Scripture: Psalm 98
Structure:
- Introduction
- Joy
- To the World
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
I have here in my hand a piece of fruit, an apple to be precise. Apples do not take long to eat. Maybe five minutes if you are not in a hurry. They take a lot longer to grow. If I were to plant the seeds out of this apple and nurture them, it could take anywhere between 5 to 12 years before the seeds produced more apples to eat. That’s a long time.
Earlier in the year we did an Anthems series, featuring some of the hymns and worship songs of the Christian faith. Today, because we are in the season of Christmas Advent, we take a break from our series in First Peter to focus on the well-known Christian anthem Joy to the World.
Joy is like an apple tree, it takes time to grow and produce fruit.
Joy to the World was written by Isaac Watts back in 1719, over 300 years ago. Isaac was the minister of the Mark Lane Congregational Chapel, a large independent church in London. Part of his ministry included training preachers.
Most of you would have heard of Eugene Peterson, who translated the entire Bible into an English paraphrase, for modern readers, called The Message. Well, the song Joy to the World is also a kind of paraphrase of Scripture. Isaac Watts did a similar thing with the Psalms of the Old Testament. Joy to the World is Isaac Watt’s poetic translation of Psalm 98, verses 4-9.
Let me read you the whole of Psalm 98 now…
Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
2 The Lord has made his salvation known
and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
3 He has rememberedhis love and his faithfulness to Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
4 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;
5 make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing,
6 with trumpetsand the blast of the ram’s horn—
shout for joybefore the Lord, the King.
7 Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountainssing together for joy;
9 let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
Joy:
Joy is not the same as happiness. Joy is more resilient, deeper, less fleeting. There is a certain happiness with eating an apple, but that happiness does not last for long. Once the apple is eaten, and hunger returns, the happiness fades. Joy is more like the whole tree. Joy has its roots in the soil of hope. The tree of joy goes on bearing fruit year after year.
I said before that joy takes time to grow. Although Isaac Watts wrote the words for Joy to the World in 1719, his poetry was not put to music until over 100 years later, in 1836, by Lowell Mason. Some say that Mason’s tune was borrowed from the composer George Handel. Others say the similarity is coincidence. Whatever the case, the song Joy to the World started as a poem, much like an apple starts as a seed.
Isaac Watts never really intended the poem to be a Christmas carol. He was simply reinterpreting the psalms through the lens of Christ. What are these ancient songs saying when we understand the Lord (Yahweh) as referring to Jesus?
Lowell Mason was a music teacher in the United States. He published Joy to the World during the Christmas season and it caught on as a Christmas carol celebrating the birth of Jesus.
There is a certain joy in doing something creative. Whether that’s writing a poem or a song or doing wood turning or baking or painting. Whatever it is we create, takes on a life of its own that may be used by God in ways that we could never have imagined, much like Isaac Watt’s paraphrase of Psalm 98.
We have compared joy to a fruit tree. We might also compare joy to the keel of a yacht. The keel is that part of the hull of a boat that we do not see because it is underwater. The keel keeps the yacht upright, especially in high winds. Without the keel the yacht would be prone to capsizing.
In the same way a keel lends stability to a boat, so too joy (born from hope) lends stability to our soul, especially in the storms of life.
We have come through a pretty tough year in many respects. 2020 has been a perfect storm in many ways. Covid has affected so many different aspects of life, even more so overseas than in New Zealand. We are a bit sick of hearing about 2020 and all its difficulties so I won’t go on about it. We look forward (tentatively) to what 2021 might hold – hopefully something better.
This hope of a better year ahead is not unfounded. We have seen reports on the news of how a vaccine against Covid is being rolled out across the UK. While it may take some months for the benefits of this to be felt across the world, there is a certain joy in hearing a remedy is on its way. This joy acts as a kind of keel for our soul; it helps to provide some stability to our lives now.
Psalm 98 begins with the phrase: Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things;
There are a number of psalms which talk about singing a new song to the Lord. This does not mean checking out the latest release from Hillsong. It means we have been through hard times and we are sick of singing the old songs of lament. We are sick of hearing and talking about Covid. We want something good to look forward to. God has given us a reason to stop singing sad songs and start singing joyful songs in praise of the marvellous things He has done.
Walter Brueggemann classifies Psalm 98 as a Psalm of new orientation. Psalms of new orientation are songs written after a community has come out of a difficult time. Sometimes life throws us curve balls or is not fair and we go through a period of suffering and disorientation, when we do not know what way is up. After we have passed through the crucible of disorientation we emerge with a new orientation, a new perspective, a new way of looking at things.
Most of the book of Job describes one man’s dis-orientation. But at the end, after God has spoken, Job sees things differently and is able to sing a new song. He is able to praise the Lord again. Job’s perspective has been enlarged, so now he has a new orientation, one which is deeper and broader in its scope.
Psalm 98 resonates with a number of experiences in Israel’s history, especially their experience of being set free from exile in Babylon. After nearly 70 years as captives in a foreign land, God let the exiles return home to Jerusalem and gave them a whole new orientation. Psalm 98 served as a helpful vehicle for praise in that situation.
While 2020 is only one year, and does not really compare with the many years of oppression Israel suffered in Babylon, Psalm 98 is the kind of song a community might sing after emerging from a year like 2020. It may also be the sort of song one might sing after emerging from a period of sustained personal grief or a crisis of faith.
To the World:
Returning to our image of joy as an apple tree. You cannot eat all the apples yourself. Apples were made for sharing. Joy is multiplied in the sharing. In sharing your apples, you make friends with your neighbours and you get to feel good about doing something life-giving for someone else.
Psalm 98 is made up of three sections. Verses 1-3 are a call for Israel to praise God as their Saviour. Verses 4-6 are a call for all the peoples of the world to praise God as King. And verses 7-9 are a call for all creation (including the non-human world) to praise God as Judge.
The joy in view here is not just for a select lucky few. The joy is for the whole world. The joy is universal in scope.
Verses 1, 2 & 4 of Isaac Watts’ song capture something of the universal scope of the joy associated with Christ’s coming. Verse 1 reads:
Joy to the World; the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room, And Heaven and nature sing.
As I mentioned earlier the Lord that Isaac Watts has in mind here is Jesus. The Lord Jesus is a King. Not just any king but the King of kings. To call Jesus ‘King’ is to say that all power and authority rests with him. Jesus is to be honoured and obeyed, not out of fear of punishment, but enthusiastically and willingly because he is a good King.
The joy is in knowing that Christ is a King who brings salvation and peace to the world, not war, oppression and misery as other kings might.
Jesus’ coming is past, present and future. Jesus has come to earth as a baby born in a manger 2000 years’ ago. But we also await his second coming in glory, at some point in the future. Then there is the sense in which Jesus comes to us in the present, by his Spirit entering our heart.
Now it needs to be said that Psalm 98 does not talk about preparing room in our heart for the Lord. Isaac Watts borrowed that idea from the New Testament. And we can easily see the Christmas connection, with Mary & Joseph struggling to find a room to stay in when they went to Bethlehem for the census.
What then does it mean to prepare Jesus room in our heart? I think this phrase is talking about at least two things: intimacy and imitation.
Firstly, intimacy. Your heart is your inner most core. It is a private place and a sacred part of yourself. It is rightly closed off from public view. The door of your heart has no handle on the outside. It can only be opened from the inside. Most people are not allowed access to your heart but you may choose to let some people in.
To let Jesus into your heart means to show him hospitality and share with him at the deepest level. Preparing room in our heart for Christ requires us to the make ourselves vulnerable and trust the Lord. It means being honest with him and letting him see how poor we are on the inside. To let Jesus into our heart is to risk loving him.
When you let someone in like that you allow them to know the real you. At the end of the day the thing that matters is not how many sermons we preached or how many people we healed. What matters, when all is said and done, is whether Jesus knows us. [1]
So making room for Jesus in our heart is about intimacy. But it’s also about imitation, as in the imitation of Christ.
Your heart is to your soul what ground control is to an astronaut – it is the command centre. To prepare room for Jesus in our heart means to imitate Christ by taking our instructions from him, like an astronaut following the orders of ground control.
Your heart is to your soul what the Beehive is to New Zealand – it is the parliament in which decisions are considered and made. To prepare room for Jesus in our heart means to imitate Christ by letting him be our Prime Minister and following his lead.
Your heart is to your soul what a cockpit is to an aeroplane – it is the place from which you control yourself and set the direction for your life. To prepare room for Jesus in our heart means to imitate Christ by being his co-pilot. He is the captain and His Spirit is the navigator. We are not passengers in our own lives, sitting in the back eating biscuits and drinking coffee. No. We are in the cockpit actively flying our soul with Jesus alongside us setting the course.
To prepare him room in our heart is about intimacy and imitation. We need to let Jesus in and we need to follow his example, because he is our King.
The universal scope of Jesus’ salvation comes out again in verse 2 of the song, which reads…
Joy to the earth, the Saviour reigns! Let men their songs employ;
While fields & floods, rocks, hills & plains repeat the sounding joy.
Jesus is not just the Saviour of humanity, he is also the Saviour of non-human creation as well: fields & floods, rocks, hills & plains. This is a way of describing all things high and low. The reference to floods is perhaps a poetic way of including all sorts of weather. As we heard a couple of weeks ago, nothing is beyond Jesus’ reach.
One thing about joy is that it must be expressed. The kind of joy Psalm 98 and Isaac Watts are writing about cannot be contained. It is graceful and dignified. A mountain or a field does not make a lot of noise but its very presence, its natural beauty, echoes the permanence and majesty of God the creator.
We have likened joy to an apple tree and to the keel of a boat. Psalm 98 makes it clear that joy is also a positive energy, the energy that comes from hope.
If hope is like a wind turbine, then joy is the electricity generated by the turbine. Or if hope is like a hydro dam, then joy is the power generated by the hydro dam. Or if hope is like an open fire, then joy is the heat given off by the fireplace. Or if hope is like a candle, then joy is the light shining from the wick.
You know when you are climbing a mountain, just putting one foot in front of the other, it feels like it’s taking forever and you are never going to get there, when all of a sudden you turn a corner, see the summit and realise the end is in sight. It is at that point, that you get a second wind. You get a fresh surge of energy to keep going and finish the climb.
Joy is that positive energy generated by hope, when we see the end in sight. It must be expressed. And what better way to express joy than in praise to God.
Verse 3 of Isaac Watt’s song is probably not familiar to most of us. We tend not to sing it. Verse 3 reads…
No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.
This verse of the song does not come from Psalm 98, at least not directly. It comes from Genesis 3, where God curses the ground after Adam & Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge.
Jesus’ coming is joy to the world because Jesus reverses the curse of sin. The idea that all of creation, including the ground, is affected by Christ’s coming is touched on in Romans 8 where the apostle Paul writes…
19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 thatthe creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Jesus’ coming means joy for all creation because Christ liberates the ground from the curse of sin and he liberates human beings from our bondage to sin as well.
The last verse of Joy to the World reads…
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love.
This verse roughly equates to the end of Psalm 98 where the author writes…
9 let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.
Isaac Watts does not directly talk about Christ as a ‘judge’ but that is what he means when he refers to Jesus as one who rules the world with truth and grace.
We might tend to shy away from the thought of judgement and may prefer to not think of Jesus as our judge. This may be because we have a distorted view of what judgement is. For us, here in New Zealand, judgement is associated with destructive criticism and putting people down. (Tall poppy syndrome.) But that is not what is meant by Psalm 98 or Isaac Watts.
Jesus does not judge the world with harsh criticism and blind condemnation. No. Jesus judges the world in a compassionate and discerning way with truth and grace. Truth sets people free and grace is something good that we do not deserve. With Jesus truth and grace always go together.
Furthermore, Jesus judges us as someone who is human himself. Jesus understands how difficult it is to walk this life. He wrestled with suffering and temptation as we all do, except he was without sin. To have a judge who is one of us, and who gets us, makes all the difference.
The other thing we note is that Jesus judges the world in righteousness. This means that he is fair and equitable. More than that though it means that Jesus puts things right. His justice restores people and things. Jesus did not come to punish and condemn. He came to make all things new.
You may have heard the story of Fiorello LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII.
One bitterly cold night in January 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.
“It’s a real bad neighbourhood, your Honour.” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” LaGuardia sighed. I expect he was sick of hearing the same old sad tune. So the mayor did something new. He did something creative. Something that would take on a life of its own.
He turned to the woman and said “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.”
But even as he pronounced the sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He took out a $10 bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”
The following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. [2]
I am pretty sure not everyone who appeared before the judge that evening got bailed out by the mayor. I imagine those without a good excuse paid the fine or went to jail, but that’s not the point. LaGuardia’s message was, we need to sing a new song. We need to get a new orientation. We need to be kind and learn to love our neighbour in creative ways.
Mayor LaGuardia’s justice was an imitation of Jesus’ justice. It is a justice that restores. Jesus is a judge who puts things right and in the process gives us a new orientation. Jesus’ righteousness puts the whole world right. He makes all things new.
Conclusion:
Psalm 98 and the song Joy to the World are a call to worship – a call to share the joy. This call starts with God’s people and enlarges to encompass all of humanity and indeed all of creation.
Jesus comes as a Saviour, a King and a righteous Judge and that is cause for real joy because it means Jesus is going to put everything right.
One final observation. Unlike many other psalms, psalm 98 makes no mention of enemies. The joy that God brings eclipses all evil and fills our soul leaving no room for bitterness or grief.
May the goodness of God fill us with joy so completely that all fear and anxiety, all bitterness and resentment would be cleansed from our hearts.
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
[1] Refer Matthew 7:21-23
[2] Brennan Manning, The Ragmuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp. 91-2
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