A Thanksgiving Sermon for MHBC (25 November 2020). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Service will stream live at 7pm.
Thanksgiving begs two questions: (1) To whom or what are we giving thanks? (2) For what reason are we giving thanks? I want to avoid generic answers to these questions and look specifically at a psalm. Psalm 98 has long been a central psalm of gratefulness. For hundreds of years, English speaking Christians have prayed it as part of their evening prayers.
The psalm begins by answering our first question: To whom are we giving thanks? Verse 1: “Oh sing to the LORD a new song.” As I often point out, notice that LORD is in all caps. The verse reads “sing to YHWH.” That’s significant for a couple of reasons. First, this isn’t just talk of a generic God. The fact that the Lord reveals his name means he can be personally known. Second, YHWH is distinguished from all other gods. The command in this psalm is not to sing to the god of your choosing. It is to sing to YWHW, the Lord.
Now that’s significant because human beings have a tendency to fashion gods according to our liking. And with that we often make those gods care about what we care about. But the God of the Bible, the one true God, is not fashioned by humans. This makes a great deal of difference. Let me state it this way. We talk about God being on our side. Countries do this. Sports fans do this. Individuals do this. But a much better way for us to talk would be to say we desire to be on God’s side. It’s a subtle difference, but it puts everyone in their proper place. The LORD, YHWH, he alone is God.[1]
And we are to sing to the LORD a new song. The idea behind a new song is that we are to be constantly refreshed by our praise and worship of the one true God. Composing a new song means giving fresh consideration to the LORD and his beauty. It’s like writing a love letter, where you reach for every adjective and description possible to express just how much you really love the person. Sure, you could say, “I love you,” but there’s so much more, so you press the limits of your language to express that overwhelming, about-to-burst feeling inside. As one of my favorite hymns says it, “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do.”[2]
To whom are we giving thanks? The LORD. Question 2: For what reason are we giving thanks? Look at the second half of v. 1: “for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.” We give thanks because the Lord has done marvelous things. This language is deeply embedded in how God works in the world, specifically his redemptive plan for the world. Let me just show you two examples. In Genesis, he promises the impossible to Abraham. He promises him a son. Genesis 18:14: “Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” Here’s this promise of doing the impossible. Nothing is too hard for the Lord.
We also see this word a few times in Exodus. Exodus 15:11 is a good example with some parallels to this psalm: “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” We give thanks to the Lord because he is unparalleled and he is acting in good and beautiful and mighty ways to redeem his creation. Notice the rest of the verse in Psalm 98. “His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.”
This word salvation is important for understanding the whole psalm. The word is much broader than personal salvation. The idea here is the Lord has accomplished a victory. The psalm pictures him as a mighty and righteous king who is putting things right. Now if you have a Bible you’ll notice this word salvation occurs again in vv. 2 and 3. So why do we give thanks to the Lord? We give thanks to the Lord because is able to do the impossible—namely, redeem a world under the curse of sin.
And this redemption is made known according to v. 2: “The LORD has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.” The whole culmination of the biblical story, indeed, the whole culmination of human history and all creation, is the glory of God. The psalm will make that clear in a moment. When the LORD delivered Israel from Egypt, he made clear to the world that he alone is God.
His faithfulness to Israel is part of his character. He had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the LORD is a covenant-keeping God. He is faithful. Verse 3: “He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God.” Notice this verse begins with Israel and extends to the ends of the earth.
In Genesis 12, God promises to Abram that he will make him a blessing to the nations. This is where we fit in. In his good providence, God chooses Israel as his people so that they might make him known to the world. And through Israel’s history, the Lord himself works until the promised seed of Abram comes. In Christ, God takes on flesh, he fulfills the covenant that Israel could never fulfill, he declares salvation to the nations by winning the victory on the cross over sin, Satan, and death.
Why do we give thanks? We give thanks to the Lord because “at the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”[3] Look how marvelous this is. The world is beautiful, but it is also terribly broken. There’s much pleasure, to be sure, but there’s also great pain. But the Lord determines to act. He doesn’t abandon his creation. He intends to do the impossible. And on the cross, we don’t just get a nice illustration of love and sacrifice, we have a divine warrior, a king, who goes into battle. We have a great David who slays the giants of sin, Satan, and death. Make no mistake about it, the cross was a moment of cosmic warfare, but when the dust clears, the grave is empty and, as C. S. Lewis put, death itself began to work backward.
An itinerant rabbi in the middle east becomes the greatest name in history. Why? Because the LORD has done marvelous, impossible things. And you and I are invited to follow Jesus. We are invited to receive the blessings promised to Abram, to be part of God’s covenant people, not by virtue of what we’ve done, but by what Christ has done. We are invited to receive what he has done, to share in his victory, to receive the Spirit of God, to be freed from sin, Satan, and death. It’s amazing.
If these things are so, how should we respond? Verses 4–6 tell us. Notice the series of commands: Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord!
The only proper response is to sing to the King. Notice that last line: “Make a joyful noise before King YWHW.” Singing is what we do when we can’t contain our joy. It is an ancient human expression of intense emotion. And it is the natural response to those who have seen the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In fact, this will be the response of all creation. It is common for the biblical authors to talk about creation praising, groaning, or doing catastrophic things like stars falling from the heavens, to capture the magnitude of what God is doing. Look at vv. 7–8: “Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together.” If we don’t recognize the King, creation certainly will. But creation joining in is also the response to a future vision. It is the day when the Lord comes to put the world right, when the King returns, as it were.
Verse 9: “before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.” How desperately we need a good King to come. The earliest Christians had a common prayer in Aramaic “Maranatha.” It means “Our Lord, come.” John says it as he closes the book of Revelation, “Come Lord Jesus.” Later, Christians would sing it in that classic Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Immanuel.”
Sunday marks the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is not the Christmas season in the church calendar. Instead, it is a season of darkness, of anticipation, of waiting, for the dawning of Christmas. As we leave here tonight and return on Sunday, our church will have transitioned to the season of Advent. The hope of Advent is there in v. 9. The Lord comes to judge the earth. What cause to we have for thanksgiving? On the cross and in the empty tomb, the Lord has done the impossible, and he is returning put all creation right. And so tomorrow, we can celebrate as Christians, as those who swear our allegiance to the returning King. We eat and drink with the anticipation that one day soon we will do so with the victorious King.
[1] Ps 100:3
[2] “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” by Neander trans. Winkworth.
[3] Gal 4:4–5