SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel most regularly, most Sundays of the year, on the four Sundays before Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: They call it the Advent season.
SPEAKER_00: We break from our book studies and do some Advent themes.
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like a copy, raise your hand.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be uh looking at Psalm 98 today.
SPEAKER_00: Just raise your hand up.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be glad to drop one off at your row, your aisle.
SPEAKER_00: So we have uh looked at already hope and peace, and today joy.
SPEAKER_00: Next week, love.
SPEAKER_00: So if you need a little bit more of any of those, and I think all of us need a lot more of all of those, uh, you want to make sure to be here and uh bring some friends along as well.
SPEAKER_00: Bob um uh Bob Goff writes a book uh called Catching Whimsy.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna put the quote up on the screen, but I love the this quote from the introduction.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Whimsy isn't something we just stumble into, happen upon, or that sticks to us unnoticed like a drier sheet.
SPEAKER_00: It is something we need to chase after every day with intention, resolve, and tenacity, not unlike a child trying to catch a bubble as it floats through the air.
SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to do, but you can spot someone who is caught up to Whimsy a mile away.
SPEAKER_00: It shows up as joy and hope and generosity and selflessness and endless amounts of curiosity.
SPEAKER_00: Love it, quote from the introduction of Catching Whimsy by Bob Goff.
SPEAKER_00: So, what if all the songs that we sing at Christmas time, that we sing so many times, some of us the older we get, the more we've sung these songs, the less they sink in because we've just gotten used to them and our familiarity breeds a bit of indifference.
SPEAKER_00: What if we could kind of wake up, reawaken to all of that again?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we do that if we wanted to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 98 invites us, I think, to the possibilities that there might be a joy that's unshakable that might last and endure past those times of trial, past the shadows that cover our lives sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to take a look at that today.
SPEAKER_00: I'll put the notes and quotes, make those available to you up there on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your camera on your phone, you want to shoot the uh QR code, you'll be able to jump and grab those before uh we get into the study.
SPEAKER_00: And I also want to thank the folks who joined us last week online from Imus Cavit, I think that's how you say it, or Cavite, uh Philippines, is where they're from.
SPEAKER_00: Perth, Australia, Sydney, Australia.
SPEAKER_00: Evidently, Australia is uh going all TVC last week.
SPEAKER_00: So there's there's yeah, two different.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's amazing, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And Liberty, Missouri as well.
SPEAKER_00: So we've this is just a beautiful thing about the you know the reach of the online ministry, and so grateful to the Lord for it.
SPEAKER_00: Today we'll be talking about, as I said, unshakable joy.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know I I'm one of the preachers that you will know of that loves Christmas time, loves the advent season.
SPEAKER_00: I love the songs, I love the lights, I love all the cultural traditions.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I love Christmas movies.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have already watched one again this year?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00: My faves are, if you're taking notes, White Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I also like Joya Noel.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody has anybody seen Joya Noel?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen that, it's really, really good.
SPEAKER_00: I want to recommend that one to you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I like the presents.
SPEAKER_00: I like getting together with a bunch of dysfunctional family members.
SPEAKER_00: This is just so much fun, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And and but watching some of the hope, joy, peace, and love uh even invade those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Occasional uh times where the family gets together and wears an ugly Christmas sweater together.
SPEAKER_00: I really like this one.
SPEAKER_00: I keep, I have to show this every year.
SPEAKER_00: Those of you who've been here for a few years.
SPEAKER_00: The parents seem to really, especially the father, really seems to be enjoying this.
SPEAKER_00: The teenagers, not so much.
SPEAKER_00: Um, to them it's a living dad joke and uh an awful one at that, as you can kind of tell.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we might sing Joy to the World, which someday, by the way, inspired Isaac Watts to write that carol.
SPEAKER_00: And that carol, um, as you, some of you may know, that carol was actually not written about Christmas, the first advent of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It was his intention to actually be looking forward to the second coming of Christ when he wrote Joy to the World.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, nonetheless, um, the hope, the, the, the peace, the joy, and the love of this season, um, there are people who aren't even Christians, aren't even believers around the world, that are leaning into a humanistic version of all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it if it softens people up a little bit and and that sort of thing, that's great.
SPEAKER_00: I'm happy for that.
SPEAKER_00: But I want them to get to the unshakable joy part too.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really anxious for them to be able to experience that and experience that in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's a fellow that some of you will know of, uh, maybe you've read some of his books or follow him on um on the internet in some way.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Arthur Brooks.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he is a professing Christian as well, and he says there's a difference between happiness and joy.
SPEAKER_00: Happiness is the feeling you have when things are going well.
SPEAKER_00: Joy is something deeper, an elevated state that can persist even when things are not going well.
SPEAKER_00: And you've heard people say this before.
SPEAKER_00: Happiness tends to depend on happenings.
SPEAKER_00: Joy actually is a little bit deeper, as Brooks has said.
SPEAKER_00: And we here at the village chapel, believing what we believe about Jesus, about God, about what the Bible teaches us, we think that in the dawn of redeeming grace, God is offering us at least these four things: unquenchable hope, unwavering peace, unshakable joy, and unconditional love.
SPEAKER_00: All of that found in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, today, as I said, we're going to look at Psalm 98.
SPEAKER_00: Um, today is also in some church traditions called Gaudite Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just from a Latin word that means rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um it's the joy Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: We're sort of halfway through the Advent season, we're leaning toward Christmas, but we don't want to be completely there yet.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna look at this old song from the Old Testament and just trace the way the God of the Bible wants his people to be joyful.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that some of you uh maybe throughout your life, when you went to church, it was sort of like, let's go be with those grumpy people on Sunday morning or those stoic people that check their emotions at the door, they come in and sit down and fold their hands, and they're the frozen chosen.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we don't want to be the frozen chosen, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It is cold, yes, everything freezes out there around this time of year, like it is uh perhaps uh at your house, all the plants, all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord wants us to be filled with joy, and I'm so excited about that and I want to talk about that.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna study a psalm.
SPEAKER_00: I'll remind you that the Psalms serve lots of purposes.
SPEAKER_00: Here are five of them.
SPEAKER_00: They stir the emotions, and I just use this acronym SIDSI when I'm talking about the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: They stir the emotions, they inform the mind, they direct the will, and whose will doesn't need a little directing.
SPEAKER_00: Yours does, so does mine, they all do, right?
SPEAKER_00: SIDSI, and so C is stimulate the imagination.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I start to see things in the Psalms that I might not have imagined when I was thinking about God, when I was thinking about my faith life, that category of my life.
SPEAKER_00: I start to see things in the Psalms a little bit differently because the great old poets, the old songwriters from the past have written so beautifully in ways that we can see things with images that inspire worship lastly.
SPEAKER_00: So before I read the text, or before we read the text, which I would like your help with that this morning, allow me, if you will, a prayer for illumination, asking the Lord to help us.
SPEAKER_00: God our Father, while we live in a dark and broken world where there are things like violence and shootings and wars and animosity, you have bestowed on us, your sons and daughters, beauty for ashes and the oil of gladness to heal our mournful souls.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, remind us today that it is in the nearness of your presence that we find sustaining grace and matchless mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Open our sin-sludged ears to hear the beckoning call of the Holy Spirit, inviting us to return home to you.
SPEAKER_00: Teach our wandering hearts that it is in you alone we may find unshakable joy.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, help us look to and humbly bow before King Jesus, for he is our life, he is our light, he is our all in all.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 98 is in Latin church services called Contate Domino, which really simply means to uh sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to do that as we read Psalm 98.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be reading a lyric that is to be sung.
SPEAKER_00: And it's, you know, this particular song, like or this particular psalm, rather, like I said, has inspired songs over the years.
SPEAKER_00: It's classified as some of the psalms are, they have different categories, theologians do when they when they categorize the psalms.
SPEAKER_00: They might say, This psalm is a wisdom psalm, like Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of wisdom language.
SPEAKER_00: But Psalm 98, on the other hand, is what we might call a royal psalm.
SPEAKER_00: And it might also fit into the category of a psalm of praise or a hymn of praise.
SPEAKER_00: So as a royal psalm, it's going to highlight the kingship, the majesty of God.
SPEAKER_00: And as a hymn of praise, it's going to respond to God in great praise.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I would love it very much if you would read the words aloud.
SPEAKER_00: There's just a few verses here, not that many, uh, nine of them.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to break it in little chunks, so if three three different parts.
SPEAKER_00: So if you'll read with as much gusto as you can, I would so greatly appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll learn a little bit just from reading it together.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.
SPEAKER_00: For he has done wonderful things.
SPEAKER_00: His right hand and his holy arm have gained the victory for him.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has made known his salvation.
SPEAKER_00: He has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: He has remembered his loving kindness and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
SPEAKER_00: So just a few comments as we get there.
SPEAKER_00: And you may have your Bible in front of you open, as some of you do.
SPEAKER_00: You like to take notes in the margins and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just putting it up here on the screen so that we're all reading from the same translation, English translation, that is.
SPEAKER_00: But we see that verses one through three rehearses six things that God has done in the past.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bible and you want to look at those six things, let me just point them out to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's really simple, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: He has done wonderful things.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, number two, his right hand and his holy arm have gained the victory for him.
SPEAKER_00: Not gained the victory for me, although he does do that.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important that we do understand that God has his own agenda in the history of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we sometimes forget that because we think of God.
SPEAKER_00: We've been trained to think of everything as about us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we, as spiritual narcissists of our own sort of product of our own generation, and for some really bad preaching that's out there, we tend to think that God is, you know, his whole agenda is about making me happy when it's really about making me holy.
SPEAKER_00: And because he knows that holiness is actually for my greatest good and will bring him the greatest glory as well.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that way.
SPEAKER_00: I always tend to think here's my list of things to do today, God.
SPEAKER_00: Get this done and get it done as soon as possible, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes in my prayers, I'll even tell him how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: How presumptuous of me.
SPEAKER_00: Less than a tiny little ant in the universe, and yet I presume to be telling the creator of all things exactly what he should do for me.
SPEAKER_00: But his right hand and his holy arm have gained the victory for him.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, the Lord has made known his salvation.
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the Lord is not doing all of this in a corner somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: He's not hidden.
SPEAKER_00: He's not trying to hide from us.
SPEAKER_00: Some people say occasionally, if God would just show himself, then I'd believe.
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you are telling the truth.
SPEAKER_00: God has revealed himself, there's not just a mountain of evidence for God, there's a universe full of evidence for God.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, it's as close as your nose.
SPEAKER_00: It's as close as the DNA in your body, which Bill Bryson's book, The Body, I think it's called, says that if you were to stretch human DNA, if you put it each strand of DNA from your body on end, it would go from here not just to the moon, but to Pluto.
SPEAKER_00: You are literally a cosmic creature in your DNA.
SPEAKER_00: Accident or design?
SPEAKER_00: Seems to me you take a lot less faith to believe that it's design.
SPEAKER_00: Something that complicated, something amazing like that is really powerful, isn't it, when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is not hiding, he has revealed himself, and it's even as close as your nose.
SPEAKER_00: He's revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nation.
SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot too.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of in our world today, nobody believes the same thing about what's right or wrong.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of claims to things that used to be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Now they're right.
SPEAKER_00: You know, even bad is good, so said Michael Jackson.
SPEAKER_00: And I know what he was saying.
SPEAKER_00: I understand some of that.
SPEAKER_00: But when we start to have the breakdown of words, when they start to mean nothing, that's one of the great things, that's one of the worst things that can happen in a society or in a culture.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Tower of Babel?
SPEAKER_00: Even God in the heavens looks down and sees all of the chaos as they try to build their own tower to the heavens and to sort of reach the heavens on their own instead of receiving God's revelation.
SPEAKER_00: So God decides to strike them and so that they end up speaking different languages.
SPEAKER_00: And it just knocks them, their pride back down, knocks them back down to size.
SPEAKER_00: It actually works for them.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is not hiding, the Lord has revealed himself in multitudinous ways.
SPEAKER_00: All we have to do is open our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: He's revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Number five, he's remembered his loving kindness and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's up on the screen as well.
SPEAKER_00: And that reminds us what the motivation of God is in wanting you to be joyful.
SPEAKER_00: He loves you.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you not to be miserable.
SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, you kind of want to go around the world, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Just stopping at several churches that have those signs out front, you know, that are just filled with those messages that are like, turn her brown, you know, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And the message is so harsh and caustic, and yet you want to say to them, don't you, where's the joy?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the where's the love of God on display here?
SPEAKER_00: Is that you're drawing me in by what?
SPEAKER_00: By shaming and condemning, or are you drawing me in by showing me the love of God in the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: And the love of a God who actually is righteous and holy, and he wants you to know his joy, to experience his joy.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to remember his loving kindness and his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And six, all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, there's nowhere that you could go where there isn't some testimony about this God who is there.
SPEAKER_00: And this is echoing or actually foreshadowing what we're getting what we would read in Romans chapter 1, right?
SPEAKER_00: That literally every, no one has an excuse for the idea that there's some kind of God somewhere that put this all together.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we're sentient creatures, we're actually self-aware, we actually look around, we can sense stuff or hear stuff, or if we can't hear stuff, we can feel stuff, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: We know something made all of this, brought this into being like it is.
SPEAKER_00: It's fantastic when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord hasn't left himself without a testimony, he has made himself really well known.
SPEAKER_00: So, verses one through three, those six things God has done.
SPEAKER_00: Verses four redirects our response in the present, you know, from the sing that we're told there.
SPEAKER_00: But it's gonna, in verses four through six, talk about us playing instruments, shouting.
SPEAKER_00: Can we really do that in church?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in some churches you can't.
SPEAKER_00: But in this one, you could, even though we don't do a whole lot of that.
SPEAKER_00: Every now and then, though, we get a shouter.
SPEAKER_00: And I, for one, I kind of like it once in a while.
SPEAKER_00: If we just would have some direction to our shouting, that would be awesome.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, grow up, I grew up in the frozen chosen, you check your emotions at the door, and then you walk and fold your hands and fall asleep to the message.
SPEAKER_00: That's and you know, that's essentially what we had.
SPEAKER_00: But what about the instructions of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus added, and with all your mind as well, when he was talking to a lawyer who needed to know that he should love God with all of who he is, including his mind.
SPEAKER_00: But your soul is in there in that command, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And yet we find ourselves kind of difficult every now and then in some churches anyway, to make any kind of you know, show or display of emotion.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you were raised in a real, don't raise your hand, but you were raised in a really quiet, stoic kind of church.
SPEAKER_00: And then were you ever, did you ever go somewhere where they really swung from the rafters?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was it was awesome for me the first time it happened.
SPEAKER_00: I think I may have told before that we were in a glow, what was called the glory barn once.
SPEAKER_00: And you literally were, you dance your offering forward, you know, and threw it in the thing.
SPEAKER_00: And then if there wasn't enough, they recounted and had another dance number.
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, and yeah, we evidently there wasn't enough.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you aren't, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So you start moonwalking your way in and you do everything you can to you get everything right and express it the right way.
SPEAKER_00: But let's not go that far.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I I mean, we, yes, it's the end of the year.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we need to keep the lights on and keep the electricity going and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But let's remember this is all about gathering to worship the Lord, and part of the way he instructs us to worship him, a whole lot of people just ignore it.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's to shout.
SPEAKER_00: What does the Lord know about you and me, the way he's designed us, that we need to sing, we need to shout a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: So, with all of that in mind, I invite you to read the next part, which is this beautiful middle part.
SPEAKER_00: And if you would do me the favor, just on this one particular occasion, let's do what we say as we say it.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: Shout joyfully all the earth break forth and sing praises, sing praises to the Lord with a lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody, with trumpets and the sound of the horn, shout joyfully before the king, the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: See, some of you are gonna go home and shout for an hour and a half at a football game.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and some of us, it's like Kim was talking about laughing earlier.
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, yeah, we were laughing a whole lot during that sort of comedy thing the other night.
SPEAKER_00: It's so funny to belly laugh at stuff, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And how good that is for us as human beings.
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's actually not just emotionally good for us, it's physiologically good for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's really good for our brains and our minds and everything, but not just to do it just for the sake of doing, but to direct it to the Lord the King, who in his great majesty he has even called us, not just invited us, but summoned us and commanded us to shout to him.
SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
SPEAKER_00: Having sung and shouted Psalm 98 a little bit, we increase our joy as all of creation joins us groaning for, longing for the great day of the Lord when he's promised to return and set all things right.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 7 through 9 remind us of that, and we'll read them in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're all about what God intends to do in the future.
SPEAKER_00: The first section was about what God has done in the past.
SPEAKER_00: The second section was about how we respond to God in the present.
SPEAKER_00: And this last section wraps up, verse 9 especially, wraps up with a promise about what God intends to do in the future, and it's really, really wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: Through that, when I think about this psalm all week long, I kept thinking, joy is the offspring of past gratitude and future hope.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say it again.
SPEAKER_00: Joy, right now, present joy is the offspring of past gratitude and future hope.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that Advent gives us an opportunity to talk about those categories like that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, with all of that in mind, let's read this last section of Psalm 98 together.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: Let the sea roar and all it let's do that again.
SPEAKER_00: I thought your roar could be better, I think.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: They at nine o'clock got it maybe a little bit there.
SPEAKER_00: Roar was a little more, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Let's do that.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: Let the seed and all it contains, let the world and those who dwell in it, let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: For he is coming to judge the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you now are thinking to yourself, wait a minute, man, we were just talking joyfully about judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: And I've said here before at the village chapel, I am one that is very excited, happy, glad, what?
SPEAKER_00: About the one who's actually the ultimate judge.
SPEAKER_00: And it's because of his nature and his character that I rejoice in his righteous judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that, just explore that a little bit, that verse nine.
SPEAKER_00: Because in verse nine, you see, it it there is this promise of the return of the king, right?
SPEAKER_00: Before the Lord, for he is coming.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you guys that love Tolkien and Lewis, the return of the king, man, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking for that.
SPEAKER_00: The one who's ultimately in charge is coming back.
SPEAKER_00: That's good, right?
SPEAKER_00: All right, so we have the return of the king.
SPEAKER_00: What's the promise that he's offering us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's coming to judge.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, now maybe some people are going, I don't know, I'm not so excited about that.
SPEAKER_00: And yet at the same time, the same people will say they really, really hate injustice in the world.
SPEAKER_00: They really hate human trafficking, they really hate domestic violence.
SPEAKER_00: They can't, it just can't even begin to fathom why somebody would go into a school like Brown University and do what they did yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: And see, the world is broken.
SPEAKER_00: And the righteous judge needs to come and set things right.
SPEAKER_00: And no amount of humans setting up little laws that people ignore or don't get enforced, no amount of that, no amount of throwing money at some, no amount of even the some of these things are good, they need to be done, but they're not the ultimate solution here.
SPEAKER_00: We need the king to come back and to set things right because they are broken.
SPEAKER_00: And I look in the mirror every day and see part of what's broken in the world, and so do you, whether or not you even know it.
SPEAKER_00: So we see the promise of the return of the king, the promise of judgment, but that his judgment has a certain characteristic to it and a scope.
SPEAKER_00: His scope is he's coming to judge the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: Not just here, not just in one neighborhood in Nashville that some of you might not like.
SPEAKER_00: Not just in one state in the United States that some of you might not loathe, not just one group of people from one political persuasion that some of you loathe.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming to judge the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news is he's the only one that could actually do that and do it righteously.
SPEAKER_00: And so I am glad myself that he's coming to set right what is wrong in this world, including some of the stuff that needs to be set right in me and the stuff that needs to be set right in you.
SPEAKER_00: So what we see in Psalm 98, don't we, is that there's a wonderful Savior in the first three verses depicted there.
SPEAKER_00: And so we sing to him and we begin to shout to him because he's a mighty king, and the whole world should respond to him that way because he's the mighty king.
SPEAKER_00: And he's the righteous judge, the judge we always wanted, because he's the judge we've always needed.
SPEAKER_00: And he's the only one that can actually set it all right.
SPEAKER_00: So in Psalm 98, it's not just an emotion that's being described and the call for us to sing and shout and rejoice before the Lord, nor is it about mere sentimentality that we might have on display in our own culture in this seasonal moment that we're in right now.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it's just about sentimentality.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm okay with sentimentality.
SPEAKER_00: I I'm I'm but it has its place and it needs to be held in that place.
SPEAKER_00: And it does me no good at all to think about ugly Christmas sweaters.
SPEAKER_00: When I go to the hospital to visit somebody who just lost somebody or who's about to lose somebody.
SPEAKER_00: I need something that's an unshakable kind of joy that I can point them to.
SPEAKER_00: And the king of that, of course, is the Lord Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's the settled, this unshakable joy is the settled celebratory confidence of knowing that God has acted.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 98 teaches us that with those six things, that God is acting.
SPEAKER_00: So he's receiving our praise, he's hearing from us.
SPEAKER_00: He loves it that we're shouting and singing to him and that we're focused on him and worshiping him.
SPEAKER_00: And he will act to redeem his people and restore the world.
SPEAKER_00: All of what's in verse 9, you see, is ultimately going to be fulfilled in the return of the king, the second coming of Jesus, the second advent, the one we still are looking forward to in King Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that claimed in Luke 24, 44, that all of the Psalms point forward and find their fulfillment in him.
SPEAKER_00: If I believe Jesus about what he said there, then I can see how Psalm 98 is really about him ultimately, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 98 calls us to both experience and express joy.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a noun joy, it's also the verb rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Not because God needs affirmation, but because we need formation.
SPEAKER_00: We need our minds renewed by the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Uncheckable joy is not the result of just thinking positive thoughts, but of rehearsing, reflecting upon, and believing God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: You see the difference?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not opposed to positive thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Positive thinking is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's great, that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, I can't hope in me.
SPEAKER_00: I have to hope in a power that is much greater and higher than myself.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that is the Lord God who has revealed himself in Scripture and called us in Psalm 98 to actually respond to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, last week I used a word that I had no idea was gonna stir up the kind of response that it did.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and it was because we had so many medical uh community people in this church, everybody kept coming up to me, going, neuroplasticity, dude, way to go! You know, it was like it was kind of funny, it was a little strange, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm gonna do it again this week because that was so good, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Um so what modern neuroscience, I just want to explain a little bit further this time, what modern neuroscience has recently called neuroplasticity, the church has for a long time called discipleship and Christian formation.
SPEAKER_00: See, neuroplasticity is that is that bit of us, the brain actually has this ability, and science just gave it a name.
SPEAKER_00: God created it a long and designed a long time ago, but science just gave it a name because we're just now discovering a whole lot of things that God's already done a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: But your brain, your mind actually builds new neural pathways when you think a thought or repeat or rehearse some kind of truth or something, and it becomes your response to something that's happening to you from the outside.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're just saying, since we are already doing that, why don't we choose our neural pathways?
SPEAKER_00: Let me retrain my brain to think about the Lord, to focus on the Lord in response to all of the stuff around me that's going on.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of just having that jerk reaction where I just strike back at somebody, maybe for half a second because I've actually started to memorize scripture and studied it enough.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit speaking it to me, recalling it to me, might say to me, Jim, be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven you.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, I can operate out of the well of those truths, those realities that are a part of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: I'm choosing actually the pathways that are going to be uh made in my own brain.
SPEAKER_00: There's no joy like the joy of having been graced by somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that yourself?
SPEAKER_00: I think you probably do.
SPEAKER_00: Um, not given something that you know you don't deserve is what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And if if if you had to, I'm pretty sure each one of us could actually think back, just reflect for a moment, when you were graced by a friend, by a family member, maybe, and they've I I realize they've all failed us, but you have been graced by people before.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that?
SPEAKER_00: And do you even recognize that?
SPEAKER_00: All right, a gamillion times more than that.
SPEAKER_00: The God of the universe who created and designed you has graced you in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he's paid the price on the cross for literally every single one of your sins, past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_00: The work is finished.
SPEAKER_00: It's been accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: Your forgiveness has been finished and accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great news?
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that do to you when you let that sink into your neural pathways?
SPEAKER_00: Your neuroplasticity is going nuclear, man.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to go to that table, which we normally go to last week.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, we just thought, yeah, it's December.
SPEAKER_00: Let's shake things up.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we can cause a church split or something, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just let's just see what happens, see if anybody gets up.
SPEAKER_00: No, we actually did this because we had all those kids up here last week.
SPEAKER_00: It just made more sense to do this this week, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna come up here and we're gonna remember and we're gonna reflect upon what God has already done in Christ Jesus to reconcile us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: And that it's not about me balancing out the moral scales, but it's not about it's not about me doing anything other than trusting Christ, who laid down his life on the cross for me and paid the price for all my sins, past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to remember our salvation and the joy of our salvation is that really starts to hit you when you know you've been graced by his salvation.
SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't earn it, you can't buy it, you can only receive it as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: That's being graced by the Lord, and that's really wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: Could you do that in your household, maybe for each other, as Jesus did for us?
SPEAKER_00: Could we reflect his image a little bit more?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we could.
SPEAKER_00: But for a for this moment, and when we come to the table, I want you to dwell on the fact that you have been graced.
SPEAKER_00: It goes back, God's plan for doing this goes all the way back into our Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: There's no difference between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God.
SPEAKER_00: He, all along, before the foundations of the world, he had a plan to save a wayward planet and wayward individuals like we are.
SPEAKER_00: We see that even the Psalm 16, I believe, is King David writing, he says, You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.
SPEAKER_00: You see how it's all wrapped up in the it's a gift.
SPEAKER_00: He grants it to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like I don't pull myself up by my bootstraps to get joyful.
SPEAKER_00: No, I just get grateful.
SPEAKER_00: And then he gives it to me as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: And it's all about his presence, not with a T, but his presence being with us, and we with him.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, it's so important.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus, echoing that same kind of line of thinking, I've told you this so that my joy may be in you.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus wants for his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: If you're one of his disciples, if you're somebody who follows Jesus and you claim to be a Christian, this is what Jesus wants for you.
SPEAKER_00: Not silliness, not mere happiness that depends on happenings, but that celebratory confidence in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Celebrate him.
SPEAKER_00: He wants his joy to be in you, and he wants your joy to be made complete.
SPEAKER_00: So, like Psalm 98, hymn of praise, and there's tons of other hymns of praise, by the way, in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 33, 66, 95, 96.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're all hymns of praise.
SPEAKER_00: They have these elements in them, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: The summons, which is, oh, sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So summoning us, let's sing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've been doing that.
SPEAKER_00: This hour in our worship service, we continue to do it as we are a people gathered.
SPEAKER_00: There's the story, for he has, and then in this psalm, there's six things.
SPEAKER_00: He's done all of this, and that's the story.
SPEAKER_00: We're singing the story of God and his salvation for us.
SPEAKER_00: The vision is all the ends of the earth have seen.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he wants it to go everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: He wants his song to be sung everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: The response is that we would shout joyfully to the Lord, that we'd be so grateful.
SPEAKER_00: And when you've been graced, I don't, this just happened to me last week.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna, I can't give you the details, but I'm just gonna say it was one of those moments where I wasn't just a part of some kind of silly high moment with a with a sporting event or something like that, which is fine.
SPEAKER_00: But it just dawned on me that the Lord had been generous to me even in a moment when I was really aware of the fact I didn't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: And there came a little tiny bud of a flower of joy, unshakable joy.
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't recoil in shame or anything.
SPEAKER_00: I looked to him and I said, Oh my gosh, you, my savior, my God, what you have done for me and in me.
SPEAKER_00: This is joy.
SPEAKER_00: In a way I don't always think of it.
SPEAKER_00: God is our creator.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and the crescendo, also, I'm sorry I should have pointed that out as well.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 98, crescendos, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It moves from the individual singing and and and and and and singing about what God has done.
SPEAKER_00: It moves to the the sort of call for all the nations, and then it moves for all creation.
SPEAKER_00: And I I really like the anthropomorphisms uh that the psalmists use when they're sort of saying things like, um, let the sea uh roar, let let the rivers clap their hands, you know.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of my uh my mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: She whenever she's she's home to be with the Lord, but but whenever you came into her presence, she always said both your first name and your last name.
SPEAKER_00: And she clapped her hands as she did.
SPEAKER_00: So for me, it was Jimmy Thomas, you know, three times.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jim Thomas, you know, whatever, like that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just as if every bit of who you are mattered to her in that moment, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And this is the way the Lord is too.
SPEAKER_00: He's so glad when we come into his presence.
SPEAKER_00: And how about when we come into his presence, we might look to him and be glad to come into his presence as well.
SPEAKER_00: So when we come up here to take communion with gladness of heart, even in our repentance, let it be joy-based repentance, not shame-based repentance, not fear-based repentance, but joy-based repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we know the response from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The promise of Scripture tells us that as we turn to Him, He then, as we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That's joy-based repentance, and that's what we want to come and express to our Creator, our Almighty God, our eternal God, for his unconditional love for us.
SPEAKER_00: So the results of Psalm 98, God is glorified, God's people are filled with joy, move to repentance, gain new perspective, renewed confidence.
SPEAKER_00: The watching world hears it and sees how glorifying God results in joyful saints.
SPEAKER_00: Last hour somebody came up to me right before the uh worship service at the 9 o'clock service and said that their visiting member of their family, an adult, had come in a week ago, and as they left the building, the big comment from this person about this church, and they hadn't been in the church uh uh very much uh recently, but she just told her dad, and he told me at the nine o'clock, he said she was overwhelmed with the joyfulness of the people in the room.
SPEAKER_00: And may that mark us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, may we be people who are joyful, not silly, stupid, not trivial joy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the kind that we just have this calm confidence in God's finished work on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And so it it though the world roars against us, and though the circumstances of our lives may not be great, you know somebody, so do I.
SPEAKER_00: We all know somebody who somehow or another has been able to navigate trials joyful, still joyful, somehow trusting God in it all.
SPEAKER_00: And I I commend that to you and to myself as well.
SPEAKER_00: The only way that can happen, I'm sure, is when God is glorified, when God's people are filled with joy.
SPEAKER_00: Not something they gin up, but something that's given to them and the watching world begins to see it as a testimony.
SPEAKER_00: Derek Kidner says, the songs that we sing now are a rehearsal.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: And God's presence among his worshipers is a prelude to his appearing to the world.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Christ, indeed, Psalm 98, that is gonna find its ultimate fulfillment in the return of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be that trumpet blast.
SPEAKER_00: And I listen, I don't know what the mechanics of it are gonna look like.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't got a clue.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what the sequence.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot of guys that have written all these books about the sequence of things at the end times and all that sort of thing, and they all can't be right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the one thing I know for sure.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I know who's in charge of the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: And the whole business belongs to him.
SPEAKER_00: And so, man, if there's a trumpet and I get a chance to shout at the trumpet, I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm gonna be shouting on the way up.
SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever that looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't pretend to know all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I just know that he is coming to judge the world in righteousness and set the world right.
SPEAKER_00: And Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus, is what I say.
SPEAKER_00: So if your house or apartment this Advent season, this Christmas season, which is basically a human construct, we haven't got a sorry if I'm blowing anybody's bursting anybody's bubble here.
SPEAKER_00: Haven't got a clue what day of the week or what day of the year Jesus was born on.
SPEAKER_00: But it's great to celebrate it anyway, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm all right with with the Christmas trees and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Let's enjoy all of that, but let's never forget that he came and that he plans to come.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's really beautiful and wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: Boredom, if that happens in your house, I want you to know it's not a crisis.
SPEAKER_00: Boredom is never a crisis.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not some kind of a, oh my gosh, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: We're bored.
SPEAKER_00: No, take that time.
SPEAKER_00: Be silent, reflect yourself on your relationship with God, read the word of God, allow the Holy Spirit of God to speak to you.
SPEAKER_00: Next year, we're gonna be in just a few weeks' time, you're gonna hear us talking a lot about reading a one-year Bible, memorizing some scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so 2026 for this church, anyway, is gonna be about those kinds of disciplines.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to invite you to even now be thinking about how you want to participate in those so that your neuropathways uh are supernaturally uh drawn to the one who created your neuropathways, the one who designed all of that in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: John Piper says the really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying there is that that is diseased kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: That is whacked kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: If you're pondering the Grand Canyon, you should not be thinking about how great you are.
SPEAKER_00: Um, at such moments, we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I think Piper is right on.
SPEAKER_00: And I gotta close with this last quote from Dane Ortland.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know of Dane.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I know the title of the book down there at the bottom is a snoozer, but you know, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: The book is really good.
SPEAKER_00: And this quote is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: True joy derives not from God and job, family, sex, friends, food, rest, driving, buying a home, reading a book, drinking coffee, but from God in these things.
SPEAKER_00: And those italics are actually his.
SPEAKER_00: Every taste of beauty in this world, from the roar of waterfalls to the chatter of birds, to the richness of true friendship.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, the ecstasy of sexual experience.
SPEAKER_00: All of that is a drop from the ocean of divine beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Joy is from and only finally in God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, fill our hearts and minds this week with Psalm 98.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I can see why it moved Isaac Watts and to write joy to the world, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We want to receive as a gift what we cannot achieve on our own.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you'd give us an unshakable joy as we look to Jesus, trust and hope in Him.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us to have long-term spiritual memory about the great things you have done in our lives, like Psalm 98 is.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to not be embarrassed, to live out a life of praise, to sing and shout when it's appropriate, Lord, to just be joyful in you.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to do that, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And help us, like everyone else in like Psalm 98, to want to see the world set to rights, to rejoice in the coming, the second coming of our Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray now.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.