The Day of the Lord

My heavy heart confesses today that I can only remember days when I was truly overjoyed with the expectation of the coming of the Lord. I feel that this is a struggle for many Christians and so I want to examine David's call to such a joy and hope in the 96th psalm.

I begin not with the means, but the Reason: Psalm 96:13 "(do all this) ...Before the Lord, for He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness." This is not a sorrowful or fearful ending to this psalm. As we will see, David is actually exultant in His expectation of the judgement of the Lord. He is overjoyed because the coming of the Lord and His judgement will be the ultimate expression of the glory of God. The righteous should have no fear of that day. Isaiah speaks precious encouragement to us in chapter 35 verse 4 when he states: "Say to those with anxious heart, 'Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.'"

To look forward with joy to the hope of the Lord's coming, our heart and mind must be attuned to the Will of God and David's counsel through this psalm seeks to engender in the reader a desire to join the psalmist in his expectation of the day of the Lord.

First in Song: Note that the first three lines begin with "sing." Beyond this though, to start the whole psalm, David suggests a new song. It is the psalmist's opinion that the first act one should make when seeking God's Will is the deepest personal expression of oneself. It is easy to sing the words and melodies of other hearts that have experienced God and still miss the personal connection that their authors birthed such compositions from. Instead, in our own feeble, faltering or sweet voices David urges us to create words from our minds and melodies from our hearts that express our immediate emotions honestly before the Lord. The songs that our tongues employ should, according to line three, not focus only on our own state but bless the name of the Lord. They should all, at the very least, end in praise.

Second by proclamation: David cannot help but break forth in doing the very thing he is exhorting us to do here and he makes his public declaration of faith two-fold. First, he describes the attributes of God -their beauty, their wonder and their distinctive nature, and Second, in verses 7 and 8 he attributes the causality of the blessings in his life and the world to God. The word ascribe (found in the NASB) is literally to write as the cause for. David tells us to take all the good things of our life and the world around us and proclaim that their inception lies in the heart of a Holy, Loving and Awesome Sovereign God. David makes it clear in verse 8 that inherent in this proclamation of God's glory is the offering brought into the temple of God. Only recently has the giving of money been reduced to a private affair. As often occurs in the church of God, heresy enters through the over-application of a truth of the word. I believe scripturally, the amount of the offering is between a man and God, but the demonstration of an offering is a public act of sacrifice that is meant to exhort the body. (this assumes the church is for believers, which is also scriptural)

Third through response: David's response, through humility, to singing praise to the Lord and proclaiming His name is found in verse 9. He worships with all his heart longing for holiness, he trembles before God when He grasps a glimpse of the expansive glory and majesty of God. He is moved to proclaim even more the Lord's sovereignty and his eyes are opened to the praises of creation and its longing for the day of the Lord. He joins all of God's works in proclaiming that "...He is coming..."

I want my heart to ever have the expectancy of the day of the Lord underpinning its desires, and filling me with hope, joy and peace that the salvation of the Lord has come and soon the Bridegroom will burst forth from His chambers to meet his bride at the altar as she reaches the far side of the Jordan's aisle.