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

Celebrate God,

our great Creator,

and our Judge.  (96:10-13)

This week is a call to have a party.  Maybe just a few minutes a day, or with a prayer during a painful moment.  To celebrate that He is still God.  And that we need Him.

And that He loves us and is willing to help us.

It’s so easy to just look at the dour moods of life and join in.  Of course we don’t like the way evil and pains show certain days.  And of course some people do very sinful and awful actions that hurt us all.

And of course nations rise against nations, for sin seems to be dominant.

But the last part of this great psalm is where the choir joins in, and where all the priests and Levites blended voices when they sang.  It is that our God will someday judge the world and make everything right.

He will judge in righteousness and truth, it explains in verses 10 and 13.  He will bring equity.  Fairness. Justice.

Part of this is the gospel message that we preach, and it includes the fact that Jesus Christ took our judgment himself.  And so He can offer us mercy and forgiveness, based on His substitution for our own judgment.

The good news is so good in fact!

A theologian who is well known wrote that he was going into a gym to play basketball, and there was a custodian sitting at the door as he went in, leaning against that door on his wooden chair and reading a book.  “What are you reading?” the theologian-basketball player asked.

“The Bible,” the old man replied.

“Which part?”

“The Book of Revelation,” said the gentleman.

And so the theologian expressed his curiosity: “Do you understand it?”

The reader answered in the affirmative.  He did.  He said what it meant: “Jesus is gonna win!”

It’s true.  And so we can celebrate and not just mourn.  We can party and not just pity.  We can worship.

Verses 11 and 12 say that this will be for all creation, which currently groans and wilts and hurts and quakes.

But someday all things will be fixed.  The trees of the fields will clap their hands.  The mountains will bounce with joy.  Created beings will all rise up and express some kind of worship to our God.

And even “every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

There will be setbacks now for sure.  There will be misuse of planet earth of course.  And we should do all we can to help God’s concerns for this, His creation.

But we must also continue the celebration that goes by faith.  That He is Lord.  That He reigns.

That’s the dominant theme here:  the Lord reigns.  He is clothed with majesty and splendor.  He is not “taken back” by a headline in a paper or an awful judgment made by a human being.

He is not devastated by the same things that ruin our days.  He is, rather, the Lord.  Doing all this the way that He wants to, and not our way.

He is sovereign and He is savior.

Let the party continue!