Psalm 96 - Covenant and Culmination

We’ll be in Psalm 96. Psalm 96 tells us that Yahweh is King and that he is Holy. Those two bedrock truths call us to a mission—a mission to worship him with our whole being and to declare his glory among the nations.

Imagine the impact if our worship extended beyond out into the world that needs to hear about God’s salvation? So, Father, its my prayer that we’ll be moved be to worship fully and declare boldly, as you work among us and through us to draw many into your eternal kingdom. Amen

It was brought to my attention so kindly and graciously by one of you, that I’ve been using a particular word quite a bit that needs to be defined. My goal is to communicate to you. And, if my choice of words isn’t serving that goal, then I owe it to you to either choose different words, or to define the words that I choose. Ideally, I would always choose better words that immediately communicate. However, when it comes to God’s word, words that God has given us in the Bible, then I have a responsibility to define those. It doesn’t do us any good to be a scripture-saturated church, if we don’t understand scripture’s own words, and use them.

The word that was brought to my attention is “covenant”. Now, to be fair to myself, I did define this word at the very start when we looked at Psalms 1 and 2 and this person was not there that day. But, they weren’t the only one not here that day, and besides, I don’t expect anyone to remember more than 20% of what I say. So, they made a good point that it would be helpful to define this term for us since we’re using it plenty. The term, again, is “covenant.”

We’re at a bit of a disservice, as English speakers, because the way the Bible uses the word covenant, and the way we tend to use it are different. The Hebrew word is Berit, and “covenant” is a good translation, but we are not served well by the way we tend to use it. Unfortunately, most of the time we use the word covenant outside of the Bible is to to refer to Home Owner’s Association agreements. Unfortunately these kinds of covenants don’t at all resemble what the Bible is talking about when it uses the word.

There is one way in which we use it that’s closer, and that is in marriage. We often talk about the covenant of marriage, and rightly so, thats biblical. The only problem is that our culture has totally trampled on the institution of marriage, from no-fault divorce to same-sex mirage and further and further it slips away. So, we’re loosing the biblical meaning of covenant, but it still remains the best way to translate the word Berit. So, we need to recover it. To recover it, we need to define it and then use it.

Put simply, a covenant is an agreement between two parties that establishes a relationship of faithful, loyal love, obedience, and trust, and makes that relationship binding, official, and permanent. It’s not a business contract or a marketplace deal. So, notice that, it makes a relationship. What a covenant does, is it makes two people related even closer than blood.

We were talking about marriage. Why do the two become one flesh? Because they’re making a covenant. Their relationship is now closer than that of a sibling or a parent. Its based on the relationship Christ has with the church. Not the other way around. In the New Testament, Paul isn’t using marriage as a convenient metaphor to describe Christ’s relationship with the church. Marriage itself is modeled upon Christ’s relationship with the church. Its an eternal design. God chose a bride for his son by our election. Have you ever been to a sort of formal wedding where, before the ceremony, the bride would be referred to as the Bride elect of so and so? We’re the bride elect of Christ in eternity past.

At any rate, why are covenants so important in the Bible? I’m glad you asked. Here’s why they’re important: There’s one plan of God to save us. There aren’t two plans, one for Israel, and a separate plan for the Church. Likewise, there isn’t a plan A, works, and a Plan B, Grace. There is one singular gracious plan of God to to establish his kingdom on earth by redeeming a people for himself. That plan is successively unfolded through 6 covenants, revealed to us through whole Bible.

So, covenants are important in the Bible because its through the biblical covenants that God saves us by establishing his Kingdom. The idea is that God is King and God’s Kingdom is coming.

What are those 6 covenants, anyway? We’re just going to make a very broad sweep to highlight each of them and give us a big picture.

The first is the Covenant with Creation. This establishes a relationship between God and Creation. Adam mediates this relationship because he’s both a creation and an the image of the creator. Adam’s responsibility as God’s son is to faithfully worship and obey as a priest and a king. God’s responsibility is to maintain the order he established in creation. And, even that, he does through Adam.

Genesis 1–2 never uses the word covenant. However, Hosea 6:7 says “they,” “they” being Israel and Judah, “like Adam, have violated the covenant;”. They, like Adam, have violated the covenant;” When Adam sinned, as the representative for all of Creation, violated God’s covenant with creation. Thats why all of creation s cursed as a result and not just Adam himself.

Because Adam violated the covenant, God decides to reaffirm and renew his covenant with creation. Just like Jared and Allison are renewing their marriage covenant next month, God renews his covenant with creation by establishing a covenant with Noah as the new Adam.

These two covenants, the covenant with Creation, and the covenant with Noah, serve as the guardrails that keep all the other four covenants on track. The cosmic stability they provide undergird God’s promises and quell any misgivings that God’s patience might run out before his mission of redemption is complete. See, because Noah, as a new Adam, would also be an unfaithful covenant partner, it must be God’s grace alone that preserves the world.

Next, is the Abrahamic Covenant. God makes a covenant with Abraham to give him descendants and to bless his offspring with land. As Abraham and his children are to live in God’s presence and be blameless. They’re to worship and obey. By doing this, the whole world will be blessed by God’s Kingdom reign. So, see, the role of Adam and a priest and king is being passed on from covenant partner to covenant partner.

Of course Abraham fails, but he will have a descendant that will obey perfectly!

The Abrahamic Covenant deals with universal blessing upon the world, yet it points towards a particular people belonging to God in a special relationship. So, as a universal blessing, it converges with the Creation Covenant and the Covenant with Noah to form the backbone of the story of redemption.

The fourth covenant is called the Mosaic Covenant. It deals with the entire nation of Israel. Through this covenant, God gives the role of Adam to the whole people. He makes them a kingdom of priests and holy nation. Israel is to be God’s obedient son. Israel will serve the world as God’s King. God’s kingdom will come, his will will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven, you see.

Through Israel, the world will be blessed. The Mosaic Covenant is based upon the promises of the Covenant with Abraham.

The next covenant is the Davidic covenant. With God’s Kingdom coming, and his sons failing, it becomes apparent that God is going to have to come to Earth himself to be King and Priest. God’s throne is in Heaven. His footstool is between the Cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. To prepare for this arrival, God anoints David to be King over Israel to show them what Yahweh’s Kingship is supposed to look like, and to actually establish the throne that he, God, will occupy when he comes, but I’m getting ahead of myself. God promises that David’s dynasty will endure forever.

Because David is the King of Israel, David is Israel. Israel winnows and whittles down to a remnant of only one faithful man, Jesus. Jesus is a royal son of David. Jesus is Israel’s King. The only way for David’s dynasty to endure forever is either for male children to continuously be born, or for one of David’s sons to live forever. Jesus is God incarnate. God’s throne merges with David’s throne in the rule and reign of Jesus, the true and faithful final Israelite.

This is how the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant converge upon one another in in Christ Jesus to give us the final covenant, the New Covenant. Jesus is the faithful covenant partner. He’s keeping both sides of the bargain, as both God and Man. As we are united to Christ by faith, whats true about Jesus becomes true about us. We become partakers in this New Covenant relationship. We’re a new people. We’re a new Israel.

Because its a covenant relationship, its binding and permanent. It can’t be broken. Our salvation is secure. And best of all, its based on love.

Members of the New Covenant are the beginning of New Creation. See, look back at Eden. In the first creation, God made the place and then he made the people. In the New creation, he’s making the people, and then he makes the place.

Its in this space between the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant that we find ourselves in the Book of Psalms. We’re looking at Book 4. Psalms is divided into 5 books, just like the Torah, first five books of the Bible. And within book 4, we’re looking at Psalm 96.

Last week, we looked at Psalm 89. Psalm 89 presented us with a dilemma. Because the nation has been exiled to Babylon, it appears that David’s throne is vacant. What’s the answer? Just about every psalm in Psalm 4 answers this question haha. But we’re going to look at how Psalm 96 answers this question. We alluded to it earlier. The answer comes by God’s throne merging with David’s throne. We find that David’s throne was actually God’s throne all along.

Lets go ahead and read Psalm 96:

1 Sing a new song to Yahweh;

let the whole earth sing to Yahweh.

2 Sing to Yahweh, bless his name;

proclaim his salvation from day to day.

3 Declare his glory among the nations,

his wondrous works among all peoples.

4 For Yahweh is great and is greatly to be praised;

he is feared above all gods.

5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,

but Yahweh made the heavens.

6 Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

7 Ascribe to Yahweh, you families of the peoples,

ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength.

8 Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name;

bring an offering and enter his courts.

9 Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness;

let the whole earth tremble before him.

10 Say among the nations, “Yahweh is being King.

The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken.

He judges the peoples fairly.”

11 Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;

let the sea and all that fills it resound.

12 Let the fields and everything in them celebrate.

Then all the trees of the forest will shout for joy

13 before the Lord, for he is coming—

for he is coming to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness

and the peoples with his faithfulness.

Book 4 shifts its view from the despair in Book 3 to a position of renewed understanding and hope. The suffering and grief of the Psalmist in book 3 is culminating in a maturity that comes from fresh understanding and new insight into what God was already doing. Remember, Psalm 89 showed the psalmist clinging to a bedrock faith. His cries of anguish were anchored firmly in unwavering trust from the very beginning.

The mature perspective in book four is a culmination of that bedrock commitment. This new perspective can be described as mature, because its really an old perspective. It reaches all the way back to the Abrahamic covenant to root its faith in God’s plan. Book 4 begins with Psalm 90 and ends with Psalm 106. Both Psalms recount Moses interceding for the people. What do I mean by “intercede”. He’s going before God to represent the People and make a case. Why is he interceding? Because they’ve sinned. Remember the incident of Aaron and The Golden Calf? The ink hasn’t even dried on the covenant God just made with them and they’re already breaking it.

But what does Moses appeal to when he intercedes? He appeals to the Abrahamic covenant. Its the backbone. So, Psalm 90 and Psalm 106 bookmark Book 4 with an implicit appeal to the Abrahamic Covenant. Stability. Maturity. That’s the tone of Book 4 where we find Psalm 96 right in the middle answering the question of the apparent failure of the Davidic covenant.

Book 4 has another interesting feature. It sends us on what I call a Psalm Scavenger Hunt. The book of Psalms and the Book of Chronicles are intimately linked. They go together. They both are written after the exile, probably by Ezra. Remember, even though Ezra didn’t write the individual psalms himself, he’s carefully and meticulously arranging the book of Psalms in order to convey a particular meaning that they can only achieve in this context.

So, God’s people spend about 160 years in exile in Assyria and Babylon. Then, in about 500 years before the birth of Jesus, Ezra leads the exiles back to the Jerusalem where they recover the Torah. Its after this, that Ezra arranges the book of Psalms and also writes Chronicles. So, at the time of Jesus, and in Hebrew ordering of the biblical books today, Psalms and Chronicles are grouped together at the end of the Old Testament.

1 Chronicles 16:8–36, go ahead and turn there. It has a Psalm in it. Verses 8–36 are a Psalm that David had commissioned to celebrate the entry of the Ark of The Covenant into Jerusalem. This psalm only appears in Chronicles. Chronicles covers allot of the same ground as Samuel and Kings, just from a different perspective after the Exile.

So, now we come to our scavenger hunt. Ezra, who both wrote Chronicles and arranged Psalms, has taken decent chunks of this psalm from Chronicles and he’s spread them across different Psalms in Book 4. So, Book 4 contains this entire Psalm in its entirety, you just have to find the different pieces and put them together. Well, the biggest piece just so happens to be the entirety of Psalm 96. If I can draw your attention to verses 23–33, you will see that it is mirrored perfectly by Psalm 96.

For homework, you can go complete the scavenger hunt and find the rest of the pieces distributed across Book 4 of Psalms. If you have a Bible with good cross-references you can cheat.

But this is not just so we can play games, or say “oh that’s neat”. Its for a reason!

Think about where 1 Chronicles 16 is. So, remember from last week, 1 Chronicles 17 is about the Davidic covenant; this psalm comes just right before it. It leads into the making of the covenant with David. So what’s going on here?

The Ark of the Covenant is being transported into Jerusalem. Prior to that, it had been in a kind of a 20 year holding pattern after having been brought back from the ark’s own self-imposed exile. God was tired of being cursed by the sons of the high priest, and he got up and left. The Ark was captured by the Philistines. But now its back, and David is ready to bring it into Jerusalem.

What is the Ark of The Covenant? Its a box. An ark is a box where you put things for safekeeping. Noah and the animals were put in one, remember? What Covenant? The mosaic covenant. Inside the ark are the stone tablets that contain the 10 words, or the 10 commandments. These are the Mosaic covenant documents. The box is wooden and covered in gold. There are golden decorative cherubim on each side of the box facing each other. They’re guarding it, just like the cherubim guarding the entrance to Eden.

The ark of the covenant represents God’s presence. The cherubim are important because the Old Testament says that Yahweh is “enthroned between the cherubim”. They refer to the ark as his “footstool”. The idea is that the seat of God’s throne is in the sky, heaven, and that his feat rest on the ark down here. So, when you are transporting the ark, you are transporting the King. Have you ever seen kings carried on poles like that in the movies? Its the same idea. They’re carrying his throne into Jerusalem, the city of David.

What this is conveying in Chronicles is that David’s eternal throne in 1 Chronicles 17, is only possible because of the presence of Yahweh’s throne in 1 Chronicles 16.

The merger between Yahweh’s throne and David’s throne begins here and culminates in the rule and reign of King Jesus.

That’s the answer we’ll find in Psalm 96, to the crisis raised by Psalm 89. It has been Yahweh’s throne the entire time. Yahweh is being King, verse 10 of Psalm 96 says.

What does the Kingship of Yahweh entail for us?

WORSHIP AND MISSION GO HAND-IN-HAND

Well, Psalm 96 says that we should sing.

1 Sing a new song to Yahweh;

let the whole earth sing to Yahweh.

2 Sing to Yahweh, bless his name;

proclaim his salvation from day to day.

3 Declare his glory among the nations,

his wondrous works among all peoples.

Sing and declare. Sing to God. Declare to the nations. Worship and mission. They go hand-in-hand. The whole earth is to sing this song. How is the whole earth supposed to sing with us unless we proclaim and declare his salvation and glory?

Our mission is to see our lost neighbors saved. Lets get that fire under us! But why? What’s lighting that fire? What’s our motivation? Verse 4:

4 “For Yahweh is great and is greatly to be praised;”

He’s worthy! Its due to him. Thats why.

If the center of our motivation is to minimize the suffering of our fellow human beings, then we will relieve their suffering right into eternal torment in Hell. And that will be perfectly just.

But, if the center of our motivation is to maximize the glory, praise, adoration, and devotion given to God, then we will see our fellow human beings saved from Hell. We will see God receive what is due to him. He’s worthy. We are made to Worship and Obey, just like Adam. That’s what human beings are for. Worship sets the record straight. It puts God back in his rightful place, and it puts us back in ours. There is nothing more cathartic than worship.

Worship and Mission must go hand in hand. We can’t pit the relief of human suffering against the glory of God. They go together.

If you want God to be praised, then go, serve people; declare his salvation.

IDOLS ARE NOT WORTHY OF WORSHIP

Its the only way. My way doesn’t work! Back to verse 4:

he is feared above all gods.

5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,

but Yahweh made the heavens.

6 Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

All the gods of the peoples, All the ways we try to save ourselves, are worthless idols. Its futility. What are those idols? What are you trusting in to save you, to relieve your suffering? What are you trusting in to save you? Is it money, and the illusion of security that money can buy, or the status that money can project? Is it sex or drugs or food, or entertainment? Are you trusting in power and the illusion of control, as if you could be God. Do you manipulate others? What worthless idol are you trusting in?

God’s worthiness motivates us to worship him. What might motivate us to worship something that is worthless? Idol worship is very likely motivated by fear, shame, anger, or some combination of the three.

Fear. The fear of man might motivate me to worship money because it can make me somebody in the eyes of man. Look at me. Look at what I drive or wear or can buy. I’m somebody. In that case, I’m fearing what man thinks of me. But another way to fear man is to fear what man can do to me. That fear might motivate me to hoard money or to stockpile weapons. The Bible warns us against these things, not to trust in military hardware. Only what God thinks matters. Only God can destroy us. We need to care what he thinks, and fear him.

Shame might motivate me to worship destructive behaviors that validate my shame-based self-understanding or to feed appetites that numb or distract me from the feeling, or both. I don’t have to make illustrations here. We all are someone or know someone. There’s two kinds of shame, well-placed shame, and misplaced shame. Well-placed shame is based in truth, and misplaced shame is based in lies. In either case, shame can become a motivation to worship worthless idols. The remedy for well-placed shame is forgiveness. The remedy for misplaced shame is to hear the truth spoken to me.

Anger. Anger might motivate me to worship power. Why? I’m going to be in control because I’m angry at who hurt me, and I’m never going to let that happen to me again. I’m living life with a chip on my shoulder, a jaded perspective that causes me to manipulate others and seek power that enables me to control them so that I can feel safe and so that I can enact revenge on the one who did this, or whoever stands in my way. Its a worthless idol. God is in control. His plans come to fruition, not ours. Safety is only found in his arms, and vengeance belongs to him.

WORSHIP IN THE SPLENDOR OF YAHWEH’S HOLINESS

Verse 6:

6 Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

His sanctuary is the Tabernacle. These four things, Splendor, majesty, beauty and strength, are accompanying God, as he is entering the tabernacle, if we think of the Ark of the Covenant, here.

This is the only place in the whole Bible where strength is paired with beauty. They don’t even appear together in the same chapter, much less right next to each other like this. Only here. I found that interesting only because we don’t usually think of these things as going together. Its like Beauty and the Beast. But God is all perfections all the time. Splendor and majesty are royal terms. So, the idea is that the King is beautiful to behold. He looks the part of a king. It really blows you away, but not only that, He isn’t just talking the talk, he has the strength of a king, to back it up.

So, what are we supposed to do?

Verse 7:

7 Ascribe to Yahweh, you families of the peoples,

ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength.

8 Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of his name;

bring an offering and enter his courts.

9 Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness;

let the whole earth tremble before him.

We’re supposed to ascribe. Again, this is a call to worship. This is a call to set the record straight. Worship is a response to who God is. In verse 6 we saw his Splendor and majesty, strength and beauty, and so the only right response to seeing that, is to ascribe those things to God. And thats exactly what these verses are calling us to do.

Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness. Why his holiness?

Remember, Yahweh left and the ark of the covenant was with the Philistines, but God has been making his way back. He’s oriented toward his people. He’s showing his faithfulness to his covenants and getting ready to show his faithfulness to David by returning and approaching David’s city. The splendor of his holiness is seen because he is approaching, he is oriented towards his people. He is devoted to his covenants. Thats what holiness is, “devotion to”. That orientation matters. He’s looking at us. His face is shining on us. Yahweh is a devoted covenant partner. He’s holy. There’s a tradition of understanding holiness as separation from, as moral purity. So people would say that God’s holiness means that he’s morally pure and that he must be separated from us because our sinfulness would defile his moral purity. Its just not biblical. Holiness doesn’t separate us from God, sin does. Sin separates us from God because it insures a just penalty, not because God is clutching his pearls. So, in this procession into the tabernacle, God is oriented towards covenant devotion and faithfulness.

That’s the splendor we worship in! He cares for his name, he cares for us. He tends to our salvation. That’s the splendor we worship in. We sing about salvation! That’s what lights the fire under us for mission. God’s worthy. Why? he’s beautiful. Why? He’s holy! How? He’s saving us. He’s leading us. He loves us. God is love. Can you feel that? It will make you tremble. “Let the whole earth tremble before him”. God’s blessing, its for the whole world.

Now, perhaps the most important verse in the Psalm with respect to the way in which Book 4 answers the question of Book 3, Verse 10:

10 Say among the nations, “Yahweh is being King.

The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken.

He judges the peoples fairly.”

Yahweh is being King. He’s the Gold Standard. Even though there’s not a human king on David’s throne, David’s throne is a projection of Yahweh’s throne. David and his dynasty rule by the authority of Yahweh as king. David and his descendants are exercising Yahweh’s kingship. So, Ezra is taking the long-view here. He’s looking further back and further forward to see that, in reality, nothing has changed. Everything is ok. Its always been Yahweh on the throne.

And, not only that, but it will always be. David’s son will occupy David’s throne forever, because Yahweh becomes David’s son who never dies. The covenant with Abraham, The Mosaic covenant, and the covenant with David all converge in continuity upon the person of Jesus Christ as God makes, by him, a truly new Covenant with a truly new people. We are new creation!

How is this covenant secure?

“The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken.

He judges the peoples fairly.”

The world is unshakeable and firmly established because of the covenants with creation and Noah. And that is indeed what the author is referring to here. The word for “world” there is referring to both the earth and the people in it. God promised Noah he wouldn’t destroy the people and the world. He’s maintaining the present state of affairs and sustaining the world until all of the elect are saved. This is his patience. Peter refers back to this covenant when he says in 2 Peter 3:9:

9 The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient on your account, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.

Upholding the world. Sustaining all of creation. Patience with sinners. Thats why this is paired in the next line with his judgment. The word for judgment here has to do with final judgment. Which makes sense. He’s being patient until judgment day. We see this down in verse 13, where he “will judge”. Lets continue:

11 Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;

let the sea and all that fills it resound.

12 Let the fields and everything in them celebrate.

Then all the trees of the forest will shout for joy

13 before the Lord, for he is coming—

for he is coming to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness

and the peoples with his faithfulness.

Creation is called to worship here because, again, its the covenant with creation and the covenant with Noah that provide the stability that enables the other covenants to unfold over time.

So, all of the covenants are brought to bear on this Psalm, because thats how we’re shown the splendor of God’s holiness. And that’s why, as new people in a new creation, we sing a new song. Amen?

Psalm 96 calls us to a mature understanding of God's kingship and our place in his sovereign plan. We are reminded that Yahweh is King, and that his covenant love for us is unbreakable.

So, what do we do? We have a mission. We are called to worship him and declare his glory. Worship and mission are two sides of the same coin; they go hand-in-hand. When we truly worship, we cannot help but be propelled into the world, and when we are on mission, it fuels our worship.

Here's the challenge: let your worship extend beyond these walls. Lets be new creation and sing the new song, with our voices, with your lives.

Think about your neighbors, your coworkers, your friends, and your family. Who in your life is stuck worshipping worthless idols and needs to hear about the glory of God and his salvation? Maybe that’s you and you need to remind yourself. Who is God placing on your heart right now? Don’t put it off. This week, share the gospel. Have that conversation, and let the way you live your life be a witness to how God is saving you in the splendor of his holiness.

We are a community, a body, the bride of Christ. Let support one another in this. Lets pray for each other, encourage one another, and hold each other accountable. Lets live life in the New Covenant and be a blessing to the world that so desperately needs set the record straight by worshipping our creator.

Yahweh is being King; he has entrusted us with the honor of proclaiming his reign. He’s given us the Holy Spirit. He’s given us his word. Worship fully, declare boldly, and be watching as God moves through The Cross Road to draw many into his unshakeable kingdom.