Break Forth

So if you turn your Bible to Psalm 98, I have to admit it's very awkward to do something that was so out of the verse-by-verse thing for me. I really struggled to even decide when to say those things. But Psalm 98, which we've been singing for two weeks now, and I thought, hey, why not sing it two weeks in a row? Made me learn it better. and I thought I want to preach the Psalms that we sing.

We did Psalm 84 and I will preach the other Psalms as well at some point. I've already preached Psalm 51 if you're interested in that. The three episodes are already recorded. That wasn't here though. But we'll go through the Psalms that we've been singing and hopefully we'll get to sing more Psalms. One of the interesting things about the New Testament is In Ephesians and Colossians it says, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

And there's arguments from people in Christianity that say that that should be just psalms. And I don't agree with the argument, but the argument is that Paul is using a type of literary device where he says three words that really mean the same thing. And he's actually commanding churches to sing psalms when they get together. I don't, again, I'm not defending that belief.

I don't agree with it. But very well-meaning believers think that. And that's why you go to some churches and they only sing psalms. And we can argue against that kind of easily, especially on the surface of the English. But what's interesting is that when we're arguing against that, it's like we miss the fact that it does say sing psalms. And it wasn't until I came to this church that I ever sang a psalm.

And I've been to a few different churches. And so I think we should sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. So in Psalm 98, it just starts out, it says a psalm. And then the psalmist writes, Oh, sing to Yahweh a new song, for he has done marvelous things. And if you turn back a page, maybe two in your Bible, beginning of Psalm 96, David says, Oh, sing to Yahweh a new song.

So it's repeating this concept of a new song. If you read Psalm 96, Psalm 97, Psalm 98, Psalm 99, you could probably go back to 95. And there's probably even more, of course. But just that one little section, even, like 95 to 100, you're going to see a lot of the same themes repeated and overlapping, even though the psalms say different things. Psalm 96 was the psalm that David had as part of the larger song in 1 Chronicles 16. and so what we say is oh sing to Yahweh a new song and one of the things that Calvin said and I just love Calvin Calvin said you know regenerate believers sing a new song whatever song was in your heart before you got saved there's a new one in your heart once you get saved and so you sing to him a new song it's not necessarily I think it's not necessarily about writing new lyrics I mean, I think new songs are good.

I like new songs once in a while, you know. I know Bert's a bit of a musician. Maybe he's written something. Maybe not. He doesn't want me to call him out. But anyway, I don't mind new songs.

I like new songs. But I don't think that's the point. The point is, is you've been saved. You've been delivered from the hands of your enemies. And in an Old Testament context, this may have referred to some physical deliverance. but in reality we've been delivered from our bondage to slavery in the hands of the enemy you were dead in the trespassings and sins in which you once walked following the prince of the power of the air following the course of this world and so in a sense we were all in bondage to Satan as our father we've been freed from that so we sing a new song, the song we sang before you may have sang a wicked song, some of you were very wicked, evildoers in your He said, well, some of you weren't so bad in the outward sense, but your song was different.

Maybe you just complained a lot. You know, everybody has different forms of sin. So we sing a new song. Why? Because he has done marvelous things. God does marvelous things.

We have Marvel Comics, right? Most people know what that is. If you don't know what it is, like, don't go watch everything and say the pastor said watch Marvel movies. But Marvel Comics, the whole name of it, it's amazing. when you see the feats of these guys in the comic books and in the movies the whole point is it's like supernatural none of these guys powers are natural and so God has done marvelous things now he's the one that's really awesome what has he done I love asking the question when I'm reading the text what has he done it says he's done marvelous things what has he done brainstorm all day or we can just read the next verse.

I found that when I read the scripture, especially Paul, when I read the scripture, when I get to a section where I start to have a question, which is how you should read your scripture every day and I get it, like sometimes you read it like it's a love letter from God and you just kind of relax and enjoy it. But you should study it a little too. And you should ask questions.

What is the text telling me? Well, what are the marvelous things? Well, he says in the next sentence, his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. So we'll just finish the first three verses here, because really this psalm is three chunks. Yahweh 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. So the marvelous things that God has done is the salvation of his people which was pictured repeatedly in his deliverance of the Israelites from the various forms of slavery that they got in from the exiles they got in and even from their own sin.

When it says God has a right hand and a holy arm, that's an example of anthropomorphism. so there's a big word, most of you are homeschoolers you guys can study that one this week anthropomorphism comes from two Greek words anthropos which means man and morph which means form basically and so it's saying in the form of man so in anthropomorphism some people would call it personification no personification is the other way where we take an inanimate object and we make it a person but anthropomorphism is where we describe something that's not human in human terms so you say God has a right hand and a holy arm well these are not literal things to be taken literally if you want to be a Pharisee you take everything in the Bible literally that's what the Pharisees really did they didn't see the spiritual aspect of things they didn't understand the fact that God uses metaphors so when God describes himself as having a right hand He's not saying suddenly he's not invisible like the scripture says. He's not saying he's not spirit like the scripture says. We have to reconcile the fact that God has given us things that are, we'll call them apparent contradictions.

God's either immaterial, he's spirit and invisible, or God literally has a right arm, in which case those other things cannot be true. Because we know that God is not a liar and God always says everything perfectly and that any misunderstanding that happens, any contradiction in Scripture is a contradiction in us, we have to investigate. We have to ask ourselves, well, how can both these things be true at the same time?

And so anybody who wants to insist that God must have a right arm, I'd love to follow them along for a day and listen to how many times they use figurative language. figurative language, metaphors anthropomorphism is when you say something that paints a picture for somebody that they understand in their mind using terms and concepts that they know to describe a concept that they don't know or maybe to even in this case describe a concept that can't be described I cannot tell you how God saves but what I can tell you is that the scripture says it's by his right hand and his holy arm. It's a representative of his power. It's because of his amazing power that God is able to save and does save.

Your right hand, and most people, it's your dominant hand. It's the one you would use for the hardest work you have to do. When I have to screw in a screw, I've tried my left, I just can't. You use your dominant hand. And I know there's a lefty in here, and no offense to that guy. But his right hand and his holy arm refer to the fact that he is powerful and he's almighty.

And his arm is holy. So what God did, he did in a holy way. There's no unrighteousness with God. God didn't break the law in order to make this salvation possible. He did it in a holy and perfect way. And he's worked the salvation.

In verse 2 it says he's made known his salvation. He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. I'm going to give you a second principle when you're reading Scripture. The first one I think I gave you was how to resolve when apparently contradictory things happen. The second thing I want you to consider is that every Scripture is ultimately revealing Jesus Christ to you.

Every psalm, before you read any psalm, so do the little thing where you read a psalm a day or five a day, do something. but every time before you read a psalm say to yourself this is a wonderful psalm about Jesus and then read it because they all are they're all there to reveal Jesus to us now often times they're talking about real historic events that have occurred and they're describing real history that God decreed to happen but it's so that we could see the shadow and the type of Christ in all these events so God has made known his salvation he's revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations, that's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God's righteousness. That's who's been revealed in the sight of the nations.

He's the one that was put on display. It's His righteousness that we are to proclaim. And even if you want to argue, oh, you're looking into this too much, tell me what righteousness God has revealed in the sight of all the nations back when Psalm 98 was written. It's a prophecy. Jesus Christ is what was revealed in the sight of the nations. He is God's righteousness.

And then in verse 3, he tells us 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. But the first part, he's remembered. So you have this language we use, does God remember things? Like when I remember something, it's almost like it was out of my mind for a moment and now I remembered it.

And so it's again, it's another use of language that's trying to teach us something about a truth, about God and about his steadfast love and faithfulness. So it's not like God was hanging out and kind of wasn't thinking about his steadfast love or faithfulness anymore to the house of Israel. And then boom, he remembered all of a sudden like we do. This is a reminder of a few things.

One, it's the fact that these things are promised. When we say God remembers something, it doesn have anything to do with God forgetting or even leaving his mind It has to do with from our perspective we recognize one this was prophesied beforehand It was promised When God remembers his steadfast love and faithfulness in the scripture it's just a reference to the fact that this is not a new thing. He's already revealed this earlier that it would happen.

Secondly, we see that when he remembers his steadfast love and faithfulness, It's from our perspective. We realize that in time, it seemed like there was a moment that we weren't the recipients of it so much. And that's really one of the themes of 1 Peter. Is that we are to remember God's steadfast love and faithfulness in the midst of suffering. You go into 90% of churches in the United States.

I know that sounds like a really big number to some of you. Well, when you hear what I'm about to say, it will. 90% of churches you walk in, what you're going to hear is all sorts of earthly promises that you're going to get if you would just follow Jesus. And in 90% of churches, people are going to suddenly find out that the preacher was lying to them.

And then they're just going to think, well, Jesus must be lying to me. And they're just going to walk away. so God delivered true sheep from some of these places but the point is this as you're suffering through an exile as you, part of the house of Israel the New Testament church, as you're suffering as a result of your sin maybe even as a result of somebody else's sin as you're suffering in part of a wicked culture you will encounter points where you feel like God's forgotten you. That's the feeling we get.

And I think no matter how much we prepare our minds for it, we can still get that feeling of separation. If Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Don't you think you may have moments where you don't feel the light of his face upon you? it's real easy when we're sitting in this room and it's warm or it's cold or however you like it, we're going to go eat hot food and we're going to have a nice fellowship it's easy to sit around and say yeah if something happens I'm ready to fight for the Lord and stand up for God if I go to prison I'm going to be singing hymns I won't even sleep, I'll sing so much I follow the words up standing here with them right in front of me that's one of the reasons I sing the hymns every day now I want to know this stuff so we need to remember his steadfast love and faithfulness we need to remember that he doesn't forget it and he will eventually return and your suffering your persecution that you may face some of you may already be facing forms of persecution you don't have to be slaughtered by some tribesmen in some remote place you can't even find on a map to be a persecuted Christian I realize we can all recognize there's a little difference between fearing for your life every day and maybe having people call you some names I think we can understand that I prefer one over the other but Jesus said blessed are you and others revile you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

He said, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Jesus defines persecution. We don't. So some of you have been persecuted by family. Some of you have been persecuted by former Christian friends. Some of you have been persecuted by people in the church.

For your faith in Christ, for standing fast to things that you know are true. God has not forgotten and that steadfast love and faithfulness that he has toward you will eventually be displayed it may be displayed in this life through some kind of vindication and some kind of deliverance from the difficulty or maybe when you get to see him that you're finally delivered I don't know which one will happen and the problem is what I want to tell you is it will be okay I don't see any divorce people in here but yeah I want to tell people oh she'll come back that's the temptation she'll come back oh he'll get saved your son who ran away he'll get saved your daughter that's doing the wrong thing no she'll I can't promise a lot of these things to you I can't promise you'll get your job back I can't promise you'll have a job next Sunday there were people who lost jobs just because they showed up at the capitol this week it happens but God has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel and if you want to take that so literally that it only means the people who were descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and who lived in the Middle East 2,000 years ago then you're not understanding how to interpret scripture and it's done a lot of damage to people misinterpreting scripture because this psalm is telling us he's remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to us, the church, to God's people, to Jesus' bride. As Jason said, there's one way of salvation.

One way. Not two. Not seven. Not zero. Praise the Lord. There's one way and it's a perfect way.

God's holy arm and mighty hand. So having established that we sing a new song to the Lord because he's worked salvation. He's wonderful. He's perfect. It's because of his unchanging and amazingly perfect attributes that we can even have salvation in the first place. What do we do next?

It says, make a joyful noise to Yahweh, all the earth. It doesn say make a joyful noise to Yahweh house of Israel It says make a joyful noise to Yahweh all the earth He telling everybody Extol Him, all nations, right? Psalm 117, praise Yahweh, all peoples. Great is His steadfast love. Make a joyful noise to Yahweh, all the earth. Break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

I think it was Calvin again. Maybe it was Matthew, Henry. But one of them said, you know, when you break forth, it's like you're bursting with it. It's almost like somebody told you, hey, be quiet. And you cannot stop singing about Jesus. That's how Paul was, right?

I mean, that's the guy we all look up to, right? Like Paul. I mean, we all want to meet Spurgeon in heaven and R.C. Sproul. I get some of that. But Paul's really the guy other than Jesus.

Some of us are like, man, I want to talk to this guy. I just want to shake his hand and thank him, you know? Break forth. Think about some of you guys when you came home from work, when your kids were especially really little, how excited that kid was to see you. And they could have been playing a toy. They could have been watching their favorite TV show.

But before their minds were completely like molded into their own little selfishness, there was a point where I used to be able to walk in that door and all the kids I ever had, they would drop everything and run to me. Nothing mattered in that moment except to go be by daddy. And that's just a little person and their daddy. Imagine how we should feel about God.

So break forth in the joy of song. Sing praises to Him. Have you ever had a cough and it just wouldn't go away? You never knew when you were going to cough. So you were like, oh, he's ready. That's how you should be with praise to the Lord.

Your mind should be so stayed upon what he has done for you and what he will do, that everything should bring praise out of you. You wake up in the morning, and you should be shocked you woke up. I mean, we're so ingrained with what we think is normal now. I wake up in the morning, my heat works both my feet work, my legs my ears are working for the most part we just take everything for granted and God didn't promise us any of that we should be ready to break forth in the praise when we see the sun come out the beauty that is around us and he says to sing praises to Yahweh with the lyre or with the harp and the sound of melody he's telling us how to worship him we're to sing there's a difference between preaching and talking and teaching and there's a difference between speaking and singing like one of the things we'll probably never do a spoken word congregational hymn here I mean if you like spoken word go ahead don't there's certain people you should stay away from who do it but we sing God said to sing praises to him with instruments I know churches that won't do instruments I don't get that because usually they're like Psalms only churches like it's strange like you do the Psalms but you ignore the command in the Psalms to use instruments it's amazing to me God has given us all these wonderful gifts of not only the instruments but then the people in the church with the musical talent to make the melody to make something we can follow along I mean I had to walk back there today to play the Psalm 98 because I knew that without it we don't all know the tune well enough to just stick together.

But if I started singing, you know, It Is Well Right Now, we could probably most of us sing it because we know that one. You don't always need accompaniment, but you can enhance the sound. I don't know if you guys listen to it, but when we say with trumpets and the sound of the horn, they're the horn. I mean, it like amplifies in my mind what God's saying when I listen to Teresa's version of that song that we sing here. so the idea becomes that we've been saved and we're to respond you respond with joyful noise joyous song and praises we're thankful to God even in the midst of difficulty and we're to make that joyful noise before the king so God has gone from our savior our deliverer to our king and it's not that he's changed but he's being described differently he's our savior, he's also your king at the end of the psalm let the sea roar and all that fills it the world and those who dwell in it and let the rivers clap their hands and let the hills sing for joy together before Yahweh for he comes to judge the earth he will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity so we have the sea roaring and all that fills in so you're talking about fish and everything little jellyfish shrimp and crustaceans all the stuff in the sea let them roar let the world and those who dwell in it so people let the rivers clap their hands I mean again if you're one of these biblical literalist people I just want to know what this means like where's the river's hand does my creek in my backyard have hands like is the river different in that way like does creeks just have fingers like come on this is obviously figurative language but Jesus said if the people wouldn't worship him even the rocks would cry out so the point is the whole creation is under the same curse we are and the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God because the creation has been subjected to futility.

Not because of him who subjected it, but in hope. In hope that... being delivered with us. The creation groans. You think animals like dying? You ever watch an animal die? They don't like it.

It's not fun for creation to be under this curse either. And you know what? It's not its fault. It's our fault. So the creation can't wait. We kind of sometimes, we're like, we want Jesus to come, but a part of me is like, I do kind of hope he waits so that some people I love get saved and that kind of thing.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying I don't want him to come, but I'm okay with being patient because of what I know happens if God waits to return. But creation's like, no, get us out of here. Okay? Creation just rejoices in God. We're the sinners, not creation.

What's interesting in Psalm 96, verse 4, it says great is Yahweh greatly to be praised he is to be feared above all gods it says for the gods of the peoples are worthless idols and then in Psalm 97 in verse 7 it says all the worshippers of images are put to shame who make their boast in worthless idols worship him all you gods and what I find interesting is that we have these admonitions about idols in Psalm 96 and 97. And in Psalm 98, it doesn't repeat that sentiment. But think about it.

What do people worship? People worship idols. Very few people worship like transcendental gods as their idols. Very few people have an immaterial god. A god that's not part of this world. Most people's worthless idols are creaturely.

People, have you ever known somebody that was just into the Zodiac? I mean, that's like, that's going to be our national religion soon. Like horoscopes and stuff. They're just, they're just, like you understand the Zodiac somebody didn just sit down and think like oh like let do like a crab and a crab and a fish and they certainly didn read the Bible and get it Like they saw constellations in the sky and at different times of year because of the position of the sun and the earth, there's certain constellations that we don't see at all, because the sun's too bright for us to see those constellations.

But then, as the earth is on the other side of the sun, there's other constellations that we can't see, but then there's new stars that we can see. So this is why Aquarius is like January 18 to February 17. Because as the earth moves, different things come into view, and you can track all this stuff. And people knew it a long time ago. And then they decided to give them all names and somehow make them in control of things and worship them.

And they might say they don't worship it, but whatever you give your time and your energy to and sacrifice your life for, that's what you're worshiping, okay? People worship rivers. And hills? They won't say they do, but... Like, you realize, like, a gigantic portion of our global economy right now is simply based on being green? I mean, companies are spending millions of dollars just to make you think they're environmentally conscious.

And they're spending millions of dollars to actually try to do the things that they're told to do so that they can say that they're a green company. people in California were banned from using straws. Maybe that's not entirely accurate, but these kinds of things are what's going on. There's people who are, who are, I don't want to say this, but making love to trees.

People are worshiping creation. The creation worships God, but we worship the creation. How dumb are we? Sin makes us stupid. And I know that's a word you probably don't want your kids saying. And so kids, don't repeat that unless you're talking about sin.

Don't even do it often. But sin makes us stupid. Nobody's actually stupid. People are intelligent, rational beings. The dumbest person who ever lived is smarter than the smartest man Okay You got to understand that But sin will make us make really bad decisions that ultimately the scripture just calls brutish and ignorant So don't worship idols. Recognize that the creation itself worships God.

And they sing together before Yahweh. Why? For He comes to judge the earth. They're happy about it. The hills are alive with the sound of music. I don't know if that's true, but But the hills can't wait to be delivered from the bondage of corruption that the whole creation is in.

So ultimately, Psalm 98 ends, interestingly, in a contrast to where it started, but also in a line with where it started. The beginning was all about the marvelous things God has done and the salvation that he's wrought for his people. the last line says he's going to come to judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity and it sounds contradictory salvation is like good and judgment sounds bad but the point is this the only reason salvation occurred is because god judged his son because jesus christ was judged as if he had done all the wicked things that sinners have done that is why there is a marvelous salvation to sing about and to burst forth about. Because Jesus Christ was judged.

And because Jesus Christ was judged, and because He took on the sins of the world, and because He died for all the people that He intended to make His bride, all of God's righteous justice and wrath for every other sin still must be executed, and it will be done equitably. You won't get out of judgment because you had more money. You won't get out of judgment because you were a better person than the next guy.

It offends them, but I tell the Roman Catholics at the abortion clinic, they're going to go to the same hell as the abortionists if they don't repent. God's going to judge with equity. And his judgment is based on the fact that every one of us rebelled against him in the garden when we were in Adam, our perfect representative who was a way better man than anybody in here.

And he fell and he chose evil over good And Jesus Christ came and he chose good over evil all the time And then he was treated as if he had been the one that chose evil So when God comes, he is going to judge the world with righteousness. There will be nobody who can look at God and say, this is unjust or unrighteous of you. and so you have a responsibility to break forth in singing to worship him for these good things he's done for you and to proclaim his name to others some of you will never street preach some of you shouldn't oh about half of you definitely shouldn't because I don't believe in women preachers but even the men not every man is designed to do that some of you might not ever go to an abortion clinic some of you aren't even on social media bless you tell me how to do that it's hard, it's like part of life almost sometimes but every one of you has people who have been placed in your life who are going to hell like right now if God came back God would judge them with righteousness and equity and you would float up to heaven and they'd go straight to hell and have you told them the gospel, you may be the only Christian they know. They may have never gone to a Buckeyes game where they heard me preach, but they know you and God put you there providentially.

And so I want you to think about these things. We're all part of the body of Christ. So that's your responsibility. Worship him. Proclaim his name. And we will, Lord willing, a week from now, we'll continue back with 1 Peter chapter 3.

Let me pray. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you that Psalm 98 was written for us. That it is not just a portion of scripture for the Israelites, for us to gloss over. But this is written for us and to us. And it is to comfort us and edify us and encourage us and even admonish us.

I pray that it would be taken to heart today. in Christ's name I pray Amen