John Piper discusses Psalm 117 in his sermon Everlasting Truth for the Joy of all Peoples and includes some great insight on praise by CS Lewis.
But the most obvious fact about praise - whether of God or any thing - strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise.... I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.… I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: "Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?" The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about....I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. (CS Lewis from above commentary, emphasis mine)
With this in mind, Piper says that Psalm 117 means...
Praise God all peoples because through Israel a Savior will come into the world. He will take away all your sins. He will fulfill all God's demands on your behalf. He will die for you and rise again and sit down at the right hand of God. And he will come to judge the living and the dead.
And until that time he is gathering his elect from all the peoples of the world by means of the faithful missionary labor of his church. He will one day be praised by every tongue and tribe and people and nation. This is his goal. And he calls all of us to be goers or senders.
There were so many verses that jumped out at me in today's readings.
Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness (115:1)
The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. (116:5)
For you, O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. (116:8-9)
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. (118:1, 29)
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? (118:6)
The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. (118:14)
The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone (118:22)
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (118:24)
And because of all that, and more, I will say with the psalmist....
You are my God, and I will give you thanks; you are my God, and I will exalt you. (118:28)
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord! (Joshua 24:15b)
Tomorrow's passage: Psalm 119
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