They sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders: and no man could learn the song save the hundred and forty and four thousand, even they that had been purchased out of the earth. - Rev. 14:3 (R.V.).
James Hope Moulton: The phrase `a new song' is one which comes to us from the Old Testament. We know it best in the psalm where the delivered soul cries out to God who has `put a new song' in his mouth (Psa. 40:3). Then we read in the great prophecy which begins with the forty-second chapter of Isaiah: `Sing unto Jehovah a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth' (Isa. 42:10). The special association of it there is that it is `the new song' of redemption.
It is addressed to a people coming from the thraldom of Babylonian captivity into their own land again. So in Old Testament prophecy it was a song of redemption, and it is still a song of redemption when it comes to us in this last book of the Bible. There it was the song of one little people living in one little corner of the earth, who were redeemed from an earthly captivity and brought home again to serve God there. Here it is the song of the Israel of God - every people and tribe and kindred and tongue, English and Germans and Russians and Americans and all the other nations, all of them redeemed from something that is worse than any sorrow that ever came into this world - redeemed from sin and all that it means. They are bought back into `the liberty of the glory of the children of God.' (Rom. 8:21)
But we need not speculate about the theme of `the new song.' We have the words of it in the ninth and tenth verses of the fifth chapter of the Revelation. It is the song of the whole creation singing to the Lamb that was slain, for He has redeemed them unto God.
Thirty-two years ago Mr. D. L. Moody held perhaps the most memorable mission of his life in Cambridge University, where I had just begun to study. Out of that week was born, I venture to believe, the World Student Christian Movement. One of the most beautiful of the Moody and Sankey hymns which we then learnt to sing begins:
Tell me the old, old story
Of Jesus and His love.
Yes, it is `the old, old story.' We think of all the generations that have gone by throughout these nineteen hundred years. There has never been the time when hearts have not been moved by that `old, old story'; there has never been the time when men have not lived and died by the faith of it, when it has not performed its mighty miracles, as it is still doing to-day. We rejoice to think, and it is our greatest joy to think, that here we have entered into the heritage of the ages. Yet though so old, it is `a new song.'
There is nothing inconsistent there. All of God's novelties are as old as creation, and all God's ancient things are eternally new.
Go to that book with the sad title, the book from which men are inclined to turn away, for they do not like to read Lamentations. But there you find these lovely words : `It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning.' `New every morning,' for the sun never rises in the same place two successive mornings. No two birds ever sing the same note. The loveliness of the earth around us is never the same. It is always changing; it is always new. God never repeats Himself. And when men talk about `the good old days,' they forget the infinite resourcefulness of the Creator. The blessings He has for us in store in the future are going to be altogether new ones, as new as everything that comes from that master Hand.
And if that is the case with all the blessings of God, most of all is it so with that which is before us here. God does not repeat Himself in the material world. Still less does He repeat Himself in the spiritual world. `Of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace.' (John 1:16) Yesterday's grace is not good enough for to-day. God does not give us stale gifts.
`If any man is in Christ,' says Paul, `there is a new creation: the old things are passed away, behold, they are become new!' (2 Cor. 5:17) That does not mean there was one distant day in our experience, a day perhaps twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, when all things suddenly became new, and now it is an old story.
That is very much the case with things on this earth. A `Newcastle' and a `New College' are among the antiquities of our ancient land across the sea. But God's novelties do not get old. When there is a new creation, God takes care that it is recreated every day. Once in Christ, there is a new creation; `and though our outward man be decaying, yet our inward man is being renewed every day.' (2 Cor. 4:16)
[..... speculations on the Book of Revelation omitted ....]
Is there one thing that is more apparent in the study of human music than the fact that beyond all other things practice is necessary? Some of us have sung in chorus when a great musician has conducted. How soon we learnt that the smallest mistake in time or tune by any one of us would be instantly detected by the keen ear which would never allow our failures to be obscured by hiding in a crowd! How carefully we had to learn the music to come up to so exacting a standard! But you and I must sing the New Song `before the Throne.' And yet we think, some of us, it is enough to come down to our churches and practice the New Song once a week for an hour and then go back again into the world and forget all about it until the next time. Can we learn to sing such a Song when we do not practice it more than that? O brethren, we cannot but agree that the reason why the world is not won for Christianity more rapidly is that Christian people to so large an extent do not practice through the week the New Song they love to sing during the hour of worship.
We had an annual festival at Cambridge long ago that I used to delight in. There we sang the greatest choral music perhaps that has ever been composed - Bach's St. Matthew Passion. We gathered together in little companies and practiced the great choruses over and over till we knew them well. Then came a day when we went over to the grand old cathedral at Ely and found a great chorus of three or four hundred. We did our practice separately, but all that we might meet at last in one united choir.
Brethren, that likewise is a parable. We are gathered together in this country and other countries, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of little choirs, all of us practicing the New Song separately; and all too often we know nothing about our neighbors who are practicing that same music. We are separated from them by all sorts of barriers, and we forget that this Song is being thus practiced all the world over. But the time is coming when all these choirs are going to unite, for nothing but the biggest of all choirs can render that music worthily. The climax of Handel's Messiah is the great musician's rendering of the New Song: `Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.' It needs must have the best and biggest chorus to make it go as it should go.
Out of the 'multitude which no man can number' that chorus must be gathered together to sing the Song in the ears of God.
You and I may put our whole duty in life into this form : that we have to learn to sing that Song in tune, with the harmony of the heart, so as to sing without discord before God; that we have to learn it by teaching it - for that is the best way of learning anything in the world - and by practicing it day by day and all day long, until at last the time shall come when all our choirs shall meet in the presence of the Almighty Lord above to sing for ever `unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins in His blood.'
A Sermon preached at Northfield, Massachusetts, on Sunday, August 9, 1914
from "Egyptian Rubbish Heaps", Five Popular Lectures on the New Testament with a Sermon, delivered at Northfield, Massachusetts, in August, 1914, by James Hope Moulton, Professor in Manchester University and Tutor at Didsbury Wesleyan College.
James Hope Moulton: "From Egyptian Rubbish Heaps", Northfield, 1914
I. Egyptian Rubbish-Heaps and the Study of the New Testament
II. A Sheaf of Old Letters from Egypt
III. Some Sidelights upon Paul
IV. How We Got Our Gospels
V. The Fullness of the Time
VI. The New Song
Go to Literature Index Page
This URL is www.abcog.org/moulton6.htm