King Of The Earth

INTRO

Psalm 96 is a royal psalm, which means the focus is on royalty. The subtitle for this psalm is “King of the Earth.” When we focus on Him—the King of Glory—it’s a game-changer. When we take our eyes off ourselves and focus on the King of the Earth, everything changes. John MacArthur said Psalm 96 “anticipates kingdom praise for the Lord from all of the nations of the world.”¹

TEACHING

Psalm 96:1-3: The psalmist began with the phrase, “Sing a new song to the LORD . . . all the earth.” This brings to mind the image of all the nations coming together to sing a new song to the Lord. The psalmist also urged, “Declare His glory among the nations . . . for the LORD is great and is highly praised” (vv. 3–4). All of us should continue to praise Him. Isaiah 2:2–4 described a kingdom-praise mentality. Isaiah’s words are possibly a picture of the nations coming together to sing a new song to the Lord.

Wiersbe titled the first three verses, “Sing! The News Is Good!”² In verse 2, the phrase, “Proclaim His salvation from day to day,” is a picture of genuine praise that includes a testimony to others of God’s plan of redemption. In other words, we are going to be preaching the good news through song. In John 4:22, Jesus proclaimed the salvation that we are supposed to proclaim and sing about—the salvation that comes through the Jews. Jesus was not American; He was not Gentile; He was not evangelical; He was Jewish. So, salvation comes from the Jews. In John 14:6, Jesus confirmed this when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” In Acts 4:12, Peter boldly stated, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people, and we must be saved by it.” Jesus is God. Because God sent His Son, Jesus, to earth as a Jewish person, then salvation comes from Jesus. This is the message that we need to be sharing. This news is so good that at some point, all the nations will be singing about this. Jesus is King!

Psalm 67 repeats the same message—the nations will rejoice and declare His glory. One day the message of God’s mercy will be made known. Psalm 96:2 commands us to “proclaim His salvation from day to day.” All of the nations will come to Jerusalem to worship Him. This singing is a prophetic picture, a Messianic psalm, a royal psalm of the King coming the second time when all of the nations will bow down and worship Him. When we truly experience God’s salvation, then we want to sing, or at least tell about it.

People may hesitate to share the gospel for several reasons. They may be nervous about sharing and/or fear rejection because people won’t like what they say. We can listen to those fears or we can listen to the Spirit of God. Before we can share the good news, we have to acknowledge that everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In order to sing the good news, we have to know what we are singing; we have to know the lyrics. The promise that all nations will come together means someone has articulated the gospel and delivered the message. Romans 6:23 tells us, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Since we all sin, then we earn death; sin leads to death. But God demonstrates or proves His love for us: while we were sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Now we’re starting to sing about the good news—God’s love. Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “we are saved by grace through faith.” Our salvation has nothing to do with being good; our salvation is based on faith in what Jesus did for us. This leads to confessing with our mouths our belief that Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9–10).

Psalm 96:4–6: Wiersbe said that in addition to singing because the news is good, we praise because our God is great.³ “For all the gods of the peoples are idols” means they are worthless and weak. When you do a study on this, they actually paint a picture of God’s glory residing and resting in Jerusalem in His sanctuary. Now all the nations are praising God because His name is great in His sanctuary.

Psalm 96:7–9: In addition to singing and praising, Wiersbe said we worship because the Lord is worthy. Don’t you love this constant imagery of all the nations, all of the earth, worshipping Him as the King of the earth?

Psalm 96:10–13: Wiersbe said we rejoice because the King is coming.⁴ What an awesome picture! Psalm 96 prophesies the King is coming, and we have got good news to sing about. John MacArthur said, “The rule of the Lord described in this psalm is not the present universal kingdom (Psalm 93), but one which will be established when Christ returns to earth.”⁵

CLOSING

The simple question is, are we ready for the King who is coming? How do we get ready? We sing, we praise Him, we worship Him, and we rejoice because we know He’s coming! In Revelation 3:11, Jesus said He’s coming quickly and to hold on to what we have so no one can take our crown. If we hold onto this understanding that the news is good, that our God is great, that the Lord is worthy, and that the King is coming; then we will live as though He is going to be here today. Jesus said in Revelation 22:12, “Look! I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me to repay each person according to what he has done.” Jesus is watching and at any given moment, He is coming back. Let’s get ready.