Advent Through the Lens of Four Christmas Songs

Second Sunday of Advent 2010 AD

Joy to the World

Part 3

Psalm 98

Psalm 98 — Its message.

Psalm 98 has a past, present, and future aspect to its triumphant rejoicing.  Psalm 98.1-3 rejoice over God’s victorious salvation which has been accomplished, and which is objective, public truth for all the world.  Psalm 98.4-6 give us the only appropriate present response to that truth: Shout joyfully to the LORD and break forth into song.  Psalm 98.7-9 give us the future of God’s victorious salvation: the nations and all creation shall rejoice and praise the LORD.  It also gives us a future public truth to rejoice over — God is coming to judge the world, and He will do so with righteousness and equity.  Whenever God comes near, judgment occurs, but to the righteous — to those who rejoice in God’s salvation — judgment is a good thing, a cause for rejoicing, for it means putting everything right, making everything just the way it should be, so that indeed the whole creation will rejoice.

Watts’ interpretation of Psalm 98.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; Let every heart prepare Him room, And heav’n and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ; While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains Repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove The glories of His righteousness, And wonders of His love.

Watts doesn’t make the error we tend to make as modern evangelicals, which is to defer Christ’s kingdom and reign to his second advent, or else to limit his kingdom and reign to the church or to the hearts of believers.  The result of Christ’s first advent is that “the Savior reigns . . . He rules the world”. And Christ’s kingdom is not, as modern evangelicals often suppose, a military regime imposed on an unwilling world.  No, Christ “rules the world with truth and grace,” and the outcome will be that “the nations” will “prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.”

In Part 2 of this series we saw that Christ’s exaltation entails him becoming both Priest and King:

The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”  The LORD shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies!  Your people shall be volunteers In the day of Your power; In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, You have the dew of Your youth.  The LORD has sworn And will not relent, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110.1-4.)

Peter in his monumental Pentecost sermon applies Psalm 110 to Christ’s first advent (Acts 2.33-36).  As modern evangelicals, we get the fact that Jesus is High Priest — our forgiveness depends on it.  But we get queasy when it comes to Jesus being King.  We affirm it, but we do so with an asterisk to qualify that he isn’t really King here and now — that awaits his return.  But Scripture will not allow us to uncouple Jesus’ Kingship from his Priesthood.  If Jesus is kind of King, then he is kind of Priest, and our sins are kind of forgiven. Fortunately, our salvation does not depend on a perfect understanding of these things.  Nevertheless, if we would fully honor our Priest and Savior, we must confess that he is equally King and Lord.  “Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing.”