(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom.
I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 98
and drive time devotions.
Psalm 98 tells us about three things
that bring you joy every day.
He has saved me.
Number two, he has remembered his love
and faithfulness to me.
Number three, he will judge the world in righteousness.
As it tells us about these things that bring us joy,
Psalm 98 also tells us how to express joy.
And that's what I'd like to focus on today.
A few days ago, we looked at the things that bring us joy
and we'll look at that also later this week.
But I'd like to focus on how to express joy,
not just excitement, not just happiness,
but genuine joy.
Because joy is not just something you have
like inside of you and it never gets out.
If you have joy, you express it.
It's something you express.
If you have it, you express it.
And it's also true, by the way,
that expressing it helps you to have it.
It's like all the fruit of the spirit,
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
They are fruit that is seen,
fruit that's born on the branches of your daily life.
And in Psalm 98, the songwriter gives us pictures
of the sights and the sounds of genuine joy.
So let's ask in our spirit right now
that God's spirit would help us to step into them
as we look at these verses.
How do you and I experience joy, express joy?
Well, number one, you're not gonna be surprised at this one.
We've seen it again and again in Psalms.
Number one, you sing with joy.
Verses one to three, 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.
The Lord has made his salvation known
and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
He has remembered his love and his faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth
have seen the salvation of our God.
Now it's interesting as we begin this Psalm
that many think that Mary was quoting
from portions of this Psalm
in the song that she sang to the Lord
when she was pregnant with Jesus,
when she went and visited Elizabeth,
the song that we now call The Magnificat.
And Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer,
knowing that, he wrote a song based on Psalm 98
that's become one of our favorite Christmas carols,
Joy to the World.
Joy to the World, that Christmas song,
is based on Psalm 98, the trues of this Psalm.
And Joy to the World has the words in it,
heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing.
We're reminded in that song to sing,
and again and again we're told to sing throughout Psalms.
And yet, many of us still think,
I don't sing, I just listen to other people sing.
But God commands us to sing.
We never say about God's command to love,
oh, I don't love, I just watch other people love.
So there must be some things we misunderstand
about this command that causes us to think,
it's okay for me not to keep this command.
And I think the greatest of those is this,
singing is not a performance, it's a prayer.
A lot of things in our culture teach us
that singing is a performance, but it's a prayer.
You're not auditioning for American Idol or The Voice,
you're talking to God.
My friend Rick Machow used to love to quote
that ancient saying, if you sing, you pray twice.
You pray with the words, and you pray with the notes.
So sing, sing for joy, sing for joy to come into your heart.
Sing in church with others,
but I also encourage you to sing to yourself
throughout the day.
Have some songs that keep bringing God's spirit
to your heart.
I have this little song, old chorus,
that I sing again and again and again throughout the day.
It just reminds me that God is with me.
What do you have that you sing again and again?
I have this little chorus that I sing many days,
and it just reminds me that God's spirit
is needed in my life.
Come Holy Spirit, fall fresh on me.
Fill me with your power, satisfy my need.
Now, I just sang those phrases just to let you know,
if I can sing on a podcast as bad as I sing,
you can sing to the Lord throughout the day,
'cause there's something about singing
that connects the truth with your emotions,
that connects the truth with your daily life.
So sing with joy, sing for joy, and then shout with joy.
That's the second thing we're told to do in this song.
Verses four to six, shout for joy to the Lord,
all the earth burst into jubilant song with music.
Make music to the Lord with the harp,
with the harp and the sound of singing,
with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn.
Shout for joy before the Lord the King.
Isaac Watts wrote, "In joy to the world,
"the words, let earth receive her King,
"let earth receive her King."
And here we're told to shout for joy.
That's how we receive the King,
by shouting for joy before the King.
The whole world and all that's in it,
shouting praise to God,
shouting praise because he's done wonderful deeds,
shouting praise because he's remembered his promise,
shouting praise because he's coming to judge the earth.
And there's these words here, shout for joy,
burst into jubilant song, the blast of the ram's horn.
There's a sense of excitement here.
And yet many times there's not enough sense of excitement
and our expressions of praise to God.
We need to learn something from our brothers and sisters
in our black churches,
who some churches have a praise break,
and they call it sometimes a shout,
where they express that shout through a loud voice
or through dancing.
We need to learn something from the brothers and sisters
in our Korean churches,
who have a time of prayer in their church
where some just shout out their prayers.
Now if you've been in one of those prayer services,
you know that everybody prays all at once,
all these voices are heard,
but up in the front is the pastor with a little tiny bell,
and when he dings that bell, everybody stops.
So everybody's heart is together,
but also shouting out their praise.
Most of us, where do we shout?
Mostly only at sports events.
And I would say to you, there's something we can learn there.
In the Bible, shouts often go with a victory.
And for the people of God,
they were either anticipating God's victory,
shouting as they went into battle,
or rejoicing in God's victory,
shouting as they came back victorious from battle.
So I want to share with you this truth,
that if you could more often shout your praise in some way,
when you hear the good news
of God doing something wonderful,
we could bring this truth into our lives.
I mean, at least use a shout emoji
when you're writing back to somebody
about something wonderful that God has done.
Shout your praise.
So we sing, we shout,
and then a third thing in this Psalm, we resound.
We resound with joy, we resound for joy.
Verses seven to nine.
Let the sea resound and everything in it,
the world and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands.
Let the mountains sing together for joy.
Let them sing before the Lord,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the people with equity.
Isaac Watts in "Joy to the World"
wrote the words that reflect what we just read,
repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy.
Let the sea resound, everything in it.
Now this word resound, it means to thunder.
It means to roar.
It means something everybody can hear.
And in these verses,
it is the creation that is praising God.
The sea, the world, the rivers, the mountains,
all are praising God.
One of the things you and I need to do
to bring joy into our lives
is we need to listen to all of creation praising our God.
Look at the sea and recognize
what a great and awesome God he is.
Look at the rivers and see again
what a faithful God he is, how he provides for us.
Look at the mountains and see what an eternal God he is.
Because all of them, all of creation,
the sea, the rivers, the mountains, the stars, everything,
all of them are resounding,
are repeating the sounding joy
of the truth that God will judge the world in righteousness.
You can see in creation the truth of who God is.
And one of the ways that you and I bring joy into our lives
is by looking at that creation
and letting it reflect into our hearts,
the joy of who God is.
So I want to ask you today,
look up from the city streets to see the sky.
Look up from the tasks that you're involved in,
maybe even out in creation and see the mountains,
see the fields, see who God is.
God is a God worth worshiping.
And one of the ways we bring joy into our lives
is by resounding this joy that is in creation.
Let's take a minute to pray to him together.
Our Father, we want to take Jesus' invitation
and we want to live our lives with joy.
He promised us joy.
And this Psalm tells us one of the ways,
many of the ways that we experience that joy.
So help us to sing in our hearts today
and sing with others if we have the opportunity.
Help us today to shout our joy,
to be excited about the things
that you're doing in this world
and to express that excitement to other people.
And God, give us a heart to resound with joy,
to look up and to see,
to look out and see all that you have done,
all that you are doing and to hear the joy
being echoed again and again and again into our hearts.
Lord, joy to the world and joy to our hearts, we pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Join us tomorrow.
We're gonna look together at Psalm 99,
which talks about our holy, holy, holy God.
(upbeat music)