23rd Sunday after Pentecost – Trinity School for Ministry
Malachi 3:13-4:6
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-16
Luke 21:5-19
[Some of you may notice that the start of the sermon is the same as a previous sermon. More than a year after I preached Psalm 98, I was asked to substitute for an archbishop who could not travel due to unrest in his country. I took advantage of the new audience and used the first sermon to springboard into a fresh word for the occasion.]
Let’s listen to Psalm 98 again.
98 Sing to God a brand-new song.
He’s made a world of wonders!
He rolled up his sleeves,
He set things right.
2 God made history with salvation,
He showed the world what he could do.
3 He remembered to love us, a bonus
To his dear family, Israel—unrelenting love.
The whole earth comes to attention.
Look—God’s work of salvation!
4 Shout your praises to God, everybody!
Let loose and sing! Strike up the band!
5 Round up an orchestra to play for God,
Add on a hundred-voice choir.
6 Feature trumpets and big trombones,
Fill the air with praises to King God.
7 Let the sea and its fish give a round of applause,
With everything living on earth joining in.
8 Let ocean breakers call out, “Encore!”
And mountains harmonize the finale—
9 A tribute to God when he comes,
When he comes to set the earth right.
He’ll straighten out the whole world,
He’ll put the world right, and everyone in it.
That was our psalm from The Message.
Eugene Peterson, of blessed memory, set out to produce a Bible translation most Americans could easily understand. While I’m not keen on Peterson’s rendering of the Gospels, his translation of Paul’s epistles helped me read them as letters to real people and not just as Scripture to be dissected word by word. His renderings of the Psalms may make some cringe, but you can’t deny the vibrancy of the everyday language that summons cinematic imagery in our minds.
In verse 9, The Message calls Psalm 98 “a tribute to God when he comes, when he comes to set the earth right.” That’s exactly how the Jewish sages have read this psalm for centuries, perhaps millennia.
Psalm 98 is part of the liturgy of the Sabbath. Every Friday night, this psalm is read to welcome God’s day of rest. Sabbath observance speaks of several things at once.
- It recalls the creation of the universe and how God rested on the seventh day.
- It celebrates God’s redemption and victory in the Exodus as he freed the children of Abraham from slavery in Egypt.
- Sabbath also looks forward to the day when God himself comes down to earth to complete the creation, dwell among humanity, and make all things right.
There is a Jewish teaching that 10 songs of faith tell the complete story of the children of Israel. The songs are 10 biblical passages related to key moments in Israel’s biblical history. The tenth and final song is Psalm 98. (Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 10:3, 11)
Psalm 98 is the song that Israel and the nations will sing when the LORD God himself comes to judge the earth. It anticipates the joy and bliss of God making all things right on earth.
“Sing a new song” is shorthand for the coming of the messianic kingdom. So this psalm is prayed by Jews everywhere every week in anticipation of the final salvation.
What is the expectation of the coming kingdom? Even in Jesus’ time, the expectation was that God would remember Israel; that God would judge the whole world; and that the nations – those old enemies of Israel – would finally submit to the rulership of God and worship him. We see these expectations in Psalm 98.
The good news is that the long-awaited day of salvation is underway, now, today, as the New Testament writers testify.
“He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel.”
None other than Mary of Nazareth, the humble mother of the long-awaited Messiah, sings a new song when she learns that God has chosen her for that precious but difficult duty of being mother to the Lord’s Anointed. In the Magnificat, she alludes to Psalm 98:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
He has helped his servant Israel …
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.
(Luke 1:46-47, 54-55)
At the Annunciation of the son she will name Salvation, Mary declares that God has remembered all the promises to Israel. At long last, the long-deferred hopes of Israel are being realized as she carries this child for nine months, as she gives birth, when she finds him teaching in the temple as a mere boy, as she asks him to make water into wine, as she watches him heal, as she watches him die.
Finally, she sees God’s covenant-faithfulness as she embraces her resurrected Son alive once again. The resurrection of the dead has begun! Yes! God has remembered Israel!
God has also remembered the nations.
The Lord “comes to judge the earth.”
Saul, a zealous rabbi, thought all this talk about Jesus was preposterous. He thought it was blasphemy, until the risen Messiah himself stopped him, talked to him, commissioned him. Jesus tapped Saul, also known by his Roman name Paul, to announce the declaration of the “New Song” to the nations.
In Athens, he sees an altar “to an unknown god.” He invites the Greeks to know the creator God who made heaven and earth, who created every nation, every people group. In this invitation, he alludes to Psalm 98. From The Message:
I’m here to introduce you to this God so you can worship intelligently, know who you’re dealing with. The God who made the world and everything in it, … he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. … The unknown is now known, and he’s calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:22-32 MSG)
The God of Israel is the God of all, Paul tells us. All have sinned and fall short of being good, but God calls us to repent because he wants to show us mercy. God has appointed our judge, Jesus of Nazareth. We know he is the judge because God raised him from the dead. This same judge, though, has made the way for mercy by his sacrificial death. Paul calls us to respond to this mercy by repenting and loving God.
To recap:
- Psalm 98 is the New Song that welcomes God and his Kingdom come on earth.
- Mary of Nazareth sings the New Song when she learns she will give birth to Immanuel, God with Us come to save us.
- Saul of Tarsus, after he encounters the risen Jesus on the way to Damascus, realizes that it is time to teach the New Song to the nations. Not only had the time of Israel’s redemption begun, but the gathering and turning of the nations to the God of Israel had begun.
The New Song and Missions
Now, we can get to the business of what Psalm 98 has to do with our Mission Expo.
Paul tells us what our response to God’s mercy found in Jesus should be: repentance and loving God.
Jesus tells us: If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15)
Then he commands us:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matt 28:19-20).
God has redeemed us. We say thank you by loving him. We love him by obeying him. He said go make disciples.
The context of this command to make disciples is the New Song that proclaims that the Kingdom of God is in the process of coming on earth. Yes, we all await the day when God will rend the heavens and we will see Jesus returning to rule and reign from the Throne of David in Jerusalem.
But the Kingdom is NOW even as it is not yet. How is it “now”?
The Church is the place where the Kingdom of Heaven meets this broken world. You and I– each one of us here robed in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit – are portals of the Kingdom. When we walk into a room, by God’s grace, we bring the Kingdom in with us.
Most of us are here at Trinity because we have heard extra clearly the call to proclaim Jesus to the lost, broken, and hurting around us. We proclaim that God made a way for us to have a personal relationship with him, Creator of the Universe. We proclaim that God loves us all and desires us.
We also proclaim a Kingdom. We proclaim that God will make all things right – every injustice, every sickness, every broken thing – God will make it right and whole. He will punish the Enemy of our Soul, Satan the Destroyer, and free the whole of creation from the devil’s grasp. When God rules and we submit to his rule, all things are right.
But that’s not just in the future. That is right now.
- When we stop to pray for somebody’s healing, we are bringing the wholeness of the kingdom to them.
- When we feed a hungry person, we are bringing the provision of the kingdom to them.
- When we visit the lonely or the imprisoned, we are bringing the community of the kingdom to them.
- When we fight against antisemitism, human trafficking, racism, domestic violence, international conflict – whatever broken thing in this world the LORD has put on your heart – we are bringing the justice of the kingdom to the persecuted and oppressed.
We all know what a wellspring of wisdom and virtue Twitter is. (sarcasm)
I began using it more at the height of the pandemic because I needed a cathartic outlet. Twitter is the dumpster fire that it is because so many people use it in that way – to vent, to shout, to brawl. In the midst of the angry, fuming cranks, there are people doing real ministry by teaching, preaching, and praying 280 characters at a time. I also use Twitter for ministry and am learning from successful brothers and sisters – like Beth Moore, Esau MacCauley, and Rich Villodas. Along the way, I encountered @LesslieNewbigin. For those who don’t know, Newbigin was a missionary and theologian who died in 1998. Yet, Lesslie continues to teach us through Twitter, thanks to a pastor in England who tweets on his behalf.
Not too long ago, @LesslieNewbigin tweeted: “The deepest motive for mission is simply the desire to be with Jesus where he is, on the frontier between the reign of God and the usurped dominion of the devil.”
Again: “The deepest motive for mission is simply the desire to be with Jesus where he is, on the frontier between the reign of God and the usurped dominion of the devil.”
Jesus is where heaven meets earth, where the divine meets humanity, where healing meets brokenness, where life meets death.
Paul said we are co-heirs with Messiah. [mind blown action] And as co-heirs with Christ, we get to be right there with him, at that divide, at that frontier, gathering the nations. Because we stand with him and IN him, we can be portals of the kingdom to a broken world.
How can we not sing the New Song? We must proclaim that salvation has come, that healing has come, that reconciliation has come, that justice has come!
Let us sing the New Song to all the world. To the homeless in our cities. To the mom who goes hungry so her children will eat. To the successful business owner who has found that wealth is not enough.
To the refugees of Ukraine. To the persecuted in Nigeria. To the Uighurs in China’s reeducation camps.
Near and far, we must sing the New Song. Redemption is here. Justice is here. His name is Jesus.
I’ll finish with a personal testimony of how God has allowed me to stand on that frontier with him and see the Kingdom of Light shine into the kingdom of darkness.
In late summer 2014, ISIS was tearing through Iraq and Syria. They had just beheaded a journalist, something I’m extra sensitive to because of my newspaper background. Mosul – home to many Christians near ancient Ninevah – had already fallen to ISIS, who were then sieging Sinjar mountain and hunting Yazidis.
I had been serving at Christ Church Jerusalem for 5 months. A text message from the rector asked: “Would you like to go to Turkey on Thursday?”
The Messianic congregations in Jerusalem had taken offerings up for the refugees fleeing into Turkey. Three of us – two Israeli Jews and a Mexican-American – would carry this money to ministry partners in southeast Turkey. It was not lost on me that we, in taking money from Jerusalem to the churches of Asia Minor, were doing the reverse of what Paul did. Along the way, we met a missionary family heading back into Iraqi Kurdistan when most western aid workers were evacuating.
We had not planned to go into Iraq. But suddenly the door opened into Kurdistan. I cannot tell you the whole story now of how the LORD made way for two Israelis to enter Iraq, but we followed where the LORD led (with the blessing of our Jerusalem leaders). We were able to personally hand over offerings to ministry partners in Kurdistan and to meet Yazidi refugees that our Turkish-Kurdish friend had been ministering to.
Here we were, the One New Man – Jew and Gentile – in living flesh, ministering the Messiah of Israel to the oppressed and displaced.
The route we pioneered, the connections we made would be used for a couple of years by other One New Man teams to minister in the refugee camps. One favorite testimony is of an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab who traveled to Kurdistan together. The Palestinian would communicate with the refugees in Arabic and explain that they had come together from Israel. “You two are friends?!” the refugees would ask. “How is that possible?”
Because we serve the God of Israel, who is gathering the nations under his wing. God reconciles the nations to himself and to one another. These One New Man teams are a first fruit of God’s peace on earth, where nationalistic conflict gives way to kingdom unity. This is what being with Jesus Messiah on the frontier between Light and Darkness looks like.
Is it easy? No. The fate of that beheaded journalist is a real threat for us. Jesus says so in our Gospel passage. But all of it, the glorious testimonies and the deep suffering, are opportunities to proclaim the New Song.
Let us sing the New Song!
God’s King and Redeemer has come! He has shared the Holy Spirit with us so we can, with him, both locally and globally,
- announce good news to the poor.
- heal the brokenhearted;
- proclaim freedom to the captives,
- let out into light those bound in the dark;
- And proclaim the year of the favor of Adonai (Isa 61:1-2a CJB)
O sing unto the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things.
With his own right hand and with his holy arm, he has won for himself the victory.
The Lord declared his salvation [his Yeshua];
his righteousness has he openly shown in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his mercy and truth toward the house of Israel,
Let us show the ends of the world the salvation of our God. AMEN.