A NEW SONG OF JOY

Ps.100:1,2 – Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands!

Serve the LORD with gladness;

Come before His presence with singing.

Singing and making music is the overflow of whatever fills out hearts. Drunks sing about their alcoholic exploits, immoral souls sing about their conquests, and miserable people sing about their miseries. This is exactly what Jesus meant when He said we speak out of the abundance of our heart. Praise and worship is intended to be an expression of the joy of the Lord that overflows from our insides, David called it singing a new song. The people of the world have their empty songs and the redeemed of the Lord have their songs which are permeated with the love and joy of the Lord. There was a new surge of joyful singing at the church pastored by Jonathan Edwards in Northampton in 1740. At Thanksgiving of that year Edwards preached about the new song of thanksgiving, this is the joy that overflowed in his church over the years following leading into the Great Awakening. Maybe this Thanksgiving will also spill over into our country in a new move of the Spirit of God. Here is something Edwards said about our new song.

“When carnal persons meet together to sing songs, it is in token of carnal mirth. But there is no joy like that which is expressed in singing this new song. This is that pleasure that the Psalmist speaks of in Ps. 135:3, “sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant.” And so Ps. 147:1, “Praise ye the Lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely.” The melody is pleasant to the angels, and pleasant to the Lamb of God, and pleasant to him that sits upon the throne, and most pleasant to the soul that makes the melody. The act of praise is an abundant reward to itself. He that sings it has communion with God in it, for in the same time that there flows a stream of love out of the heart towards God, there flows a more full stream of love from God into the soul. At the same time that he praises God with a sweet voice, Christ with a sweeter voice speaks peace to the soul and manifests his love to it.”

Edwards described worship as some sort of interaction between the redeemed and the Lord. He pours His love on us and we respond with songs and shouts of joy. He responds and pours greater measures of His love on us and our joy increases resounding in new songs of joy. This sounds like church to me!!!