yuri Gagarin is an unlikely candidate to make an appearance in our churches. The Russian cosmonaut died in 1968. Nevertheless, you may have heard of him. He was the first man in space. He is also becoming a favorite sermon illustration of some.2 It is often attributed to the “Russian cosmonaut,” that upon his return from space, he pointed out that “he had not seen God up there.” The story is more complex than this, as it may have been popularized by Khrushchev and then misattributed to Gagarin.3 But let us not allow facts to get in the way of a good illustration.

This may illustrate much about modern conceptions of God for us. Do we expect to see God “up there”? Are we surprised if the Hubble Telescope does not show us God’s living room? Perhaps the popularity of this illustration descends from C. S. Lewis, who wrote a response essay to Russian reports that “they have not found God in outer space.”4

Psalm 113 anticipates that we cannot find God in outer space. In fact, a God we find in outer space is hardly worth psalming or hymning. This psalm commences what we often call the “Hallel Psalms” or sometimes “the Egyptian Hallel.” Psalms 113–18 are recited by Jews together, and even though Psalms 111–12 also commence with “hallelujah,” they are not recited as part of the Hallel.5

Psalm 113 stands at the head of the Hallel and introduces the God who is worthy of praise—the God worthy of psalming and hymning. In this article we will see two ways God is presented to us: first, the appropriate time to praise him; second, how he is appropriate for praise. In the next article we will look at God and the lowly.

The Appropriate Time to Praise (vv. 1–3)

The psalm commences with a reflection on when God should be praised. He is to be praised “from now, until eternity.” Or as we might say in common parlance, we are to start and not stop. Before rushing past this, we ought to reflect on what it implies—namely, that God’s name deserves unceasing praise.

Why would God’s name deserve unceasing praise? Well, one reason would be because time is his creation, and all of his works praise his name (cf. Ps 104:31–4). Time itself, in its entirety, ought to praise God. We should join in the chorus.

But this is not merely lofty. The psalmist makes it practical for us. We are to praise “from the sunrise to its descent.” When you wake in the morning, praise God. When you gather round your dinner table and the sun has set, praise God. Between those times, you also should praise God.

If you are a skeptical person, you might be asking, “How can I do this all day? This doesn’t seem sustainable. I’m not a monk or a nun!” Or you might be thinking, “Am I expected to sing all day long?” A few considerations will aid us.

First, we have far too narrow a view of praise. Take as an example the phrase “praise and worship.” Upon hearing this phrase many ideas may come to mind. But generally, Christians and churches who use this phrase use it as a shorthand for music. I grew up with praise bands, worship music, and worship pastors, all of which had to do with song. But song is not the exclusive domain of praise. The biblical view of praise is more but not less than song. The whole of the Sunday service is worship. Yes, that also means listening to preaching is worship.6

Second, we do praise and worship God outside of the bounds of Sunday. It is no accident that the Heidelberg Catechism (HC) is structured around guilt, grace, and gratitude.7 It is the basic structure of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Paul writes in chapter 12, beginning the gratitude section,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:1–2)

Paul describes “spiritual worship” as presenting our bodies to God, and he goes on to give an ethical exhortation fueled by gratitude: “Do this; don’t do that.” This means we worship God by loving him, by loving our neighbor, and by serving them through good works in gratitude.

The Appropriate God for Praise (vv. 4–6)

The psalm also shows us the loftiness, the exaltation of God in a few different ways. He is “exalted above all nations.” There are also the rhetorical questions, “Who is like YHWH, our God? Who ascends to sit? Who bends to look on the heavens and the earth” (5–6).

First, God is above the nations. If you are familiar with the contours of the story of the Old Testament, this does not take an overactive imagination. In the Old Testament, this meant the pagan oppressing nations. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia each had their turn oppressing the people of God, sometimes swapping back and forth.8

Recently, there was an election in America. And this truth applies—that God is above all nations. He is exalted above America and her elections, England and her monarch, and all the warring nations of this Earth. There is only one God, and so all nations are accountable to him. Provincial deities do not exist to judge the nations on a sliding scale. We do not have to worry about warring gods or nations trying to rival our God because our God has “the whole world in his hands.”

The psalm undergirds this point by inviting comparison: Who is like YHWH? The following clauses can be difficult to render into idiomatic English. The poetic picture the psalmist paints helps us to understand God’s incomprehensibility. People can be seated “up high” and can look far down. Perhaps you have been to the Grand Canyon and looked far down from up high. This is not what the psalmist is suggesting. Rather, God must “go up” or “ascend” to sit. To put it more starkly, when God sits on his throne, he is so exalted that he does not “sit down” without “going up.” Our God though “seated,” “sits up” not down. We cannot describe his session as downward because he is so incomprehensibly exalted.

In a like manner, to look at the heights of heaven, God must “stoop low” or “lower himself.” A helpful distinction to draw out the psalmist’s meaning is the distinction between the immaterial and observable heavens. The observable heavens are into what the Russians sent Yuri Gagarin. The observable heavens are what we can see on a clear night or through the Hubble Telescope. But the immaterial heavens are where God dwells. The immaterial heavens are outside the universe.

What the psalmist is telling us is that from the immaterial heavens, to see the material heavens, God must lower himself. To see the farthest reaches of space we must muster the best of our technology. But God is so far higher than this that he must stoop to see the universe. There is a division between the observable and immaterial heavens. Yuri Gagarin could not fly to God. You cannot build a tower or an elevator to the immaterial heavens. If we were “to boldly go,” to split a famous infinitive, we could not travel to God.9

What the psalmist is teaching us is the creator/creature distinction. God alone is Creator, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All other is creation—the angels, time, the universe, the observable heavens and the earth. God is God, and we are not.

Conclusion

It is because of the creator/creature distinction that God is worthy of praise. A god which one could find contained within creation is a god who is “comprehensible.” Such a god as that can be contained and overtaken by his creation. But it is not so with our God, not the God of the psalmist who must stoop down to see the heavens and the earth.

C. S. Lewis, after comparing finding God in space to finding Shakespeare as a character in his plays writes, “If God created the universe, He created space-time, which is to the universe as the metre is to a poem or the key is to music. To look for Him as one item within the framework which He Himself invented is nonsensical.”10 This is a decent summary of the first six verses of Psalm 113. Next time we will look at God and the lowly in verses 7–9.

Notes

  1. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are the author’s translation.
  2. Tim Keller references a “cosmonaut” in his The Reason for God (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 122. Recently on social media, Roman Bishop Robert Barron also referenced a “cosmonaut” in the 1950s making this claim.
  3. Russian Colonel Valentin Vasilyevich Petrov attributed this misunderstanding in an interview to Nikita Khrushchev, which was then misapplied to Gagarin. See a translated excerpt of the interview at Colonel Valentin Petrov, “Did Yuri Gagarin Say He Didn’t See God in Space?” Pravmir, April 12, 2013.
  4. C. S. Lewis, “The Seeing Eye,” in Walter Hooper ed., Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, (1967), 167. Perhaps it is through misunderstanding Lewis’ comments that this came to be attributed to Gagarin himself in the English theological world.
  5. It is my opinion they are a thematic introduction in the Psalter to the Hallel. These two bridge the introduction of book 5 (107) and the small Davidic collection (108–110) to the liturgical collections of Hallel, Psalm 119, and Ascents (120–34).
  6. See especially from the Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) 89–90.
  7. See HC 2.
  8. See for example the comments of the chief of the cupbearers, or vizier, of Sargon to Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18:19–21.
  9. “To boldly go where no man has gone before” is a tagline from the opening of the TV series, Star Trek.
  10. Lewis, “The Seeing Eye,” 168.

©Luke Gossett. All Rights Reserved.

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    Post authored by:

  • Luke Gossett
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    Rev. Luke Gossett (MA Westminster Seminary California; MA and PhD Candidate, Catholic University of America) is the pastor of Ascension Presbyterian Church (a mission of the OPC Presbytery of the South) in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. His dissertation focuses on the linguistic functions of the Hebrew word for “now.” Luke has been married to his wife, Jennifer, since 2014, and they have three wonderful children.

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