The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): The Psalms cover a multitude of emotions and conditions of the heart, from depression and anxiety to faith and trust. But only one Psalm is given over entirely to the praise and worship of our God.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. As God's people raised their instruments and voices in praise, the sound from the temple was deafening. It could be heard far and wide. The Psalmist, however, didn't just call upon Israel to praise her God, he also called the nations of the earth and all creation to raise their voices in worship. Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 98 and challenges the church to enthusiastically praise our God.

Dr. James Boice: There's a very well-known and frequently quoted passage from the book of Ecclesiastes. It's probably the only well-known and frequently quoted passage from the book of Ecclesiastes, but it goes like this: there is a time for everything, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

I suppose a reason that is so frequently quoted is that it applies to so many circumstances of life. There are indeed happy times and sad times. And even as we have been studying the Psalms together, we've found that to be true. Many of these Psalms deal with sad times. They talk about sin and defeat and despair and loneliness.

And when we study those Psalms, if we do it with any empathy at all, we come out somewhat subdued. Never defeated. We always rejoice that we have a savior, but nevertheless with a great consciousness of our sin or our loneliness and quite often our failures and defeat. Well, that's sometimes the case, but that is not the case today.

Today we're looking at Psalm 98, and Psalm 98 is one of the most joyful songs in the Bible. It's a psalm which I've called an exuberant praise psalm. It's a noisy, effervescent psalm of praise from beginning to end. Now, in church tradition, Psalm 98 is known as the Cantate Domino from the first two words in Latin, which mean "sing to the Lord."

In the Book of Common Prayer, which is used in the Anglican and Episcopal churches, it follows the reading of the first lesson for the evening service. And that means, because that is read Sunday after Sunday in churches in this tradition, that it's known and probably thoroughly memorized by many millions of people.

It's a lot like Psalm 96. We've studied Psalm 96 already. If you look back and compare them, you'll find that they're much alike. Both begin and end the same way. But this psalm, Psalm 98, is given entirely to praise. There's no comparison with the heathen and the fact that they don't know God and don't know how to praise.

It doesn't tell us anything about how to praise. We've gotten that in other psalms. This is simply praise to God. It's a point of minor and perhaps incidental interest that this is the only psalm in the Psalter that's prefaced with the Hebrew word *mizmor*, which means "psalm." I don't know if that means anything, but if it does, it might suggest that the best of all praise psalms should be like this one.

Now, how do we outline it? John Stott has a very useful outline. You notice that there are three stanzas in the New International Version, and that's a valid, very useful way of dividing it. He calls the first of those stanzas "God the Savior" (verses 1 to 3), and the second stanza "God the King" (verses 4 through 6), and the third stanza "God the Judge" (verses 7 to 9). You notice that those are emphases as you look through it.

But on the other hand, they can also be understood as a swelling expansion of the praise that's being offered. And what I mean by this is that the first stanza calls on Israel to praise God. Second stanza calls upon all the nations of the world to praise God. And then the final stanza turns to creation itself, what we would call the cosmos, and it calls upon creation to praise God.

The force of that last stanza is captured very well in one of our hymns, "Come, let us sing unto the Lord," which is a rendering of this psalm. It goes like this: "Let earth be glad, let billows roar, and all that dwell from shore to shore. Let floods clap hands with one accord and hills rejoice before the Lord." Something of the poetry captures the exuberant tone of the psalm.

Actually, there are three well-known hymns based on this psalm: "New Songs of Celebration Render" by a man whose name is Eric Routley; "Come, let us sing unto the Lord," which is the one I've just quoted—it's found in the Associate Reformed Psalter of 1931—and best of all, and perhaps surprising to many people, "Joy to the World, the Lord is Come," that great hymn by Isaac Watts. I suppose there's no better way of proving that this is a joyful psalm than to say that that greatest and most joyful of all Christian hymns and carols is based upon it. The psalm really is a great one with which to praise God.

Now, I pointed out that each of these three stanzas calls upon one part of creation or mankind to praise God. And in the first instance, first three verses, this is Israel. The reason? Well, verse 3: "He," that is God, "has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel." Now, that verb "remembered" is in the past tense. "He has remembered."

So, what we're probably to understand from that is that it's referring to some act of past deliverance that God exerted on behalf of the people. We're not told what this was, and there's no sure way of finding out. Commentators who date this particular block of psalms as rather late in the history of Israel in the Old Testament period would say, "Well, this is probably the return of the Jews from their exile in Babylon to their own land."

That may be true, but again, as I say, there's no sure way of knowing. There's just not enough data here to figure it out. But what is certain is that this salvation or deliverance was a victory of some sort. And that's because the word for salvation, you find it occurs there once in each of the first three verses, can also be translated "victory," which it is, in fact, in the King James Version rendering of verse 1: "He has granted us the victory."

So, if I could refer to what I said several studies ago, it is because of this new act of deliverance or this new victory that the people are to sing a new song. Now, probably good that we don't know what that victory was or have any tools for trying to figure it out because if we did, we'd spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it was.

What's important for us is to understand the victory that God has made for us, or the deliverance that God has given to us through Jesus Christ. That's the thing that we want to sing a new song for. And as a matter of fact, we find in the book of Revelation that that's exactly what the saints are doing in heaven. They're singing a new song to God because of God's victory or deliverance on their behalf.

Now, what is it? Well, when we look through the Bible as a whole, especially the New Testament, we find that it speaks of three different kinds of victory, or three areas in which victory has been achieved. First of all, there's deliverance from sin. You see, the greatest problem that you and I face is sin. Not a lack of self-esteem or a lack of achievement, but sin.

And the problem is we just can't conquer it. Sin separates and sin destroys. It separates us from God and it destroys relationships. In the end, it'll bring us to that final place of all separation, which is hell. So, the question is this: who is to save us from our sin? We look to the world and we don't find any help there. The world can't solve its own problems, and even if it could, this wouldn't mean anything in terms of our standing before God, and it's with God that we have to deal.

We look to ourselves; we don't find any help there either. If we could conquer our sin, we would do it, but we can't. Instead, sin lives within us and it drags us down. We find ourselves saying much as the apostle Paul quotes himself as saying in the seventh chapter of Romans: "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. What a wretched man I am! Who will ever deliver me from this body of death?"

But then in the very next verse, he gives the answer. He says, "Thanks be to God, the Lord Jesus Christ." He begins to explain how God does it in the eighth chapter. Let me just read what he says there at the beginning of Romans 8: "Therefore, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

Now, that deliverance from sin is in three stages. First of all, there's deliverance from sin's penalty. Sin requires judgment from God, but Jesus Christ took our penalty. He died in our place. So now there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Second, there's deliverance from sin's power. Jesus saved us not so we might remain in our sins, but so we might be delivered from our sins.

That's why Paul says that now the righteous requirements of the law can be fully met in us. And finally, as he says a little later on in the chapter, there is deliverance even from sin's presence because he speaks there of our glorification when we are going to be made like the Lord Jesus Christ in his perfections. So we have deliverance from sin.

Secondly, the Bible talks about deliverance from death. Glorification, you see, embraces that idea because it implies deliverance from death. Death is an enemy, a very great enemy, according to the Bible. But even though we are appointed to die once, we look forward to our resurrection from the dead because of the victory over death achieved by Jesus Christ in his resurrection.

Paul writes about this in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15 especially: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." Or again, he says, "He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." You see, because of Christ's victory, we no longer fear death, but instead we're enabled to live obediently and fully, knowing that when we die, we will go to be with Jesus. Paul said in another place: "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."

Now, thirdly, there's deliverance from Satan. This is the third kind of deliverance that's emphasized in the New Testament. It's deliverance from Satan and his power. If you go back to the first book of the Bible, to the third chapter of Genesis, you find a great promise there. Adam and Eve had sinned, God has come to pronounce his judgment.

He's speaking to the serpent and pronouncing a judgment upon him, but in the middle of the judgment, he gives the promise of a redeemer who's to come. And this is what he says: "He," that is the redeemer, Jesus, "will crush your head," that is the head of Satan, "and you, Satan, will strike his heel." Now, Jesus did it at the cross. He defeated Satan even though Satan wounded him temporarily, as it were, in the process.

The atonement broke Satan's power, which was the power of sin and death. Now, Jesus' victory over Satan enables us to be victors too. In the power of Christ, we don't have to fear him. James says, "Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you," if we submit ourselves to God in Jesus Christ.

And as far as the outcome of the battle goes, we turn to the book of Revelation, we see there the saints and we read: "I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire, standing beside the sea, and there were those who had been victorious over the beast and his image." So we have deliverance from sin, deliverance from death, and deliverance from Satan.

Let me point out that there are some striking parallels between this psalm, Psalm 98, and Mary's Magnificat, which we have recorded in the Gospel of Luke. It probably means, may well mean, that Mary was aware of this psalm and to some extent followed the flow of its ideas as she composed her own Magnificat. Let me just show you how it works.

Psalm 98: "Sing unto the Lord a new song." Magnificat: "My soul praises the Lord." Psalm 98: "For he has done marvelous things." Magnificat: "The mighty one has done great things for me." Psalm 98: "His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him." Magnificat: "He has performed mighty deeds with his arm."

Psalm 98: "The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations." Magnificat: "His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation." Again, Psalm 98: "He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel." Magnificat: "He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful." You see, Mary was very aware that the birth of Jesus Christ meant victory for the people of God over sin, death, and Satan.

In *The Treasury of David*, which is that great collection of material on the Psalms by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, there's a story of something that happened in a little church in the country of Tyrone. A small, ragged boy appeared in that church Sunday by Sunday and sat right in the middle in one of the pews, paying very close attention to what the pastor was saying.

The pastor wanted to get to talk to him because he seemed so attentive, but he would always slip away. Never was able to find out who the boy was. Well, the time came when this little fellow was absent for a number of weeks, and the pastor didn't know what had happened. But one day a man came and knocked at the pastor's door and said, "I have come to ask a favor of you, and I'm almost ashamed to ask it because I live six miles away.

But I would like you to come and see my son who is dying. He speaks in a strange way, talking about things that I don't really understand, and you're the only one," he says, "that he's willing to see." So, the pastor agreed to do that. He trudged along the rural road in drenching rain. He finally arrived at this house, a little hovel tucked into a desolate mountain valley.

The man who had come to see him was waiting at the door, and when he went inside, he saw that little boy lying on a straw mat in the corner. When the little boy saw him, he raised himself up, he stretched out his frail little arms and he said, quoting Psalm 91, "His own right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory." And almost immediately after that, the little boy died.

What a great victory has been achieved for us by Jesus Christ, and what a wonderful thing it is that he's able to instill such conquering faith even in a child. Now, stanza 2. Here God is praised as king, which is why this psalm is included in this particular block of psalms, 93 to 100, which have to do with God as king.

First stanza praised him as savior and called on the people of Israel to sing a new song to him. This stanza views him as king, not only of Israel but of the whole earth, and it calls upon all the nations to join in singing: "Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music.

Make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn, shout for joy before the Lord the king." The most striking feature of that stanza is something we've seen before and we're going to see it again, namely the desire of the Psalmist that the worship of God be joyful and above all loud.

One of the commentators on these psalms, Marvin Tate, says the noise of the temple worship was legendary. In other words, everybody knew about it. You read about it in the Old Testament in 2 Chronicles 29, for example, or Ezra 3. In that second passage, Ezra 3, we're told that the people were so happy and the sound of the instruments was so loud and their shouts so exuberant that all of this was heard very far away.

So I ask the question: shouldn't the worship of God's people be exuberant today? Should we who now know deliverance from sin, death, and Satan through Jesus Christ be any less exuberant or joyful in our worship than were the Jewish people of old? We ought to be ashamed for any lackluster worship or any halfhearted praise in the church of Jesus Christ.

The Methodists are well known for their singing, and one reason for that is what they were told to do by John Wesley. He told his followers: "Sing lustily and sing with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead or asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of it being heard than when you sung the songs of Satan."

Well, not all of us have great voices, but I don't think the angels find poor voices offensive when they are used in the praise of our great God. Stanza 3. This last stanza is poetic and in some ways it's the most unexpected because in it, in very beautiful language, the Psalmist calls upon the entire creation to praise God.

So, in the first stanza, he's asking Israel to praise God. In the second stanza, he's turning to the nations and asking them to praise God. In this stanza, he turns to the creation, or as we would say, the cosmos. And the reason is that God is coming to judge the world in righteousness and the people with equity (verse 9).

In other words, the psalm closes by looking ahead to that future day when the ills of this suffering world are going to be set right. And we know that that is the day of the return of Jesus Christ. This joyful future liberation of the cosmos is something that Paul develops and explains for us in that eighth chapter of Romans to which I referred earlier.

Verses 19 through 21: "The creation," he says, "waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

Now, in those verses, Paul is personifying nature. He doesn't mean that creation itself, the physical things that we see out there, materialistic things, somehow have feelings the way human beings do. He's not saying that at all. But he's saying by personifying nature that it's incomplete and there's a sense in which nature is not going to enter into the fullness of what God intended it to be until Christ returns.

That's quite different from the way the world looks at nature. The world today, the secular world, makes either one of two errors where the cosmos is concerned. Either it deifies nature, virtually worshipping it, which is why some people, I suppose, think it's worse to harm the environment for spotted owls than to abort babies.

Or the world regards nature as evolving toward perfection, accompanied by the human race, which is also evolving. I referred on other occasions to that classic scene on the television program *Cosmos* where Carl Sagan is pictured standing against a representation of the starry heavens in all their glory, and he's saying in almost reverential tones, "The cosmos is all that is, or that ever was, or that ever will be."

In that representation, Carl Sagan is the picture, the very image of unbelieving man standing on the very tips of his toes, staring out into the distance as far as his telescopes can reach and saying, "The world is all that is." But what Paul does in the eighth chapter of Romans is something similar but also quite different.

He also pictures something standing on its toes, but it's not man looking into the distance. It's creation itself. And what the creation is earnestly looking for as it looks beyond itself is the glorious freedom of the children of God in which it will share. In other words, creation itself wants to praise God and will, according to Paul's teaching and this psalm.

The world makes another error, which is not entirely different from the first, and that is that it sees in nature some kind of a perfecting principle, as if there's something intrinsic in things that says everything's going to get better and better. If you're talking about that in a physical way, that's the power behind the theory of evolution.

If you're talking about it in terms of the human personality, it's this idea of inevitable perfection: "In every day and in every way I am getting better and better." But of course, we're not. That's only whistling in the dark. Even given millions of years, which is what some of the evolutionists and anthropologists like Leakey give us, even given all that time, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in the nature of man. There never has been and there never will be apart from Jesus Christ.

Well, what's the Bible's perspective on nature? It's very balanced and it goes like this, three points. First of all, this is God's world. God made it, it's his, and therefore we better respect it and not abuse it. We're not to treat it irresponsibly, but responsively.

Number two, the world is not what it was created to be. It's been subjected to troubles as the result of human sin and God's judgment on man at the time of the Fall. It's been subjected to frustration, bondage, and decay according to Paul's teaching in Romans.

Nevertheless, number three, the world will one day be renewed. I think of the way C.S. Lewis describes that in the first of the Narnia books, *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*. You know how he does that. The world that he's describing is under the power of the wicked witch, and what that means is that it's always winter. Spring never comes.

But when Aslan, representing Christ, is raised from the dead, the hold that the witch has on the universe is broken and spring begins to come. The ice melts, flowers bloom, and the trees turn green. It's poetical writing, but it describes something that's going to happen in some way. The rivers will indeed clap their hands, the mountains will indeed sing, and you and I, if we're among the redeemed, will certainly join in. And we'll be singing, "Hallelujah, for the Lord God Almighty reigns."

Our Father, we thank you for the teaching of this psalm. We thank you for the joy that it communicates, and we thank you for the joy that we have because we are in Christ Jesus. Grant that our worship of you, our praise of you, might never be lackluster, but might always show something of the presence and joy of the Holy Spirit within to the praise of the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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