The Worthiness of Worship

1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;
    let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
    let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the LORD is a great God,
    and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth;
    the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
    and his hands formed the dry land.

6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
    let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
7 For he is our God,
    and we are the people of his pasture,
    and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8     do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
    as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers put me to the test
    and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation
    and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
    and they have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
    “They shall not enter my rest.” – Psalm 95:1-11 ESV

So, how's your worship today? Even as you read this, what's your view of God like? For many of us, worship has become a ritual we practice on Sundays. It is an activity we participate in one day a week, but even then, it may not be what the Bible refers to as worship. We may sing songs, pray together, listen to a message from God's Word, and even tithe, but never really worship God.

Worship is more about an attitude than an action. If we sing, praise, give, and listen to God's Word being taught with a wrong attitude or from misplaced motivation, our efforts are anything but worshipful. From God's perspective, worship begins in the heart. If we fail to give Him the attention and reverence He deserves, our worship ends up as little more than lip service designed to impress others, not honor God.

And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.” – Isaiah 29:13 NLT

The author of Psalm 95 understood the concept of worship as recognizing God's worth — His worthiness to receive our praise, attention, dependence, and expressions of love and thanksgiving. Worship is a viseral response to the greatness of God.

Come, let us sing to the LORD!
    Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
    Let us sing psalms of praise to him.
For the LORD is a great God,
    a great King above all gods. – Psalm 95:1-3 NLT

Yahweh is a great God and a great King. He is unique and the only true God. This is a recognition of what is often called God's transcendence or otherness. Yahweh is incomparable and without equal. He is not a slightly improved version of man. In fact, He is nothing like us at all. Yet, we often treat God with a sense of familiarity that borders on contempt. In our efforts to make Him approachable and comprehensible, we emphasize His goodness at the expense of His greatness. That is why the Psalmist tended to view God through the lens of nature. He saw Him in the thunder and lightning, the mountains, storms, and majestic splendor of creation. They were reminders of the majesty and power of God. The greatness of nature reminded him of the greatness of God, the one who created it all.

He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
    and the mightiest mountains.
The sea belongs to him, for he made it.
    His hands formed the dry land, too. – Psalm 95:4-5 NLT

The psalmist invites us to respond to God’s transcendence with awe and reverence.

Come, let us worship and bow down.
    Let us kneel before the LORD our maker,
   for he is our God. – Psalm 95:6-7 NLT

He reminds us that we have been created by the same God who formed the universe out of nothing. But not only is He our maker, He has chosen to be our Shepherd. He has made us His people, and we belong to Him.

We are the people he watches over,
    the flock under his care.

If only you would listen to his voice today! – Psalm 95:7 NLT

Like the Israelites of the Old Testament, we as believers have been chosen by God and made His special people. We have His favor, protection, and His promise of eternal life. So why wouldn't we come before Him with thanksgiving, joy, praise, and a certain degree of respect and awe — every day of our lives?

Worship is a full-time job. It is something we need to practice every day. In fact, it has been said that anything we do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship. When we live our daily lives in submission to His will, we worship Him. When we stop and thank Him for a meal, we worship Him. When we recognize His creative handiwork in a sunrise or sunset, we worship Him. When we gladly serve those He has placed in our lives, we worship Him.

Again, worship is more about attitude than anything else. The author of Psalm 97 picks up on this theme.

May all who are godly rejoice in the Lord
    and praise his holy name! – Psalms 97:12 NLT

Do we find joy in the Lord? Does He satisfy us even when our circumstances are less than satisfactory? Even when we have little, can we recognize His hand of blessing and worship Him for His goodness and greatness? The psalmist warns against testing God by doubting His provision for all our needs. He references a place called Meribah, where the ancient Israelites replaced their worship of God with whining and complaining. The story is found in Exodus 17 and records what happened when the Israelites began to question God's goodness and diminish His greatness.

At the Lord’s command, the whole community of Israel left the wilderness of Sin and moved from place to place. Eventually they camped at Rephidim, but there was no water there for the people to drink. So once more the people complained against Moses. “Give us water to drink!” they demanded.

“Quiet!” Moses replied. “Why are you complaining against me? And why are you testing the LORD?”

But tormented by thirst, they continued to argue with Moses. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Are you trying to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?” – Exodus 17:1-3 NLT

While their displeasure was aimed at Moses, it was a direct assault on Yahweh’s providence and provision. The psalmist used this moment from Israel’s past to drive home a point about reverence for Yahweh.

The LORD says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,
    as they did at Massah in the wilderness.
For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
    even though they saw everything I did. – Psalm 95:8-9 NLT

They had been eyewitnesses to God’s power when He brought the ten plagues against their Egyptian overlords. They stood in amazement as Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea and followed his command to cross to the other side on dry ground. God had led them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. But when they arrived at Rephidim, the miracles of Egypt were replaced by the minor inconvenience of thirst. Suddenly, their great God, who had defeated the army of Egypt, was not powerful enough to quench their thirst.

But God didn't allow their doubts to diminish His glory. He stepped in and provided yet another miracle that revealed Himself as “the Rock of our salvation” (Psalm 95:1 NLT).

The LORD said to Moses, “Walk out in front of the people. Take your staff, the one you used when you struck the water of the Nile, and call some of the elders of Israel to join you. I will stand before you on the rock at Mount Sinai. Strike the rock, and water will come gushing out. Then the people will be able to drink.” So Moses struck the rock as he was told, and water gushed out as the elders looked on. – Exodus 17:5-6 NLT

Moses ended up renaming the spot at which this miracle occurred.

Moses named the place Massah (which means “test”) and Meribah (which means “arguing”) because the people of Israel argued with Moses and tested the Lord by saying, “Is the LORD here with us or not?” – Exodus 17:7 NLT

When faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, the people not only doubted God's power but also questioned His presence. They gave Him grief rather than glory. Yet, in response to their disrespectful and doubt-filled complaints, Yahweh responded by providing life-giving water from a rock. His means of provision should not be overlooked. His decision to use an inanimate, lifeless rock as the conduit of His blessing was not arbitrary. It was intended to convey a powerful message concerning His hard-hearted and ungrateful people. Rather than showering God with praise and honor for all His past acts of goodness, they had become spiritually dry and incapable of giving Him the glory He deserved.

Jesus used similar imagery when addressing the Jewish religious leaders who challenged Him to rebuke His followers for praising Him.

As he rode along, the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of him. When he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen.

“Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord!
    Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!”

But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!”

He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” – Luke 19:36-40 NLT

On another occasion, Jesus told these pride-filled and self-absorbed religious leaders that God could produce more faithful and worshipful followers from ordinary, lifeless rocks.

“Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones.” – Matthew 3:9 NLT

The greatest form of worship is obedience — doing what God has told us to do in His Word. Do we obey Him? Do we listen to what He says and respond with joyful obedience? To come and sing praises on Sunday, then go our merry way and do our own will the rest of the week is not worship. True worship is about submission and obedience. It is acknowledging God's greatness and willingly listening to what He, as our creator, asks us to do. We show His worthiness by obeying Him.

If only you would listen to his voice today! – Psalm 95:7 NLT

Father, may I learn to worship You more. May I learn to recognize Your greatness in the world around me. Open my eyes so that I might see You more clearly and more often. And give me the strength and determination to obey You. because an obedient heart is a worshipful heart. Amen

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Most Important Thing About You

 What do you know about God? If someone asked you to describe your understanding of who God is and how He operates in the world, what would you tell them? It was A. W. Tozer who wrote, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us" (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy). But far too often, we think far too little about God. Even when He comes to mind our thoughts about Him can be inaccurate or simply incomplete.

Tozer goes on to say, “It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is” (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy).

So, the question before us is “What is the nature of our God?” This is not the kind of question one should take lightly because the answer will reveal much about an individual’s moral well-being. Our view of God is the lens through which we view and understand the world. Once again, Tozer provides insight into this matter.

“…no people has ever risen about its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.” (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy)

Determining our view of God is a worthy exercise that will pay dividends in the future. It will force us to face our errant ideas about the Almighty and bring them into alignment with what the Scriptures have to say about Him. Interestingly, God’s Word is one of the places where humanity is encouraged to question His identity and character.

To whom then will you liken God,
    or what likeness compare with him? – Isaiah 40:18 ESV

“To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?” – Isaiah 46:5 ESV

Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? – Exodus 15:11 ESV

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? – Micah 7:18 ESV

If we’re honest, there is much about God of which we are ignorant or, perhaps, indifferent. Some of us have known Him for decades but, if put to the test, there would be little we could share that could give evidence that we knew Him intimately. So much of what we know about God is academic in nature, a compilation of disconnected bits of information that bear little resemblance to the one true God.

If I asked you if you knew the President of the United States, you would probably respond by telling me his name. If pressed, you could probably tell me the year he was elected, his political party affiliation, his wife’s name, and your personal assessment of his administration’s policies and programs. Your knowledge of him would have been gleaned from news reports, the op-ed section of the local paper, and from the opinions of others. You would have had no personal encounters with him. No one-on-one conversations would have taken place between the two of you. Any claim to truly know him would be a stretch of the imagination.

Sadly, it’s likely that the average Christian has more familiarity with the Commander-in-Chief of our nation than they do with God. Some of us spend far more time keeping up with the Kardashians than we do with the Creator God. We live in the information age, a time when access to knowledge about virtually any topic or individual is at our fingertips. And yet, we suffer from a lack of intimacy with and intelligence about God.

The goal of this series of posts is to help us get to know our God better. To do so, we will explore the attributes of God that He alone possesses. As the verses above so clearly state, our God is without equal and totally incomparable. He is not one among many; He is the solitary and sovereign God of the universe whose power, knowledge, and all-pervading presence are unparalleled and non-reproducible. God can be mimicked but never matched. He is, to put it mildly, one of a kind. Yet, how easy it is to treat Him with a familiarity that borders on contempt.

To know God. That was the divinely ordained objective when God created Adam and Eve in the garden. They were made so that they might enjoy unbroken fellowship and undiminished intimacy with Him. But sin changed all that. Because the first man and woman chose to disobey God, they were banned from His presence. They found themselves cast from the garden and operating in isolation far from the one who had made them. And with each succeeding generation, humanity moved further and further away from the garden and, at the same time, far from the presence of God.

But God still desires for men to know Him, not just cognitively but intimately and personally. As the apostle Paul points out, God has revealed Himself in the universe He created. He has placed signs of His presence and proofs of His character all around us. Yet, most of humanity has remained blind to the evidence and oblivious concerning the God to whom it points.

They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. – Romans 1:19-23 NLT

Despite the sobering nature of Paul’s words, the prophet Jeremiah points out that God still longs for mankind to know Him, and he intimates that this relationship with God is not only possible but preferable.

This is what the Lord says:
“Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom,
    or the powerful boast in their power,
    or the rich boast in their riches.
But those who wish to boast
    should boast in this alone:
that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord
    who demonstrates unfailing love
    and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth,
and that I delight in these things.
    I, the Lord, have spoken!” – Jeremiah 9:23-24 NLT

God is knowable but He is also irreplicable. There is nothing in all creation that remotely resembles Him. Even men, who are made in the image of God, are not mini versions of God. We can reflect His glory but are incapable of sharing it.  Even in His thought processes, God remains distinctly different from humanity.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT

Yet, we tend to view God as little more than a slightly more powerful version of ourselves. Because of the finite nature of our minds, we are incapable of fully grasping the “otherness” of God. Unable to comprehend His transcendence, we try to transform the incomparable God into a new and improved version of ourselves. The psalmist alludes to this common misconception when he quotes God’s assessment of man’s dumbing down of His divine image.

“…you thought that I was one like yourself.” - Psalm 50:21 ESV

The French agnostic, Voltaire is reported to have said, “God created man in His own image, and man returned the favor.” And his rather sarcastic statement supports what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans.

…they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. – Romans 1:21-23 NLT

Failure to know and recognize God for who He is creates a vacuum in the soul of man that must be filled. When we neglect a proper understanding of God, we end up with false views of His character. We fabricate our own version of Him, leaving us with an emasculated, impotent deity who looks nothing like the God of the Bible.

Psalm 97:9 describes God as “most high over all the earth” and as “exalted far above all gods.” He is transcendent. That simply means that He is totally distinct from all that He has made. He cannot be reproduced and there is nothing that remotely mirrors His likeness. Psalm 99:2 adds that God “is exalted over all the peoples.” Men are not mini-gods. Being made in His image does not infer that we resemble God. That is why Isaiah 40:18 asks the rhetorical question: “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?” The answer is “No one and nothing!” God alone is God.

God needs nothing. He has no lack or insufficiencies. He requires no complement or counterpart to complete Himself. He did not create humanity because He was lonely or needed companionship. Nothing was missing in God’s character; His being is whole and holy. The apostle John reminds us, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5 ESV). Timothy adds, “He alone is immortal and dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16 BSB).

Yet, God has made Himself known to men. He has displayed His divine attributes through the universe He has made. We are surrounded by the evidence of His power, glory, wisdom, creativity, grace, mercy, and love. Our very existence is proof that He exists. Even man, with his vast knowledge and scientific discoveries, has been unable to explain the universe's existence. Our most educated and well-reasoned theories are little more than shots in the dark.

In the book of Job, we have recorded the words of God as He confronts the arrogance and audacity of mere humans who question His will and His work.

“Who is this that questions my wisdom
    with such ignorant words?
Brace yourself like a man,
    because I have some questions for you,
    and you must answer them.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
    Tell me, if you know so much.
Who determined its dimensions
    and stretched out the surveying line?
What supports its foundations,
    and who laid its cornerstone
as the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels shouted for joy?

“Who kept the sea inside its boundaries
    as it burst from the womb,
and as I clothed it with clouds
    and wrapped it in thick darkness?
For I locked it behind barred gates,
    limiting its shores.
I said, ‘This far and no farther will you come.
    Here your proud waves must stop!’” – Job 38:2-11 NLT

Man has no business questioning God or trying to explain the existence of the universe apart from God. Everything, both the invisible and the visible, exists by the expressed will of God. He spoke and it came into being, and all that He made God reveals His glory and greatness. But that points out one of the most important aspects of God’s nature. He must reveal Himself to man to be known by man. Humanity cannot discover God on its own. Left to his own devices, no man would even attempt to find God. According to the apostle Paul, “no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:11 ESV), and his assessment echoes the words of David.

God looks down from heaven
    on the entire human race;
he looks to see if anyone is truly wise,
    if anyone seeks God.
But no, all have turned away;
    all have become corrupt. – Psalm 53:2-3 NLT

Amazingly enough, this transcendent, invisible, and unfathomable God has chosen to reveal Himself to man. And we will see more of His divine attributes on display as we continue our quest to know God better.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.