Psalm 117

While this psalm is not as explicit a missionary psalm as Psalms 67 and

96, nevertheless, it does call for extolling the Name of God before all the
nations and all the peoples.
The international Gentile people groups (Hebrew: gdyim // cammim)
must be told of the loyal faithfulness of Yahweh. Accordingly, when all
the peoples of the earth are called to praise and extol the Lord, the
assumption is that someone has transmitted to them the knowledge and
worship of the Living God. But if it is not assumed that the witnesses
are Israel, then to whom does the task fall in these days of Old Testament
revelation?
The assumption is that the Gentile nations have heard and must continue
to do so. How will they be able to respond to the requirement laid
on them in this, the briefest of all the psalms, unless Israel has fulfilled
her task of sharing the Good News with them?
What would motivate Israel to be so magnanimous unless it was the
loyal love and faithfulness (Hebrew: hesed) of God? This served as Israel's
highest motivator for outreach to the Gentiles. Israel's songs of praise, her
confession of the wonderful deeds of God on her behalf, and her declaration
of the same to the nations was driven solely by the everlasting loyal
love and faithfulness of God. Only redeemed Gentiles and Jews can praise
God, hence the necessity of active missions in the Old Testament.
Conclusion
It is all too easy to conclude that the Old Testament does not set forth
a missionary mandate for Israel since, as George Peters claimed, "Nowhere
in the Old Testament was Israel 'sent' to the nations."7 But Peters linked
the word "send" with the New Testament's definition of missions. There-
7. Peters, Biblical Theology of Missions, p. 21.
God's Purpose for Missions in the Old Testament
fore he unnecessarily eliminated other, legitimate indications of the concept
of missions from the older Testament.
Despite that nuanced meaning Peters identified, he nevertheless did find
a missionary purpose and theology in the Old Testament. That is why it is
not difficult to see how generalizations that deny that any Israelite was ever
sent as a missionary to anyone else, or that the Old Testament is totally built
around a centripetal emphasis, can find little usefulness in a discussion of
God's call for Israel to be a light to the nations. Even though the radical centripetal
approach does recognize a certain universality in the Old Testament,
which is viewed as foundational for the New Testament call to evangelize,
the case laid out here sees more than a mere foundational basis in the Old
Testament evangel and its call for Israel's involvement.
Over and over again the psalmists called on all the peoples of all the
lands and nations to praise the Lord (Pss. 47:1; 67:3, 5; 100:1; 117:1).
Even more directly, these ancient singers of Israel urged their people to
tell, proclaim, and make known the mighty deeds of Yahweh (Pss. 9:11;
105:1) and to join in singing praises to God from all the nations (Pss. 18:49;
96:2-3). The psalmists themselves offer to sing God's praises among the
nations (Pss. 57:9; 108:3). The expected result would be that all the ends
of the earth would turn to the Lord and all the families on earth would bow
down in worship to him (Pss. 22:27; 66:4; 86:9).
This is not so surprising, for had not King Solomon in his dedicatory
prayer of the temple pronounced a blessing on the people, all the while
asking God to bless them in order that all the peoples of the earth might
know that Yahweh is God alone (I Kings 8:43-60)? While some may once
again argue that since there was no evidence of a going out or a "sending"
to the nations in the form of a missionary, and that missions in the Old
Testament are at best centripetal (inward-moving to the center, to Zion)
rather than centrifugal (outward-going from the center), we beg to differ
with them.
It might be noted, in this connection, that when Jesus cleansed the temple
and drove out the money changers, he drove them out of the Court of
the Gentiles. Could it be that the concern for commerce in that day had
crowded out the requisite concern for the Gentile nations?8
The example of Jonah refutes the alleged case for a centripetal-only
emphasis in the Old Testament. Jonah was commanded to go preach in
the capital city of Assyria, Nineveh. This ministry, even though carried
out under considerable duress and a narrow nationalism, was still blessed
8. A suggestion made to me in a written communication from Dr. Kenneth Mulholland.
Missions in the Old Testament
by God. True, Jonah was distressed that God's grace should have been
extended to such brutal and hostile enemies who had wrecked so much
havoc on Jonah's own homeland. But the fact remains, as we shall see in
a later chapter, that Jonah is an excellent example of cross-cultural missions.
Therefore, God did send messengers with his message just as the
psalmists envisioned. After all, no one thinks up the gospel by himself or
herself; it always comes from the outside. That is why it is most difficult
to urge Gentiles to extol, praise, and worship Yahweh if they have never
been told about his person or work. And this expectation was not reserved
only for the eschaton, but was already operative in the days of these singers
in Israel. This can be ascertained from the accompanying reasons that
appear with the injunctions for all the nations to know the Lord and to
serve him. Missions cannot be an afterthought for the Old Testament: it
is the heart and core of the plan of God.