"What happens when we worship?”...

At the church where I serve, we have been spending our time together asking and answering the questions “What is worship? Who actually worships? Does worship really matter? Why are we supposed to worship? What happens when we worship? And how are we supposed to worship?” And during this time, we have been discovering that all humanity has been wired for worship. And during this time, our hope and prayer has been that God would move in our heads, hearts, and hands in a way that results in us understanding and embracing the life of worship that we were created for in a way that results in us worshipping Jesus with our lives.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together asking and answering the question “What happens when we worship?” To answer this question, we are going to look at a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Psalms. As we discovered earlier, the book of Psalms are a collection of prayers and songs that were spoken and sung by the Jewish people that were collected together to form the first playlist of worship for the people of God. This playlist was then preserved and recorded for us in the Bible.

And it is in one of these songs that formed the playlist of worship for the Jewish people that we will discover a timeless answer to the question “What happens when we worship?” So let’s discover this answer together, beginning in Psalm 115:1:

Not to us, O LORD, not to us, But to Your name give glory Because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth.

The Psalmist begins this song to the Lord with a proclamation of worship to the Lord. When the Psalmist uses the phrase “not to us” this phrase literally means “not on account of us”. In addition, when the psalmist uses the phrase “give glory” this phrase conveys the sense of giving honor to someone or something. So the psalmist is basically proclaiming “Not on account of us should the Lord honor us, but to the Lord and the name of the Lord you are to give honor”.

The Psalmist here is calling humanity to not seek honor from the Lord, but to instead give honor to the Lord. The psalmist here is calling humanity to not seek honor by making much of their name, but to instead seek to honor the Lord by making much of His name. Because, as we discovered last week, to rightly worship requires the right object of worship. And that right object is the Lord. The Lord is the right object of worship because every other object of worship will fall short of satisfying our deepest thirst for worship.

However, se we have also talked about in this series, every day is a battle for our worship. Every day is a battle about what we are going to value most. And in light of that reality, the Psalmist here is calling humanity to value the Lord as being of ultimate value by giving the Lord the honor He deserves.

The Psalmist then explains that the reason why we are to honor the Lord by making much of His name is because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth. What is fascinating is that the word for lovingkindness, in the language that this letter was originally written in, has no English equivalent. In other words, no single English word can capture the meaning of what the Psalmist calls lovingkindness.

The closest the English can come to this word is to use the phrase steadfast love and devotion. Similarly, the word truth here, in the language that this letter was originally written in is a word picture of firmness and faithfulness. The Psalmist point here is that the reason why we are to honor the Lord by making much of His name is because of the Lord’s steadfast love and devotion that has been demonstrated by His abundant faithfulness to His people and His promises.

The Psalmist here is pointing us to worship the Lord by giving honor to His name because the Lord is firm in His promises to His people and is steadfastly devoted to His people. After making this proclamation of worship to the Lord, we see the Psalmist ask and answer a timeless question in verse 2-3. Let’s look at that question together:

 Why should the nations say, "Where, now, is their God?" But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.

In verse 2, we see the Psalmist echo a question that has been asked throughout human history: “where now is their God?” I mean this morning, is this not a question that is still asked today? “If there is a God, where is God? Where was God when I needed Him? Where was God when such and such happened?” The Psalmist here addresses a question that has resonated throughout human history.

When the Psalmist refers to the nations here, he is referring to the nations around the Jewish people that worshipped false gods instead of the Lord as the one true God. You see, many of the nations around the Jewish people would ask the question “Where now is their God?” as a taunt to the Jewish people when they suffered misfortune.

So here is a question: Has anything really changed? Is this not the same question that people who are far from God will sarcastically ask followers of God when bad things happen to them? But his morning, this question was not asked simply to taunt followers of the Lord. Another aspect of this question involved how the Jewish people worshipped the Lord.

You see, while the nations around the Jewish people made idols that represented their god and that were used as their object of worship, the Jewish people did not have an image of the Lord. As a matter of fact, the Jewish people were commanded by the Lord to never make an idol or image that represented the Lord. So, in addition to mocking what they believed was the absence of the Lord from the Jewish people, this question also conveyed the sense of asking “where is the image of the God that they worship?”

One of the things that distinguished the Jewish people from the nations around them that had rejected the Lord is that the Jewish people did not worship an image, an idol that depicted the Lord. Instead, as the Psalmist points out in his answer to this question in verse 3, “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.”

In other words, the Psalmist basically answers this sarcastic question by proclaiming, "unlike your false gods who you try to depict with an idol, the Lord is not confined by geographic location. Instead the Lord transcends time and space and is lofty in the Heavenly places. The Lord is beyond a merely human existence that can be depicted in an image, He transcends humanity. And unlike your false gods who you try to depict as an idol, the Lord does whatever He delights and desires to do. The Lord is not dependant on anyone for anything and is not constrained by anyone or anything. The Lord, unlike the idol that you make is ever present and everlasting as the all powerful Creator of the universe".

Tomorrow, we will see the Psalmist unpack this reality…