About this sermon
Psalm 96 summons all the earth to sing a new song to the Lord and to proclaim his salvation among the nations. The psalm looks ahead to the new covenant age, when the gospel gathers the Gentiles into God’s people. Missions exists because worship does not yet fill the earth, and worship is the goal. The Lord reigns and will judge the peoples in righteousness, so everyone must stand ready in Christ for that day.
Sermon transcript
Dear friends, let us hear with reverence and awe the Word of our God. Sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless His name. Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day. Tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in holy attire.
Tremble before Him all the earth. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Indeed, the world is firmly established. It will not be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all it contains. Let the field exalt and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord. For he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s ask the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Again, gracious Lord, our heavenly Father, we have much to sing about, much to praise you for.
We do pray that by your Holy Spirit you would give us attentive hearts And open minds this evening. We pray that your word would not return to you void. We pray that by your spirit you would cause the seed of your word to take deep root in our hearts and bear spiritual fruit unto holiness and sanctification in our lives. Open our minds and hearts this evening to behold wondrous things from your word. And by your grace, Lord, set a guard over my lips that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word and edifying to your people and glorifying to your name. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening, it’s another title that is not very insightful, but it is straightforward, sing a new song.
And there’s three key words you can be listening for in my sermon this evening, the words praise, evangelism, and righteousness. Well, dear ones, it has often been observed that this collection of divinely inspired poems, known to us as the Book of Psalms, covers the whole range of human emotions. The Psalter takes us to the depths of depression and despondency, and it also takes us to the other extreme, to the heights of joy and praise, and it touches everything in between those two extremes. Our psalm for this Lord’s Day evening is one of those psalms which pulsates with a mood of joy and praise as the unidentified psalmist summons all of the nations of the earth to sing to the Lord a new song. As it says in verse one, sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, bless his name, proclaim good tidings of his salvation from day to day. And as we will see, it is a new song that we are summoned to sing to the Lord because this psalm prophetically anticipates a glorious new work of Yahweh, our covenant Lord. A new work that is described in this psalm in verse two as His salvation and in verse three as His glory and His wonderful deeds. Because this psalm invites not only the people of Israel, but all of the nations of the earth, all of the families of the peoples, as it says in verse 7, to sing this new song in celebration of God’s new act of salvation, it prophetically anticipates this messianic new covenant age, when believing Gentiles will be gathered in and incorporated into the covenant people of God, along with their believing Jewish brethren.
As the great reformer John Calvin explains in his commentary on this psalm, and I quote from Calvin, he says, We must infer from this that it has reference to the kingdom of Christ, God’s name could not be called upon in any other part of the world than Judea until it had been revealed, and the heathen nations were at that time necessarily altogether incapacitated for any such exercise. Yet it is evident that the Holy Spirit stirred up the saints who were under the law to celebrate the divine praises till the period should arrive when Christ, by the spread of the gospel, should fill the whole earth with His glory. So again, this psalm anticipates the age in which we now live, this new covenant age, this age between the ages, between the first coming and the future second advent of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The age when the gospel is going out to the nations, when all of the nations are being discipled through the spread of the gospel. Now, in terms of what kind of psalm this is, again I quote from Dr. Willem van Gemeren. He says that this psalm belongs to a group of psalms that covers psalms 93 through 100, united by genre and motif. These psalms are hymns celebrating Yahweh’s kingship and form a subcategory of the descriptive praise psalms. The linguistic similarities between Psalms 96 through 99 may suggest that the same author has composed these psalms. By being incorporated into a larger unit in 1 Chronicles 16, which quotes extensively from this psalm, the psalm became associated with the glorious entry of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. Now, as I read this psalm to you a few minutes ago, what major themes did you pick up on as you were listening to the reading of this psalm?
Well, there’s a couple of major themes that we need to focus on, that it would be helpful for us to focus on as we seek to learn from this portion of God’s Word. And one major theme is God’s universal kingship. Yahweh is king over all the nations is a truth that this psalm proclaims. Yahweh the Lord is not just God of Israel, he’s not just a national deity who is limited in power and limited in his geographical sovereignty. No, he is the Lord and king over all of the nations, over all of mankind. Another major theme in this psalm is God’s universal justice. In terms of the structure of this psalm, in the first three verses, we have before us a universal call to praise the Lord in song, and we’ll focus on that call in just a few minutes.
And then in verses 4 through 6, the psalmist gives us the reasons for this praise. Why should we praise the Lord? Why is all humanity summoned to praise the Lord? And then in verses seven through nine, this universal call to praise is repeated in somewhat different language, but for emphasis, it is basically repeated. Verse 10 is a proclamation of the good news of the Lord’s righteous kingdom reign, and verses 11 to 13, which close the psalm as a final call to universal praise, where all of creation is called upon to join with the human race in rejoicing before the Lord because of the good news of the coming of His righteous kingdom rule. So with all this in mind, let’s dig in to the details of our psalm for this evening. And we notice, first of all, if you’re following along in your sermon outline, if you happen to have a copy of that, the first thing to notice is the universal call to worship.
Observe, friends, that God commands all the earth to worship Him. Worship is A duty. We are creatures. God is our creator. And not only are we creatures of God, like the animals, we are God’s image bearers. And we owe God, as every rational creature owes God, worship and praise and adoration. The worship of God is a universal, God-ordained duty. Every single human being on the face of this planet, whatever their nationality, whatever their ethnicity, whatever their background, whatever their socioeconomic status, whatever their religion, all human beings are morally obligated before the creator of the universe to offer the creator worship, thanksgiving, and praise. It is a universal duty. But for those of us who through sovereign grace have come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, it is not only a duty, it is a duty which is something that ought to be a delight, not a drudgery.
For the Lord has been good to us. We can sing to the Lord a new song because he has done marvelous things for us. He has given us the grace of salvation. And so we read here in verses 1 through 3, the opening call to worship. Sing to the Lord, sing to the Lord. In many of your translations, that word Lord is in all capital letters indicating that the English translators are translating the covenant name for God, Yahweh. Sing to Yahweh, the Lord, the covenant God of Israel. Sing to the Lord a new song. And this call to praise, again, is not just addressed to Israel, to the covenant people of God. Sing to the Lord all the earth, Sing to the Lord, bless His name, proclaim the good tidings of His salvation from day to day.
And then verse three helps to underscore the fact that this is a call not just to the earth or the land of Israel, but not just to the people of Israel, but to all the nations. Verse three, tell of His glory among the nations. That would be the Gentile nations. His wonderful deeds among all the peoples. Now notice, first of all, friends, in the opening two verses which summon us to worship and praise God, notice that the biblical religion is a singing religion. Biblical faith is a singing faith. The singing of praise is one of the central elements of divine worship. Historic biblical Christianity has always been a singing religion. Like the ordinances of prayer and preaching and scripture reading and the administration and receiving of the sacraments, the praise of Almighty God in song is a divine ordinance and an essential element of Bible-based worship.
In His Word, God commands His church to engage in exercises of worship such as prayer, the reading of Scripture, the teaching and preaching of the Word, and so forth, the giving and receiving of the sacraments. But God also commands His people in many places in Scripture to declare his praises in song. Again, the Christian faith is a singing faith, and as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have much to sing about. That’s why singing is one of the highlights of our worship, not just in the evening service, where we take hymn and psalm requests, but in both of our services. Now, this ought to cause us to reflect on the power of worship song. Perhaps you’ve heard of the so-called worship wars that rage in the churches. And there’s a debate among Bible-believing Christians about styles of worship and debate about what kinds of songs we should sing to the Lord, whether contemporary songs or traditional hymns or we have our RPCNA brothers and sisters who believe in singing only the Psalms and so forth.
But one of the things about the singing of praise is that well-known psalms and hymns and worship songs have the power to just get into your soul, don’t they? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where maybe you find yourself facing grief or facing sorrow or facing joy in your life, a time of joy? And in the midst of that sorrow or joy, whatever the case may be, one of the great hymns of the faith or a favorite psalm perhaps comes to mind and comforts you or encourages you at that particular time. I remember a time in my life many years ago when I faced a particularly stressful time in my life, and I remember I was driving down the road in my car just feeling overwhelmed with stress, overwhelmed with angst about what the future held, and I started singing that well-known hymn, It Is Well With My Soul.
It is well with my soul. I didn’t feel like it was well in my life at that time, that time of stress and the time when there was so much uncertainty in my life, but that powerful hymn comforted me, and I must have looked ridiculous behind the wheel, driving down the road and singing. I don’t know if anyone was looking or would have cared, but you see people doing all kinds of things in their cars these days as you’re driving down the road. But I was comforted by that beautiful hymn, It Is Well With My Soul. Perhaps there are favorite hymns or psalms that touch your heart. And this, my friends, I believe that the power of worship song is one of the reasons why differences over so-called music style in the worship services of the church can become such a powerful source of contention among professing Christians.
Now, you may be tempted to say, well, pastor, that’s not the way it should be. We should just be open to all kinds of different worship styles, worship songs. I guarantee you, brothers and sisters, if your session decided that we would remove the pulpit and instead of singing from the Psalter hymnal, we had a rock band up here, I suspect that not all of you would appreciate that. That’s sort of an understatement. But friends, the reason for this is because Worship song, we recognize its power, we recognize its importance, wherever you come down on the issue of contemporary versus traditional or what have you. We need to seek biblically-based worship song, whatever the so-called style may be. Everything we do in worship must be guided by and based upon and agreeable to the Word of God and the commands of Scripture, the prescriptions of Holy Scripture.
But worship song is powerful, and no wonder that the Psalms, this divinely inspired collection of worship songs, has such a prominent place in Scripture. It has the power to get into our souls. We see also the importance of worship song in Holy Scripture. God commands it, so it must be important. Worship song touches our souls in a way that goes beyond our intellects and touches our emotions as well and unites emotion and mind together. Let me ask you, dear listener, is your Christian faith a singing faith? You know, it’s tempting to say, well, since worship song is so controversial in the church, we should just get rid of singing altogether. Let’s just have prayer and scripture reading and preaching. But friends, we can’t do that because God has commanded His church to sing. And is your faith a singing faith?
Is the praise of God in song a regular part of your spiritual and devotional life as a Christian? And do you view the worship song of the church when you gather for worship to be an important aspect of your devotion to and worship of Almighty God? I’m reminded of what the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 5, verses 17 through 21, where he is exhorting the church to not get drunk with wine, do not follow pagan ways, but to rejoice in the Lord. Verse 17, so then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. And what are the evidences or the outflows of the filling of the Holy Spirit? Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God the Father, and so forth.
Well, notice also as we consider this universal call to praise and worship, notice that this universal call to praise cannot be fulfilled without evangelism. Sing to the Lord, bless His name, proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day as it says in verse two. Now, the call to sing and to bless and to proclaim, these are different ways of speaking about these things involve one another. We proclaim good tidings of salvation in our song as we also proclaim that in our witness and as that is proclaimed in preaching. and so forth. But again, and I’ve quoted this before, but I think here again, John Piper has some helpful words to say when he addresses this issue. In his book, Let the Nations Be Glad, The Supremacy of God in Missions, Mr. Piper writes the following, missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.
Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity, but worship abides forever. He goes on to say, worship therefore is the fuel and goal in missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions, we simply aim to bring the nations into the white hot enjoyment of God’s love. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. I think our psalmist would agree with Mr. Piper. And by the way, as an aside, I have some theological issues and theological axes to grind with John Piper. But nevertheless, truth is truth, whoever speaks it.
And I think that he is spot on in those comments. My dear listeners, the message of Psalm 96 supports these assertions by Mr. Piper. But it is because we live in a fallen world where most folks don’t worship the Lord with gladness and joy that missions and evangelism should be very high up on our priority list as a church of Jesus Christ. Notice also that the main theme of our praise is to be the good news of God’s mighty acts of salvation. As we read in verses 2 and 3, proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day. In other words, continuously tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples. Again, this was written in the old covenant age. This was written in an age where knowledge of the true God, saving knowledge of the true God was limited to Israel at that point in time.
There were a few occasional Gentiles who would come to true faith in the true and living God that we read of, you know, Ruth and Rahab and so forth. but it was very rare for Gentiles to come to faith in the true and living God. But here, even under the old covenant, the Holy Spirit through the psalmist urges the people of God, summons the people of God to tell of his glory among the Gentile nations, among all of the peoples. And again, this is ultimately fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the things that’s interesting about the Psalms and many other passages of the Old Testament that call God’s people to praise is that oftentimes the rationale for that praise includes God’s mighty acts of salvation. Think of how many, think of the Psalms that call upon us to bless and praise the Lord because of his mighty acts in the Exodus, for example.
The Exodus event where God rescued his people Israel from their slavery in Egypt and brought them into the promised land. God’s people are sometimes summoned to praise God because God has granted them a political deliverance, a deliverance from foreign aggressors or oppressors. We see the people of God summoned to praise Him as they return to the promised land after the Babylonian exile and so forth. But friends, all of these lesser acts of salvation, these historical acts of salvation, ultimately point to the ultimate act of salvation that God has accomplished, this new act of salvation that this psalm prophetically anticipates, namely Christ’s redemptive work. Christ’s redemptive work is the ultimate act of salvation, and therefore Jesus Christ and His saving work ought to be the predominant themes of our worship song as believers. living in this new covenant age of fulfillment.
And by the way, as an aside, this is not a sermon against exclusive psalmody, but we love our Covenanter, our Reformed Presbyterian brothers and sisters, and we love the psalms and we love to sing the psalms. And our RP brethren point out to us that Christ is revealed in the psalms, and that is absolutely true, amen to that. But Christ is revealed in the psalms in Old Covenant terms. He is revealed in the Psalms by way of anticipation, not by way of fulfillment. So, since we are in the Age of Fulfillment, God has, in Christ, provided for us this new work of salvation. It is, therefore, appropriate for us to sing a new song to the Lord, including songs and hymns that extol the Lord Jesus for His fulfillment of the work of redemption in this new covenant era.
Well, notice next, and again, as I mentioned, let me just back up a little bit. As I mentioned before, this call to praise is also repeated in slightly different terminology in verses seven through nine. Verse seven, if you skip down there, ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Again, the biblical faith is not only a singing faith, it is a faith that involves the covenant family. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples. meaning not just the Jewish people but Gentiles as well. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in holy attire. Tremble before Him, all the earth. Again, all of the nations are summoned to worship God in holy attire. And we can only worship God in holy attire, by the way, as we are clothed in the perfect, everlasting righteousness of Christ, as we trust in Him and Him alone as Lord and Savior.
But then moving on to the next section of the psalm verses four through six, notice next the psalmist’s rationale for this universal call to praise. Why should we praise the Lord? Why are the nations summoned to praise the Lord? Because Yahweh is greater than the so-called gods of the nations. Verse four, for great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols. They are dead idols. They are the result of man’s imagination, fallen man’s work. But the Lord, on the other hand, the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Why are the nations summoned and called upon to worship the Lord, to sing praises to the Lord for His new act of salvation?
Well, because the Lord is greater than all so-called gods. He is greater because he is the one true and living God, the creator of heaven and earth. Whereas the so-called gods of the nations are man-made idols, non-existent beings, the result of man’s imagination and man’s workmanship. Dear listener, do you truly believe in your heart of hearts that God is indeed great and therefore that He is greatly to be praised? If so, do you live your day-to-day life in the awareness of His supreme greatness, majesty, and glory? Do you declare his greatness by your life? Let us ascribe greatness to our God, for he is indeed great and greatly to be praised, for he is the one true and living God. But next, friends, receive and declare the good news of God’s righteous kingdom rule. Let’s look at verses 10 through the end of this psalm.
Verse 10, say among the nations, the Lord reigns. That’s good news. Yahweh reigns and His reign is a reign of grace and salvation, a reign of deliverance. Yahweh, the redeeming God, the God of redemption, the God of covenant faithfulness, He reigns. His kingdom rule. is universal. Say among the nations the Lord reigns. Indeed the world is firmly established. It will not be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.” Now why should the nations rejoice that Yahweh will judge the peoples with equity? When we think of judgment we think of condemnation and certainly God will judge the nations in the sense that He will on Judgment Day, Christ will judge the nations separating the sheep from the goats and so forth. But sometimes that word judge is used to indicate rule or reign. God will reign over the peoples with equity.
There was a lot of inequity. There was a lot of injustice in the ancient world just as there is a lot of injustice today. We see injustice all around us. We see it in our news feeds every day. And it is tempting when you are confronted with the injustice and wickedness of the world, it’s tempting to be frustrated and flustered and to fret because of evildoers, but the good news of the gospel not only declares to us that God will save those whom he has chosen from before the foundation of the earth, but also that God will bring his justice to bear in the end. And so we see God’s kingdom rule brings stability where there had been instability. as it says in verse 10 again. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Indeed, the world is firmly established.
It will not be moved. The ancient Gentiles, their worldview was such that in their view, the world was uncertain. There was uncertainty even about the natural order. The gods, if they lost their temper, could overthrow the order of creation and throw it into chaos. But because God, Yahweh, is God, the created order is firm. The pattern of day and night, winter and summer, the crops and so forth, the seasons continue because God, the sovereign Lord God, makes the created order stable. The stability of the created order is due to God’s universal reign, and that is good news. That would be good news to people who worried about whether the deities that they worshiped, who were fickle and unstable, whether they would throw the created order into chaos, no. God is a God who bounds the chaos.
He is sovereign over the chaos and he brings order out of chaos. Just as God’s rule causes the created order to be stable, so also God’s gracious rule will bring righteousness and stability to the nations, ultimately through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And God’s kingdom rule is a cause for rejoicing as we see in verses 11 and 12. Let the heavens be glad. and let the earth rejoice. Let the sea roar and all it contains. Here the psalmist uses anthropomorphic language to summon all of creation to join with the human race in praising God. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth, let the heavens be glad, let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar and all it contains. Let the field exult and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy.
Now, of course, We know that trees don’t literally sing. We know that the field cannot literally exalt in a literalistic sense, but in this kind of language, all of creation, in a sense, bears testimony to the glory of God, and in that sense, praises the Lord. And then verse 12, verse 13, rather, before the Lord, for He is coming. Let them sing for joy before the Lord, for He is coming. He is coming to judge the earth, and that’s a good thing. His gracious reign is coming to earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness. We see God will rule and judge all peoples with righteousness and truth, with faithfulness. The righteous kingdom, of course, was decisively established by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This kingdom reign, this kingdom of grace and salvation has drawn near in the person and saving work of Christ.
It is progressively growing as the gospel goes forth among the nations, and as the elect among the nations of mankind are progressively not only called into the kingdom through the gospel, but progressively discipled in that kingdom. And it will be brought to its full and consummated expression when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory to judge all mankind at the end of this age. Are you ready to stand before the judgment seat of Christ? Well, if you are outside of Christ, you’re not ready. But if you are trusting Christ for your salvation from sin with a true penitent faith, be assured that your sins are forgiven. You’re clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and therefore you will stand before his glory. If you’re unsure, dear listener, repent and believe the good news. Trust in Christ. as your Lord and Savior, trust in Him and Him alone for salvation from sin.
And then you too, having experienced this new work of God, the work of salvation in your own life, you will be enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit to sing to the Lord a new song. Brothers and sisters in Christ, sing to the Lord a new song, and let us summon the nations through the gospel to sing to the Lord all the earth. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you, O God, for your missionary heart, We thank you, O God, that you call all the nations of humanity to worship and praise you, for you are indeed worthy of all praise and adoration. And we thank you, God, for the new work of salvation that you have done in and through Christ, your Son, our Lord and Savior. We ask, Lord, that you would fill our hearts with the joy of the Lord, that we might not only sing your praises, but also summon all the nations. to praise you, for Lord, you are great and greatly to be praised.
You are to be feared above all gods. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. As we close our time this evening, I invite you to rise and we’ll sing together hymn 417, Jesus shall reign wherever the sun. 417.
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