Dennis Tuuri

Our topic is joy. Please stand. Reading of God’s word. Oh, sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory. The Lord has made known his salvation, his righteousness. He has revealed in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his mercy and his faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Break forth in song. Rejoice and sing praises. Sing to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of a psalm, with trumpets and the sound of a horn. Shout joyfully before the Lord the King. Let the sea roar in all its fullness, the world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands. Let the hills be joyful together before the Lord. For he is coming to judge the earth with righteousness.

He shall judge the world and the peoples with equity. Let’s pray. Father, we pray that you would open this text through understanding. Give us, Lord God, the power of the Holy Spirit that we might discern out of your text in your scripture, things that are important for us that transform our very being. Help us, Lord God, to engage in joy during this season and in all our lives, knowing the truth of this psalm.

Help us, Father, to understand this psalm and to make application to our lives in the power of the Holy Spirit. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

It was a delight this past Tuesday to go out with mostly young people but a few of us older folks as well to go caroling in the neighborhood. It was so joyful to raise songs of praise to our savior and to our father and the holy spirit for this blessed season that we celebrate in our country.

The coming, the advent of the savior, reminded me of Christmas long ago, probably 30 years ago or so. I had been raised in the faith. I then became a Christian, so I thought at the time. I look back at it now and God was recalling me. Shortly thereafter I went and spent a winter in Minnesota. And my first, my first Christmas after recommitting or dedicating my life to Christ again, I remember on a Christmas Eve service, picketing a church. I was in the home of a radical political activist family that was very much against the war in Vietnam, which was ongoing at the time.

And instead of engaging in the joy of the Christmas season, that first season of my renewed commitment to Christ, I picketed. I remember walking down the streets of this little Minnesota southern town, much snow on the ground. I remember walking along, looking down at my feet and thinking how miserable I was, how ashamed I was of being a human because of the destruction that humanity causes upon the face of the earth.

To look back at that memory and then to think this past week of being out joyfully caroling songs of joy to the risen savior. Songs that in my imagination, at least as we’re out of doors, nothing to break the sound patterns, go up as it were to where our minds are focused on the throne of God. And I thought, praise God for the salvation he has wrought in my life and continues to mature.

Some of you young men and women don’t know what I’m talking about, and we hope in a sense you never will. We hope that the dedication and commitment of your parents to raise you in the context of the faith will mean that you don’t have those sort of experiences as a young man where you look at Christmas instead of joy as being a place of sorrow for what mankind has wrought on the face of the earth.

We pray that you would be raised in the context of understanding the sovereignty of God and the truth of Psalm 98, that at the center of this fourth book of the Psalms, at the center of our life as Christians, is joy for what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished in his advent. However, I am sure that these same sort of thoughts will permeate your minds. You will go through various crisis points in your own faith, young people, and you will come to a renewed appreciation for the joy of the Savior as you mature in the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And you’ll have these same, not perhaps the same kind of memories of paganism and then the salvation of Christ affected in your life, but you will grow and deepen in your walk as a Christian. And it will always be, I think, at its very heart analogous to the context of what we celebrate in Psalm 98. We celebrate joy universal for the savior, for the king, for our creator, redeemer, and recreator.

And that is what we want to talk about today from Psalm 98.

I also remembered this last week as I hum to myself continually for the last few weeks this version of Psalm 98 that we’re now singing in parts. I remember back probably 15 years ago or so to meetings at the Lord’s home, early on in the life of our church, where we would learn and sing the Geneva jigs, the psalms as produced at Geneva in the time of Calvin. We were so excited, and I remember at work—I was there then working as a purchasing agent—how those psalms just resonated through my mind throughout the day and brought joy, this sense of joy of Christ’s presence then and now. Psalm 98 is doing that for me. I don’t know about you.

But it is a Christmas psalm. It is the psalm of the coming, the advent of the Savior, King, and Creator. And it’s a psalm of great joy that we are learning to sing in ever more glorious ways and maturing, as this psalm clearly calls us to mature, in the excellence by which we praise our creator and king for this advent of our savior.

There’s a distinctiveness to Psalm 98. First of all, it’s the only psalm that has a title to it that says “a psalm” with nothing else. So it’s like you could almost say it’s kind of singled out as the psalm—maybe not the psalm, but there’s a distinction to it in terms of its very title that God has provided. There’s a distinction to it because, as we understand the literary structure of the psalms being five books and this being in the fourth book and at the chiastic center, the structure of those 17 psalms, there’s a distinctiveness to it where it kind of focuses all the joy. Everything that fourth book of the Psalms is talking about is our creation and recreation and our savior.

That’s where book four moves. It moves from creation—sort of models the first few psalms—to recreating and considering the new creation in Christ after this advent of Christ pictured at the center of the book.

The church has historically used this text as a companion text to the Magnificat, one of the great Christmas songs of course. Magnificat from the first Latin word of Mary’s song, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior.” Great Christmas psalm and song that’s sung, and this Psalm 98 is seen as a complement to Mary’s Magnificat and has been used liturgically balancing it or working with it back and forth at various stages of church history.

It is unique in that it is a psalm of 100% joy. You know, we’ve seen in Psalm 96 some instructions and commands about worship, the worship of God and the beauty of holiness, talking about the way we approach him. We’ve seen in Psalm 97 other ethical instructions to us that God is coming and he’s going to destroy the idolatry of the people. So we’re encouraged to put off idolatry. But here, this psalm really—the whole focus of this psalm is joy.

You know, so this sermon is all about the joy of the season of the advent of the savior. This Psalm 98 has been called in the historic church the Canate Domino—”Oh, sing to the Lord.” The first two Latin words: “Canate, sing; Domino, to the Lord.” And as Derek Kidner in his commentary says, it is wholly given up to praise, and then all is joy and exhilaration. All is joy and exhilaration. At the heart of this psalm and this book of the psalms is this wonderful bursting forth of joy.

And I want to just talk about three aspects by looking at the three separate stanzas of this psalm, at least as I’ve outlined them. Different men do them different ways, but to me it seems we can put them into three stanzas. And the first stanza is the joy of Jesus, a comprehensive salvation. The second stanza will talk about the joy of Christ the king. And then the third stanza, the extent of this praise, the joy of the creator, redeemer, and recreator with those motifs brought into it.

So first of all, the joy of Jesus, a comprehensive savior. And this is on your outline, verses 1 to 3. “Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.” So at the very beginning, “Cante,” sing. There’s the command in this psalm. That is the point, the central point of application to us, is to engage in singing praises to the Lord. We come together to do this very thing. And we are commanded here, exhorted. It’s like we cannot hold our joy back even.

It’s not so much a command as a natural progression of an understanding of Jesus as savior, king, and recreator. We are to burst forth in this song. And we are commanded to sing. And that command does not just go to the women of our church. That command goes to the men of our church. And it doesn’t just go to those who have good voices. It goes to all those who understand that the advent of Jesus was as savior, king, and recreator.

We are exhorted, encouraged, and even yes, commanded to open wide our mouths and sing his praises.

I praise God that at least for a while now in Sunday school our men are gathering with our young men, the teen boys, to sing, to try to learn this commandment in a fuller sense and be brought into obedience to it and make our singing more excellent as it becomes in the center of this psalm. I’d encourage you men that are not part of that class to pursue, consider coming and learning to sing more excellently.

“Sing unto the Lord a new song.” We’ve talked about this. Some of you are a little hesitant—what is he talking about, this newness in prophetic worship? I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about this and let me begin in terms of this new song and show if we understand Psalm 98 and its immediate application and its prefigurement of the worship of the church. It’s a very important connection to make because it tells us that this psalm is not filled with musical expressions of an infantile or juvenile church in the Old Testament, as Calvin and other men wrote, but rather we have here the full-blown expression of what’s going to come to pass with the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that he looked forward to.

And I am reading Amos 9:11 and 12. Listen to this prophecy: “On that day the future, I will raise up the tabernacle of David which has fallen down, repair its damages and raise up its ruins. I’ll raise up the tabernacle of David.” And in Acts chapter 2, James talks about how this is fulfilled in the assembling of the church now. This is a text that gives the dispensationalist the willies. The tabernacle of David—they got it. “Well, that means the civil polity of David. That means the structure of the tribes under [David].” Must mean something, but it’s got nothing to do with the church. And that’s not what was being said in Acts chapter 2. A totally, from my perspective, wrongheaded approach—to try to understand what this phrase means without going to the scriptures themselves to interpret it for us.

Once we look at 1 Chronicles 16, we know what the tabernacle of David was. Turn to 1 Chronicles 16, please.

1 Chronicles 16. And we’ll not read the middle, the longest section, which is a long psalm that David presents, but we’ll read the beginning and closing paragraphs of this chapter. 1 Chronicles chapter 16: “So they brought the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it.”

Well, there it is. If we look at Amos and say, “What was the tabernacle of David?” the scriptures tell us this is the tabernacle of David. “So they set the ark in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. Then they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, ascension offerings, peace offerings before God. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord.”

Now, that being finished means, and the rest of the history of this tabernacle portrays it this way: that word “finished” means no more sacrifices went on at the tabernacle of David. There was a once-for-all sacrificial rite of ascension and peace. And from then on, this tabernacle of David on Mount Zion had no blood being shed at it, but it had the ark. And he blesses the people in the name of the Lord.

“Then he distributed to everyone of Israel, both man and woman, to everyone a loaf of bread, a piece of meat and a cake of raisins. And he appointed, this is what’s going to happen at the tabernacle of David: He appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord to commemorate, to thank, and to praise the Lord God of Israel.”

He appoints Levitical choirs and singers and players to minister before the ark of the Lord in the very presence of the ark of the Lord. No veil of separation here has existed in the tabernacle and will happen in the temple later. No, they minister before the ark of the Lord to praise the Lord God of Israel.

“Asaf the chief, next to him, Zechariah. And they name here the members of what you might call the ministry team that’s going to happen in the tabernacle of David. Obed-Edom is with them. Stringed instruments and harps are played by this jail fella. But Asaf made music with cymbals. Benaiah and Jehiel the priest regularly blew the trumpets before the ark of the covenant of God.”

See, Psalm 98 is what they do. Here they come before the ark of God without the veil separating them from it in this simple tent that David had constructed for the ark, the tabernacle of David. And this is what Amos and the other prophets said would be restored, brought back when the new covenant times come. You see, and indeed, when any time of reformation in the history of Israel, this is what they did, as we’ll look at in a couple of minutes.

“Verse 7: On that day, David first delivered this psalm into the hand of Asaf and his brethren to thank the Lord.”

And there’s a long psalm here that really is portions of many other psalms including Psalm 96 as we saw, and also elements from Psalm 98. So this psalm he gives to these Levitical singers, and that goes on for the majority of the chapter. So we drop down now to verse 37:

“Okay, the people say amen. Verse 37: He leaves Asaf and his brothers there before the ark of the covenant of the Lord to minister before the ark regularly as every day’s work required. Okay. Now, and Obed-Edom with his 68 brethren, including Obed-Edom, the son of Jeduthun and Hosiah, to be gatekeepers. Okay. So, he sets up these ministers, and Obed-Edom, who we think is a Gentile—we don’t know for sure—but anyway, he sets up these men to be gatekeepers.

“Now, he does something different. He takes Zadok the priest in verse 39, and his brethren, the priests, before the tabernacle of the Lord at the high place that was at Gibeon.”

So here, not only does David set up this musical worship with instruments and stuff at Zion where the tabernacle of David is constructed with the ark, but now we see that we are very clearly told here: the balance, the actual tabernacle made according to the pattern that God showed Moses in heaven. That tabernacle is at Gibeon still. And Zadok the priest David commands to offer burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar of burnt offering regularly, morning and evening, and to do according to all that is written in the law of the Lord which he commanded Israel.

And then it goes on. The rest of the chapter proceeds. The point is that 1 Chronicles 16 makes very clear what happened and what this tabernacle of David was and why Psalm 98 is the sort of psalm that it is.

What’s changed? What’s the new thing? The new thing is a new system of worship initiated by David. And we read in the prophets very clearly: it wasn’t David. Nathan the prophet is the one who communicated God’s word to David to set up this worship system at Zion. And when we say, when we’ve come to Mount Zion in the book of Hebrews, this is the Davidic tabernacle that was set up there. Bloodless worship. No veil separating the worshippers from the very presence of God at the ark of the covenant.

It is a little island, as Peter Leithart says, of new covenant worship set in the midst of old covenant reality. Still looking forward to the coming of Christ but anticipating and showing everyone what it’s going to be.

Now, just so you’ll understand, there’s a very common reference work, common enough that Logos Research System sells these reference works, a nine-volume set called the Complete Library of Christian Worship. And as I was doing some research this last week on Psalm 98, I found that in volume one of this series, the Biblical Foundations of Christian Worship, an article by Janice Leonard called “The Tabernacle of David.”

And in this article on the tabernacle of David, the author says quite clearly just what Peter Leithart says and just what is very evident from 1 Chronicles 16. In the summary of this, she says: “During the Davidic era, the tabernacle of Moses and its worship were moved to Gibeon. In addition, David set up a worship center in Zion, a tent meeting, also known as David’s tabernacle, and instituted a non-sacrificial worship of praise and thanksgiving.”

So that’s the summary of what this Leonard says in this book. He says: “Surprisingly, when they take the ark up to Mount Zion, they did not return it to the tabernacle in Gibeon as David brought it out of the house that it had been at the house of Abinadab. David doesn’t take the ark back to the tabernacle of Gibeon, but rather he puts it in a tent, the tabernacle of David, referred to in Amos 9:11 and other places. And he puts it in the city of Zion, which was the place of David’s residence.

“And as she says, except for the initial dedication ceremonies, this worship did not involve burnt sacrifices. And she goes on to show repeatedly that under the reforms, after you know the people sin and you have good kings and bad kings, and when the good kings would come along—Asa, Josiah, Joash, Hezekiah—they would always reinstitute worship according to the model or pattern commanded by David. And frequently they would say: ‘thus David and Nathan the prophet.’”

So even after the temple is constructed, the temple shows the change that David brought in terms of the musical instruments, the praise and worship. David set up a series of Levitical singers in the context of the tabernacle of David, and all that stuff is then instituted in the temple as well. So we have this combination of the temple system—a glorified tabernacle—and then we have also these Davidic elements that picture what will happen in the new covenant.

Now, the point of all that is just pretty simple really. It is that when we read this new thing that’s done, it’s the new system of worship that God instituted by way of his prophet Nathan to David, where this psalm was sung, and it was worship that prefigured what we do today.

Now, that’s important for us because we want to know, as we meditate on the greatness of the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, and as we meditate on the fact that he is king over all the earth, and as we meditate on the fact that he was the Word that brought creation into being—and in John 1, he has said—we read a very definite correlation to Genesis. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Word was God.”

And then goes on to talk about that Jesus comes as the true light. Day one that Jesus comes to reinitiate or to initiate a new creation through his work on the cross and his resurrection ascension. As we meditate on those wonderful facts portrayed in this psalm, we want to worship God. We want to praise his name. We want to have the joy that wells up within us as we recognize the comprehension of his salvation, kingship, and recreation.

We want to worship him the way he wants to be worshipped. And he tells us here that this—at the heart of the Davidic worship at the tabernacle of David—that God says, through Amos and others and then repeated in the New Testament, this is what the church is assembling as the tabernacle of the greater David. We are assured that instruments, singing, rejoicing, joy, universal is a definite part of what we come together to do on the Lord’s day.

We come together to sing forth the praises of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the pattern established for us very clearly set out in 1 Chronicles 16, very articulately defended by Peter Leithart, and actually part of a standard reference work on biblical worship and its foundations—biblical foundations of Christian worship, popular enough to sell through Logos Research Systems. We find that this is not some weird kooky thing. This is something that people have understood. It just takes a little bit more looking at the Old Testament than most people today in the context of the church are want to do.

And as a result, we see, “Well, this is great. This is what we’re supposed to do. This new song is indeed what we’re engaged in in the context of Christian worship. New songs.” And of course we could talk about how in the book of Revelation they sing a new song because that Davidic worship is brought to fulfillment and completion through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we celebrate this, and in this first stanza we’re told specifically that Jesus is a savior. That’s why we celebrate this. That’s why we enter into the worship in this first stanza. It’s repeated three times. Can you find it? Can you find “salvation” three times in verses 1, 2, and 3 on your outline, printed right out for you there? Can you find it? No, you can’t. Because in verse one, you can find two of them.

See verse two, the bold italic, and then verse three, “All the ends have seen the salvation of our God.” You got that? But in verse one, to show the correlation, I also put in bold italics the word “victory.” “His holy arm hath gotten him the victory.” Same word. It’s the same word, and it’s an important word for us, I think, because what it points out to us is that this salvation as we celebrate at this time of the year with Jesus, the coming of the savior, is a salvation that is much more comprehensive than the Christian church is normally given to expressing.

It is a Hebraic salvation. In other words, in the Old Testament, this word “salvation” didn’t just mean “saved from your sins,” “saved so you could go to heaven,” “saved in an ethical sense.” That had a physical component to it. In the Old Testament, there were various kinds of distress from which you need salvation. National problems, individual problems, enemies—you needed salvation from enemies. Moses saved Jethro’s daughters at the well. That’s the same word used. Deliver them from their enemies. Natural catastrophes, God would deliver you. When the wind blows hard and the lights go out, he’d save you and bring you through it. Okay? He’d save you. Plagues, famine, sickness—all of these aspects of distress in the Old Testament required being saved. And whoever brought you out of those things was your savior, so-called, in the Old Testament.

And so the idea is that the salvation that we rejoice at in the coming of Jesus Christ is comprehensive. It’s not a neoplatonic Greek abstract thing. It means the destruction of your enemies. It means, you know, God delivering you in various situations. And it’s interesting—the word “for” is claustrophobic. Old claustrophobic like me. It’s interesting that the word “salvation” means to make wide, to bring you out of constriction and being bound up into brought into a wide open space.

Salvation, even in the very root of the word, in other words, it has this physical picture to it. And we certainly don’t want to bring that stuff up over the forgiveness of sins offered through our savior, but I’m saying here: this is a three-fold repetition in this stanza of a comprehensive Hebraic understanding of what salvation is, and it’s comprehensive.

Now, if we understand the depth of that truth, if we understand the importance of that comprehensive salvation, it increases our love and our joy then, universal joy we experience as we meditate upon it.

I’m also going to speak, as we go through this, that there’s this progression of salvation. There’s a thrust, an emphasis, in the first few verses of the psalm on Israel and then an extension of that salvation to the world. And so the savior, when he comes, will produce, you know, blessings “as far as the curse is found.” So it is, you know, extensive and intensive. It goes—the salvation that Christ affects 2,000 years ago is working its way over the entire world.

And it’s not a salvation that works its way over the entire world to leave a bunch of folks behind that aren’t saved. I was at Costco the other day, and they said, “Boy, those Harry Potter books are selling good.” But you know what selling best is Left Behind? Is that the name of the series? The video series and book series by Lahaye and somebody else. You know, I’m pleased on one hand that many Christians are buying books at Costco and making an impact on that organization.

On the other hand, you know, it shows this idea of salvation is kind of a getting away from the physical world. We can all go up on clouds and as angels play harps. But that’s not salvation. Salvation is holistic. It’s intensive as well as extensive. God will change the face of the world. Nothing short of that meets what this term means in the context of the Hebrew Old Testament. It is an extensive salvation.

He is our savior. Now let me read a quote from Derek Kidner again on this word “salvation” to kind of drive this point home. “Its chief aspect is salvation as in the name Jesus. It looks, okay, the name Jesus, it looks at both friend with salvation and foe with victory, and is big enough to combine the hard decisiveness of the latter with the compassion and constructiveness of the former.”

So it’s a term “salvation” in the Old Testament that brings together both the idea of Jesus’s victory over all our enemies as well as the idea that he’s the friend of sinners and brings salvation.

Now let’s look at, and you can just listen to this: Matthew 1:18 to 23, familiar story, but this is what—I’m saying is this first stanza of Psalm 98 brings our focus, our focal point, to the salvation affected by Jesus Christ.

We read this: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ is as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.

“But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’

“So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us.’”

This joy of the first stanza of Psalm 98 is the Christmas joy as well. Joseph was instructed to name the child Jesus. The word “Jesus” means “savior.” Jesus is our savior, our savior from sin, our savior from distresses, who brings about this comprehensive, extensive and intensive salvation to his people.

Christmas joy is recorded for us in these words of Psalm 98, these three-fold occurrence of salvation. We celebrate the birth of Jesus, savior. He’ll save his people from their sins. Our savior himself comes, of course, to produce this wonderful blessing through his work on the cross, through his affecting the deliverance of his people.

Psalm 98 draws heavily on themes from Isaiah, and I wanted to quote in this regard from Isaiah 59:16-21.

“He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore, his own arm brought salvation to him. His own righteousness it sustained him. For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak. According to his deeds, accordingly he will repay. Fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies. The coastlands he will fully repay.”

And all this leads up to verse 21 in Isaiah 59: “As for me, says the Lord, this is my covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants, says the Lord, from this time and forever more.”

The blessings of the new covenant of the Lord Jesus Christ coming, when no man is righteous, the Lord Jesus Christ puts on righteousness in his incarnation, takes on human actions in obedience to the law of God. He puts on his own righteousness that he might affect our salvation by becoming our substitute.

But note also that this same phrase that leads to this description, the new covenant, is salvation in terms of Christ’s righteousness, is a part to ours. It’s also described in terms of the physical deliverance of his people, the destruction of his enemies and his people’s enemies. In the Old Testament, salvation is always balanced out, as it were, the understanding of it at least, with this reference to the destruction of God’s enemies and his people’s enemies.

Isaiah 63:1-6: “Who is this who comes from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah? This one who is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength. I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Why is your apparel red and your garments like one who treads in the wine press?”

His garments are red because he takes upon himself our sins and the payment for them. But his garments are also red because he destroys his enemies and he tramples out the grapes of wrath, as it were. And in that same text in verse 5: “My own arm brought salvation for me, and my own fury it sustained me. I have trodden down the peoples in my anger and made them drink in my fury and brought down their strength to the earth.”

When we celebrate the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the joy we’re ushered into is the joy of salvation. But salvation is comprehensive, extensive, and intensive.

Isaiah 49:6: “It’s too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Indeed, in Zechariah’s song, the Benedictus, in verse 68 of Luke chapter 1: “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who have been since the world began, this horn of salvation that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers.

“He’s remembered him his faithfulness, and in remembering his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of your life. And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Highest, for you’ll give before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of sins.”

No disjuncture in the New Testament between the remission of sins and our salvation and the destruction of our enemies. And in fact, the very basis for our living, being enabled by our savior to live lives working out our salvation, is this fact: that indeed, as is said here, he would grant us being delivered from the hand of our enemies that we might serve him without fear.

This comprehensive salvation means that as we approach our lives, if we do not have a full sense of the victory of God over every enemy to his people, then we’ll have fear of what surrounds us and we will not serve him in proper holiness. Psalm 98 tells us the universal joy that’s explained there is because of the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the dayspring on high who has visited us and affected our salvation.

He is our savior. His name Jesus is a constant reminder to us and to our children of salvation from sins. What a friend we have in Jesus. But a woe and destruction to the enemies of God and the enemies of his church.

And as a result of that, we do not fear what life brings to us this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month. All of our enemies have been defeated definitively through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that work is being played out throughout the context of the entire created order as this psalm tells us.

Now, Simeon says, “Let your servant depart in peace according to your word. Mine eyes have seen your salvation.” If we see demonstrated before us today, in Psalm 98 and in a consideration of the advent of the savior who has to be named Jesus who would save his people from their sins, if we understand that salvation and see it in Hebraic comprehensive terms instead of Greek philosophical terms, then we go forth from here in peace.

No matter what we face this afternoon or tomorrow, we know that the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished all things for our salvation, the remission of our sins, and the destruction of every enemy that would raise itself up against us as his people. He has prepared beforehand this salvation.

We have great joy because of the salvation. We joy for Jesus, but we also joy because he is the Christ, the Messiah, which is my second point: the joy of Christ, a comprehensive king.

We could say that verse two or stanza two, rather, talks about the form that this phrase takes, and it is a musical form. “Joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Break forth in song. Rejoice, sing praises, sing or make music to the Lord at the harp, with the harp, the sound of a psalm, with trumpets, and the sound of a horn. Shout joyfully before the Lord the King.”

Clearly, I believe that this stanza is clearly marked off as a chiastic structure, beginning with “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth,” ending with “Shout joyfully before the Lord the King.” And so we see that the climax of this musical crescendo that builds in response to the advent of Jesus, the climax is an acknowledgement that he is the Lord but he is the King.

The Lord the King. Our joy universal comes from a contemplation of the great privilege we have to celebrate and to exclaim forth that the Lord Jesus Christ has ascended to the right hand of the Father. He has become King of all, king over all kings. He was that from all time and has made that manifestation clear in his advent, his incarnation, his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father. We, our joy is based not simply on Jesus as savior, but Jesus as King.

Jesus Christ, Savior, King, is the content of the gospel that we’re called to proclaim forth and to rejoice in the context of Psalm 98. This, the King, the Lord of hosts, is proclaimed in Isaiah to be the one before whom he stands in the throne room of God. And we come into the frame of God. We come before Jesus, but we also come before the Lord the King. And that is an essential element of our joy.

We have commanded joy here in multiple forms. Lots of different words, several used for singing, several words used for breaking out, several types of musical instruments described. A maturation of joy and singing before God in multiple musical forms is portrayed for us in Psalm 98.

Messianic music making is at the center of this chiastic structure, the very middle of this psalm. The movement of these psalms coming to the advent of ultimately the greater David establishing the greater tabernacle, the church, at the center of that approach, we find this bursting forth with musical instruments. “Sing or make music to the Lord with the harp.” The centrality of musical instruments in the worship of Christ is given to us here.

It is an absolute error to say that somehow we should not have musical instruments in the worship of the church. We talked about that earlier with Davidic worship restored. And here we see the advent of the savior brings forth all kinds of sounds from the created order to worship Jesus Christ the Savior King.

Augustine in his consideration of these two horns that are described here made some interesting comments. We have the harp but we also have in verse 6 where to praise God with trumpets and the sound of a horn. Trumpet was a long flat herald trumpet. The horn was a cornet, a curved horn. And the word for horn here actually originally meant the ram’s horn. So the ram’s horn was originally the instrument that was eventually replaced with a metallic horn, a cornet made along the model of the ram’s horn. So you see this in the Psalms. This is probably referring to the metallic instrument. And yet some people think it might actually be a ram’s horn that’s being used.

Now Augustine commented on this trumpet. He called it a “ductile trumpet” made of brass. And the way it was made was it had to be hammered out and then made, put into use. And Augustine compared this in his sermon on Psalm 98 to the way God hammers on us. He talks about Job and he talks about Paul.

God hammers on Job through the taking of his children, his prosperity, his health. Hammering on Job who is to be a ductile trumpet to praise forth God in the midst of adversity. Because while the hammering is going on, yet Job sounds forth praise to God. And by the end of the process, it is a very clear note that the ductile trumpet of Job sounds forth: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The Apostle Paul hammered on through various difficulties, a thorn in the flesh produced to him, enemies round about. And yet Paul becomes the ductile trumpet, hammered on through the tribulations of God, to sound forth the praises of God through his use by God and through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Men and women, saints, I tell you, I tell myself: may we see our trials and tribulations as the hammering of God on us, his ductile trumpets, to use Augustine’s word, that we might sound forth the praise of God in the midst of the hammering, in the midst of the trials and tribulations, that we may prove ourselves to be what these horns are a pale picture of—the saints of God who bellow forth praise to him, not just with their songs, but with their words as well.

Do we complain under adversities? Then we sound a flat note or a sour note. Do we praise God in the midst of, through, and at the end of the difficulties God places in our path? Then we’re ductile trumpets sounding forth the praise of God.

If Augustine could talk that way, and I think it’s proper, let me talk a little bit about the horn. The metallic horn is a representation of or based upon the model of the ram’s horn. And we see in this description of these horns made by men, brought into the worship of God. We see once more God saying that our vocations are to be given over to producing life in the context of our world.

We look at the life God has created, the ram’s horn, and we then get an idea. We’re going to make something like that. We can use it for worship. We can make a brighter instrument. Maybe make it sound better, make more notes on it, more diverse. God calls us to be recreative under King Jesus in our vocations, to bring all that we are into the praise and worship of God as we beautify things.

I believe that God calls us to exercise vocation in the context of this call to praise as well. That’s what we do. You know, used to have bagpipes that were made on the bladders of animals or stomachs or whatever it was. And now use synthetic materials. That’s not bad. That’s just what this verse says is good. It’s good to move from ram’s horns to cornets. It’s not good to go back to just what’s in nature.

Nature is the great demonstration of God’s power and might and life, but he wants us to look at that and to continue to glorify the world about us according to the model that he sets before us. Even as the Lord Jesus Christ is our model who wants to do the will of the Father as his necessary food for life, we’re called to praise God with our vocational aspects, and we shout forth praises at the ascension of the King is what this set of verses kind of seems to intimate.

The King is enthroned. The Lord God is King. He’s enthroned as King and all of the created order breaks forth in praises before the King, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Luke 1:39 and following: “Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste to a city of Judah and entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. It happened when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary that the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

“Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me. For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greetings sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.’

“And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, for he has regarded the lowly state of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things and holy is his name. His mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.

“He has thrown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers to Abraham and to his seed forever.’”

Mary rejoices in the full aspect of the coming of Jesus as savior. But she also rejoices, as do we when we read that song or sing it, in the crowning, in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is King of kings and Lord of lords. “He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted them of low degree.” He is the King, and our praise for him is centered on that.

I’m fearful that Herod, wicked King Herod, I thought of this as we watched the play, the Christmas program the other night. Wicked King Herod seems to have had more faith—well, maybe I should use the word “belief.” He had a stronger appreciation, let’s put it that way, of who Jesus Christ was than many Christians seem to have in some ways. So probably a dangerous thing to say, but do you understand where I’m going?

He saw a competitor to his throne here and now, not just in the by and by. Herod wanted to kill Jesus because he seemed to understand far better than typically we do, even sometimes, that the Lord Jesus Christ is a competitor to every…