Psalm 98

Mark Smith preaching from Psalm 98

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SPEAKER_01 0:18

Today's reading is Psalm ninety-eight. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, a psalm. 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 no 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. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Break forth into joyful noise and sing praises, 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. 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 before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with equity. And so reads God's word.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Yes, Father, may we know your help this morning now as we turn to your word, give us soft hearts and uh open minds and listening ears as we seek to receive your truth now and be uh thrilled by it and transformed by it. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please take a seat, everybody, if you can find one. Um this is the this is the end of our summer exile from uh from screen one. We'll be back in there next week. And uh if you're new or visiting here this morning, come back again next week and head down to the end of the corridor into uh where we normally have our home. We moved back in here uh during the during the summertime. During the summertime we go through Sam's. This is the last of our uh Sam's series. We'll pick it up again next uh next July at Sam 99, because we started several years ago at Sam 1 and we just go through them all. But next week we start a brand new series. It'll take us about six months with a little break in Advent through Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth, and we're going to be looking at uh at that systematically week by week, and uh what that has to teach us about being church together with all of the mess and uh complexities that churches uh churches bring. Um but as we get into some idea and encourage you to have it open uh in front of you and just have in your mind what's the um what's the biggest celebration you've ever been caught up in? What's the biggest celebration you have ever been caught up in? Have you ever uh stood in the Aviva Stadium singing zombie by the cranberries? Because Ireland has won, they've hopefully beaten England. Or uh maybe your Argentinian, you got caught up into the the world cup, and I'm sorry, Spanish uh and got caught up into the uh celebrations over your World Cup victory. Um I think all the Argentinians are now gonna rush me and punch me, isn't that? That's that's what that's what you guys do, isn't it? Um maybe you've uh you've seen the old old footage of when victory was declared uh in Europe after the end of the the Second World War, and people in in London and cities in the in the UK just uh just filling the streets, uh strangers hugging one another, people clamming on lampposts. And what you don't have is uh is somebody just over in the corner going, yes, this was quite a satisfactory victory, actually. Uh no, everybody is celebratory, joyful, enthusiastic, because big victories demand big celebrations. Uh we, as a consequence of uh being married to Philippa, uh, we watch a lot of tennis in our house. Not, I mean, uh I just as you can probably tell, not a massive kind of tennis physique. Um, but we've become tennis fans. Uh in our house, we watch uh most of the the kind of major championships, and certainly Philippa has it on. And one of the things that I've noticed is that celebrations intensify as you go on. You know, if there's been a if there's been an intense rally uh back and forward, there'll be a little fist pump at the end. If somebody wins a tie break at the end of a at the end of a set, they might kind of be like that, but get the crowd going. And then once it's championship point and they have won, that's when they collapse on the floor. That's when they climb into the stands to get up to where their friends and family are. That's when the tears come. It would be weird, wouldn't it, if after an intense rally they were on the floor and climbing up and crying because the victory hasn't happened yet. The big victory demands a big celebration, though. And Psalm 98 is like that. It's a big victory that demands a big celebration. If Psalm 98 had a volume button, it'd be one of the loudest Psalms in the entire Psalter because it begins with singing and shouting and musical instruments and trumpets and horns, but then it gets to the point where human beings are utterly insufficient. They're not making enough noise for this celebration. And so the psalmist recruits the sea and the rivers and the mountains, and so the rivers roar. Oh, sorry, the sea roars and the rivers clap and the mountains sing. Because big victories demand big celebrations. What kind of victory could possibly demand a celebration like this? And the answer for us this morning is the biggest, the greatest victory that has ever been won. God's victory, the one that He has brought about ultimately in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what we need to know. This is what is central to our understanding of Christianity. I know that if you've been at City Church for any length of time, we talk a lot about uh suffering and being prepared to walk through seasons of suffering, and that is essentially important. It's about perseverance to the end and enduring until we see Jesus face to face. But one of the things that we need to emphasize this morning is the reason we can endure suffering, the reason why we can persevere in following Jesus, even though the season that we find ourselves in is difficult, is because he's already won. He is victorious. It's not a might be, it's not a hopefully he will be, it's not a maybe. It's that God has triumphed over evil in his son, the Lord Jesus. Christ has won the greatest victory, and that is cause for us this morning and in our lives for the biggest and greatest celebration. So this morning I just want to do two things. I want to show you the different facets of that victory that God has won for you, and then to encourage you to live in light of that victory. So, first, celebrate what God has won for you. What has God done? Well, the first reason why we should celebrate is because God has done what we could not. God has done what we in our own strength, with our own desires, could not, would not do. The grammar of these opening verses is dominated by God's action. He has done, his right hand has worked, he has made known, he has revealed, he has remembered. The psalmist is saying that God has done something that is worth us celebrating. And what has he done? Well, pick it up. Verse 1. Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. He has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy heart, 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. The references in verse one to these marvelous things, to the holy arm of the Lord, are deliberate echoes of another part of the Bible. They're deliberate echoes back in your Bible to the to the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus, which is which recounts the story of the people of God who were in slavery in Egypt and their rescue by Moses and Aaron. And after they crossed the Red Sea, Moses sings a song, uh, retelling, recounting the victory that God has won. And it picks in Psalm 98 as picking up the language from that song. They were trapped, they were helpless, they were slaves to a tyrant whose ultimate desire was to destroy them. They could not rescue themselves. They needed somebody else to remember, to see them, to act. And God has done what they could not. This is why the focus is on God's action. People had no power to rescue themselves. They needed him to act. Some of you may remember. Back in uh in Chile in 2010, a gold and copper mine uh collapsed. And it trapped 33 miners underground. And the people thought that the miners were dead. And they started doing kind of um exploratory uh drilling to see if they could uh they could recover the bodies of the of the people. And 17 days after the uh the mine shaft collapsed, uh, they pull out a a drill and attached to the end of the drill is a note that says, We're all okay down here. And this starts this massive rescue effort. And you might have remembered on the news how people were saying they were sending down supplies and medical supplies and food and uh you know, games and lights and things like that to help them because it took them 69 days before the Chilean miners were eventually unearthed, literally. And you might recall the the news footage of those those first men being brought up in those kind of those cages that are just kind of one person wide, being pulled out of this of this shaft, and the joy on their faces as they saw the night air again and were reunited with their families. They were helpless. They need somebody, they needed somebody else to do what they could not. Somebody acted to save them, and you could see the joy on their faces as they were lifted out from this certain death. They were in their own graves, and yet they were rescued. Israel could not break free from Pharaoh. That's what the psalmist is looking back to. They could not part the Red Sea, they could not rescue themselves. The Chilean miners could not dig their own way out of that fallen mineshaft. And we too, we too cannot rescue ourselves. This Psalm looks back, but it also looks forward to what would be accomplished ultimately by Jesus. And we have different enemies than Israel did. Our issue is not uh physical slavery and under the the lash of a whip having to make bricks. Our tyrant is uh is not an earthly pharaoh. No, our our tyrant is death. Death is the one who rules over us, and he will have us. Our slavery might not be at the level of chains, but it is most certainly at the level of the heart. Because when we make the good things that God has given us into idols that we long for, that we're controlled by, we turn our backs on the God who made us, and we end up harming ourselves and others around us, and we live, therefore, under God's judgment. Our dark cave is not a mine, it is the grave. We're a race doomed to die under the reign of death. And it is these enemies that Jesus has defeated. This is why it's the biggest victory that demands from us the biggest celebration because Jesus has transferred triumphed over enemies that we have no hope of defeating on our own. We have no hope of defeating our uh our sin, our proclivity towards self-love, towards uh loving anything but God. Or the enemy of death. How can we look beyond the beckoning grave? These are the are the enemies that Jesus has triumphed over. So do not live here, do not sit here under the false assumption that Christianity is about Jesus helping you just to live a bit of a better life. No, it's about God finding us trapped in a cave, unable to save ourselves and acting to rescue us. It's about Jesus coming and stepping into the arena against our greatest enemies and emerging victorious. It is the greatest triumph that demands the greatest celebration. And so the Sama celebrates the mighty holy arm of the Lord. And we immediately think that that that means that the victory that God brings is one by strength. You look forward to the New Testament, you realize that actually it's outstretched arms, its arms uh splayed out in weakness, its arms uh bloodied and pierced. This is the holy mighty arm of the Lord that rescues his people from enemies that we could not. That's the place of victory, as the Lord is spread upon a cross, and he was plunged into the grave's dark cavern, only to emerge victorious three days later. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the confirmation that he was victorious over sin and death, that he has triumphed, that sin's power over your life, if you're trusting in Jesus, has been broken. You're no longer a slave to sin, as the New Testament says. Jesus says it, Paul says it. And you're no longer enslaved by that Pharaoh, but set free to live as a son, a daughter of the living God. It also means that the grave is not the final word. Though we may spend some time there, it is not our final destination. Because Jesus rose again, and if we have faith in him, we too will rise. And so he really does offer forgiveness, cleansing from shame and from guilt, and a new life for all who would come willingly to celebrate in his victory. The second reason why we should celebrate what God has done is because God doesn't keep his wins to himself, he's made them known. The Lord has made his salvation known, the psalmist tells us. God doesn't win privately, he announces his victory. Not the way that we might boast in an achievement, but as an invitation to share in his triumph. The psalmist goes on to say he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. This means that before Christianity is ever advice, it is new. It is something to be declared to the world, to the nations, that Christ has won, that the king has conquered, and God invites the nations, those who did not know him previously, the life of enjoying the victory that he has won. Jesus' victory over sin and death declares to the world that there is a God in heaven who is both just and gracious. He doesn't just let sin go unpunished, but he punishes it in Jesus. And so we get to be rich beneficiaries of his grace. That though we deserve justice, we receive God's undeserved kindness. This is what he declares to the nations. And the third reason to celebrate God's uh victory is because this victory proves his enduring faithfulness, that he is the promise-keeping God. Imagine for a second a young child, uh young child who's uh been in the foster care system for a while, and he or she meets their adoptive parents. The parents look at the child and say, Look, we've we've got to make some things ready. There's some some paperwork to do, but we're we're coming back for you. We're getting everything ready and we're gonna come back. So the child waits, the paperwork is finally signed, and the day arrives when the couple walk in and they kneel down and they say, We told you that we would come back for you. We're here, you're ours now. Let's go home. When the psalmist says he has remembered his love and faithfulness to the house of Israel, saying that God will always keep his promises. That he is a father who will kneel down and say, I've come back. I'm taking you home. You are mine. He heard the groaning of Israel in slavery in Egypt, and he remembered his promises to men like Abraham. And so he saved them. He remembered his promise to Adam and Eve, our first parents, to send one who would crush the head of the serpent. He remembered his promise to David to enthrone a good king on his throne forever. And then if you were to flick forward to the early chapters of Luke's gospel, you have this beautiful little moment where the infant Jesus is brought into the temple, and there's an old man there, his name's Simeon. And God had made Simeon a promise. And as he walks over and takes the infant Christ in his arms, he looks and says, That's it.

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My eyes have seen your salvation.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

He's kept his promises to me. In peace. God's promise. God's promises are always kept. Jesus is proof that he has not forgotten his people, that he will bring them home to himself. Ends with creation singing and with humanity because the king is returning to his people. His past actions have become a guarantee of his future faithfulness, that because he has acted in history to save, we can have confidence that he will return again to bring us home. And even though the psalmist says that he comes to judge, creation doesn't tremble. Creation doesn't cower in fear. No, it sings with delight. Why? Because God's judgment is the way in which he makes all things new. It's the way in which he unwinds every un injustice that has ever befallen you. It is the way in which everything that is sad comes untrue. It is how he comes to make all things new. Or is the the Christmas well the song that we tend to sing at Christmas, Joy to the World says he comes to make his blessings flow, or as the curse is fine? The psalmist wants us to sing in delight rather than caring in fear. This is only possible if you've at this victorious king. If you've been rescued by this faithful king, the judgment that you deserve has fallen on him, and you know what it is to enjoy his grace, his undeserved kindness. It's being declared to the nations now. All the different ethnicities represented and nationalities represented before us. Psalm 98 is coming true. Come. Celebrate the victory. God has won for you. He has done what you could not. So if all of this is true, secondly, second half. If all of this is true, it has implications for how we how we live. We want to live in light of the victory that God has won for us. Jesus has, as he emerged victorious from the grave, has achieved for us. So this is our second point. You have verses one to three. Tell us what God has done, then essentially verses four to nine ask, well, what would life look like if you actually believed it? Do you actually believe that Jesus is victorious, that he is alive, that he's ruling and reigning, that your life is his, that he is coming back to make you his own and to bring you home with him? Because if your answer is yes, then that should have implications for how you live now. Let me give you three. The first, I guess, in the psalm is hard to miss. It means that your life is a life of joy. Your life is a life of joy. Shout to the Lord. Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Burst in jubilant song with music. The psalmist is not remotely self-conscious about raising the volume and singing unreservedly, unabashedly in celebration of what God has done. Why? Because big victories demand big celebrations. This Psalm is full of joy. You think about singing for a second. Why has God so ordered humanity? Why has He so formed us that our vocal cords vibrate in certain ways that allow us to modulate a tune? Why I mean, like seriously. Why singing a thing? Why do we do it? You want to know the Bible's answer? You want to know the uh God's answer? The theological answer? It's that sometimes sometimes there's a joy in us that words themselves cannot express. Sometimes things need to be sung. When Ireland wins the six nations, we don't shake hands with one another and say, uh, lolli, the uh the fields of Athens Rye, where once my uh I watched the small free birds fly. No, we we belt it out. Because sometimes there's a joy that that is greater than words can express. Similarly, we might sit in a Bible study and and talk about how Jesus deserves all the glory and that we want to glorify him with our lives. But something else happens in this room when the nearly 200 of us that are seated here raise our voices and sing, All glory be to Christ, our King. We're made to sing. Brothers and sisters, you were made for more than work. You were made for more than pleasure. You were made for more than just hanging on by your fingertips to faith in Jesus. He wants so much more for you than that. You were made to sing, to lift your voices, to lift your hands. And you know. Singing doesn't just have to be pretending that everything is okay. When it's not. Yeah, I was thinking a little bit about um Paul and Silas in the book of Acts. There's a story when Paul and Silas, if you don't know who they are, it doesn't matter. Two New Testament Bible guys, right? They've had their life transformed by Jesus and they've been put into prison in Philippi. And they're rescued through an earthquake, and an angel opens the uh the jail door and and off they go. But if you read that account, when they're chained to the wall, still locked up, what are they doing? Well, they're singing. They don't start singing after the door swings open. They don't start singing after their chains fall off. They're singing anyway. Why? Because they know that Caesar is not king. Because they know that the jailer is not their master, they know that their circumstances are not governing them. They know that Jesus is the king and that he is victorious. And so even though they're tailed to a Philippian wall, they can sing with joy. Because they know that the ultimate victory is Christ's and that he has already won it for them. And so singing is the appropriate response.

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Maybe even especially in seasons of suffering.

SPEAKER_03 29:53

A life of joy. The second implication, I think, if you're living in light of the victory that Jesus has brought for you, is a life of peace. When the battle has been decided, you no longer need to live as though it all rests on you. There's a deep peace available to the Christian because Christ has already won what we could not. And so you don't have to save yourself. You don't have to justify yourself, you don't have to prove yourself, you don't have to make yourself someone because you've already been made a son or daughter by grace of the living God. You don't need to control everything. The king has conquered. His victory is secure, and he invites you to come and to rest in that victory and find the peace that he offers. This is where the first half of the Psalm becomes so pastoral, actually, because if his right hand, his holy arm have worked salvation for him, then God did it, not you. And so you can stop relating to God as though you need to try and twist his holy arm into liking you. Some of us live our entire lives thinking that there's a spiritual scoreboard that every day gets reset to zero. Did I have a quiet time? Yes, good. More points on the board. God's gonna be pleasing me today. Did I lose my temper with the kids? I've just been deducted. God's gonna be pretty upset with me now. Had a great Sunday? Good. Everything's gonna be okay. I had a terrible week. Well, maybe I'm not even a Christian. Psalm 98 says that your salvation rests on the victory of another. Christ is one, and your salvation depends on him, not on you. So come and rest. Come and know the peace that he offers. It also means that you can begin to make peace with your past. We've all got things that we regret. We've all got things that we wish that we could take back, bells that we wish we could unring. Christianity doesn't bring us peace just by saying, hey, look, do you know none of that really matters? Just move on.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Do you know how it gives us peace? My sin. Oh the bliss of that glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.

SPEAKER_03 32:50

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Oh my soul. Though, of course, this peace that we celebrate does not mean that we have a life just full of ease. The storms will still rage. But no storm is sovereign. The disciples in the boat ask the question amongst themselves: who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? Psalm 98's answer is that's the victorious king. And if he's in the boat of your life with you, you can have peace. Final one. If you live in light of the victory that Christ has won for you, then you can have a life of hope. Right now, Paul tells us in uh Romans chapter 8: creation is groaning, creation's longing for the day when it will be renewed. It wants it, it wants the king to return. And Psalm 98 glimpses the day when that hope will change to glad fruition. The rivers will clap and the mountains will sing together for joy, because the judge is returning to make all things right. How far does his victory reach? As far as the curse is found. Christ enables reconciliation. Has sin damaged our own bodies? Well, Christ one day will raise them anew and perfect. Has sin damaged creation itself? Well, Christ will come to renew it. Just as the curse reaches everywhere, Christ's victory reaches everywhere. And Christian hope is not wishful thinking. It's not, well, things will probably get better. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes prayers remain unanswered for years, sometimes for a lifetime. Some illnesses result in death. Some injustices are not resolved in this life. Christian hope looks beyond that. Christianity does not promise that everything will be fixed before your funeral. No. It promises something better. That the king will renew things eternally. And we know that it is a sure and certain hope because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That's really what Christianity rises and falls on. If Jesus is not alive, then we have no hope. But if he is, and he is, then we have a certain hope for the future. That God who kept his promises to us in Christ will keep every promise still outstanding, and that his past faithfulness will be a guarantee of our sure and certain future. So let me ask you as we finish. Which of these joy, peace, hope are you lacking in? Which one do you need to lean into, live into as a result of Jesus' victory for you? The Christ's victory should expand your joy, that his triumph should bring you peace, that his reign should give you hope. Which one? He's like, Yeah. I don't have as much joy as I would like my peace. I haven't felt like that in a while. Oh, I'm feeling quite hopeless now. There's a prayer team after the service. They meet usually over in the corner here. If you'd like somebody to pray with you, please come forward. Uh I would love to do that and just minister to you if that's something that that would be a blessing to you. Joy says, Christ is one. Peace says, therefore, I do not leave need to live in fear. And hope says one day his victory will be seen everywhere. I think this is the right place to end our summer series in the Psalms. Because the Psalms never give us a shallow picture of life ever since we started back in uh Psalm 90, uh Psalm 91. We've spoken honestly about fear and death and suffering and injustice and sin and failure and the brevity of life, the difficulty of trusting God when life doesn't make sense. But Psalm 98 refuses to let those things have the final words. No, the final word of our summer series in the Psalms is victory. Christ has won. Because something remarkable has happened in history. Jesus Christ has died. Jesus Christ has risen, the King has won, and he is coming back to make all things new and to bring us into his forever home. And so we can live differently now. With joy, even though life hurts, with peace, even when life feels beyond our control, and with hope, even when we cannot see how things will be made right. And so until that day, let's celebrate his victory. The greatest victory of all.

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And remember, big victories demand big celebrations.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Father, we are sorry for those times when we are cold-hearted to the victory that you have won for us. Would you thrill and enthuse us? Fill us with joy, grind us in hope, settle us with your peace. And as we raise our voices now, would we remember your great kindness to us? Your victory over those enemies that we could not fight on our own. And may it thrill us afresh. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.