Just One Resolution

Introduction:

Engage:

I want to thank you so much for your invitation to come and preach here for you! I have heard a lot about you all from my good friend Brayden Morrison. When he was still preaching here regularly, one time we decided to come with him and I remember vividly the welcoming spirit you guys showed me and my now wife Ally when we came to listen to his message. So when I heard that you all were in need, I jumped on the opportunity to come back.

As I was writing this message, I actually asked Brayden over the phone if there was anything he wanted to tell you regarding how he’s doing now, and so here’s a little update that he wrote to you guys:

“Hey everybody! I hope you are doing well. I miss you all dearly and am looking forward to visiting again soon! A little update from me: I was recently hired to be the Senior Minister at the Christian Church of Liberal, MO (which is close to family and to Ozark Christian College) and I am currently studying at Biola University in their Master’s of New Testament.

I was very happy to hear that my good friend, Landon, was coming to preach to you all today. Listen closely to him ”

(He gave me permission to cut that part out, but I didn’t want to.)

May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you,

Brayden Morrison

Focus:

It’s always so great to see our loved ones moving on to new things, new jobs, graduations, marriages, births, and so on. But tonight we are all going to experience something new something great, something encouraging. Tonight we are going to embark on a new year. When the clock strikes midnight, there will be something brand new, 2024. A new year, which has never been and will never be again when it’s gone. And for so many, that’s exciting. But there’s also another side to a new year that can be just as real. Fear.

It’s so true that humans are scared of the unknown. I for certain am terrified of the ocean. Not because I’m scared of sharks, but because I’m scared of the sharks that we haven’t discovered yet. According to national geographic, only 5% of the ocean has been explored, and what we’ve seen is already crazy. If you’ve got a spare hour, hop on youtube or the TV and watch the hunting tactics of orcas. It’s insane. Imagine an animal that’s as smart as a dolphin and as deadly as a great white and you get somewhere close. And that’s with what we’ve discovered. If I were honest, if the ocean completely explored, and I knew what was under the surface, I wouldn’t be scared at all. And if we knew exactly what this new year might hold, we wouldn’t be scared either. But we don’t know. If we tried to guess a year ago what 2023 would hold, we wouldn’t have come anywhere close. War in Israel, Wildfires in Maui, and Artificial Intelligence wouldn’t have scratched the surface of our guesses, so no wonder people are scared. But our fears are often much more personal than that.

Relevancy

Maybe you’re financially scared. You are working and working, or you can’t find a decent job at all, the bills and groceries are getting more expensive than you expect and you are afraid that you might not be able to make ends meet.

Or Maybe you’re physically scared. Our fallen bodies keep us from doing what we want. You might be sick, or overworked, or maybe you’re just growing older and you are afraid because you don’t know how much you longer can keep going as you are.

Maybe you’re emotionally scared, you have dealt with loss, or trauma, or anxiety and you are terrified of the path forward. You ask “What is going to happen to me next?”

Or maybe you’re spiritually scared, you might have doubts or uncertainty about God’s faithfulness, and you can’t shake them even when you pray fervantly and read scripture.

Set the biblical stage: But the people in the Bible weren’t isolated from experiences like this. They feared the present and the future, just like we do. It’s easy to become jaded and feel like the people of scripture are so unlike us that they can’t possibly have similar experiences, but they did. Our passage today was written right after years of bondage and slavery. It was most likely written after the Exodus or the End of the Babylonian Exile. Like us, the Israelites in their captivity were financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually scared to an even greater degree. Their present was grueling, the future unknown. But God brought them deliverance, and our passage today was their resolution.

Preview:

Through our passage today, I’m going to give you one, just one new-years resolution. Sing. And then three marvelous reasons that God gives us to sing. So let’s explore that resolution together.

Go ahead and open up your Bibles to Psalm 98, and we’ll just tackle the first three verses today. (WAIT) So Let’s talk about that resolution!

I. Sing to the Lord!

a. This is the only command in our passage today, that all of us should sing directly to God. Let’s go ahead and read the first part of verse one.

Psalm 98:1a (ESV)

Oh sing to the Lord a new song

Sing to the Lord

What does it mean to “Sing to the Lord?” We all have sang songs to God, that’s what we have just done in worship, but why is this a resolution for us? Because this resolution is for heartfelt singing. It’s a singing that comes from inside us, and pours out. The word here in the original language is one of praise, of calling all the people of God together to celebrate!

But I don’t want to skip over the “To the Lord” part of this. For many of us, just reading the words in a singsongy way is what we do for worship, I especially become guilty of this if it’s a song I’m not especially into, but we should remember that praise is really just a type of prayer. To sing to the Lord is to pray to the Lord in song. When we make our songs to God an intimate conversation with him, we put our heart in the game, because we are talking to our Father who is our caretaker and Lord.

A New Song

And the song we sing to him is a “new song”

And no it’s not saying that we’ve got to stop listening to old music and go learn to sing the new stuff that’s coming out every 20 minutes. It’s an phrase that means a fresh expression of praise to God. It means that when you see God do a new thing in your life, you praise him in a new way.

When God provides for you when you had lost hope, it means singing “All I have needed Thy hand hath provided” in a new way, a way that thanks him for the new thing he has done for you.

And when doubts about Christ’s faithfulness start to arise, and he reminds you in scripture that nothing will ever separate you from his love, you sing “No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from His hand” in a new way, a way that thanks him for the new thing he’s done for you.

And so the psalmist commands us to Sing this New Song to the Lord! So why don’t we? What keeps us from singing with our whole heart when we see God move? I know for a lot of us, sometimes singing feels really embarrassing. We really don’t want anyone else to hear us, and so we wait until everyone starts all at once to sing to God. That’s not all bad, we need order in our worship, but we’ve all felt at some point that if someone hears us belting out praise that they might judge us. “Man they need a vocal coach.” “Do they know how loud they are?” “They’re just showing off.” And people, that’s a load of junk! Who are we to judge when someone is offering their praise to God! The ruler of the universe is pleased to hear us sing to him, so how can any mere man or woman judge another for doing what pleases God.

I know this can be especially hard for us men, guys in the room, I know we might subconsciously think that singing is not manly or it’s just not for us, but the greatest men in the Bible sang. Leaders like Moses, Kings like David, and the perfect man and God himself, Jesus Christ sang.

So everyone, sing to the Lord a New Song.

But how can we simply sing to the Lord when we are afraid of the unknown? How do we get from a point of fear to the thankfulness we need to sing our new song to God? We remember what he’s done. We sing to the Lord… (Read point 2)

II. For He has Done Marvelous Things!

When we feel like we have no reason to sing, God shows us his deeds and gives us a reason for praise.

Let’s go ahead and keep reading.

Psalm 98:1b–2 (ESV)

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.

These marvelous things are the things that show his great sovereignty over all creation, these are the awesome things that show who God is and how he works on the earth. And the first marvelous thing that he does is this, he…

Works Salvation

In fact, God has always worked salvation. The reason this Psalm was written was because God worked salvation for his people in saving them from their captors. From their slavery, and it was done all by his own power. Our text says that “his right hand and holy arm” have worked salvation for him, and that’s a really awesome thing. The right hand and arm were symbols of Power. God saving his people was him flexing his holy muscles and saying “I alone have won salvation for my people.”

And the truth is, that the salvation that God gives, it’s all completely from him. Because salvation is from God’s bigness, and sovereignty, it means that he saved us out of his own heart and mercy! We can’t manipulate God into saving us, but he did it out of his very own heart.

Trying to win God’s approval is like an adopted son trying to earn his place in the family by working his butt off around the house. And his father sees his effort and says, “Son, you ARE a part of this family, and nothing you can do can make you any more or less of my son.”

The Father sent Jesus into the world as his right hand and holy arm to bring us out of our sinfulness and bondage so that we can only boast in HIS power and love for doing so. Nothing we can do can make him any more or less our Father. As the old American preacher Johnathan Edwards said, “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”

And in the same way that he worked salvation in the Past, he is also working salvation for us in the present, and will work it in the future! It is by God’s working powerfully in us that we are being saved by becoming more like Jesus. And on the last day, our Lord Jesus will powerfully complete our salvation so we can reign with king Jesus forever. And so how can we not sing? Our salvation was, is, and will be powerfully accomplished by our God in Christ. And that by itself is enough to sing about, but there’s another marvelous thing that God does, and it’s that he…

Reveals Salvation

His salvation for people wasn’t kept on the down-low. When he rescued Israel from Egypt this is what he said to Pharoah.

Exodus 9:16 ESV

But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

His salvation of Israel was to be seen by all, so that they might know that he alone is God. And that’s what it says here, that he has “made known his salvation, and revealed his righteousness, and the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” And isn’t that just what we celebrated last week? How God’s salvation appeared and was revealed to the world in an infant named Jesus? The righteousness of God has been revealed in Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. And that’s why we receive righteousness through faith in him.

God’s salvation is also being revealed right now, when we open up the pages of scripture, the Holy Spirit uses the word of God to reveal the gospel daily and to keep changing us into the likeness of Christ. God is also revealed to us in his body. When we see others live like Christ in our church body we see a picture of Jesus revealed to us in real time, and God uses his church to reveal his salvation to others.

And God’s salvation will be revealed once again, coming on a cloud. And all of us will meet our beautiful Lord in the air, and reign with him forever. And for that, we sing! He has revealed to us what we could have never found on our own, salvation. There is one more marvelous thing that this passage states for us though and it’s perhaps the reason for all of them. The third marvelous thing that God does is he…

Remembers His People

God’s marvelous work and revealing of salvation in the lives of his people depends on his remembrance.And we sing to him our new song because of it!

And that’s what our final verse adds. We sing a new song because he has not forgotten us, but has remained loyal to his word for his people.

Psalm 98:3 ESV

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.

When the Bible speaks of God’s remembrance, it’s a way to describe his care for his people. It’s not that he actually ceased to think about his people, but that he is coming to their rescue. We see this right before God rescued Israel from Egypt. It says in Exodus 2:23-24

Exodus 2:23–24 ESV

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

God’s remembrance of his people testifies to his faithfulness, and similar to how he remembered Israel in their time of need, He remembers us in ours. Because we belong to God there is no dark place or valley that he will not rescue us from, whether in this life or the one to come, he remembers us, and he is faithful.

He also shows his steadfast love in his remembrance. The word steadfast love here can also be translated loyalty. He is loyal to us! This isn’t the kind of loyalty that an obedient dog shows to it’s owner. But the kind of loyalty that a Father shows his children when he takes care of them. We don’t provide him with anything, but he gives us himself. He gives us grace not because of anything in us, but because of his own love and mercy. And because this loyalty is part of who God is, he cannot lie to us. He perfectly upholds every promise he makes us. That’s why he freed Israel from Egypt, because he promised he would not forget them. And similarly, he promised salvation for us as well.

In Genesis, God promised that he would send a seed from the woman who would crush the head of Satan and foretold how the seed of Abraham would bring blessing to all the peoples of the earth. Deuteronomy said that would be a prophet like Moses, and according to 2 Samuel, he would be a king from the line of David, and his throne would last forever. Isaiah explained that he would be born of a virgin and that he would be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

And we have seen him, Jesus Christ, the Salvation of God. Because God remembered us. And he still remembers us. It’s easy sometimes to thing that God has forgotten about us between the time now and when he returns, but he will remain steadfast to his word, and on the last day Jesus will say:

“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

And because he says Fear not, we shall not be afraid.

Conclusion

Relevancy

So as the new year approaches and you begin to fear the unknown, Sing to the Lord a New Song, for he has done Marvelous Things!

When you are financially afraid, you can sing that God remembers you in your worry, and he will provide what you need!

When you are physically afraid, you can sing that God’s salvation will be revealed from the heavens on the last day and that you will be given a new body forever!

When you are emotionally afraid, you can sing because God has given you his steadfast love, and will never leave you.

When you you are spiritually afraid and full of doubt, you can sing because you know that God has worked your salvation by his mighty hand as a gift, and he will continue to work powerfully in you.

So this new year, as your one resolution. Sing to the Lord a New Song, for he has done, is doing, and will do Marvelous Things!