Today’s Passage: Psalm 96
All the earth is called to sing, and His glory is to be declared among the nations, and even the families of the peoples are told to bring an offering and come. Then creation itself is called to rejoice, because He is coming to judge. This is not a song to be kept inside one border. He is coming, and the day belongs to Him, and the timetable of it is not ours to close.
As you read, hold this: Declare His glory among the nations. He is coming.
Context A song the ark already heard
Much of this wording matches the song David appointed when the ark came into Jerusalem.
"Sing to the LORD, all the earth. Proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all peoples." 1 Chronicles 16:23-24 (BSB)
Which of the two texts came first is not what matters here. What matters is the overlap, for it tells us that worldwide praise stood at the very center of Israel’s worship on one of its highest days. This was no late addition, but there from the beginning.
Psalm 96:1-3 (BSB)
¹ Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. ² Sing to the LORD, bless His name; proclaim His salvation day after day. ³ Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.
Three times over the psalm says it: sing, and sing, and sing again. Then it names the direction the singing is to travel, among the nations and to all peoples. This salvation is not only to be kept and treasured at home; it is to be said out loud in the very places where the temple has never stood.
Psalm 96:4-6 (BSB)
⁴ For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. ⁵ For all the gods of the nations are idols, but it is the LORD who made the heavens. ⁶ Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty fill His sanctuary.
Verse 5 names them plainly: the gods of the nations are ’elīlīm, pronounced eh-lee-LEEM. Strong's H457, worthless things, idols, nonentities. The word sounds almost like ’elōhīm, the ordinary word for God or gods, and by that near echo it mocks them, naming them as worthless things, mere nothings. The psalm does not stop to argue against the other gods point by point. It simply names them empty beside the LORD who made the very heavens they never made. .
Psalm 96:7-9 (BSB)
⁷ Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. ⁸ Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; bring an offering and enter His courts. ⁹ Worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness; tremble before Him, all the earth.
Ascribe, the psalm says, and three times again it presses the word, this time addressed not to Israel but to the families of the nations. Bring an offering, it tells them, and enter His courts. People who by their birth had no court to enter are here invited in, as though the door had never been as narrow as practice had made it seem.
Psalm 96:10-13 (BSB)
¹⁰ Declare among the nations: “The LORD reigns!” The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity. ¹¹ Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea resound, and all that fills it. ¹² Let the fields exult, and all that is in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy ¹³ before the LORD, for He is coming—He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness.
Study notes He is coming
Twice the psalm says it, He is coming, and on this the ninth Article stands closed: He will return, and He will judge. This house holds firmly that the King is coming and will not treat it as an open question. Yet it will not go on to close a chart that He did not draw, and so it names no pre-tribulation scheme and fixes no millennial timetable. The psalm’s own word is enough. He is coming to judge the earth, in righteousness, and in faithfulness.
Creation’s joy here is not a world cheering its own ruin. It is a world that has long waited under crooked rule, at last being told that the waiting is over.
Declare His glory among the nations. He is coming.