Sermon for MHBC (11 October 2020). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website.
First sermons are tricky. There’s a variety of topics that are fitting, but I want to do something this morning that will set the trajectory for my ministry here at MHBC. My desire is that I could honestly say, “This is what my ministry is about.” I also hope it will set the trajectory for the future ministry of MHBC. I think it will answer some critical questions for us—namely, what is our driving force? What is our goal? And finally, I hope it might change your perspective on your life.
The topic this morning is neatly summarized by the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What is the chief end (purpose) of man? The answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. To glorify God. That means to make much of him. To celebrate him. To worship him. To value him above everything else. That is the target at which every Christian and every church must aim: The Glory of God.
With that said, Psalm 96 is one of the great places to go for this topic. Let’s take a look at it together. Before we look at the individual verses, let me make a comment about Hebrew poetry. In case you don’t know, Hebrew poetry works differently than English poetry. Our poetry is built around syllable and rhyming structures. Hebrew poetry’s primary device is parallelism—that is groups of lines. These are often in groups of two. For example, look at v. 1: “Oh sing to the LORD a new song” (that’s line one). “Sing to the LORD, all the earth!” (that’s line two). These two lines are connected. They are parallel. In Hebrew poetry, these groups of lines work together, explaining, expounding, contrasting. So this psalm is built around couplets. Each verse, with the exception of v. 13, has two parallel lines that are meant to be read together.
This psalm gives us a lot of instruction. Just notice the commands in vv. 1–3: sing to the LORD (3x), bless his name, tell of his salvation, declare his glory. Let’s zoom in a bit on v. 1. “Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!” Two times we are instructed to sing to the LORD. It’s important that LORD is in all caps. You may already know that in an English Bible that means the underlying Hebrew is the divine name YHWH. So we aren’t talking about a generic God. We are talking about the God who says to Moses, “I am that I am.” This is the living God. Put another way, we are to sing to the God of the Bible. But we aren’t to sing in some haphazard way. We are to sing a new song, which means we are to be refreshed by his splendor. And the whole earth is under obligation to do this.
Then we are carried into v. 2. “Sing to the LORD, bless his name.” This is the crescendo of the three commands to sing. Bless his name. Tell of his salvation from day to day. It’s worth noting that salvation in Hebrew is yeshua, which is, of course, Jesus’s name. Remember that Matthew records the angel saying to Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The news of God’s saving action is worth telling. And it’s worth repeating.
Look at v. 3. “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.” The ESV translates declare here, but really I think a better translation is recount. The basic meaning of the word is to record or count over and over again. So the idea seems to be, “Keep talking about his glory.” Now I love that, and this is where I want to place the central thrust of this message because this is where the psalm places the main thrust. We are aiming for a singular focus on the glory of God.
When we talk about glory, a word picture is helpful. The Hebrew word for glory literally means “heavy” or “weighty.” When we talk about God’s glory, it’s a shorthand way of saying that God is more weighty, more worthy, more valuable, more supreme, more beautiful, than anything else in the entire universe. Recounting or declaring his glory among the nations means being so singularly focused on the splendor of God that making much of him is the reason we get out of bed in the morning.
Now I have to confess to you that this is easier said than done. There is something inside me that fights to give God the glory due him. It is that thing which we inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve. It is the desire to make ourselves gods, to seize control, to determine right from wrong. As Augustine famously put it, “We are curved in on ourselves.” That is, we are bent away from God. I feel that every day of my life and there are seasons of intense struggle.
So what do we do? The remedy is to see and gaze upon the splendor and magnitude of God as he is revealed to us in Christ. Put another way, the remedy is to taste and see that the LORD is good. When I want to motivate my children, I describe something good to them. I tell them how much fun something will be or all the things they will get to do. To stir our hearts or our affections, we need time contemplating, meditating on, pondering, gazing at, the beauty of the Lord. This fires up our heart, it stokes the flames of our affections.
Notice the connection in v. 4. Why should we declare his marvelous works among all peoples? “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.” Why declare his marvelous works? Because he is supremely unique. He is infinitely great. Words fail to describe his magnitude, his worth, his glory. He alone is to be worshiped and revered. No thing and no one compare to him.
Now we hear this talk about other gods, and we might think it doesn’t apply to us. Let me caution you about dismissing idolatry too quickly. There is a reason idolatry is the most prevalent issue in Scripture. It is not just a habit of pagan people from the ancient world. It is a pervasive issue for humanity. Every human everywhere in every time is inclined toward idolatry—worshiping something other than the living God. John Calvin called our hearts “idol factories.” They are constantly producing something to latch onto, to devote themselves to, to love, to fight for, to obsess about. Make no mistake, idolatry is at the root of it all.
Why is the LORD to be feared above all other gods? Verse 5: “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols.” Such a line would have been a bombshell in the ancient world, and I think it’s a bombshell in our modern world. This is an exclusive claim. There is no other god who compares. There is only one God. Derek Kidner comments, “Its robust challenge to the accepted ideas of the day invites the Christian to be equally unimpressed by currently revered nonsense, whatever its pedigree or patronage.”[1] The LORD is incomparable. Verse 6: “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.” I love the way the NET translation brings out the idea of this verse: “Majestic splendor emanates from him.” The LORD is the fount of all that is good and beautiful and worthy and awesome.
When we see this, all we can do is worship. Look at the next verses beginning in 7. “Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!” Just like vv. 1–2, we have the same word repeated three times which builds toward a climax. Verse 8: “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name.” Now look back at v. 2. Notice the climax of sing to the LORD is bless his name. And here the climax of ascribe to the LORD is the glory due his name. This is precisely what Jesus teaches when he instructs us to pray “hallowed be thy name.” It’s a prayer that we would see the beauty and value and uniqueness of the living God, that our heart would come to value him above all else, that our affections would desire him and rejoice in him, that he would be exalted and glorified.
That’s what we are instructed to do in vv. 9–10. “Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! Say among the nations, The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” You might have noticed that there’s a slight transition here. The psalmist says, “The LORD reigns” and then he begins to talk about the Lord’s role as judge. Though it may sound like a bad thing to our ears, it is a thoroughly good thing because it means the world is being set right. This is where we get the gospel, the good news. The psalm closes with a vision of the future and that future is fulfilled in the work of Christ.
In the next series of verses, we see this poetic language that calls nature itself to rejoice. Verses 11–13: “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.” This nature language is a poetic device used by the prophets to talk about the LORD doing something unparalleled, usually this is related to the LORD’s coming like it is here.
So from the psalmist’s perspective, there is reason to rejoice because there is future hope. The LORD, the king, is on the move. He is coming. He is coming to set the world right. He is coming to reverse the curse. He is coming to fill creation with his presence. He judges with goodness and faithfulness.
We have the advantage of the NT. Some of the Gospel writers tap into this hope. For example, Mark opens his Gospel by saying, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Preparation for the Lord’s coming. That’s the task of John the Baptist. And who is the coming Lord? His name is Jesus. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection secure the redemption of God’s creation and for those who embrace him as king, we share in his resurrection.
So we have this psalm that calls us to glorify God. How do we do that? We do that when we follow his commands. We do that when we pursue holiness. We do that when we strive for unity. We do that when our lives are marked by teachings of Jesus. We do that when we find our delight and pleasure in the worship of the Lord.
It is October, which is Reformation month. One of the rallying cries of the Reformation: soli Deo gloria, which is a Latin phrase that means “To God alone be glory.” If you were to look at a piece of music composed by Bach, you would see the letters “SDG.” Bach understood that all of life, even creating music, was about the glory of God.
As we think together on this first Sunday, I hope you might consider what it looks like for you as an individual and what it looks like for us at MHBC to be singularly focused on the glory of God. I pray that will be our heartbeat.
[1] Psalms 2:380.