Clap Your Hands, All Ye People...International Sunday School Lesson for October 24, 2010

Clap Your Hands, All Ye People…

International Sunday School Lesson for October 24, 2010

By

Jed Greenough

Psalm 47

 O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.

 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.

 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.

 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.

 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.

 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises.

 For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.

 God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.

 The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.

For today’s lesson I chose the KJV for the International Sunday School Scripture because it was the version that inspired a great song from my youth and I hope yours.  When I think back upon the time of my life when I sang it and consider myself then and I think of the intervening years since, I realize how much has changed.  Even the number of times that old song gets sung has changed, but like God’s word, God Himself never changes.

We grow old and the experiences our lives are made of change us both for good and bad.   The people we become are different from how we started out, but God remains LORD most high upon “the throne of His holiness.”

When Israel originally sang this psalm of praise they sat in a position of supremacy, of splendor, of success.  Israel was close to God for they had built His temple as He had designed it.

They followed His instructions and they received His blessings.  He did in fact subdue the people and nations that would oppose Israel and so it was certainly worthy that they should praise Him.

Unfortunately, with time things, as I said change, and that is what Israel did.  Their kings and their priests forgot God or rather chose to ignore Him.  As the leaders went so went the people.

There was a brief renewal with King Josiah (2 Kings 22 and 23) during which God was again praised corporately but with Israel’s success came an arrogance a turning away.

Today as I read this psalm I think of America, a country blessed by God more than any other and certainly one that could have sung this same psalm in our history.

For this country he subdued people and nations just like Israel and in the past we have praised Him from our leaders down to our citizens.  But are we repeating the same sins and taking the same things for granted and forgetting God just as they did?  And this nation is not alone.

When Israel turned from God He turned from them, never again did they have this great reason for singing songs of triumph, they became the subdued, for as they sang, “He shall choose our inheritance for us.”

So what can be done?

I am not unlike anyone else that has a message they want heard, and I want you to come back to me, but I cannot sugar coat where I think we are headed.

In 2 Kings 23:8 the high priest in speaking to Josiah’s secretary said, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.”

The high priest found it….the words are staggering to me.

When King Josiah “heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes.” 

They had drifted that far, they had to find the Book and they were so far from what it said that the king was beside himself with grief.

The king did all he could to return Israel to God and as a result God though He was swiftly going to bring disaster upon Israel kept Israel in peace until Josiah died.

After Josiah, we are told in 2 Kings 23:25 that there was never another king who turned his heart to the Lord as he had.

The result was, “Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of His fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him to anger.  So the Lord said, “I will remove Judah from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, “There shall my name be.”

We can remember God and His word individually, as families and in our churches.  We can choose leaders that follow Him and honor Him and perhaps the inheritance He chooses for us will be one of peace until we die.

But it might be that the Lord who did not turn away from the heat of His fierce anger before will not now even for a little while.  What then?

Like the psalm for the October 17^th International Sunday School Lesson, I see the prophetic in both today’s Psalm 47 and Psalm 48 and they were originally meant to be seen as a unit and therefore they should be studied that way.

As in the case of last week’s Psalm 46, Psalm 47 and Psalm 48 were relevant to the time they were originally inspired as well as to ours if our time is the time of the end.

As 46 was a prophecy about the terrible things about to fall upon the earth, Psalm 47 and 48 tell of the victory we can look forward to and the reason Psalm 46 told us that God would be our refuge.

If you are not acquainted, or need a refresher with the scriptures that parallel these three psalms that deal with the subduing and assembly of all the nations read some of those scriptures in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Matthew, and Revelation.

All nations were not subdued at the original time of this psalm but in the time of the end they will be; all nations, all kings and all people will exalt Him!

For Discussion:

1. Find a recording of the song based on Psalm 47 and bring it to your class.
2. Is verse 5 a prophecy concerning Jesus, does it mean something else or are there multiple meanings?
3. Read Psalm 46 and Psalm 48 with today’s psalm.
4. One of the easiest of the prophetic aspects of today’s psalm to study with a concordance is “nations”.
5. In studying different versions of the Bible some versions with regard to verse 7 simply repeat the idea of singing praises or psalms, whereas others translate it “skillful psalm” or “praises with understanding”.  Consider how or why this is significant.