Psalm 98
Let’s hear God’s word together
from Psalm 98. It says, a Psalm. Oh, sing to the Lord a new song
for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made known his salvation
and he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the
house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have
seen the salvation of our God. Make a joyful noise to the Lord,
all the earth. Break forth into joyous song
and sing praises. Sing praises to the Lord with
the lyre, and with the lyre and the sound of the melody. With trumpets and the sound of
the horn, make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord. Let
the sea roar and all that fills it, the world and those who dwell
in it. Let the rivers clap their hands.
Let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes
to judge the earth and he will judge the world with righteousness
and the peoples with equity. Over the last handful of weeks,
we’ve studied the kingship Psalms. They started at 93. and they
go all the way to 100. So in a couple weeks, we will
have completed the little section called the kingship songs. And
very often, as you make your way through those songs, you’ll
see common themes. You’ll see themes about God as
King, God as Judge, God as Redeemer, God as Savior. God is a warrior. God is a battle fighter. You’ll
see all kinds of themes and you’ll see all kinds of commands to
different people to worship God. And in tonight’s Psalm, when
you make your way through Psalm 98, you’ll see God calls in the
first section, Israel to worship him. And in the second section,
he calls the whole earth to worship him. And then in the third section,
he calls all of creation to worship him. And so in Psalm 98, you
get a different aspect of who is called or commanded to worship
God. But also in Psalm 98, you get
a little bit different angle. You get a psalm full of joy because
of who God is and what he’s done. And you know this psalm better
than you think you do, for Isaac Watts gave us a Christmas hymn,
Joy to the World. And in Joy to the World, it expresses,
I think, one of the greatest theological themes that can give
us hope. And that theme is this, that
God comes in Christ to make his blessings flow as far as the
curse is found. Those of you who’ve been in the
morning Sunday school class on the covenant, You’ve studied
in the early weeks, the curse and the extent of the curse.
Adam and Eve in the garden were given a test by God, a probationary
period. And the probation or the test
was this, you may eat from all the trees of the garden, except
for one of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not
eat for in the day of that you eat of it, you shall surely die. There was a threat, eat and die,
don’t eat and you’ll live. And so we understand from the
story of the Bible that Adam and Eve ate, the curses came,
God lined up Adam and Eve and Satan, cursed with Satan, he’ll
crawl on his belly. He’ll be at enmity with the offspring
of Eve, especially with Christ. Satan will be a heel nipper. But Christ will be a head crutcher. And then to Adam, he said, your
work is going to be hard. You’ll sweat. You’ll have thorns
and thistles. The ground will not produce as
it did in the Garden of Paradise. Work will be hard and you’ll
die. You’ll return to dust from which you came.” And to Eve,
he said, having little ones will be difficult. Being married will
be a struggle. And then we go from the garden
really out into the jungle. Adam and Eve were banished from
the garden so that they could not eat of the tree of life and
live forever in sin. And so since the garden, we have
lived in the jungle. We have lived in the wilds. We
have lived in a creation that is that is cursed because of
sin. It doesn’t produce like it used
to. It doesn’t. It’s not like it was in the garden,
though, as we look around us and we see what man in his image
has made from the world as he’s had dominion and subdued it,
it’s quite amazing that That we live in a cursed world, as
wonderful as we have it on many, many respects. But that hymn,
Joy to the World, the Lord is Come, gives us hope that through
Jesus, through the King, God is going to come and every injustice,
every inequity, every war, every tumult, every wrong, every injustice,
thing that we struggle with in this life, it is going to get
made new for Christ is going to make his blessings flow as
far as the curse is found. We know that ultimately will
take place as God, the Savior God, the King God, the Redeemer
returns and makes a new heaven and a new earth. But we have
to remember Psalm 98 the perspective, the original hearers of that
psalm, they don’t know all that we know. They don’t know the
fullness of Christ. They don’t know the fullness
of redemption like we do. And so it helps us to see this
psalm from their perspective, but also remember it from the
Christ-centered perspective that we have. So the first section
you’ll see in verses one through three speaks of God our Savior. And it says, oh, sing to the
Lord a new song. He’s speaking to Israel here.
For he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made known his salvation.
He has revealed his righteousness. These words echo in a sense,
they parallel what what Mary said or what she spoke
in her Magnificat after Gabriel appeared to her and told her
that she would bear the Christ child. And after she entered
into the house of Elizabeth and in a sense met John the Baptist,
who though still in his mother’s womb leapt for joy, that the
Christ child was in his presence as well. And you see in Mary’s
song, but also in the song or the few verses of Psalm 98 here,
the words of redemption, We don’t think about this, but when we
come to church every Sunday, we should think of it like this.
We are the redeemed who come to praise the Redeemer for the
redemption. That’s what we come to do. We
come to tell God how grateful we are, how thankful we are,
how struck in love and wonder and praise we are that He, the
Redeemer, has redeemed us. And so we, the redeemed, gather
to sing songs of redemption and praise to God our Savior. And
there’s a sense where every Sunday we ought to come in the house
of God and sing songs for Christ in the cross. But we ought to
sing songs because God has carried us through a week. He’s brought
us through many dangers, toils and snares. He’s kept us safe
and thus far he has brought us into his house. with great joy. And so we worship here in verses
one through three, God, our savior, and we worship him with joy and
with gladness. This is a call to Israel. It’s a corporate call. And sometimes
that’s something else we forget. We think worship is about us
as individuals, but for the Israelite and for the Christian, maybe
in not too many days distant past the Christian, but especially
Israelite understood that worship was corporate. It was not infected
by our individualistic society we have. We think it’s all about
me, it’s all about I, but worship was corporate. I was glad to
hear them saying, let us go into the house of the Lord. And so
this is a call to Israel to worship God for his actions. and it reminds them of the exodus,
it reminds them of his victories that they have won in wars, that
nations scattered, and that even, as is probably the occasion here,
God returned them from exile in the country of Babylon. And
he says, sing something new. It’s a fitting occasion. Sing to the Lord a new song. In a sense, make up a song about
this new occasion of his salvation. Remember when… Israel left
Egypt. What did Miriam and Moses do?
They sang, I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously.
The horse and the rider are thrown into the sea. That’s a song we
sing on occasion, but it’s a song they sang that was new. And so
you can imagine this week, the ones who received news of no
cancer, might have sang a little song to the Lord in their heart.
Oh Lord, you have blessed me. Or when we’ve been freed from
some hardship or difficulty, oh Lord, you have been my great
salvation. And we might have our hearts
skip. beat and sing with joy. We’ve been through something
and God brought us through it. So God our Savior there is in
verses 1 through 3. God our King we find in the next
section verses 4 through 6. Make a joyful noise to the Lord
all the earth break into joyous song sing praises Sing praises
to the Lord or to Yahweh with lyre, and with the lyre and the
sound of the melody, with trumpets and the sound of the horn. Notice
the very end of six. Make a joyful noise before the
King, the Lord, or before the King, Yahweh. My family has a
certain basketball team you know we like, and they had a 50-50
week this week. But they have a place where they
play basketball. And when you go into that place,
it is loud, it’s small, it’s legendary, it’s noisy, it quakes
and it shakes. And every time we go there, we
come out of there saying, wouldn’t it be great if church was like
that? Wouldn’t it be great if people camped out to go to church? Wouldn’t it be great if people
got in line all day to get in the door, not to worship something? but to worship the King. Wouldn’t
it be great if for hours on end, the place where God is worshiped
shook and it quaked and it was so loud that your ears couldn’t
stand the noise because the joy and the song and the gladness
for redemption and for God our King was so great. What would
you think if in years to come, We started getting complaints
from our neighbors here on Saddle Club. There’s too many cars.
They’re lying in the street, those Associated Reform Presbyterians,
right? They don’t know what to call
us. They make up something. Those ARPs, whatever they are.
We’ll have to do something about that. But what if the noise,
and I’m not saying rock and roll, because I’ll die first. But what if our voices blew the
roof off the sanctuary because we couldn’t help rejoice because
God was our king and the neighbors couldn’t stand it? Wouldn’t that
be something? Wouldn’t that be something to
pray for and anticipate? Well, who knows what the Lord
will do. We desire, though, to see the
church full. We desire to see the roof lifted
when we praise Almighty God. And we don’t want to sell ourselves
short. There’s a reality. There’s a true reality that as
we gather on Sunday, we gather together with all around the
world who bend the knee to Christ. And we gather together with not
just those around the world who worship Christ, but we gather
with the saints who have gone before us. And all the creatures
who night and day surround the throne of God and night and day
they cry, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. We see
pictures of heaven in the Bible and it’s a place. And quite frankly,
it’s louder than. basketball arena. It’s louder
than the biggest football arena. It’s louder than the biggest
hockey arena. It’s louder than the the greatest comeback concert
of an old band on tour. It’s full of light and thunder
and peals of lightning. It’s full of the sounds of nature
and we gather with that worship when we gather on Sundays. And
so maybe we’ll never make the neighbors mad here, but we do
gather with a quite a loud and full of joy a throng of worshipers
who worship God the King. And notice in verses four through
six, the call to worship moves from Israel and it moves to the
whole earth. Who should worship the Lord?
The whole earth is called to worship the King. And one day
all will acknowledge Christ. in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
when the exiled Israelites returned from Babylon and they rebuilt
the temple, they began by building the foundation, and it took a
lot to get to that point. And at the end of just the foundation
being built, the priest and the Levites, they put on their ministerial
clothing, they got their trumpets, they got their cymbals, they
gathered the people of Israel, and they celebrated just the
little bitty foundation. They were so excited that worship
could begin again in the promised land after those 70 years. of
exile, and the Bible tells us that when they gathered for worship
there, the first wave of exiles, when they came back to Jerusalem
and built the foundation, they had made a beginning for the
city of God. They had made a beginning for
the worship of God. It says that mixed in with their
worship were the cries of the older men, and you know how it
is. There’s always those in the church. It ain’t like it used
to be, right? It’s not as big as it once was.
I don’t know, there’s always those. But mixed in with the
complainers, you might say, the loudness of worship was so loud
that the praises of Almighty God could be heard at a great
distance. The people loved worshiping their
king, and it was that loud that it was heard from a great distance. Doesn’t our world need to see
people worshiping God that way? We love the, the loud super speedways. We love the loud basketball and
football arenas. We love those. We’re enamored
by it, aren’t we? And it is fun. But maybe we’re
less enamored with what ought to be the loudest noise on earth,
and that is the worship of God, our King. Well, the third section,
verses seven through 10, speaks about God, our judge. Picking up at verse seven, it
says, let the sea roar. This is the section where all
creation is called to worship. and all that fills it, the world
and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, before Yahweh,
for he comes to judge all the earth. He will judge the world
with righteousness and the peoples with equity. There’s a statement
that I often make that gets people really upset, and it’s this.
Jesus died for trees. That offends people because they
say, oh no, Jesus died for souls. He did do that. But what does
Romans 8 tell us? Romans 8 tells us that all of
creation is groaning under the travail of the curses of sin,
and it can’t wait. It eagerly awaits the adoption
of the sons and the daughters of God, because what does creation
know? It knows that when God makes
all things new, that it will no longer be subjected to futility. There will be a new heavens and
a new earth. And so when we say Jesus died
for trees, we don’t mean it the same way that we mean it when
we say he died for you, he died for me, he died to make my soul
that will last forever live with him in heaven. No, we mean that
his salvation is cosmic as well as individual. He died to make
a new heaven and a new earth possible. as well. And that’s
the hope of Christmas. That’s the hope of joy to the
world. He comes to make his blessings
flow. As far as the curse is found, the curse didn’t just
end with Adam and Eve or with Satan. The curse extended into
creation. It busted up our DNA. It busted
up our cells and creates cancer. It has cursed the land. It has
cursed the earth, the cosmos. It has subjected it to futility. This is a dark and dying world.
And so to sing every Christmas, joy to the world, the Lord, the
King is come. Let earth receive her King. It’s
a great message of hope, not only for people, but for the
cosmos, for the world and everything in it. And so there’s a call
here for creation. to worship God. Let the rivers
clap their hands. He gives, what do we call it,
personification to the things of the earth. Let the sea roar
and all that fills it. And so a Christian has a high
view of creation, right? to dress the earth, to keep it,
or to subdue it, or to rule over it. We’re the first Earth Day
people, right? We’re the first recyclers. We’re
the first to not destroy the earth, but to protect it and
keep it, because that’s why Adam was made and put in the garden,
to dress the earth, to keep it, and to make it prosper. And so
we are God’s rulers over all the earth. And the poetic language
here is quite amazing to see how the earth reflects the glory
of Almighty God. In the Chronicles of Narnia,
most of you I’m sure have read it, Many of you have probably
seen it, but when they first go through the wardrobe, and
they enter Narnia, and they see that it’s frozen, it’s tundra-like,
and they meet, is it Mr. Tumnus? And they say, what’s
wrong here? They say, it’s always winter,
and never Christmas. But remember, as the story goes
on, as you see Aslan on the move, the figure of Almighty God, the
ice begins to melt, the winter begins to thaw, the flowers begin
to blossom, and things begin to look new again. And that’s
exactly what Psalm 98 is reminding us of. You may look out in the
world and see darkness. You may look out in the world
and see wars. You may look out in the world
and see hardship. You may have experienced it in
your own life, but when God the King comes. When God the Redeemer
comes, when God our Savior comes, when God our Judge comes, he
will fix everything that is broken. And that’s a great message of
hope, isn’t it? That’s a great wonder of salvation that we can
look for and that we can long for. Remember this as you go
through the week. It will not always be winter. for Christmas is coming through
God our King. Let’s pray together. Lord, we
thank you for this truth that reminds us of the hope that we
have that when things seem dark and unbending in this world,
we know that God will come and make all things new. And every
day on the tip of our tongue ought to be the great words of
Psalm 98, the words of Isaac Watts, joy to the world, the
Lord is come, let earth receive her king. He comes to make his
blessings flow as far as the curse is found. Let us remember
this every day with great joy as we have our aches and pains,
as the world has her aches and pains, that this is not the way
it will always be. Help us to think on these things
and to anticipate with great joy our king. We pray it in his
name. Amen. is is the earth a steady reins, that
may their stones employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills,
Repeat the sounding joy! No more the sins and sorrows,
no He comes to make these blessings
flow. For as the curses flow, for as
the curses flow, for as, for as the curses flow. and makes the nations prove the
glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love and wonders,
wonders of His love