February 1st
Psalm 96

A Missionary Psalm

Psalm 96, an “enthronement” or “Yahweh is king” psalm, is part of the collection of Psalms 93-100 that reflects a major theme in Book IV of the Psalter: no matter what seems to be going wrong in the world, we can have confidence that God reigns over all. Most of the “Yahweh is king” psalms, including Psalm 96, begin with the proclamation “Yahweh is king!” or “Yahweh reigns!”

This psalm begins with six imperatives of which three invite us to sing!  The proper response to God’s saving act is to sing for joy.  Three key truths emerge here:

  • This is a new start for Israel, returned from exile in Babylon. The people have an expectation of God doing good, new work among them.  The proper response to God’s saving act is to sing for joy.
  • Second, a recognition that God’s purpose is justice for the earth and all its peoples. This is a song of present reality and future expectation (see vs.13).          

This is, in fact, a missionary psalm.  Verse 3 – ‘God’s wonders’ -  refers to the Exodus, the deliverance at the Red Sea and the return from exile in Babylon.  Our psalmist assumes that these acts performed on Israel’s behalf are significant not only for Israel but for the world.  They show the pattern of God’s involvement in the world and they indicate God’s saving purposes for the world.  So these are the grounds for the nations to rejoice with Israel, even if the nations don’t know it yet. 

        10 Say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king!
         The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
        He will judge the peoples with equity.’ (v.10)

        He is coming to establish justice on the earth!
    He will establish justice in the world rightly.
    He will establish justice among all people fairly. (v. 13)

This is a new song that remixes the old words, for it celebrates the old, old story of what God has done for God’s people (96.1-3).         

        It is a new song that radically displaces the old gods whose former worshippers must now bring all their worship into the courts of the Lord (v.4-9).

        It is a new song that transforms the old world into the anticipated righteousness and rejoicing of the reign of the Lord (v.10-13).

  • Third, verses 11-13 remind us that the congregation is ‘creation-wide’ that is, humans, the sea, the trees, everything rejoices!

11 Let heaven celebrate! Let the earth rejoice!
    Let the sea and everything in it roar!
12     Let the countryside and everything in it celebrate!
    Then all the trees of the forest too
        will shout out joyfully
13         before the Lord because he is coming!

Theologian Francis Bridger reminds us that mission includes care of the earth.  He writes:

        We are called to be stewards of the earth by virtue not simply of our orientation to the Edenic command of the Creator (Genesis 1-2) but also because of our orientation to the future.  In acting to preserve and enhance the created order we are pointing to the coming rule of God in Christ.  Ecological ethics are not therefore, human-centered; they testify to the vindicating acts of God in creation and redemption.  Paradoxically, the fact that it is God who will bring about a new order of creation need not act as a disincentive.  Rather it frees us from the burden of ethical and technological autonomy and makes it clear that human claims to sovereignty are relative.  The knowledge that it is God’s world, that our efforts are not directed toward the construction of an ideal utopia, but that we are, under God, building bridgeheads of the kingdom serves to humble us and to bring us to the place of ethical obedience.  [1]

This is the church’s salvation song: the good news that in Christ the kingdom has come near and will come in future fullness.  Thanks be to God!

 

[1]   C.J.H. Wright – The Mission of God, p.411