The End of the World
Psalm 97,
The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice;
let the many coastlands be glad!
2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
3 Fire goes before him
and burns up his adversaries all around.
4 His lightnings light up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
5 The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth.
6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
and all the peoples see his glory.
7 All worshipers of images are put to shame,
who make their boast in worthless idols;
worship him, all you gods!
8 Zion hears and is glad,
and the daughters of Judah rejoice,
because of your judgments, O Lord.
9 For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth;
you are exalted far above all gods.
10 O you who love the Lord, hate evil!
He preserves the lives of his saints;
he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
11 Light is sown for the righteous,
and joy for the upright in heart.
12 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous,
and give thanks to his holy name!
This morning I want to talk to you about the end of the world.
For as long as there has been a world, humanity has been fascinated with this topic. This has been true of cultures all over the world all throughout history — from Ancient Mesopotamia to Chinese dynasties, from Norse Vikings to sub-Saharan Africa, from medieval Europeans to modern Americans — it’s a human thing to wonder about the world’s end.
And in the Bible itself, the end of the world was on the table right away!
In the Book of Genesis, just five chapters in, the Flood could have been the final judgment to end the world — and it would have been if not for the mercy of God!
But because of God’s mercy, and because of his patience (the apostle Peter tells us), the final end of the world has been delayed. Still.
But the end is coming, and that’s what I want to talk about this morning. And the real reason I wanna talk about the end of the world is because it’s the topic of Psalm 97.
There are three parts to the psalm, and I’m gonna title each part with what its mainly about:
Part 1, verses 1–6 is Christ will come again.
Part 2, verses 7–9 is Every human will respond.
Part 3, verses 10–12 is How God’s people live in the meantime.
We’re gonna spend most of our time on Part 3, but first Part 1.
1. Christ will come again (vv. 1–6)
Psalm 97, verse 1 just picks up where Psalm 96 left off. Psalm 96 envisions all of creation rejoicing, and the last verse of Psalm 96 explains why. This rejoicing is, verse 13,
“…before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.”
97:1, then, says: Yes, that’s right, the Lord reigns and all the earth rejoices, even the coastlands. That’s the deepest corners of the earth. The parts way out there.
Then verses 2–5 describe the coming of God with this intense imagery. Listen to this: clouds and thick darkness. A throne of righteousness and justice. Fire going before him, consuming his adversaries. Lightning flashes. The earth itself trembles. Mountains melt like wax.
To a casual reader, this sounds like a really bad thunderstorm. But when we have the whole Bible in mind, we can pick up the allusion to Mount Sinai.
Mount Sinai was when God came down on the mountain to give the law: Exodus 19:18,
“Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.”
Deuteronomy 4:11,
“the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.”
The Final Theophany
This was an amazing moment in history. The word for it is a ‘theophany’ — which means a God-appearing. That’s what Sinai was.
And now Psalm 97 is describing another theophany — it’s a future, final God-appearing, that’s envisioned to be like Sinai!
That’s because the Original Law-Giver and the Final Judge are the same.
That’s why the imagery is the same, except in this future, final appearing, God comes in the person of Jesus Christ. We know this from the New Testament: John 5:11,
“The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.”
Matthew 24:30,
“Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man… and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”
2 Thessalonians 1:7,
“the Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire…”
The end of the world is now what we call the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The God who once descended on Sinai in clouds and fire will appear again finally in the person of Christ, and “every eye will see him” — Revelation 1:7.
Everybody will see him, and everybody will respond, one way or another. That’s Part 2.
2. Every human will respond (vv. 7–9)
Humanity is divided into two categories that will be clearest on the final day of judgment.
Jesus has called these categories the wheat and the tares. The Psalms use the language of the righteous and the wicked. The New Testament draws the line as between believers and unbelievers — those who are in Christ and those who are not. And when Jesus comes back every eye will see him — those who have been united to him by faith and those who have rejected him. They all will see him, but they’re gonna respond differently.
Shame for Idolaters
Verse 7 tells us the unbelievers (those who reject Christ) will be put to shame — but here they’re described as the “worshipers of images” … as those who “boast in worthless idols.” Which is a good reminder!
I want you to get this: there is really no such thing as an unbeliever. Everybody believes in something. The question is never if you believe, but who you believe in. So, unbelievers are always more accurately called “idolaters.”
They’ve chosen to reject the one true God, and instead, they’ve replaced him with some other ‘little-g god’ — and for the last hundred years in our society, the ‘little-g god’ of choice is the Modern Self.
That’s the point of theologian Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (it’s a helpful book written a few years ago).
In one sense, modern idolatry is as old as it comes — our society has “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” — that’s Romans 1:25.
But what makes us different today is that, with our technologies, we have said, “I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14) …
So we want to create human life … We want to determine our own sexuality …We want to invent our own morality … We want to become super human in our daily lives and live longer than ever … We even want to have the final say on when and how we die …
The whole thing is about putting Self in the place of God.
That’s what transhumanism is — it starts with the myth of exclusive humanism (that’s the idea that there is no God, but only us). That paves the way for the idolatry of the Self — the idea that “We are all God.”
And right now, it’s just so clear that’s what’s going on. If you look around in our culture, the idolatry of Self is having its moment.
But on the day Jesus returns, at the end of the world, every unbeliever/every idolater/everyone who rejects Jesus will be put to shame.
That means eternal regret. They will hate the choices they have made. The lies they have embraced will be exposed. And the demonic forces behind the idolatry will also bow the knee in submission to Jesus! (That’s the end of verse 7.) The Day is coming.
Joy for Believers
But now in verse 8 notice the contrast to believers, to those who trust in Christ — that’s who Zion and Judah represent. It’s the people of God. Zion is glad! The daughters of Judah rejoice!
And the mention of “daughters” in verse 8 is an idiom for villages or small towns. (This is an insight from Christopher Ash.)
He says the idea here is that it’s not just the capital city, Zion, that rejoices, but it’s all believers everywhere! Even what might seem like the smallest outpost of kingdom of Christ, even the parts way out there, like in the middle of North America — on that day we’re all rejoicing together … believers from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” … We will all say, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory!” (Revelation 7:9; 19:7).
On that day, verse 9 will be the clearest reality of all:
“For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth;
you are exalted far above all gods.”
In other words, Jesus has ultimate supremacy …
“every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11).
This is what Psalm 97 is getting at. In summary, Psalm 97:1–9 is the Christian hope in a nutshell:
One day Jesus is coming back in judgment and salvation — judgment for those who reject him and salvation for those who trust him. And by his grace, church, we trust him. We will rejoice on that day. We will love his future, final appearing! Amen.
The big question now is: How do we live in the meantime?
3. How do God’s people live in the meantime?
Now this is the church’s question. We ask it together, and the New Testament is all about it. But verses 10–12 in Psalm 97 give us a pretty good answer, and that’s what I wanna show you. But I want to help you bring it down more personally. This is a topic that can be so out there and theoretical, but don’t let it be.
I want you to think, right now: Jesus is coming back one day.
Now ask yourself this question: What does God want me to do in this life? How should I live in the meantime?
According to verses 10, 11, 12, we see at least three answers. First is this:
1. Lead a moral life.
This is verse 10, and it’s one you need to see. So everybody help me out. Find Psalm 97, verse 10:
“O you who love the Lord, hate evil!”
“Hate evil” — this is a command, and it’s one that we are not set up well to understand. That’s because “hate” is a biblically strong word that we use too commonly. And “evil” is a biblically common word that we use too strongly. That make sense? We’ve weakened the word hate and narrowed the word evil.
So we have to slow down and think about this.
To hate something is to have an intense hostility against it. It’s not a mood, it’s a conviction. We shouldn’t casually throw the word around about food or weather or sports teams.
And evil is anything that defies the moral will of God — anything that is a deprivation or distortion of God’s goodness. It’s not just the worst, most horrible things nobody likes to talk about. But truly, sin, of every kind, is evil.
See, we often define evil horizontally: we think it has to do with how much hurt it causes other people. But the Bible, first, defines evil vertically: the issue is what it says about God.
Evil is evil because it defies him, it rejects him, it dishonors him. This is why we must have a God-centered morality.
Right and wrong, good and evil, is not whatever you want it to be in the moment. But good and evil — the moral framework of reality — is an objective standard determined by the righteousness of God, and he has revealed this to us as his moral will in Scripture. What a gift!
God guides us how to live in harmony with his holiness. He shows us how to lead a moral life, which means we hate evil.
I think this is one of the greatest needs in our day for the church’s witness.
We need moral clarity — the ability to recognize evil, the courage to call evil evil, and the God-centered conviction to hate evil.
And that means the evil out there, but it starts first with the evil within our own hearts.
It’s been said that many Christians today are soft on evil. And wherever that’s true, my theory is that we’re soft on evil culturally because we’re soft on evil personally, and we’re soft on evil personally because our vision of God is small … Wherever our understanding of God’s glory is frail, and our commitment to his word is weak, we will get this wrong.
And if we’re ever gonna experience true revival, in our church, in this country, it will include a recovery here. Spurgeon put it plainly. He said,
“We cannot love God without hating what he hates.”
Until Jesus returns, in the meantime, we’re called … you’re called … to lead a moral life.
Second thing to do in the meantime …
2. Lead a hopeful life.
This is verse 11:
“Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.”
A few years back, the Holy Spirit made this verse pop off the page to me. I wrote it out on a notecard and put it on my desk. I think it’s a glorious sentence.
Notice first that it’s an agricultural metaphor, which we see a lot of in Scripture. Light and joy are sown. The focus is on planting, on sowing, but the words “light” and “joy” sound more like a harvest. How do you sow light? How do you plant joy? You don’t. You sow something else that, in the moment of sowing, looks different from what you hope it will become.
I just re-seeded my front yard. Tall fescue grass: Thick, forest-green blades, cool to the touch on the hottest summer day, firm but humble, durable but inviting, elegant but approachable — oh it will be wonderful!
But what I held in my hand, before I dropped it in the ground, looked nothing like that — it looked nothing like what it will become. It was just a seed.
That’s so much of life, isn’t it? Life in this meantime is sowing. It’s planting. And a lot of times, we want to judge the future harvest by how the seed looks now. It’s such an easy mistake to make. How do we not do that?
How can we call it light now in the sowing? How can we call it joy now?
The answer is hope.
Our hope is in the harvest, and it’s so sure — God’s promise is so certain — we can say the light is in the ground. The joy is coming, and it’s already here.
That’s what it means to lead a hopeful life.
Third thing to do in the meantime …
3. Lead a thankful life.
This is verse 12:
“Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!”
Rejoicing and thanksgiving — it’s the same idea. We rejoice in God and we give him thanks in response to who he is and what he’s done.
Now, I’m just going to use the word thankful because it’s the last word in verse 12 and it encapsulates joy. Thankfulness includes joy. And this is such a fitting way to conclude Psalm 97, and really, to conclude everything.
For everyone who trusts in Christ, thankfulness will be the posture of our hearts at the end of the world. We begin doing now what we will do forever. We’re called to lead a thankful life today:
Colossians 3:15,
“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts… And be thankful.”
1 Thessalonians 5:18,
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Now, how do we do that? What does it look like to lead a thankful life?
I think it comes down to the discipline of daily thankfulness.
Very practically, just imagine how you start and end your days.
You wake up every morning. We all start there. Now what if, first thing in the morning, when you’re awake for your brain to work, you thanked God? Thank him for something specific — a provision, a gift, an experience. Start by thanking him.
And then that night, with your head on your pillow, when God has brought you through another day, you end your day by thanking him for it. Even when things are tough, when things go sideways, in the full assessment of everything, there’s a reason to be thankful. Give God thanks as you fall asleep, give God thanks when you wake up — and if you do that everyday that becomes a thankful life.
It will be a life that honors God until that final day when we step into the eternal morning. This is how we live as we wait for the end of the world, because, as Psalm 97 shows us: Because Christ will come again. And every human will respond to his final appearing, either in shame or joy. And until that day, in the meantime, lead a moral life, lead a hopeful life, lead a thankful life.
Father in heaven, the life to which you have called us is a life that you create. Thank you for the Holy Spirit! Thank you for his presence and power day by day, moment by moment. We need him.
Thank you that your Spirit brought us from death to life through the gospel. Thank you that he opened our eyes to see Jesus and to know your great love for us.
Thank you for the hope that your Spirit guarantees in our hearts — the hope that Jesus will return and make all things new. We long for that day. And we pray, with the apostle John, Come, Lord Jesus!
In his name, amen.
