‘Assignment Attitude’ and Psalm 98 and Revelation 14 &15 Compared
Today, 01-08-03 the Lord showed me His merging of the Old Covenant with the New Covenant in Revelation 14 & 15. Also Psalm 98 has a number of parallels with Revelation 14 & 15. This is good stuff and is needful for me to study out completely. Also the need for an ‘Assignment Attitude’ in the army of God was given to me today. It is a must for a soldier/disciple of the Lord to have a specific assignment for life to gain the maximum effectiveness in the army of God.
‘O Sing unto the LORD a new song: for He hath done marvelous things: His right hand, and His holy arm have gotten Him the victory.’(Psalm 98:1)
Although the text here is referring to the Psalmists present day praise for the Lord’s working, it can also apply to the great ‘Victory’ that we have in Christ through His Cross, for it is through Him and His holy arm alone that we gain the ‘Victory’ and His right hand supplies us with the power to win the battles as soldiers of the Cross!
Herein lies the foundation for an ‘Assignment Attitude’ which every soldier of the Cross must focus upon for their life, for without an assignment from the King of kings and Lord of lords we will wander aimlessly about this sojourn of life which Job called his ‘great struggle’. Unless we keep our eyes fixed upon the goal we will falter when distress, delay and discouragement come...for they will come...’In your patience possess ye your souls’ the Lord Jesus said in His great end times message penned by Luke in chapter 21 of his Gospel.
The ‘Victory’ is won, the Lord has fought the war and won it all on His Cross, but we must persevere here on earth and fight the battles/skirmishes He has assigned for us to participate in and win through His grace! Without an ‘Assignment Attitude’ we will be without focus and spend our days in a muddle, wandering about like sheep without a Shepherd!
Therefore, now that we are saved and delivered from the power of darkness, we must at all costs receive our daily orders from the Commander in Chief and press on toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus! Amen? He has set up ‘Divine Appointments’ for us in every place we enter for He is continuing to call out a people for His own and we must be Spirit-led to see and know what and when to speak to those souls to whom He leads.
This is an ongoing assignment for all who are saved, however, we must progress and step up digesting the meat of the Word of God and discern just what it is that the Lord has determined our life assignment is and do everything within our means to reach the goal that He has set for us. You, and only you, can accomplish this Divine Assignment and the sooner you gain an ‘Assignment Attitude’ the better it will be for His glory and your good.
That means we must be in communion with the Lord, being connected to the Vine, sapping all our energy from Him alone, by abiding in Him and His Word, for without Him we can do nothing! Herein lies the secret, and the Lord Jesus Christ in so many words said it without complication: ‘If you abide in My Word, then are ye My disciples...Abide in Me...I am the Vine, ye are the branches, he that abides in Me and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit, for without Me ye can do nothing…If ye abide in Me and My Words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you’
(John 8:31, 15:4 ,5, 7)
Abiding in His Word, Abiding in Him, Connected to the Vine, are all the same concept. Therefore digesting mass quantities of His Word, memorizing, meditating, singing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs focused on Him and His Word is the key and the only way to be Spirit-filled and led by His Spirit. That’s it...no ifs ands or buts...we can’t argue with the Truth, for He Who is the Truth gave it to us plain and clear.
He explained it simply: ‘The Words that I speak unto you they are Spirit they are Life.’ (John 6:63) Therefore if you want to know your Assignment, if you want to be filled with the Spirit and be led by the Holy Spirit, you must be filled with, energized and controlled by His Word!
This Psalm 98 also speaks to the future and final victory that the Lord will accomplish for His earthly people Israel during the Day of the Lord, even though the text is speaking in the past tense. He certainly will get ‘The Victory’ and will make known His salvaton/deliverance...in the sight of the heathen...He will remember His mercy and His truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen [will see] the salvation/deliverance of our God. (Psalm 98:1-3)
Then universal praise to Him will occur:
‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the LORD with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and sound of cornet, make a joyful noise before the LORD the King...for He cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall He judge the world, and the people with equity.’ (Psalm 98:4-9)
This wonderful chorus of praise to the LORD is for His threefold work of providing redemption for all, which is by ‘The Victory’ of the Cross of Jesus Christ (v.1, 2), executing the redemption/deliverance of the nation of Israel at the end of the Seventieth Week of Daniel (v.3), and His righteous judgment of the world which culminates with the battle of Armageddon, the final event of His Day of the Lord wrath/judgment upon the earth. (v.9).
The last two events are still to come, of course, during His end of the age program for mankind. However there is great praise to the LORD beginning with (v.1) where singing unto the LORD ‘a new song’ is commanded to be sung for ‘The Victory’ which foreshadows a similar event recorded in Revelation 14:3.
In the Revelation 14:1-5 passage, which occurs at the end of the Seventieth Week of Daniel, after the nation of Israel is saved/delivered in a day by the Lord, a group of harpists in heaven ‘before the throne’ are singing a new song in the presence of ‘the Lamb’, the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who takes away the sin of the world, which immediately causes our minds to focus on redemption and ‘The Victory’ of His Cross.
Redemption, being the key word in all of Scripture, is also the focus or key word of the book of the Revelation. First of all He seals the 144 thousand (Revelation 7:1-8) who were ‘redeemed from the earth...redeemed from among men’ (Revelation 14:3, 4), then He redeems, rescues, delivers the saints from the Great Tribulation through His rapture (Revelation 7:9-17), and finally He redeems/rescues/delivers the nation of Israel at the end of the Seventieth Week of Daniel (Revelation 14:1ff; Isaiah 59:20; Romans 11:25,26)
Although the record of God’s Day of the Lord judgment takes up the majority of the book of the Revelation, it is not the central purpose of God for mankind. He rejoices in showing His great mercy in Redemption through His Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that remains as His priority and primary focus of this final book of the Bible. The Lamb is His choice title throughout the book of the Revelation as it appears 28 times!
However, His judgment is the means of bringing about the purging and purifying of the nation of Israel so that they will be in condition to be redeemed by the Deliverer who comes to Zion as He saves the nation ‘in a day’. God’s judgment also purges the earth readying it for His millennial rule when ‘the wolf will lie down with the Lamb’.
The parallels continue between Psalm 98 and Revelation 14 as praise to the Lord is accomplished by not only singing ‘a new song’ but there is also the utilization of the harp in both passages:
‘Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.’ (Psalm 98:5), then ‘And I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps. And they sung as it were a new song before the throne’ (Revelation 14:2,3a)
The harp is also used by:
‘Them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints, Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? For Thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest.’ (Revelation 15:2-4)
This great anthem of praise to the Lord God Almighty also nicely parallels the emphasis in Psalm 98 and supplies the answer to who it is that is playing the harps in Revelation 14. These are the soldiers of the Cross/martyrs who ‘loved not their lives unto the death’ spoken of in Revelation 12:11. They are also referred to in Revelation 6:11.
They have gotten the victory over the Satan’s emissary the beast, and now are in heaven after being martyred having given their lives for the cause of Christ during the Great Tribulation. Now they have been given the great privilege of playing ‘the harps of God’ in praise to Him who alone is worthy. They also are singing ‘the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb’ demonstrating the merging of the Old and New Covenants in their victory song of praise!
While the song of Moses (Exodus 15) is a song of victory and praise for His redemption and deliverance of the people of Israel after the Red Sea experience and represents the Old Covenant, the song of the Lamb underlines the New Covenant and focuses on the three-point message of the ‘Everlasting Gospel’(Revelation 14:7):
‘Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord and glorify Thy name? For all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest.’
Revelation 15 is the powerful introduction to the Grand Finale of the wrath of God (Revelation 16), ‘the seven last plagues for in them is filled up the wrath of God’(Revelation 15:1) referring to the seven vial judgments which are ‘full of the wrath of God’(Revelation115:7).
These are the seven last plagues, with the seven trumpet judgments being the seven first plagues (Revelation 9:18-20) sent by God at the beginning of His wrath, the Day of the Lord, which began when the seventh seal was opened (Revelation 8:1) revealing the Day of the Lord judgments/contents within the book/scroll (Revelation 5).
This sequence demonstrates the chronological order of the book, even though there are expansion chapters inserted that further explain the event filled Great Tribulation. Therefore, the Lord provided chapters 12 and 13 to give details and explanations concerning this complex and difficult period at the end of the age.
However, there is a definite flow of events, and chapter 15 is a vital chapter showing the merger of the two economies, with the singing of the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb by the Great Tribulation martyrs now having been given the harps of God which were utilized by the 24 elders in chapter 5.
These 24 elders, whose duties focus on leading the worship of God, are glorified Old Testament priests representing the 24 courses of priest, who played the harps of God while performing their ministry to God on earth having been appointed by David himself (I Chronicles 23:5, 25:1) who was a skillful harpist, before the building of the first temple.
Now, they hand over their harps to the glorified New Testament priests who in fact have a perfect priesthood provided by their Great High Priest the Lord Jesus Christ. These victorious New Covenant priests lead the worship of God in the presence of the Lamb of God having received an eternal ministry to Him Who alone is worthy!
The harp referred to as the national instrument of Israel, was an integral part of Temple worship in the Old Testament as the Levites were given the ministry and responsibility to utilize this most powerful form of worship (II Chronicles 29:25), the singing of praise to God with the skillful accompaniment of the harp. Harp appears over a dozen times in the book of the Psalms showing the vital position this instrument held in the worship of the Lord.
The harp is only referred to in one verse of the New Testament outside of the book of the Revelation where it appears six times, including ‘the harps of God’ (Revelation 15:2), the only time in the Scripture where they are personally assigned to the Lord Himself.
This final and most magnificent book of Scripture is the worship book of the New Testament having many parallels with the Old Testament worship book, the book of the Psalms. The word worship appears twenty-four times in the book of the Revelation illustrating some of the most powerful and intensive worship scenes in all of Scripture. Although the occurrences of the word worship are almost evenly split between the Lord and the Beast/Antichrist, the book of the Revelation provides us with some of the most beautiful and instructive worship passages in the Word of God!
The neglect of this vital revelation thru the ages has deprived the saints of the needful instruction it contains and therefore worship of the Lord is often shallow and without meaning or effect. Study of this final book of the Bible will definitely bring us closer to the holy God of heaven Who is ‘able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think...according to the power that works in us!’ Amen?
