Sing unto the LORD a New Song
Psalm 98:1
As I am sitting here on Christmas Day, I am snowed in by a rare snowfall. With that, and all the isolation that this Coronavirus requires, I have had time to reflect which in prior years I had been too busy with Christmas activities. I have listened to the Lessons and Carols from Christ Church, Cambridge as well as many other fine choral works centered around the season of Advent and Christmas. I reflect with great sadness that many of these events have been cancelled. But I am glad to be able to see recordings from years gone by.
The text from Psalm 98:1 says to sing unto the LORD a new song. Singing in various styles have been with humanity from time immemorial. And when we remember that the book of Psalms has songs that are thousands of years old, we realize that the singing of songs to the LORD goes to ages past. Moses wrote the 90th Psalm over three thousand years ago. The Bible in both the Old Testament and New commands us to sing unto the LORD.
The important words in this short verse from the psalm is “unto the LORD. We should notice that at least in the Authorized Version that LORD is in all caps. This is because it is the Divine pronoun for Yahweh, the God of Israel. There are lords many, and people have made to themselves many gods, but there is only One LORD and One God. So we are not dedicating our work to some earthly potentate. There are songs that do that. We are not singing to nature, but to the Creator Himself. The LORD is called the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” We need to sing in a way that reflects glory upon the King of the Universe.
Modern society does not understand kingship very well. In America, we got rid of royalty hundreds of years ago. We are supposedly all equals both under the Constitution and in the sight of God. In Britain, even though the queen is revered, her powers are strictly limited. Her children are less so, and there may come a day in the future that the monarchy disappears, just like it has in most of Europe. So when we talk about Christ our King, we do not have a good earthly comparison. We do have dictators and Elites, but these, too, are poor reflections of the majesty of God. Abraham Kuyper, a former Dutch Prime Minister of the Netherlands more than 100 years ago lamented in a work called “Pro Rege” (For the King) that the idea of Christ the King was fading. In the upper strata, it was replaced with mocking. But even in the lower classes where Jesus was still revered as High Priest and Savior, the confession of Him as King only remained in the ancient confessions. The majesty of Jesus has been reduced. The transcendence of God has been replaced with immanence. In simple terms, Jesus has been reduced to a mere buddy.
What society does not realize is that Western Civilization is based upon the Kingship of Christ. It is from Christ’s eternal kingship that earthly sovereigns are a reflection of. When we think of the British monarchy, we notice that there is pomp, majesty and ceremony. The monarch is crowned with the anthem “Zadok the Priest.” I remember prince Edward saying that monarchs do not make themselves. Even the great King Solomon was anointed by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet. The coin of the realm says that Queen Elizabeth reigns by the grace of God. Earthly kings rule be the permission of the Great King, Jesus. We must remember this top down approach to kingship and authority. Earthly potentates are to reflect the Kingship of Christ. If we do things the other way and project earthly kingship to Christ’s kingdom, we run into all kinds of problems as many kings and queens are far from perfect. Even the best monarch is a poor shadow of Christ’s Kingship.
So we need to keep in mind that our songs unto the LORD are worthy of the Great King. The glory and majesty of God needs to be taught in our hymns. The trouble is that music for the large part no longer reflects this reverence. We sing songs about Christ the Savior, the friend we have in Jesus, and out salvation experience. But we no longer sing “Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise” or “Crown Him with Many Crowns” much.
I pondered why this might be. If one listens to the Lessons and Carols, one hears several passages of Scripture from the Authorized Version (King James) mixed with carols which are meant to reflect upon these readings. The boys choir of Cambridge did an excellent job in singing, and the readers read the Scripture with a sense of reverence. Everything one needs to hear in order to become a Christian is there. It was a good show. I wondered if anyone who heard the Lessons and Carols became a Christian. I would hope so. But how many went hope mostly unaffected by the message. The critics might have given it a good review. The attended might have told others how wonderful the service was. But the Who and Why are missing. The service is not to showcase the talents of men but rather to glorify God. I would suppose that many who would be turned off by the Lessons and Carols did so because it seemed to have such little effect of eternal significance on them. It was just a tradition going back many years. But it should strike the heart. Who is it that was born in yonder stall? Why did the One who spoke Creation into existence become flesh?
I think that the problem is not the message but the audience. The message has become old and stale. They are now old songs and not new. There is always a lust in the human heart for novelty. New music and new doctrines. We are become like the philosophers of Mars Hill. We are bored of the old philosophy and theology. We crave something new. There is always someone waiting to provide this novelty. “Change” has become the new mantra. No one ever seems to ask the question where this change is actually taking us. We are tearing everything down without anything to replace it. We are headed back to the Dark Ages. Music and art have become barbaric. Instead of singing “O God, our help in ages past” who is “our hope for years to come,” we want to sing Seinfeld songs, songs about nothing.
Kuyper held that science, art, philosophy, and music are built upon the bible itself. Even when these disciplines apostate and tried to go on without God, even their achievements that linger for a season depend upon Christian underpinnings. But new we see rot and decay. For a while, they continued to sing the LORD’s song with their lips, even their heart had long departed.
I also saw several recordings of services at Westminster Abbey. One can see the majesty of the structure as arms reaching out to God. The organ sounded forth its majestic praises. The royal family was escorted in by the singing of a majestic hymn. But when the royals came to their assigned places, they looked around with indifference, except for the Queen herself. Prince Charles when he becomes king wants to change hist title from “Defender of the Faith” to “Defender of Faith.” The ruin of our great civilization is rotting from the top.
What we need to do is to sing a new song unto the King of the Universe. This does not necessarily mean we come up with new hymn tunes or lyrics. Nor does it say that we shouldn’t still sing the old ones. What it does mean that the Sovereignty and Majesty of God be proclaimed. When we do our Scripture reading, it does not mean we use new translations. Many of these translations are barbaric and become a Babel of sound in which no one is sure any more what God is saying. Even though the King James Version is in Old English, at least it is written in beautiful poetry and prose. It reflects well on the majesty of God. It reflects the very best we can offer to God. Any “new” translation had better keep this in mind. What needs to be new is our heart rather than just changing the forms of worship. The problem is not in the old hymns which reflect good, biblical theology. It is that they are no longer believed. Instead of being sung from the heart, they are mumbled. So people say there is something wrong and old with them. This is not true. It is a problem of the unbelieving heart which no change in form will change. The same problem with the old music will manifest itself in the new. Soon these tunes will be mumbled also.
So, I will listen to old and new tunes so long as they properly reflect on who God is. And I pray that my heart will be gladdened by them. I like the Getty/ Townsend’s “In Christ Alone.” But I also love Bach and Handel as well. When we sing “In Our Music, God is Glorified” let us be captivated by the glory of God and not the new dimension of sound. Let the songs we employ be an imitation of the new song we will sing in glory. The Book of Revelation gives us some ideas of what these songs will be.
May your heart be lifted up to the Great God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen
