“Psalm 96: Calling for a Party” (Part One)

Celebrate God!  (96:1-3)

Every once in a while we should stop for a party, and get our church to do the same.

It’s not a birthday party or an anniversary, but a celebration of who God is.  This whole psalm calls us to sing and believe and celebrate that the Lord reigns.

It’s taken from times of worship in the Old Testament, especially from I Chronicles 16, the dedication of special Ark of the Covenant.

But it’s for today also.

People stop to celebrate birthdays when the baby whose birthday it is doesn’t even understand.  We also do it when we’re getting to be 40 or 50 and don’t want to admit it.  But we still celebrate.

I’ve been in birthday parties for people in rest homes – and in spite of the pain, there still is a special celebration of life.

We should sing that new song (96:1) about God constantly, even when we don’t quite understand Him, or when we don’t feel like it, or when things are pretty sour.

We can still embrace who He is and that He reigns.

This one just calls for that song – and in the Old Testament the song that we sing is a song of redemption indeed, but especially related to what God would do for His nation.  They did not know a lot about the future, but they had this hope that the Lord would reign someday, and that the mountains would shake and the Messiah would come.  And the enemies would be judged.

We still have that hope, and now we know it is centered in a person.  And His second coming!

Verse 1 is clear about the party and the singing – a song is often a symbol of joy inside.  It’s the best we can do when we’re together, if we’re going to do something out loud.  We would rather not just yell, so we sing songs of praise.  We worship the King.  We call him “Holy, holy, holy”!

We even tell Him out loud, “I love you Lord, and I lift my voice…”

Verse 2 says it should be a song of salvation.  In many ways that is our main message.  We have good news.  The church has been entrusted with the Gospel, which should be preached to ourselves every day, for we certainly hear the bad news every day.  We hear it in the headlines but we also hear it in our own hearts.  We are sinners who need to be reminded that our salvation is totally of God.

It was in the Old Testament, and it still is today.  Be sure.

Verse 3 reminds the church and all of us personally that this song is for all the nations.  It is not something we have just for our little group or our small building – small in comparison to the universe and the nations.

“God so loved the world”!  And when a church loses that vision, it loses one of the main verses of its song.

One of our goals as pastors is to teach our people to celebrate, even in the middle of pain.  The Lord still reigns.

In the great Romans 8 chapter about suffering and the fact that all creation groans, it also speaks so strongly of God’s sovereign reign.  Creation groans like a mother giving birth to a child, and in this case the earth wants to see Christ return and make all things new.  We are “pregnant” with our sure hope.

And then we will know, I suppose, what Paul meant when he said “all things work together for good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28).  Or maybe we’ll just melt in front of God and won’t need to know.

But the song in our hearts is there.  Even when there are pains and tragedies, sadnesses and frustrations.

Israel was certainly in no position to say that God was giving them everything they wanted.  There was no “name it and claim it” action that was working then.  But they still sang this song and called each other to do it.

And today we do that at the church.  Every Sunday.

And in between we stop at the rest home or a sick bed or have coffee with someone facing financial disaster, and we must not dismiss this call to sing this song of salvation and declare that the Lord still reigns.  He can still help us.  He is God.

Let the celebration continue.