The Geography of Glory Text: Psalm 113:1-3
Introduction: The Non-Negotiable Starting Point
We begin this morning with the first of the Hallel psalms, a section of the psalter running from Psalm 113 to 118. These were the songs the Jews would sing on their great festival occasions, and it is highly likely that this was the hymn that our Lord sang with His disciples after their last supper together, just before He went out to the Mount of Olives. The word Hallel means praise, and the word Hallelujah is a command, an intensive summons to praise Yah, or Yahweh. This is not a suggestion. It is not an invitation to a feeling. It is the fundamental obligation of all creation, and it is the central joy of the redeemed.
In our therapeutic and man-centered age, we think of praise as something we do when we feel good, a sort of emotional exhaust valve. But the Bible presents praise as the very fabric of reality, the constitution of the cosmos. To praise God is to get in line with the grain of the universe. To refuse to praise God is to attempt to swim upstream against the current of all that is, which is not only futile but insane.
This psalm, then, is a summons to reality. It calls us to align ourselves with the way things actually are. God is God, and we are not. He is the Creator, we are the creatures. He is the Master, we are His slaves. And in this glorious, hierarchical reality is our only true freedom and our only lasting joy. The modern world chokes on such concepts. It wants autonomy. It wants to be its own god, its own master. But to be your own master is to be a slave to the most capricious and cruel tyrant imaginable: your own sinful self. The psalmist here calls us out of that cramped, dark prison cell and into the broad, sunlit uplands of joyful submission to the King of Heaven.
These first three verses lay the foundation. They establish who is to do the praising, what is to be praised, and the total, all-encompassing scope of that praise. It is a command that leaves no person, no moment, and no square inch of creation untouched. It is a declaration of total war against every form of godlessness, secularism, and man-centered religion.
The Text
Praise Yah!
Praise, O slaves of Yahweh,
Praise the name of Yahweh.
May the name of Yahweh be blessed
From now until forever.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of Yahweh is to be praised.
(Psalm 113:1-3, LSB)
The Central Command and the Commanded (v. 1)
The psalm opens with a staccato burst of commands.
"Praise Yah! Praise, O slaves of Yahweh, Praise the name of Yahweh." (Psalm 113:1)
First, "Praise Yah!" This is Hallelujah. It is a summons to the covenant people to praise their covenant-keeping God. Yahweh is not a generic deity; He is the God who has revealed Himself, the God who made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and the God who has brought us out of the Egypt of our sin through His Son, Jesus.
Then the command is specified: "Praise, O slaves of Yahweh." The word is slaves, or servants. In our egalitarian age, this language is offensive. But the Bible is not interested in flattering our rebellious conceits. The fundamental truth of our existence is that we are not our own. You will be a slave to someone or something. The only question is, who will be your master? As Paul says in Romans, you are either a slave to sin, which leads to death, or a slave to obedience, which leads to righteousness (Rom. 6:16). There is no third option. There is no autonomous middle ground. To be a slave of Yahweh is the highest honor a creature can have. It is to be owned by the kindest, most gracious, most powerful Master in the universe. It is to be brought out of the slave market of sin and into the household of God. This is not a demeaning status; it is our liberation.
And what are these slaves to praise? "Praise the name of Yahweh." In Scripture, a name is not a mere label. It represents the character, the reputation, the authority, and the very being of the person. To praise God's name is to praise Him for who He has revealed Himself to be. It is to boast in Him. It is to declare His attributes: His holiness, His justice, His mercy, His wisdom, His sovereignty. We are not praising some vague, sentimental idea of God. We are praising the God who has spoken, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Duration of Praise (v. 2)
The second verse extends this command across the dimension of time.
"May the name of Yahweh be blessed From now until forever." (Psalm 113:2)
The praise of God's name is not a temporary affair. It is not for a church service on Sunday morning, to be forgotten by lunchtime. It is to begin "from now." If you have not been praising Him, the time to start is this instant. And it is to continue "until forever." This is an eternal project. This is what we will be doing for all eternity, and we will never exhaust the reasons for our praise. The worship service does not end when the benediction is pronounced; it simply moves into the world. Our whole lives are to be an act of blessing the name of Yahweh.
This verse establishes the historical scope of God's kingdom. His name is to be blessed throughout all of history. This is a profoundly optimistic and forward-looking statement. It assumes that God's people will be on the earth, blessing His name, until the end of time. This is not the language of a defeated, retreating people, hoping to be evacuated before things get too bad. This is the language of a triumphant kingdom, whose praise will only grow louder and more extensive as the ages roll on. We are part of a project that cannot fail, a chorus that will never fall silent.
The Dominion of Praise (v. 3)
Having established the eternal duration of praise, the psalmist now turns to its universal, geographical dominion.
"From the rising of the sun to its setting The name of Yahweh is to be praised." (Psalm 113:3)
This is one of the great, global, missionary verses of the Old Testament. It is a non-negotiable prophecy. The praise of Yahweh is not to be a tribal cult, confined to a small strip of land in the Middle East. It is destined to cover the entire globe. From the farthest east to the farthest west, from Japan to California, the name of Yahweh is to be praised.
This is not simply saying that praise should happen all day long, though that is true. It is a statement of geographical totality. The course of the sun across the sky defines the boundaries of the inhabited world, and the psalmist declares that this entire territory belongs to Yahweh and will one day be filled with His praise. This is the Great Commission in seed form. This is the engine of postmillennial eschatology. We believe this verse. We believe that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). Jesus Christ did not die and rise again to redeem a few isolated individuals while leaving the vast bulk of the cosmos under the dominion of Satan. He rose to reclaim everything. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him, and He has commanded us to go and disciple the nations.
Therefore, this verse is both a promise and a command. It is a promise that God's global purpose will be accomplished. And it is a command to us, His slaves, to be the instruments of that purpose. We are to take the name of Yahweh to every tribe and tongue and people and nation. We are to plant churches, establish Christian schools, build Christian culture, and work until every last corner of the globe, from sunup to sundown, resounds with the praise of our God.
Conclusion: Our Unshakable Task
So what is our takeaway? It is very simple. We have a job to do. We are the slaves of Yahweh, and our task is to praise His name. This is not a grim duty; it is our highest privilege. We are to do this right now, and we are to keep doing it forever. And we are to do it everywhere, until the song of praise that begins in this place on a Sunday morning becomes the universal anthem of a redeemed world.
The world around us is in chaos because it has rejected this fundamental reality. It tries to build its towers of Babel on the shifting sands of human autonomy, and they inevitably collapse into ruin. Our task is not to despair at the ruins. Our task is to get on with the work of building a city whose builder and maker is God. And the foundation of that city, the mortar in its walls, and the anthem sung in its streets is the praise of the name of Yahweh.
We are commanded to praise. We are identified as the slaves who praise. We are given the content of our praise, which is His name. We are given the timeframe for our praise, which is forever. And we are given the location for our praise, which is the whole earth. Let us, therefore, get to it.