Psalm 98

All right, if you open your Bibles with me.

We'll be in the book of Psalms today, first

song number 98.

I'll be reading from the ESV to be on the

screen in the ESV.

God's word says a Psalm, O 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.

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 in the joyous song and sing pra

ises.

Sing praises to the Lord with a lyre, with a

lyre and the sound of 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.

He will judge the world with righteousness and

the peoples with equity.

Let's pray.

Our gracious Holy Father, I pray that you

would bless this time as we look to your song.

I pray that you'd bless the preaching of your

word to our hearts and minds

and your message in spite of the messenger and

may it all be for your glory because of Christ

.

In his name I pray, amen.

So we sing a song every Christmas that wasn't

originally intended to be a Christmas song.

And that doesn't cause much controversy.

We have controversy over different things like

the Christian Sabbath and stuff like that.

But when the song was written, it was very

controversial.

It was written by a man named Isaac Watts.

And you may recognize his name.

He wrote hundreds of hymns, several that we

sing.

He wrote a Psalter out of all the different

Psalms.

And we still use some of those Psalms that he

wrote from a long time ago.

He was born in the late 1600s and lived until

the early 1700s.

And like I said, we sing many of his songs

today.

But when he was writing those songs, he was a

very controversial person.

He was what you would call a non-conformist.

That was somebody who didn't agree with the

Church of England and didn't conform to what

they prescribed that they should conform to.

And at that time, when you would sing songs in

church, all the songs would be Psalms.

And they were very specific about how you were

to have the Psalms sung in church.

They had to be very close to the words that

were written on the page in the Bible.

And so, in other words, they did very minor

changes to the words.

And so, they had a very hard time of putting

it to music in a way that made English

speakers, even English speakers of that time

be easy for them to sing and for them to

understand what they were singing.

And so, what you have to do is take these

words on the page and you have to make a match

to a meter.

And so, I do this every week when we have the

Psalms. I have to find a tune that we're

familiar with that has the same timing as the

words to the song.

And so, we are English speakers. We have a

thing called English poetry.

And by the way, if you didn't know that other

languages, poetry is different.

It doesn't always rhyme like ours and doesn't

have the same meters or timings that ours do.

And so, Isaac Watts would make these Psalms.

He would rewrite them into the common meters,

the common timings, and then they would be

able to sing them easier and understand the

words.

He changed the words, but he tried to keep the

meaning as close as possible so that the

congregation would be able to sing it easier

and understand what they were singing.

Now, can you imagine that that would be the

controversy that the church had compared to

all the different controversies that we have

today?

You know, are homosexuals allowed to preach or

whatever? All the things that we deal with now

, they were worried about how many words can

you change to the Psalms that we sing?

So, it's a very, very different time.

So, when he was a teen, he listened to the

church and how they sung the words, and he

realized that people weren't understanding

what they were singing.

They didn't get what they were singing, and

therefore, the intended effect that the Psalm

is supposed to bring out in a believer wasn't

happening.

And so, he wrote a song from Psalm 98 that you

may be familiar with. It's "Joy to the World."

And again, he didn't intend this to be a

Christmas hymn, but that's how we have kind of

used it.

So, let's look at the words, the very first

line of "Joy to the World" that Isaac Watts

wrote compared to the version that the church

at the time sang.

He wrote, "Joy to the World, the Lord is come

." Recognize that?

The song that they would sing instead of that

said, "All earthly creatures praise the Lord

God and sing for joy at his behest."

Now, that sounds a little wooden to us because

we're, you know, 400 years later, but even at

the time, that was hard for them to get to

sing. It was hard to put to music.

And so, Isaac Watts did all these things, and

we are blessed even to this day from his

ministry and him standing up to the church cur

mudgeons of his time.

He's been a blessing to us. And so, I wanted

to look at this song that he took that song

from and just look at how it's interpreted,

how it applies in our lives, and maybe that'll

help as we sing that song during Christmas

time for us to understand

and have that same the desire that Isaac Watts

had, that we understand what it's saying and

that it turns into real worship and praise for

us even in this time.

So, Psalm 98 teaches us that we should rejoice

, that we should be joyful in the Lord.

And in the first three verses, it teaches us

that we should rejoice because God saves his

people.

Look at those verses with me, Psalms 1 or 98,

1 through 3.

"O 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.

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."

And this Psalm is one of six in the 150 Psalms

that we have that teach us to sing a new song

to God.

And each one of those six Psalms that uses

that language to sing a new song to God is a

response to something that God has done to

save them from a predicament and then how he's

provided victory over their enemies.

Psalm 144, 9 through 11 says, "I will sing a

new song to you, O God, upon a ten-stringed

harp.

I will play to you, who gives victory to kings

, who rescues David his servant from the cruel

sword.

Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of

foreigners whose mouths speak lies, and whose

right hand is a right hand of falsehood."

Now, many preachers in our day have used these

new song Psalms to encourage their

congregation to sing new songs.

In other words, to have the full band

experience and the choruses and the fog

machines and the lights.

But that's not what they were intending when

they wrote these Psalms.

The intention was for the singers of these

Psalms, the readers of these new song Psalms

to contemplate, to think about the truth of

who God is and what he has done.

And when he works in our lives and brings us

victory and salvation from our sin and from

specific circumstances in our lives,

that the understanding of that, understanding

who he is and what he's done in our lives,

turns into joy, turns into praise and turns

into worship.

And we're moved into that in a deep way. We

turn that into song.

I mean, that happens to me when I think about

the things that I've gone through in my life

that we've gone through as a family, we've

gone through as a church.

And we sing so many hymns and there's always a

hymn that can come to mind that I remember and

sing to the Lord.

We're to understand what he has done and we're

to respond with emotion.

Emotion is not bad. Spiritual emotion built on

the truth, built on the word of God and what

he has done is not a bad thing.

And in fact, that is what God has called us to

do as we understand with our mind his truths

and understand with our mind what he has done.

And it's supposed to move our emotions and

then our emotions are supposed to move our

feet and in our action and our will as we live

our Christian lives.

So that the psalmist is pointing these things

out. Look what God has done.

Look how he has saved Israel has brought

victory over our enemies and it turned those

things into praise and worship for God.

The NASB says here that they are wonderful

things that God has done.

You can also translate it as amazing things.

It's been said that the marvelous things that

the psalm talks about are things that, one,

God intervened in a situation where it was

obvious that God had done it by his power.

Or two, the way in which he intervened showed

his righteousness to every nation.

Or three, he did it because he remembered his

faithfulness and his love.

And there are very particular circumstances

that the Psalms that teach us to sing a new

song were probably written about.

But the Old Testament is full of the

situations that meet those three criteria.

Just think about Exodus and God saving his

people from slavery in Egypt.

He remembered them in their oppression.

Exodus 3.7.8 says, "Then the Lord said, 'I

have surely seen the affliction of my people

who are in Egypt

that have heard their cry because of their

taskmasters.

I know their sufferings, and I have come down

to deliver them out of the hand of the

Egyptians

and to bring them up out of the land to a good

and a broad land, a land flowing with milk and

honey,

to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites,

the Amorites, the Parasites, the Hivites, and

the Jebusites.'

And it was done in a way that was miraculous.

There was no mistaking that it was God working

and bringing his people out of Exodus.

So just look at the one plague of hail, Exodus

9-19.

"Now therefore, send, get your livestock and

all that you have in the field into safe

shelter.

For every man and beast that is in the field

that is not brought home will die when the

hail falls on them.

Then whoever feared the word of the Lord,

among the servants of Pharaoh, hurried to his

slaves and his livestock into the houses.

And then God, in a miraculous amount and size

of hail and brimstone,

killed everything that was not brought in a

safe shelter."

And then all the nations heard about God's

work for the Jews, the Hebrews in Egypt.

Joshua 2.9 talks about Rahab, the prostitute

who met with the spies.

And she said to the men, 'I know that the Lord

has given you the land and that the fear of

you has fallen upon us.

And that all the inhabitants of the land melt

away before you.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the

water of the Red Sea before you when you came

out of Egypt.

And what you did to the two kings of the Amor

ites who were beyond the Jordan to Sihon and Og

, whom you devoted to destruction.

And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted,

and there was no spirit left to any man

because of you.

For the Lord your God, he is God in the

heavens above and on the earth beneath.'

And so the story of the Exodus meets all the

criteria that the Psalmists have when they

write these Psalms of singing new songs.

And you can just go over and over again

through the Old Testament.

And the Hebrews were so blessed by a powerful

God who did so many things that there was no

way you could mistake

that the Hebrews, the poor little nothing

Hebrew tribes could have done them.

That it had to be God working them out.

And all the nations around them knew that fact

.

The Book of Judges, the people would sin

against God and he would send oppression.

And then they would cry out and he would send

a judge to come and rescue them.

And he would do it in some crazy way that the

people would know that it had nothing to do

with them.

Later in the history when the kingdom was

divided, Hezekiah faced the giant army of Senn

acherib, the Assyrian, and God sent angels to

destroy that army.

So this Psalm is a general Psalm about the

goodness of God.

It's about the things that God has done and

how he rescues Egypt because there's just so

many things in the Old Testament that can be

attributed to God's hand alone.

But that's how God works throughout all of

history and no clear example and maybe why

this song is used for Christmas is in the

birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

All the prophecies, centuries of prophecies

and promises that were made in the Old

Testament, every aspect of the law that Moses

gave the Hebrews pointed in some way to the

coming of the Messiah.

Back in Genesis chapter three, when God cursed

Adam and Eve in the serpent, in that curse was

an illusion to the coming Messiah who would

crush the head of the serpent.

And we even today have the privilege of

looking back at all these things that has

worked through the Old Testament and the New

Testament saints in the saints of old and

church history.

And even today in our lives, as we pray and

God answers, as we look forward to the future,

we can see all these things that God is

working in us, that he's working in ways that

only he can work and that he's working in ways

that use our lives as a testimony to his

goodness and his grace in our lives.

And so that causes us to rejoice in him and

who he is and what he's done.

And we'll be singing those new songs all the

way into the future.

Look at Revelation 14, one through three, then

I looked and behold on Mount Zion stood the

lamb and with him 144,000. That's us, by the

way, the church who had his name and his

father's name written on their foreheads.

And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar

of many waters and like the sound of loud

thunder.

The voice I heard was like the sound of harp

ists playing on their harps, and they were

singing a new song before the throne and

before the four living creatures and before

the elders.

No one could learn the song, that song except

the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the

earth.

And they sang that new song because they were

redeemed from the earth.

We rejoice, we have joy, because we have a

Savior. God saves his people. We also rejoice,

we also have joy, because he reigns over all

of the nations.

Verses four through six of our passage in

Psalm 98 says, "Make a joyful noise to the

Lord all the earth, break forth in a joyous

song and sing praises.

Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with

the lyre and the sound of melody. With trump

ets and the sound of the horn, make a joyful

noise before the King, the Lord."

This invitation to praise isn't just for his

people. It's for all the world to praise the

Lord. He deserves praise.

The NASB translated this to shout joyfully to

the Lord. And we read in Philippians this

morning that every knee will bow and every

tongue will confess.

All nations, all tribes, and all tongues. In

this second part of our song, the whole earth

is joining Israel to praise God for his mighty

victory.

And all kinds of instruments were used to

praise. The shouting, they're all used

together to magnify the glory and the worth

iness of God himself.

Music has been an important part of the

worship of God since the foundation of God's

creation. Job said in Job 38.7, "When the

morning stars sang together, and all the sons

of God shouted for joy."

Genesis chapter four tells us that it was only

five generations from Adam before man created

the first musical instrument.

And so God gives us a pattern of his marvelous

works in the first part of the song, but he

also gives us a pattern of worshiping him with

our voices and with instruments.

That pattern was from the beginning of the

word and it's going to be throughout history

and into the future.

We are commanded as God's church to sing

together and to worship the Lord even when we

just have to do our best.

Ephesians 5.19, "Addressing one another in p

salms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing

and making melody to the Lord with your heart

."

Colossians 3.16, "Let the word of Christ dwell

in you richly, teaching and admonishing one

another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hym

ns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in

your hearts to God."

And when we're done with that here on earth,

we're done singing psalms and hymns and

spiritual songs to one another here on earth

for his praise.

We'll continue singing into eternity.

Revelation 15.3, "And they sing the song of

Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the

Lamb, saying, 'Great and amazing are your

deeds, O Lord, God the Almighty, just and true

are your ways, O King of the nations.'"

Notice the same topic that we're talking about

now that all the world, every nation will sing

is the same theme of the song we'll sing into

eternity.

Now, we have a unique form of worship, and I

thought it was good in the Sunday School

message how we talked about the liturgy of the

early church.

I don't know if you noticed that, but it's

very similar to the one that we have now.

There's singing, there's giving, there's

reading of the word, preaching and praying and

all those things the early church did.

We still do today in 2024.

So we learn about God's works in the past, and

that causes us to sing and to praise Him.

We see the promises that He keeps even in our

lives now, and that causes us to worship and

to sing and to praise Him.

And then we look forward to the fulfillment of

the rest of His promises in the future, and so

we sing to one another praises to our Lord and

Savior.

And when we understand His Word, the response

is that we break forth and praise.

That means we don't sing for the sake of

singing itself, we sing with a purpose behind

it.

We sing because we are joyful in the Lord.

Those who understand the reality of how

singing and music are integrated into the

being of man, we talk about this after church

sometimes.

One of Brother Phil's things that he thinks

about often is how we were made to sing.

We were made to play instruments.

So you think about the insanity of how we

understand, if you don't know anything about

music, you know what sounds good.

Music is a set of frequencies that our minds,

and when you match two or three different

frequencies together, you have harmony.

And there's no real reason for that. There's

no external reason for that, except we were

built to understand those things as harmony.

And when you play two half-step notes together

, you hear dissonance, and it doesn't sound

good.

Why? We don't really understand why, but we

know that we were created to understand and

appreciate the beauty of music.

We were created because God is a musical God.

He created angels just to sing around His

throne for eternity, and one day we will join

them.

We can listen to the birds and how they chirp

and they sing.

Each bird has a unique sound, except for the

mockingbird, which mocks the other bird's

sounds.

But they don't appreciate that their own songs

as being beautiful.

They are just doing it because they were

created to make that type of song.

It's just what they do, but we can appreciate

the beauty of that.

Because we were created in the image of God to

appreciate beautiful things, to appreciate

songs and beautiful melodies.

So God gave us this ability that we can turn

it back into His worship and His praise,

because He appreciates it.

He loves music and being sung to.

And it gives us an expression of this emotion

that we're supposed to have when we realize

all that He has done

and who that He is as God.

So we all make a joyful noise to the King

every Sunday, sometimes in our cars, sometimes

in our showers or in our homes.

And we're all to shout joyfully with all of

the nations.

I've been to Japan a couple of times and I

didn't understand a lot of the language we

deserve as in church.

And I recognize the same emotions and the same

things that were happening in the prayers.

And the songs of God's people even in Japan,

even though I couldn't understand it, they

were praising God for the same reason.

And one day, all of us, the Japanese believers

, the African believers, the believers here

will all stand before Him and rejoice and

praise.

All the nations will praise our Lord.

So He keeps His promises that He makes, He

deserves our worship, He deserves our praise,

and we rejoice because He does.

We rejoice because He saves His people,

because He reigns over all the nations, and we

rejoice because He judges over the earth,

verses seven through nine.

But the sea roar and all that fills it, the

world and those who dwell in it, but the

rivers clap their hands, let the hills sing

for joy together.

Before the Lord, for He comes to judge the

earth, He will judge the world with

righteousness and the peoples with equity.

Now, the whole earth is instructed to join

together and praise God, not just Israel and

not just the surrounding nations, but the

whole earth and everything in it.

The sea worships God, everything in the sea ro

ars and prays to God, the rivers clap their

hands in joy, and the hills sing songs of

praise.

All the cosmos, the whole universe is singing

in anticipation to the return of the Lord who

will come and judge the earth and make

everything right.

And we again have the ability to see the

beauty of the metaphors here, that all the

landscape and all the things are given to us

by God to point back to His glory and His

power

and to ascribe the beauty that it has to the

Creator of it.

We can enjoy the sights and sounds and the

smells of the ocean or the beauty of a hike in

the woods or the mountains, all those things.

We can enjoy understanding that our God is the

one who by the power of His word alone spoke

every one of those things into existence.

And when we do this, we can understand our

place in the world, our purpose here, to point

back to Christ and praise and glory, just like

everything else, but to a special degree.

But here it says that the beauty, all those

things praise God and we look around at those

things and we see the fullness of our world,

how those things have been hurt by the curse

and by sin, how there's death and pain and

suffering.

We can rejoice with all those things with

nature because the judge is coming to make

everything right and is coming to judge

everything with righteousness and equity.

So why would a coming judgment be a cause of

praise and celebration as it is to the whole

world?

The scriptures are full of descriptions of

that same Creator God who created everything

so beautifully, coming and pouring out His

judgment on the world, the ungodly in this

world when He returns.

That same judgment is vindication for all

those who are oppressed by the ungodly, for

all those who are hurt by the sin in this

world and all those who are delivered from

that coming wrath.

First Thessalonians 1.10 says, "And to wait

for a Son from heaven whom He raised from the

dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to

come."

And in that we see that Paul describes in

Romans 8 that even that nature is groaning and

yearning for His coming and His coming

judgment.

Romans 8.18, "For I consider that the suffer

ings of this present time are not worth

comparing with the glory that is to be

revealed to us.

The creation waits with eager longing for the

revealing of the Sons of God.

The creation was subjected to futility, not

willingly, but because of Him who subjected it

in hope that the creation itself will be set

free from its bondage to corruption and obtain

the freedom of the glory of the children of

God.

For we know that the whole creation has been

groaning together in the pains of childbirth

until now.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves

who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown

inwardly as we wait eerily for the adoption of

the Sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we were saved, now hope that

is seen is not hope for who hopes and for what

He sees, but if we hope for what we do not see

, we wait for it with patience.

The creation, along with us, longs to be free

from the corruption of sin, and we feel that

in our lives.

How we wish that we could stop with the sin

and those thoughts that we get and all the

problems that come with that, the anxieties

and the pain that come in our families.

The culture that we have is so full of sin and

we know as believers they'll never find true

happiness until they repent and bow the knee

to their Savior.

Jesus Christ. But they live in pain and

suffering until that point.

We groan for them. We groan for ourselves and

all of creation groans for the coming judgment

of God.

They are looking for the victory that comes

with Jesus Christ's return.

And this is the same victory that we look

forward to, where we don't just win the battle

, but Christ wins the whole war against sin.

But how do we praise Him for this seeing that

He comes to judge the world with righteousness

and the peoples with equity and uprightness?

Especially knowing that we ourselves would

fail the test of that righteousness, that He

would judge us.

And this is the mighty victory that we

celebrate this month and even today on His day

that Christ came into the world to save

sinners.

That He came to live and to die and to be

raised again on the third day so that

everything, including the creation, could be

reconciled to God and restored to its original

place, to be brought under the reign of the

King of Kings.

Ephesians 1-10, "As a plan for the fullness of

time to unite all things in Him, things in

heaven, and things on earth."

Colossians 1-20, "And through Him to reconcile

to Himself all things, whether on earth or in

heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross

."

And we celebrate His reign over us now and His

coming reign in complete and total power, even

in this world where everything is not put into

the right place just yet.

But we know, we hope that one day it will be,

that everything will be made right.

So by faith, we join the sea and the rivers

and the hills and the mountains in praise to

our God, singing a new song and rejoicing that

one day He will come and make everything right

, and we have the reason for our hope in Him.

Joy to the world, the Lord is King, and He

will reign forever and ever.

And this is what prompted Isaac Watts when he

read this song to write the words that he did.

So I'm going to read you the original poem

that he wrote about this song in the 1700s.

It says, "To our Almighty Maker God, do honors

be addressed, His great salvation shines

abroad and makes the nations blessed.

He spake the word to Abraham first, his truth

fulfills the grace, the Gentiles make his name

their trust and learn his righteousness.

Let the whole earth his love proclaim with all

her different tongues, and spread the honors

of his name and melody and songs.

Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth

receive her King, let every heart prepare him

room and heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns, let men

their songs employ, while fields and floods,

rocks, hills and plains repeat the sounding

joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns

infest the ground. He comes to make his

blessings flow far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace, and

makes the nations prove the glories of his

righteousness and wonders of his love."

Let's pray.

Gracious, how do you, Father, we praise you

today.

We thank you for the opportunity to come and

sing, to come and worship you, to hear your

word preached, even with all that's going on.

We pray that you have been honored, and I pray

that this week, as we go out, that we can see

all that you have done and bring you praise

and glory and honor for it.

Like Isaac Watts did so long ago, I pray that

your joy that you sit in Christ would be our

joy, and it would cause us to rejoice in him.

In Christ's name I pray. Amen.