Psalm 96 is an astonishingly happy psalm. It depicts the whole human race and even the trees, the earth, and the sea just filled with joy and rejoicing. 

That actually raises a question. This isn’t the world the way we know it. Not everybody is filled with joy, and the world itself is a broken place with natural disasters, disease, and death. How could we get from where we are to what we see in this psalm? Is this nothing but just an inaccessible, crazy idea of a world like this, or is it possible to get to a world like this?

The answer actually is in here in the links this psalm gives to the rest of the Bible. This psalm is a series of summons or invitations, and there are three basic ones that are being given to us here: 1) the call to see, 2) the call to sing, and 3) the call to rejoice in judgment.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 18, 2013. Series: Open My Lips: Studies in the Psalms. Scripture: Psalm 96.

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