Singing with Jesus

A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath.

Psalm 92,

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
    to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
    and your faithfulness by night,
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
    to the melody of the lyre.
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
    at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

5 How great are your works, O Lord!
    Your thoughts are very deep!
6 The stupid man cannot know;
    the fool cannot understand this:
7 that though the wicked sprout like grass
    and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever;
8     but you, O Lord, are on high forever.
9 For behold, your enemies, O Lord,
    for behold, your enemies shall perish;
    all evildoers shall be scattered.

10 But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;
    you have poured over me fresh oil.
11 My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
    my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.

12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
    and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
    they flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They still bear fruit in old age;
    they are ever full of sap and green,
15 to declare that the Lord is upright;
    he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

Father, I want to thank you again for this moment, and for your Word. We ask that you would show us the glory of Jesus in the Scriptures, and that you would help us to live in light of his realness. Do that, we ask, in Jesus’s name, amen.

“If I had only known then what I know now!” — that’s a statement you’ve probably heard before (maybe it’s one you’ve said yourself) — it’s what we could call the clarity of hindsight.

Standing where we are in the present and looking back, we see more from here than we saw then, and it’s a kind of wishful thought-experiment to imagine ourselves then knowing what we know now:

Think about Middle School (I’ve been reading a book about how weird Middle School is for kids — it’s tough) — just imagine, parents, if you could go back to Middle School with the wisdom and chill you have now.

Or here’s one: what kind of stock would you have bought in 1997 when a company called Amazon went public at $18 a share?

This is the clarity of hindsight — and if we could’ve had the clarity back then we have now, we would’ve done some things differently.

And this way of thinking helps us make sense of Psalm 92. 

Now let me explain why. This is gonna take a minute, but bear with me …

The Heavenly Perspective

Notice in the superscript  — those little words above verse 1 — Psalm 92 is called,

“A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath.” 

Now this is a little funny, right, because isn’t this true of every psalm? Every psalm is a psalm, and all of them were used for worship on the Sabbath, so how is Psalm 92 special? What is this superscript saying? 

Well, what’s unique about Psalm 92 is that the Sabbath referred to here is not talking about the weekly Sabbath, but this is about the final Sabbath that’s realized in the end-time new-creation. I think Sabbath here is referring to heaven.

Think back a couple years ago to the Book of Hebrews — remember that the writer of Hebrews (commenting on Psalm 95, just a few psalms over), he says “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” He says there’s another Sabbath day yet to come, a final Sabbath — and that’s what’s in view here in Psalm 92.

Psalm 92 is a song for the Sabbath of our future, heavenly rest! Which means this — if you use your imagination — Psalm 92 is a song that we’re gonna sing in heaven looking back on our lives in this world.

Psalm 92 is us saying in heaven one day “If I had only known then what I know now!” — except that it’s given to us now! We get to read this today! We have a true heavenly perspective right in front of us, and it shows us at least two big things we need to know.

So for the sermon this morning, I wanna tell you two big truths that we’ll know with certainty in heaven, but that Psalm 92 is letting us in on today. The first is this:

1. We sing with our Savior. 

Now I already told you that we’re gonna sing this song, but now I want to be extra clear that we’re gonna sing this song not with Jesus over here on the side somewhere, but we can only sing this song in union with him.

And to make that case, first I want you to know that this psalm is about him. 

Mainly About Jesus

Something that you’ve heard us say over and over again about the Psalms is that the Book of Psalms is mainly about the Messiah. The individual psalms were composed at different times (almost half of them by David), but the Book of Psalms as a whole was compiled for the people of God in exile. And it’s that final form book we have. 

So we shouldn’t isolate the individual psalms and focus only on the historical context of their composition, but instead we read the psalms as a single book that has been compiled and arranged in a particular way. 

And the driving concern of this book as a whole is that God has a future for the house of David! The house of David is the hope of God’s people because it’s through David’s lineage that the Messiah would come. So the Psalms really are pointing to him. They’re pointing to Jesus. That’s why the Psalms are the most quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament — and this is the book that Jesus himself most quoted!

Which is an amazing thought … we know for a fact that Jesus read the Book of Psalms. The same book that we’re reading here, Psalm 92 we’re looking at this morning — Jesus read it and prayed it and sang it, and he knew it was about him. 

Last week, we saw in Psalm 91 that Jesus knew all of the promises of Psalm 91 were to him as God’s anointed one, and the same is true of Psalm 92. Psalm 92 is the celebration of the victory he experienced in Psalm 91 — which means we don’t read this psalm and draw a straight line from these words to us, but instead we read Psalm 92 and first imagine Jesus reading it. 

In the Voice of Jesus

I want us to try this. Try to hear the praise and celebration of Psalm 92 in the voice of Jesus …

He starts in verse 1 by saying it’s good to give thanks to Yahweh, to sing his praises, to declare his steadfast love and faithfulness all day long. It’s good to do that! Why? Why is it good to praise God?

It’s because, verse 4:

“For you, O Yahweh, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.”

This is straightforward: It’s good to praise God because we’re glad in his work — what he’s done! Jesus says, verse 5,

“How great are your works, O Yahweh!”

But what works is he talking about? God does a lot of works — there’s creation and providence and salvation (and a trillion details) — what works does he have in mind here?

Well verses 10–11 tell us. Psalm 92, verse 10:

“But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.”

This is describing triumph — victory. And that’s the work of God he’s talking about in verses 4–5. And notice: this is God’s work specified in the experience of a single person. This is first-person singular — it’s “my horn,” “me,” “my enemies.” 

Check out that phrase to “exalt the horn” — and the idea of a “horn” is power — so to exalt the horn is to establish this power as supreme … which happens through victory. 

He’s saying, I’m the top dog! I’m the Alpha-ox! Because all of my rivals have been subdued!

This singer in Psalm 92 is saying this about himself … the singer is Jesus. 

And of course Jesus would say this about himself because it’s true. And this metaphor of an exalted horn is used for the Messiah in other places in the Old Testament. Take 1 Samuel Chapter 2. 

Like Hannah Says

1 Samuel 2 is Hannah’s prayer. She’s rejoicing in God and what he’s gonna do for his people, she ends the prayer with this, 1 Samuel 2:10, 

“The adversaries of Yahweh shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven. Yahweh will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

You hear that? Victory over adversaries and exalted horn. It’s the same thing we see in Psalm 92, verse 10 — but in 1 Samuel 2 it’s clear that it’s about the Messiah. Hannah says this is for “God’s anointed.”

Now do we see anything about being anointed in Psalm 92? Yeah, look at the very next line in verse 10! 

Verse 10 again:

“You have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox [and look at this! —] you have poured over me fresh oil.”

That is anointing!

So you have here: (1) Exalted horn; (2) victory over enemies; (3) anointed one.

Psalm 92 is about Jesus. Jesus is the one saying this. He’s singing this song in the victory that God has given him.

Can We Sing It, Too?

And now we’re reading it and we want to sing it too! We wanna sing this song, but it’s not about us. 

How does this work? How can we sing this song about Jesus and claim it for ourselves?

Here’s how: It’s because all the blessings of Jesus are shared with those who belong to Jesus. 

And this is something that you might know, or maybe you’ve heard it before, but honestly, if we could really grasp this, it’d change everything for us. Seriously. I mean it. Personally, I wanna get this more. 

That in union with Jesus, we get Jesus and all his benefits. 

This was one of the great recoveries of the Protestant Reformation, that by our faith in Jesus all that belongs to Jesus get applied to us: 

His righteousness becomes our record. 

His Sonship becomes our status. 

His peace becomes our anchor. 

His Spirit becomes our strength. 

His resurrection becomes our new life. 

His intercession becomes our confidence. 

His inheritance becomes our future.

All that is his becomes ours. Every possible good thing from God in our lives comes through Jesus. We exist now only in him. So we’re actually seated with him in heavenly places! We’re hidden in him. Our eternal destiny is as secure as his throne. That’s all true, right now …

And this is glorious — it means that your worst days, your most painful moments, will not endure. They will not last. Now they might be part of your story, but they are never ‘your story’ — and the only way they could be would be if Jesus ceases to be who he is. 

See, our hope is as alive and indestructible as Jesus is himself. 

Jesus shares his Psalm 92-triumph with us! His victory is our victory! 

So we don’t sing this song apart from him, but we sing it with him, through him, united to him.

By our union with him, because Jesus is blessed, we are blessed. That’s what it means to be a Christian!

And I just want to pause here for a minute and say: I cannot imagine a more compelling reason to be a Christian than this.

If you’re here and you don’t believe — if you’ve never put your faith in Jesus — this is why you should: You get Jesus and all his benefits. 

He will share with you everything that is his. What will it cost you? It’ll cost you your whole life, in one sense — it will cost you your life as you know it. You have to turn away from your sin. But this song becomes your song! You receive the victory of God. 

And one day, when we look back here, we’ll know: Psalm 92 is about Jesus, and we get to sing it with our Savior!

Second truth here. One day we’ll know for sure …

2. We age with glory.

This is verse 12.

In verse 12, Jesus, the singer, goes from thinking about his own experience of salvation to thinking about the reality of the righteous. The “they” in verses 13–14 is plural. Now I’m gonna read the last part again, but before I do I want to remind you of Psalm 1. There’s an allusion here and I want us to catch it. Remember the very first psalm opens with a vision of the blessed man — Psalm 1, verse 3:

“He is like a tree 

planted by streams of water 

that yields its fruit in its season, 

and its leaf does not wither. 

In all that he does, he prospers.”

And we, as the readers of the Psalms — as those who have faith — we’re often called “the righteous” in the Psalms and we’re supposed to be like this blessed man. He’s the paragon of faithfulness.

Now listen to Psalm 92, starting in verse 12:

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree

and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

13  They are planted in the house of Yahweh;

they flourish in the courts of our God.

14  They still bear fruit in old age;

they are ever full of sap and green,

15  to declare that Yahweh is upright;

he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

Now here Jesus is taking about us. We have become like that blessed man — and Jesus is singing about it.

And that’s not a strange idea, that Jesus would sing about us, because in Zephaniah 3:17, we read that God rejoices over us with gladness and exults over us with loud singing. And so if we ever needed an idea of what that singing might be, here’s one. 

Imagine this: Jesus is singing about you, and do you want to know what he’s saying?

The Older, the Better

He’s saying that you’re like a tree. We’re trees! We are flourishing palm trees, rooted and nourished by the presence of God. And here’s what that means: the older, the better. 

The older, the better — now that takes a different perspective, doesn’t it? That takes a heavenly perspective.

Because nothing around us in this world is saying that. So many in our society despise aging and they do all they can to stop it (or to at least disguise it!) I read last week that in America, we spend around $30 billion every year on anti-aging products and services. We pretty much do everything you can imagine when it comes to aging, except honor it!

But Psalm 92 says something radical: aging when you’re a Christian is not decline, but flourishing. The older we get in Jesus, the more fruitful we become. Not less valuable — but more. Not less alive — but more alive because “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Do you see? Aging is a glory for those united to Jesus. 

The song of Psalm 92 is sung loudest by those who’ve walked with God the longest. And we’re gonna know that with certainty one day, but wouldn’t it be amazing if we really knew that now?!

The stupid man cannot know this! The fool cannot understand this! Because  they’re fixated on the ephemeral. They only see the here and now. Our perspective, though, is different! And that’s the point. The clarity of hindsight is a gift Psalm 92 gives us today.

“If I only knew then what I know now” — we don’t have to wait to know. What if we lived today in light of heaven?

What if we built our lives in this world as if we’re looking back on our lives from heaven?

That’s the invitation this morning. That’s what we get to do! And one thing that means, for sure, is that we’re gonna praise God. We can’t praise him enough! Our whole lives are just Praise! Praise! Praise!

“It is good to give thanks to Yahweh, 

to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 

to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night!”

And that’s what we do now as we come to this Table. 

The Table

We come to this table to remember the death of Jesus for us, and to rejoice with him in his victory. The one who sings Psalm 92 is the one who triumphed at the cross and empty tomb, and he invites us to share in that triumph.