PSALM 98 - Wonders Of His Love

Introduction

Back in 1933 a woman named Fannie Holt was trying to come up with a fun activity for her girls’ summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and she hit on the idea of having a “Christmas in July” celebration—campers exchanged quirky gifts, sang Christmas carols, and even had a visit from Santa himself (who barely escaped heat stroke from wearing the suit in the hot North Carolina weather!) The tradition continues there at Keystone Camp, but has spread all over the country since the ‘30’s.

So it’s fitting that we are coming across Psalm 98 here in July, since this psalm forms the basis of one of the most-sung hymns at Christmas, “Joy To The World”. Isaac Watts wrote it in 1719 as part of his publication Psalms of David, under the heading of “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.” Watts himself did not seem to envision it as a Christmas hymn, but the connection between the birth of Christ in in Bethlehem and His coming to earth as a glorious King has made his setting of Psalm 98 a staple among Christmas carols.

So you’ll notice in the bulletin at the end of the service that we are going to sing Joy To The World. Admittedly, it seems weird to sing a Christmas carol on a hot July day—Christmas carols are meant to be sung in the cold weather—and often in the dark, as carolers go around from house to house singing.

But the command we have here in Verse 1 doesn’t say “Sing to YHWH a new song every Christmas...” So consider with me that this psalm gives you instructions on how to sing the wonders of God’s love not just in the cold and dark of a December night, but how you are to

Sing your carol of God’s MIGHTY DEEDS into the COLD DARKNESS of this world

I had a supervisor for many years who loved Christmas carols; we always knew whenever she was particularly stressed or overwhelmed, because she would blast Christmas carols in her office, regardless of the time of year! In the same way, this psalm of the wondrous deeds and mighty salvation of King YHWH is your song to sing when those dark moments of pain or loss overwhelm you.

When the cold grip of fear or unbelief freezes your heart and gathering for worship is the last thing you want to do; when the same old besetting sin knocks you to the mat for what seems like the hundredth time in a week; when the sinful behavior of that family member lands on you again; when the medical tests just keep coming back with the opposite results that you were praying for; when despite your best and most God-honoring efforts there is still too much month left at the end of the money; when the world’s ridicule and mockery of Christ and His people just feels like it’s suffocating you—this is the carol to blast into that cold darkness!

The psalm divides neatly into three parts, and if you will discipline yourself to meditate on each of them you will have powerful fuel for singing your song of God’s mighty deeds into the cold darkness of this world. Consider Verses 1-3 with me:

Psalm 98:1–3 LSB

Sing to Yahweh a new song, For He has done wondrous deeds, His right hand and His holy arm have worked out His salvation. Yahweh has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the eyes of the nations. He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

First of all, consider how

I. God aims to be GLORIFIED through your SALVATION (Psalm 98:1-3)

See how in Verse 2 the psalmist connects God’s worldwide glory with His power to save:

Psalm 98:2 LSB

Yahweh has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the eyes of the nations.

Not only did He save you, Christian, but He went on to reveal that salvation before the world! What this means is that

He stakes His REPUTATION on REDEEMING you (cp. Isa. 42:8; Num. 14:15-16)

We know from the Scriptures that God is a jealous God;

Isaiah 42:8 LSB

“I am Yahweh, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.

He insists (rightly and righteously so) that He be honored and glorified. He acts throughout all of human history to demonstrate and magnify His Name. He will not allow His glory to be diminished or unnoticed. And so think about this—if He has staked His glory on saving you, He will not fail to do it!

In Numbers 14, we read about God’s wrath against the Israelites in the wilderness, when they were rebelling and complaining so severely that He threatened to destroy them and re-make the nation of Israel through Moses himself. Moses’ response to YHWH is striking:

Numbers 14:15–16 LSB

“Now if You put this people to death as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say, ‘Because Yahweh was not able to bring this people into the land which He swore to them, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.’

Do you see what Moses did? He essentially said, “Lord, if you slaughter these people, all the Egyptians will see that You don’t keep your promises, your mercy and compassion are in limited supply, and You don’t have the power that You claim to have! You cannot fail to save these people as You promised, because that would diminish your glory in the eyes of the nations!”

The psalmist continues this same theme in our text in verse 3:

Psalm 98:3 LSB

He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Not only has He irrevocably tied His worldwide glory to redeeming you, but through you

He SHOWS the world His POWER to SAVE (cp. Isa. 52:10)

You are His worldwide demonstration of His saving power! The psalmist was pointing to God’s unerring faithfulness to save His Old Covenant people Israel from their captivity in Egypt, and placing this psalm here in Book IV of the psalter indicates (as we’ve said) that this psalm is also meant to recall to mind how God delivered His people from their exile in Babylon—YHWH did not hide His deliverance of Israel from the world, He did it right out in the open! Isa 52:10

Isaiah 52:10 LSB

Yahweh has bared His holy arm In the sight of all the nations, That all the ends of the earth may see The salvation of our God.

It did not matter how severe their bondage, it did not matter how heavy the chains, it did not matter how grievious their slavery—when God was pleased to rescue them, He showed the whole world what He could do!

Christian, let this truth be the fuel for the fire of your song—sing of the mighty deeds of God to save you into the cold darkness of this world. Just as His Old Covenant people were saved publicly before the eyes of the whole world (remember how Rahab the harlot said that everyone in Jericho was quaking in their boots because they saw what YHWH had done to deliver Israel from Egypt forty years prior??) God staked His glory on His ability to save His people from Egypt under the blood of the Passover lamb and through the wilderness into the land of His promise, and He did it with the whole world watching.

When the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, sealed the New Covenant with His blood on the Cross, effecting the salvation of His people, it took place in one of the most public places imaginable—outside the gates of Jerusalem, a city so cosmopolitan, a city so much at the crossroads of the civilized world that the sign listing His charges had to be written in three languages! As the Apostle Paul would say, “these things weren’t done in a corner!” (Acts 26:26)

There is no bondage to sin too heavy for the mighty saving arm of YHWH to break; there is no cold darkness that the song of His mighty deeds cannot transform. So sing Christian, out of the joy that comes from knowing that your salvation is the primary way that God glorifies His Name—He cannot fail to save you!

Sing your carol of God’s mighty deeds into the cold darkness of this world because God aims to be glorified in your salvation, and because

II. God aims to be PRAISED by all the NATIONS (Psalm 98:4-6)

Look with me at verses 4-6:

Psalm 98:4–6 LSB

Make a loud shout to Yahweh, all the earth; Break forth and sing for joy and sing praises. Sing praises to Yahweh with the lyre, With the lyre and the sound of singing. With trumpets and the sound of the horn Make a loud shout before King Yahweh.

Now we commonly point to verses like this (and it is true) to demonstrate that the use of musical instruments in worship is a Biblical practice. But there is something else going on here. The instruments that are named here are specifically Temple instruments that were to be used in the worship of YHWH. When Solomon completes the Temple in 2 Chronicles, we see these same instruments issued to the priests and Levites. Keep your place in Psalm 98, but turn briefly with me to 2 Chronicles 5 (page 361 in the pew Bible)—in Verses 12-13 we read

2 Chronicles 5:12–13 LSB

and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and relatives, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, standing east of the altar, and with them 120 priests blowing trumpets in unison when the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to give thanks to Yahweh, and when they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and when they praised Yahweh saying, “He indeed is good for His lovingkindness endures forever,” then the house, the house of Yahweh, was filled with a cloud,

Now follow me here—trumpets, harps and lyres were used by priests and Levites in the worship of YHWH. Now—look again in these verses. These priestly instruments are to be used by who? ALL THE EARTH!

The staggering implication here in these verses is that God’s aim is that someday

The whole POPULATION will be His PRIESTS (cp. 2 Chron. 5:12)

God’s aim is to transform the entire population of this planet into His joyful, singing servants! That every tribe, tongue, people and nation will serve Him as fully as the Levites in the Old Testament. Isaac Watts also wrote a hymn setting for Psalm 72— “Jesus Shall Reign Where’r the Sun” (can you see a trend in his music?) that includes the line “People and realms of every tongue / dwell on his love with sweetest song, / and infant voices shall proclaim / their early blessings on his name.”

At the Day of Pentecost, when the salvation Christ accomplished in the New Covenant began to be proclaimed to every tribe, tongue and nation, Peter quoted from the Book of Joel that

Acts 2:17 LSB

‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams;

God’s aim is that the whole population of this world will be His priests, joining together in the priestly work of praising Him with harps and lyres and trumpets and great singing.

And look back at 2 Chronicles 5—what does it say in the next verse happened when they sang and praised YHWH according to the command?

2 Chronicles 5:13–14 LSB

...when they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and when they praised Yahweh saying, “He indeed is good for His lovingkindness endures forever,” then the house, the house of Yahweh, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of Yahweh filled the house of God.

God aims to make the whole population His priests so that

The whole PLANET will be His DWELLING (cp. 2 Chron. 5:13-14; Habakkuk 2:14)

The vision of Psalm 98 is that the manifest presence of YHWH will no longer be confined to Mt. Zion; the dwelling place of God will not just be in Israel, but throughout the entire earth! The day is coming, Christian, where there will be no place where He is not known, no place where He is not exalted and honored and worshipped as God.

In contrast to the people who are terrified at the statement that “America is a Christian nation”, the aim of Psalm 98—the aim of God Himself is that someday every nation will be a Christian nation. Christian America, Christian, China, Christian Iraq, Christian Namibia, Christian, Russia, Christian Belize, Christian Australia, and on and on to every nation on earth! As we pray every week, that the message of this Kingdom would spread until

Habakkuk 2:14 LSB

“...the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh, As the waters cover the sea.

So sing your carol of God’s mighty deeds into the cold darkness of a world that now rejects Him. Because it is by your singing that God is pleased to spread this news of His mighty salvation throughout the nations. When you share this Good News of the mighty right arm of God to save through Christ, you are sharing a message that cannot be stopped. It cannot be thwarted, it cannot be slowed down; God aims to be praised by all the nations, and He will not stop until it is done! No matter the darkness of the opposition and the coldness of the unbelief that surrounds you, Christian, let your heart be warmed and filled by the light and glory of the mighty deeds of YHWH.

God aims to be glorified through your salvation; He aims to be praised by all the nations, and in the last three verses of our psalm we see that

III. God aims to be JUDGE over all the WORLD (Psalm 98:7-9)

Psalm 98:7–9 LSB

Let the sea roar, as well as its fullness, The world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, Let the mountains sing together for joy Before Yahweh, for He is coming to judge the earth; He will judge the world with righteousness And the peoples with equity.

Here again we have the marvelous picture of the entire created order breaking into song because of the righteous judgment of YHWH—the roaring oceans, the applauding rivers, the mighty choir of the mountains all singing to God because

He will RIGHT every WRONG (cp. Rev. 21:4; Ps. 147:3)

As one author puts it,

The judge is at the door. He will dry every tear. He will bind up every wound. He will set every bone. He will untie every treachery. He will reverse the effect of every desertion. Every disease will be sponged away. Every cruelty will be dissolved into nothingness. No unrepentant sinner will be given the power to blackmail the redeemed cosmos out of her joy. The fatherless will be brought to their everlasting Father, and all the pieces of this glorious story will be fitted together, and there will be no remainder. (Doug Wilson, https://dougwils.com/the-church/s8-expository/psalm-98-undertake-or-overtake.html, retrieved 07/18/29025)

And when He comes on that Day

He will VINDICATE His PEOPLE (cp. Luke 1:46-55)

As it turns out, Isaac Watts’ hymn is not the only connection Psalm 98 has to Christmas. Because this psalm seems to have been the basis for Mary’s song of praise after the angel Gabriel brought her news of her role in the Messiah’s birth. Hang on to Psalm 98 and turn with me to Luke 1—starting with verse 46 (page 856 in the pew Bible). Follow along there as I read from Psalm 98—

Psalm 98:1 LSB

Sing to Yahweh a new song...

Luke 1:46–47 LSB

“My soul magnifies the Lord...

Psalm 98:1 LSB

For He has done wondrous deeds

Luke 1:49 LSB

“For the Mighty One has done great things for me...

Psalm 98:1 LSB

... His right hand and His holy arm have worked out His salvation.

Luke 1:51 LSB

“He has done a mighty deed with His arm...

Psalm 98:3 LSB

He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel...

Luke 1:54 LSB

“He has given help to Israel His servant, In remembrance of His mercy,

When the angel Gabriel came to Mary with the news that she would give birth to the Messiah, her heart immediately went to the promises of Psalm 98—so when we sing it at Christmas, we are making the same connection with this psalm that Mary did! This psalm is fulfilled in the arrival of Jesus Christ—He is the King that the psalmist was singing about all those centuries earlier. He is the fulfillment of all of the promises here in this psalm.

So Christian, sing the song of how God has glorified Himself in your salvation through Jesus Christ. This is the song to sing when you are weary in your battles with your sin. When you have given in to that anger at your kids again, when you have fallen to lust after fighting as hard as you know how, when you’ve spent another sleepless night staring at the ceiling because of your worry over your finances, when your physical weakness and aches and pains in your worn-out old body drag you down into despondency again and you are tempted again to believe that God has had enough of you, that He is tired of constantly forgiving your sins—sing what this psalmist sings about the surety of your salvation in Christ!

Because God has tied His very glory to your redemption! He will in no way allow your soul to slip through His fingers, because He is demonstrating His power in saving you! He has paid for your redemption by the blood of His Only Son—He will never allow that sacrifice to go to waste! In your dark days of your unending battles with sin, Christ bled on that Cross to atone for that sin; in the coldness of your weakness and frailty, know that Christ suffered weakness and frailty on the Cross for you; in the darkness of your doubt and unbelief, Christ cried out on the Cross at His abandonment by His Father so that you would never be apart from Him.

Christian, God will never tire of applying the precious blood of Christ to your repentance—He will never fail to vindicate His power and authority in your salvation! Your battles with sin and the brokenness of this world are the means for Him to demonstrate the power of His right hand and His holy arm to work out His salvation toward you through Jesus Christ! “He comes to make His blessings known far as the curse is found!”

Christian, sing the song of how God aims to be praised by all the nations—amidst all the mockery and disregard for the truth of the Gospel, when it seems like the Good News of Christ’s reign is forgotten and unheeded by a culture that only cares about its own lusts and cravings; when you are brokenhearted because the friend you have prayed for so long and have witnessed to so intently has turned his back on Christ (and you); when you have those moments where you really feel like you are so tired of swimming against the currents of a rebellious nation—sing the song of the victory of Christ’s reign!

Because the day is coming—maybe soon, maybe far into the future—the day is coming when all the earth will be the Temple of YHWH! When every tribe, tongue, people and nation will serve as priests and worshippers of Jesus Christ! When every single knee will bow and every single tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! His reign and His Gospel will not fail! “Let EVERY heart prepare Him room, and Heaven and nature sing!”

Christian, sing the song of how God aims to be the judge over all the world—He aims to “make the nations prove the glories of His righteousness”. Jesus Christ is coming to judge the earth. The Day is coming, and “heaven and nature will sing” at its arrival, because He will wipe away every tear, He will restore every loss, He will heal every wound. On that Day the justice that you have longed for in your own life—the justice you have longed to see in the world around you—will all come about.

Will that Day be a day of joy for you? Will you join in with the applauding rivers and singing mountains and roaring seas in celebration, or will that Day be a day of dread and darkness for you, because you find yourself outside of the promises of Christ? When the psalmist says that Christ will “judge the peoples with equity”, it means that His judgments will be guided by His perfect righteousness; His utter and unbendable standards of moral perfection.

In the justice-starved brokenness of this world, we have never experienced truly righteous judgment. Our best efforts at justice have always been stained by our imperfections and ignorance; we are accustomed to always having an appeal somewhere. The prosecutor broke the chain of custody in a key piece of evidence; the defense forgot to add a detail to its cross-examination that could have influenced the jury.

We are accustomed to having someone we’ve offended simply shrug their shoulders and say, “Forget about it.” We’re used to standards of right and wrong that have lots of “wiggle room” in them; lots of gray areas that could go either way; lots of times when we’ve either gotten a raw deal or we’ve given someone a raw deal and no one really ever does anything about it.

But understand that on that Day—when the Crucified, Risen and Reigning Judge of all Creation is seated on His Throne to judge once and for all—the justice He hands out will be final. It will be inflexible. It will be undeniable. Any thought you are harboring about that Day that says you will be able to explain yourself, that you will be able to show why you really were a good person, that even if you weren’t perfect you still are deserving of mercy—all of those arguments will die on your lips at the first sight of your Judge in His righteousness.

The only escape you will have on that Day is if you have already run to Him for mercy. Now is the acceptable time, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6:2

2 Corinthians 6:2 LSB

for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation”—

Will the sight of Christ the Judge on His throne on that Day be a delight or a terror for you? Will you sing for joy with the mountains because your Redeemer has come, or cry out for them to bury you to hide you from His wrath? Will you sing of how He has stretched out His mighty right arm to work salvation for you, or will you watch in terror as His hand stretches out to cast you out of His presence forever? Make sure that Day is a day of joy and not terror for you—come and talk to me after the service, talk to one of the elders here at Bethel, talk to someone who can show you from the Scriptures how you can know that when that Day comes you will sing for joy on the Day when you see the coming of your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Ephesians 3:20–21 LSB

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

What does it mean that God “stakes His reputation on your salvation”? How does God’s intent to glorify Himself give you comfort that He will not fail to bring you to Himself in heaven? How does this enable you to persevere in your battles with your remaining sin?

What is the significance of the psalmist calling for all the earth to use lyres and trumpets and horns to worship YHWH in verses 5-6? How does the promise of God’s glory covering the earth the way His glory filled the Temple in 2 Chronicles 5 give you hope for the future of the Gospel in the world?

Read Amos 5:18-20. What does this passage say about the way some people will experience the coming of Christ on the day of judgment? What do you need to do today to prepare for the Day you will appear before Him?