Joy to the world? But there are viruses, fighting, work challenges, illness, and death. Can you really sing “Joy to the World”? When you look at Psalm 98 on which it is based, the answer is, “Yes!”
Sing! Look back at God’s marvelous deeds. The first part of the Psalm looks back to what God had done. “Marvelous things” are not just any actions, but focus on the Exodus and the related miracles that the Lord performed as he led his people through the wilderness into the promised land. He emphasizes that it was not the might or wisdom of his people that delivered them, but his own right hand and holy arm. He has made his salvation known. Salvation is a broad enough term to include, positively, deliverance for his people, and, in contrast, victory over an oppressive enemy. However difficult your present situation, the Lord assures you that he was with you, his covenant people, in the past. He is the unchanging God, and thus you are assured that he is and will be with you.
Sing a new song! When the Lord performs new acts of salvation, his people respond with new songs of praise, Psalm 33:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1; Isaiah 42:10; Revelation 5. The new work of salvation has its culmination in the coming of the One whom the angel told Joseph to name Jesus—for he will save his people from their sins. When John sees the Lion-Lamb in heaven, with his saving work accomplished, the Lord is praised with a new song. Notice how the work of delivering his people Israel broadens into a display of his work to the ends of the earth. “There are certain phrases and figures in the Psalter, which are connected with the idea of plan and continuity in the work of God and of its destination to arrive at a final goal. Most characteristic of these, because most Psalm-like, is the phrase ‘a new song.’ occurring five times.” (335–336) “The Psalmists know that the end is not flung upon the world out of the lap of chance, but that it proceeds with stately, unhastened, unretarded step from the council-chamber of God.” (337) “When the Psalmists make eschatology the anchor of salvation, this is not done in a self-centered spirit…. the Psalmist succeeds in forgetting his own woes for the woes of for the hopes of the people as a whole., But it is even more important to notice that he is able to forget them for the overwhelming thought of the glory of Jehovah. The gloria in excelsis which the Psalter sings arise not seldom from a veritable de profundis and, leaving behind the storm-clouds of its own distress, mounts before Jehovah in the serenity of a perfect praise.” (339) (Geerhardus Vos, Eschatology of the Psalter)
Continue reading “Joy to the World!”