Readings for today: Psalms 89, 96, 100, 101, 107
Human beings are naturally selfish creatures. We are self-centered. Self-promoting. Self-protective. Self-indulgent. If you have any doubts, take a scroll through Instagram or Facebook sometime. Selfies. Humble brags. Carefully curated authenticity. Scripted messiness. Real life edited down into a series of highlight reels. Flip open Twitter and what do you see but a platform for “call-out” and/or “cancel” culture. People throwing out their often ill-informed opinions on just about every subject. Perfecting the blame game. Throwing around self-righteous accusations. Setting themselves up as a modern day Pharisees as they seek to “police” other people’s content. Of course, our media is no different. Driven by particular agendas, they report only those facts which support their pre-determined narratives. They spin inconvenient truths out with the hope that their audience won’t notice the verbal misdirection. This game is played by politicians, media moguls, titans of industry, social influencers, you name it. Why? Because we’re all human. And - back to my original premise - to be human is to be self-centered. Self-promoting. Self-protective. Self-indulgent. We just have this innate tendency to make life all about us.
The same is true in the church. We might even be the worst offenders. Why would I ever say such a thing? Well, it’s one thing to have a political hot take. It’s another to take a stand on social issue. If we’re honest, all our selfies and humble brags are pretty superficial and trivial in the grand scheme of things. But to twist the worship of the Living God and make it about us is serious business. To dare to impose our own preferences or judge based upon whether we “got something out of it” is arrogant in the extreme. To assume we know what’s best or to make the mistake of thinking worship is about us getting our needs met, our wants fulfilled, our desires granted is foolishness. Worship is not about how we feel…though we should experience a range of feelings during the experience. Worship is not about what we think…though our thinking should be challenged on any number of levels as we sit under the authority of the Word of God. Worship is not about what we get…though if we are humble we’ll receive any number of blessings for having been in God’s presence. Worship is not about us. It is about God.
One of the most challenging Biblical truths for Christians to grasp is that God’s highest priority is Himself. God’s greatest passion is for His own glory. God’s deepest love is for Himself. And if you find yourself thinking that makes God sound like a narcissist, let me humbly suggest you take a step back and think it through. In the beginning. Before time and space. Before the universe came into being. There was God. He existed eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect communion. There is no lack in God. No deficiency in God. No void God needed to fill. God could have gone on existing in perfect communion with Himself for all eternity and not missed a thing. God doesn’t need us. God isn’t incomplete without us. God is all-sufficient in Himself. But God did choose to create. God created a universe and filled it with all kinds of beauty and artistry and splendor. He created the dualities that mark our existence like light and dark. Sun and moon. Earth and sky. Male and female. Finally, God made a special creature in His own image. It was an act of pure grace. He gave us agency and creativity and responsibility that mirrored His own. His plan was to live in unbroken fellowship with us forever. Inviting us to share in the perfect love He has in Himself. But we rejected His plan, of course. We went our own way. We wanted to be like God. Self-sufficient. Self-governing. Self-propagating. We wanted to be in charge of our own lives. We wanted to be the captains of our own destiny. The masters of our own fate. The rulers of our own souls. So, in a supreme act of love, God let us go. God let us go our own way, knowing it would end in self-harm and self-destruction. God let us go our own way, knowing we would turn His beautiful creation into a means to feed our own selfish desires. God let us go our own way, knowing we would reject Him at every turn as we tried our hand at self-rule. And all God knew and feared would happen took place. It broke His heart.
But God wouldn’t let go. To do so would be to act against His own divine character. So God rends the heavens and comes to earth. God - in some sense - rends the Trinity to come to earth. Sending His beloved Son to become one of us. Sending His beloved Son to suffer and die for us. Sending His beloved Son to deliver us out of the mirrored prisons in which we live - where all we can see is Self - and set us free to love and serve Him again as He planned from the beginning. And yes, God did this for us but more importantly, He did it for Himself. He did it to remain true to who He is. To do anything else would be to deny His very nature and character. Even in our salvation, God’s highest commitment remains Himself. God’s highest priority remains His own glory. And this is why we worship. We worship God not for how He makes us feel. Not for what He’s done for us. Not for the eschatological “goodies” that await us in the life to come. We worship God simply because He is God. He alone is worthy. He alone is deserving. This is what we were created for in the first place.
So listen again to the words of Psalm 96. Lift your voice again in praise. God is God! Let’s give Him the worship He deserves and the worship He demands! “Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity." Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.” (Psalm 96:1-13)