1 Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! For He has done
marvelous things; His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory.
2 The LORD has made known His salvation; His righteousness
He has revealed in the sight of the nations.
3 He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the
house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
4 Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth; Break forth in
song, rejoice, and sing praises.
5 Sing to the LORD with the harp, With the harp and the
sound of a Psalm,
6 With trumpets and the sound of a horn; Shout joyfully
before the LORD, the King.
7 Let the sea roar, and all its fullness, The world and
those who dwell in it;
8 Let the rivers clap their hands; Let the hills be joyful
together before the LORD,
Psalm 98 is a part of a selection of psalms that have no
title which might give us a clue as to who the human writer was. Psalm 98 is
simply entitled, “A Psalm”. There is speculation by many commentators that
Isaiah the Prophet might have written this psalm. But Spurgeon is a pretty
strong believer that David wrote it years earlier and it was put in this
particular set of psalms to celebrate the victory that the nation of Israel
experienced when they were delivered out of captivity in Babylon and set free
to go back to the Promise Land.
When you read through Psalm 98 you might also recognize a
similarity to a song that was sung by Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus. In Luke
1, Mary was told by the angel Gabriel that she would give birth to the Messiah
and that her cousin Elizabeth in Jerusalem was also five months pregnant with a
child. Mary goes to Jerusalem to share this good news and is eager to get
Elizabeth’s reaction. No sooner does Elizabeth hear the news than she bursts
into song, and Mary joins her. That wonderful song of hers, recorded for us in
Luke 1:46-55, is called the Magnificat. If we read Psalm 98, then we read
Mary's magnificent hymn, we can trace all the way through her song the
underlying themes of this psalm. It is as though Mary had been meditating on
this psalm all the way up to Jerusalem. Elizabeth's song invoked Mary's new
song, one right out of this old song which had been in the Hebrew hymnbook for
approximately five hundred years.
Something else about Psalm 98 that most people don’t
realize is that it is the inspiration for one of our favorite hymns at
Christmas time. “Joy to the World” is perhaps an unlikely popular Christmas
hymn. This favorite Christmas hymn draws its initial inspiration not from the
Christmas narrative in Luke 2, but from Psalm 98. Isaac Watts is the author of
“Joy to the World”. He lived between 1674 and 1748. He was a clergyman, a poet,
and a prolific writer of hymns. He paraphrased the entire Psalm 98 in two parts.
“Joy to the world” was taken from the second part of the
paraphrase (Psalm 98:4-9), entitled “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.” Watts,
commenting on his paraphrase of the psalm, notes: “In these two hymns I have
formed out of the 98th Psalm I have fully exprest what I esteem to be the first
and chief Sense of the Holy Scriptures . . ..”
Originally, "Joy to the World," rather than being
a “Christmas hymn”, would more accurately identified as a "kingdom
hymn." Watts was actually describing Christ's second advent and not His
first, the Messianic kingdom and not the manger.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come; Let Earth receive her
King; Let every heart prepare Him room; And Heaven and nature sing; And Heaven
and nature sing.
Joy to the Earth, the Savior reigns; Let all their songs
employ; While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy; Repeat the sounding joy.
He rules the world with truth and grace; And makes the
nations prove; The glories of His righteousness; And wonders of His love; And
wonders of His love.
Now whenever you sing “Joy to the World”, always remember
Psalm 98.
God bless!
