Last week, as we looked at Psalm 79, we were reminded that the Christian life isn’t about pretending that life is different than what it is. As believers, we’re not required to act like the harsh realities of pain, discouragement, suffering, and death are not there. Rather, God has given us psalms like Psalm 79 that guide us in lamenting before the Lord, and I would imagine that with the great difficulties and discouragements some are facing even now, that was an encouraging and helpful psalm for us to look at and follow in our prayers.
However, Psalm 98 points us in a different direction. Psalm 98 is probably the purest and clearest psalm of unbridled praise in the entire Psalter. There is no mention of enemies, or death, or suffering. There is no warning in this like we find in Psalm 95. It is simply a call to praise God. In fact, it is an ever-expanding call to praise God. That is, the first three verses call Israel to praise God, the next three verses call all the peoples of all the earth to praise God, and the last three verses call the rest of the created order (i.e., trees, seas, hills, etc.) to praise God. It is an ever-expanding circle of praise to God until all of creation is caught up in it.
There is no doubt a historical setting in which this psalm was composed. It has been argued (convincingly, I think) that this psalm was written “as a victory song recited up on the return of the successful army of Israel, which was considered to be led by Yahweh.”1 However, it is clear that if there were any historical specifics that were first written into the psalm (and there might never have been), they have been removed. That is, this psalm was written not to be confined to the use of a specific group of people in a specific historical setting. This psalm was written and put into the Psalter in order to be used by the people of God in all times. The heading for the psalm is perhaps the simplest in the Psalter. It just reads, “A Psalm.”
So, what do we do with a psalm like this? Well, if Psalm 79 is instructive for us in showing us that we may lament before the Lord and teaching us how to do so, I think Psalm 98 is instructive for us in reminding us that we must also stop on occasion and look above the difficulties and hardships in our lives and remind ourselves of why God deserves our praise. I would say the key reminder we should get from Psalm 98 is that no matter what is going on in your life – and I really mean that – that there is reason to praise God. There is reason to praise him for what he has done in the past, for what he is doing in the present, and for what he will do in the future. That is what Psalm 98 teaches us. So, what then are those reasons given in the psalm for why God is to be praised? That is what I want us to see this morning.
First, we see in the psalm that God should be praised because he has redeemed us.
The theme of the first three verses is salvation. The word “salvation” is actually found in every verse. The psalmist writes, “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; 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.”
By calling for the people to sing a new song, the psalmist is not necessarily crying out for someone to write a song that has never been sung before. Certainly that is not excluded, and the writing of a new song after an act of deliverance would be fitting. However, the idea is probably also seen in simply taking a song and singing it anew, that is in light of the present situations.
We’ve probably done that before. I remember an occasion this past year when we were in Louisville that I walked into the service very humbled before God because of my sin. I had just been considering my life, my failures, and my outright rebellion in some instances, and I was really angry with myself. It was one of those Sundays when I walked into the service thinking, “I don’t even deserve to sit and worship with these people as my life has been so below where it should have been for that week.” I was disgusted with myself and thinking that what I really deserved was a good beating for my sins. However, we walked in and the call to worship mentioned the reality of forgiveness because of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Then, we sang a song that began, “I don’t deserve to be your servant, and how much less to be your child. Anger and wrath, sure condemnation should be my portion, my just reward.” I remember thinking, that’s exactly right. Then, the next line we sang was, “Never have seen it. Never will know it. Your lovingkindness enfolds my life.” As we sang that, I just felt like crumbling in my chair. I was overwhelmed by grace, overwhelmed by the gospel. But the odd thing is that we had sung that song prior to that Sunday. I had sung it. But I sung it that day anew – the same song in different circumstances. I think that is the call of verse 1. It is a call to consider afresh our redemption and sing in light of it anew, a song of praise to the Lord.
The psalmist says to praise him for his has done marvelous things, working salvation. He references his right hand and holy arm. These are images that speak of the Lord’s power as a warrior. He had crushed the Egyptians. He crushed the Babylonians. The deliverance of his people had always been an act of mercy and an act of power simultaneously, and this is what they had witnessed again.
And it is the same for us. Salvation is not simply a legal reality that says we’re no longer under the penalty of our sin. It certainly is not less than that, and that reality is the center of our salvation. However, it is more as well. We can look around and know that God has redeemed us from Satan, sin, and death, not so that these things might linger with us forever. He has redeemed us from them in part by crushing them and ensuring their destruction. One day Satan, sin, and death will be no more. And they will be no more because God has crushed them through his Son as he redeemed us by dying on the cross to pay for our sins and being raised so that we might be justified.
In verses 2-3, the psalmist celebrates the fact that this salvation was not done in private. That is, God did not say, “Hey, I’m ashamed of you, so I don’t want anyone to know I’m delivering you” as he redeemed them. Rather, the psalmist says that God has “made known his salvation . . . 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.”
We know our sins, don’t we? Some of us have done things in here that if we were to begin to mention them, we would probably first ask for the children to be removed from our service. Some of us have been self-righteous in thinking that because perhaps some of those things have not been done by us that we have somehow merited our righteousness before God. Both categories are disgusting. Both categories of sin mean that, apart from Christ, we deserve hell. And God has looked upon us in our sin and not pretended like it is not there. He has looked upon us in our sins and declared, “He/she is mine!” and then sent his Son to the earth to suffer the payment for our sins and to rise from the dead so that we might not have to face the punishment that we deserve, so that we might have complete forgiveness from our (never with the charges forcing us to be anything less than God’s child), and so that we might be his own. And God did not do that in a closed room. He did that on a hill outside Jerusalem for all to see. He is so delighted in the reality that you are his that he has commanded you to confess that you belong to Christ before men.
This morning, God himself says to us in this psalm, “Praise me for redeeming you. It was done with great cost – not gold or silver but the precious blood of Christ. And I have done it in a way to make clear to the world that you are mine.” Even when we’ve sinned and come back to God thinking, “I don’t deserve to be your servant,” he has shown us the response of is heart in the parable of the prodigal son. He proclaims, “Kill the fattened calf, give him the family ring, put good clothes on him, for my son has come home.” Therefore, how can we not praise God for our redemption? If our faith in resting in Christ and his finished work for us, then this morning, we have been redeemed, never to face judgment, never to receive that which our sin deserves. That’s true of you and me. What a blessing! And that is a reality that you can look at regardless of what struggles you are facing or the circumstances which have caused you to lament before God this week.
It is right and fitting for us to pause, look beyond our life circumstances, and praise God for his redemption. As the song says, “Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well, with my soul.’”
That is reason enough to praise God, and yet the psalm gives us more. Verses 4-6 show us that God is to be praised since he is the king who is reigning over the entire world. Therefore, we can see that we should praise God because he guides and controls our lives.
As verses 1-3 celebrate God as the one who has redeemed his people, verses 4-6 celebrate God as the one who is the king, now reigning over the entire world. Verse 4 calls all the earth to “break forth into joyous song and sing praises.” Verses 5-6 tell how to praise him and sing praises to him, saying, “Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD!”
Thus, we see that God is saying, “Praise me with your voices, with your instruments. Offer praise to me, sing to me.” But then we see that we are specifically offering our praise “before the King, the LORD!” That is, praise God because he reigns over all the earth.
Now, you might then say, “Well then, Lee, you’ve misstated your second point. It shouldn’t be “Praise God because he guides and controls our lives,” but “Praise God because he reigns over the whole world.” Well, that would have been fair to say, and it is indeed true. But that can remain to us somewhat of an abstract reality that doesn’t really connect to our lives. That is, I think it’s easy for us to acknowledge that God is King over the world. He is God. However, it’s sometimes difficult for us to accept wholeheartedly what that means, and what the psalmist’s declaration here entails.
What God’s universal kingship means is that God is reigning over everything that goes on in the world. He’s in control when things happen in our lives and in the lives of everyone else who lives. God’s reign means that God is accomplishing his purposes, and nothing can stop it. That’s what it means to declare that God reigns, that he is king over the world. Therefore, what I want us to acknowledge as we acknowledge that God is king is that this means that he is guiding and is in control even of our lives and that which affects our lives.
Now, that can be a painful reality that leads us on occasion to wonder why God did not keep this person or that person from sinning in a way that brought great pain to us. And we cannot know all of those answers. But what we can know is that the God who loves us enough to send his Son to die for us is in control and guiding our lives. He’s working things for our good. Whatever comes to us cannot come to us without being measured by him. Even Job’s suffering only took place at the Lord’s granting Satan permission to afflict him.
This means that no matter what is going on in our lives, we can praise God for redeeming us, and we can praise him for being in control and guiding our lives. And again, it doesn’t mean we will see why everything is happening, but we can trust the one who is king of the universe. Regardless of what goes on in Washington or North Korea or in our own homes, God is in control.
Just the other night, I was reminded again of how thankful I am for those of you who teach my children at church. Every time any of my children reflects knowledge of the Scripture, I am reminded again that that happens not just because Lili and I teach them. It’s you all as well. Well, anyways, I was reading one of the latter chapters in Acts to my kids when I read about Paul appealing to Caesar, then Agrippa saying that he probably could have been freed if he had not appealed to Caesar, and then an angel coming to Paul and telling him that he must stand before Caesar.” So, I thought to myself, “This is probably not fully connecting,” and said, “You see, kids, it looked like Paul hadn’t messed up and gotten himself in a bad situation and he could have been thinking, “Man, I’ve messed up God’s purposes for my life” or “That king is really messing up my life,” but what was going on is that God was fulfilling his exact purposes for and through Paul.
I think expected to ask for questions, the kids’ blank faces to show that I had overshot them, and then to pray and kiss the kids goodnight while thinking, “How do I help my kids’ really get the message of a text like that?” However, before I could get into any of that, Michael spoke up and said, “Dad, that story is kind of like Joseph, isn’t it?” And I almost cried when he said that, again, so thankful for you teachers here at church teaching my children so much and applying the Bible with them again and again.
Michael was right, and there are numerous examples where we get pictures in the Bible where we might think that someone’s life is spiraling out of control. Paul at the end of Acts was a good example in my mind, but Joseph is probably the best. There were no doubt all kinds of questions in Joseph’s mind, but he could rest in the fact that his God reigned over every Pharaoh, over his brothers, over the weather and famines, over prison guards, over Potifer’s wife, over everyone and everything. And God was guiding and controlling his life throughout all that.
Therefore, it’s right for us to pause in the midst of our struggles, look above them, be reminding that God is in control and guiding our lives, working things for our good, and to praise him for that. Right now, he is still king over all the world. Let’s rest in that and praise him for that. Bring forth our instruments and voices and “Make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD!”
Finally, verses 7-9 remind us that we should praise God because he will one day judge the world.
Verses 7-8 call upon all the inanimate creation to join in the praise. Not just Israel, not just the nations, but all the created order should praise God. We read in verses 7-8, “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.” But then notice why. Verse 9 says, “. . . before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.”
We should praise God because he has redeemed us, because he is reigning over us, and because he will one day judge the world. Why should we praise him for coming judgment, though? We should praise him for coming judgment because he will one day come and set everything right. There will be no more sin, no more death, and no more pain. And the created order should join in this praise because right now the created order itself is under a curse. The reason there are earthquakes and famines and drought and thorns and thistles is because Adam sinned and a penalty for his sin was that the ground itself was cursed. Every tornado that blows through Jackson (which seems to happen every couple of years now) is a reminder to us that the earth is crying out for things to be set right. In fact, Romans 8:19-23 tells us that the created order is groaning and longing for God’s people to be redeemed?
But why? The reason is that when God Christ comes to judge and raises his people to eternal life in the process, the created order will be free from its curse. The earth itself will be free from its bondage to decay, even as our bodies will. So, when we see the earth crying out with all kinds of disasters around us, we can know that the created order is longing for the day when God will come and judge the world and set everything right. Well, that day is certain, the psalmist reminds us, and so we should praise God now.
Right now, we can praise God because he will one day put a permanent stop to Satan, sin, and death. Right now, by faith, we trust in his guidance and control. One day, though, our faith will turn to sight. We will see what God had been doing. We will see him set everything right.
So, this morning, let me encourage you to stop. Take your eyes off your circumstances just for a second, remind yourself of the precious reality that you have been redeemed through Christ, that right now God is in control of your life and guiding it so that you might become more like Christ, and one day he will set everything right as we comes to judge the world in righteousness. And as you contemplate those realities, let’s praise God for that. What on earth right now compares to those truths? The answer is that there is nothing that compares. Even the suffering of this present times, Paul tells us in Romans 8:18, is not worth comparing to the glory that we will one day experience, of a glory that will be ours as we’ve been redeemed, are being conformed to Christ’s image, and will one day be judged righteous as we are raised from the dead. Even as we come to the table this morning, let it be with a heart of praise that we celebrate this meal. Amen.