LET LIGHT SHINE OUT OF DARKNESS – Part 2 of 2

“Our concert of praise
To Jesus we raise,
And all the night long
Continue the new evangelical song:
We dance to the fame
Of Jesus’ name;
The joy it imparts
Is heaven begun in our musical hearts.”  
(Charles Wesley in “Hymns for the Watch-Night”)

There could hardly be a better time to preach the gospel of Christ, and surely no better time to sing it. The gospel has always been needed, since it is God’s solution for the human race, but in our day the need is more poignant and more dramatic. Whether one looks at the penultimate threat of nuclear destruction, or the private anguish of the lonely soul in an impersonal society, one cannot imagine a world more starkly in need of a Savior. There could hardly be a more demanding, more exhilarating time to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. We have never been more needed.

But we must have a song to sing. Without a song, we will only add to the dissonance of the times. 

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in “Our First Song: Evangelism in the Hymns of Charles Wesley” (1984)

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SING TO THE LORD A NEW SONG

Three Psalms start with precisely these words — Psalms 96, 98, and 149 — “sing to the Lord a new song.” As does Isaiah 42:10 (“sing to the Lord a new song”) and Psalm 33:3 (“sing to Him a new song”). And Psalm 144:9 adds its voice to the chorus, “I will sing a new song to You, O God.”

Why is this the case? Psalm 40 gives us a clue. The psalmist has “waited patiently for the Lord” for some deliverance. God hears him, and rescues him, and one of the things God does for him in the deliverance is “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God” (Psalm 40:3).

New songs of praise are appropriate for new rescues and fresh manifestations of grace. As long as God is gracious toward us, as long as He keeps showing us His power, and wowing us with His works, it is fitting that we not just sing old songs inspired by His past grace, but also that we sing new songs about His ever-streaming, never-ceasing grace in our lives. 

-- Adapted from David Mathis at desiringgod.org

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A NEW SONG

"O sing to the Lord a new song," the psalmist cries; "sing to the Lord, all the earth" (Psalm 96:1). We moderns and postmoderns, committed as we are to the idea that whatever is most recent is best, are likely to think that the psalmist's call for "a new song" is a quest for novelty. I'm sure it's far more than that. His thinking, rather, is akin to the eighteenth-century hymnist and preacher Charles Wesley when he cried, "O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise…!" Wesley wrote those words on the first anniversary of his transforming religious experience. Recalling all the wonders of God's work in his life, Wesley found one tongue, yes even a choir, inadequate. Such is the mood of the psalmist. All his vocabulary seems stunted and insufficient for the wonder he feels, so he yearns for a new way to declare the glory of God. He wants much more than new words, a fresh melody, or a different set of musical instruments; the poet wants a newness within his own person.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in Longing to Pray: How the Psalms Teach Us to Talk with God


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