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.