Psalm 98A - A Song to Sing (Part 1)
The superscription to Psalm 98 says “A Psalm." No author is indicated.
There are three strophes to this psalm:
verses 1-3 Why we should sing
verses 4-6 How we should sing
verses 7-9 Creation sings
Strophe #1: verses 1-3 Why we should sing
O sing to the Lord a new song,
For He has done wonderful things,
His right hand and His holy arm have gained the victory for Him.
The Lord has made known His salvation;
He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel;
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
(Ps. 98: 1-3, NASB)
The psalm begins with the exhortation “sing to the Lord a new song." This song would be an example of one of the new songs.
The phrase “new song” occurs in Psalm 33:3;
Sing to Him a new song;
Play skillfully with a shout of joy.
in Psalm 40:3;
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the Lord.
in Psalm 96:1;
Sing to the Lord a new song;
Sing to the Lord, all the earth.
here in Psalm 98:1;
O sing to the Lord a new song,
For He has done wonderful things,
His right hand and His holy arm have gained the victory for Him.
and also in Psalm 149:1
Praise the Lord!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
And His praise in the congregation of the godly ones.
We see it in Isaiah 42:10,
Sing to the Lord a new song,
Sing His praise from the end of the earth!
and again in Rev. 5:9.
And they *sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
Here in the first strophe of Psalm 98, six reasons are given as to why we should sing a new song to the Lord.
1) He has done wonderful things.
We sing a new song to the Lord because we recognize that God is and that He is not silent. The popular Christian philosopher and apologist Francis Schaeffer wrote concerning this topic in his 1972 work, He Is There and He Is Not Silent. From his home in L’Abri, Switzerland, he and his wife, Edith, entertained countless visitors who came to study with them. He begins chapter one, “The Metaphysical Necessity," with these words:
“This book will deal with the philosophic necessity of God’s being there and not being silent, in the areas of metaphysics, morals, and epistemology.” (p. 1)
The two principles, summarized in the title, are simply:
a) God exists
b) God interacts
God is not absent. God is not silent. God is not distant.
God is present. God is concerned. God is active.
God has done wonderful things, God continues to do wonderful things, and God will do wonderful things in the future.
What a statement of hope. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is the confidant assurance of what God will do in the future.
To hope in God is not to wish to escape all of the troubles of the world. To hope in God is to know that he is always there and is always working in those troubles.
2) His right hand and holy arm have gained the victory for Him.
The people of God were encouraged by God Himself, to remember the victory which God delivered in bringing His people out of the bondage of slavery to Egypt. It was God Himself who demanded that the feast of Passover occur each year. The reading of the Haggadah, the liturgy of the Passover, recounts the Exodus during the Seder dinner to remember what God did. God acted dramatically on many occasions to demonstrate that He was there and that He was not silent.
When the Egyptian army was closing in, God parted the Red Sea, allowed the entire nation of Israel to pass through, then closed the waters and drowned the military intent on their destruction.
We are never to forget the God who is not silent.
When Jesus sat with his disciples at the Last Supper, he was sharing the Passover Meal with them. As they broke the bread and drank the cup, Jesus infused this feast with new meaning when He said,
“Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” (Matthew 26: 26-29, NASB)
3) He has made known His salvation -
The Passover feast was a time to recount the salvation of the Lord as He delivered His people into the land which He had promised to Abraham.
The Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, symbolizes God’s salvation through His Son, which was the brilliant plan of God from before the beginning of time.
4) He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations
What began as a teacher with his 12 disciples in an upper room has reached around the world. Christianity has more adherents than any other religion in the world.
from https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
According to a recent study (based on the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion) by The Pew Forum, there are:
2,173,180,000 Christians (31% of world population), of which 50% are Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other.
1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of which 87-90% are Sunnis, 10-13% Shia.
1,126,500,000 No Religion affiliation (16%): atheists, agnostics, and people who do not identify with any particular religion. One-in-five people (20%) in the United States are religiously unaffiliated.
1,033,080,000 Hindus (15%), the overwhelming majority (94%) of which live in India.
487,540,000 Buddhists (7%), of which half live in China.
405,120,000 Folk Religionists (6%): faiths closely associated with a particular group of people, ethnicity or tribe.
58,110,000 Other Religions (1%): Baha’i faith, Taoism, Jainism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Tenrikyo, Wicca, Zoroastrianism, and many others.
13,850,000 Jews (0.2%), four-fifths of which live in two countries: United States (41%) and Israel (41%).
5) He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel.
In 70 AD, the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem.
From Wikipedia, “History of Israel”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel#Jewish–Roman_wars
In 66 CE, the Jews of Judea rose in revolt against Rome, naming their new state as "Israel".[53] The events were described by the Jewish leader and historian Josephus, including the defence of Jotapata, the siege of Jerusalem (69–70 CE) and the desperate last stand at Masada under Eleazar ben Yair (72–73 CE).
Josephus estimated that over a million people died in the siege of Jerusalem. The Temple and most of Jerusalem was destroyed. During the Jewish revolt, most Christians, at this time a sub-sect of Judaism, removed themselves from Judea. The rabbinical/Pharisee movement led by Yochanan ben Zakai, who opposed the Sadducee temple priesthood, made peace with Rome and survived. After the war Jews continued to be taxed in the Fiscus Judaicus, which was used to fund a temple to Jupiter. An arch commemorating the victory was erected in Rome and still exists.
In 1948, the nation of Israel was once again reconstituted.
On 14 May 1948, on the day the last British forces left from Haifa, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.[152]
6) All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God
In both senses - God's national work with His people, Israel, and the spiritual work of God in the spread of the gospel, the work of God has been made known to every nation on earth.
And yet even today, missions are working to reach people groups which have not heard that message.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wycliffe_Global_Alliance,
Wycliffe Global Alliance is an alliance of organisations with the common objective of translating the Bible for every language group that needs it[clarification needed]. Wycliffe was founded in 1942[1] by William Cameron Townsend. It was known as Camp Wycliffe, and it became Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1942. The organisation is named after John Wycliffe, who was responsible for the first complete English translation of the whole Bible into Middle English.[2]
…
As of October 2018, translations of either portions of the Bible, the New Testament, or the whole Bible exist in over 3,350 of the 7,350 languages used on Earth, including 245 sign languages.[5]
The essence of these six declarations is that God saves. His plan of salvation has been revealed to the world. It is the perfect plan. It is the brilliant plan. We sing because of the beautiful works which God has done.
The next strophe begins Part 2.