Sermon on Psalm 33, The Heart of Worship

One Sunday morning, two men are out in a boat, fishing. After several hours on the lake without catching a single fish, one of the men says to his friend, “You know, we probably should have stayed home and gone to church this morning.”
The other man says, “Well, I could have stayed home, but I couldn’t have gone to church.”
“Why’s that?” asks his friend. “My wife is sick.”

Early in his career, Matt Redman, the popular Christian musician in Britain, was singing with his church’s praise band when his pastor confronted them. They were proud of their musical performance, he said, but they were neglecting true worship. Insulted by the charge, the members of the band left the church—all, that is, except Redman. Shortly afterward, he wrote his hit song “The Heart of Worship,” which included these words: “I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about you, Jesus.”

If you’re like me you’ve probably had some incredible times of heart-felt worship where you thought your soul was going to burst with joy, and you’ve probably had some times when you weren’t sure you even ever connected with God. Perhaps in your private worship you find things flat, or maybe when you’re with others you feel self-conscious. Of course, the point of worship is not how we feel, it’s how we honor God. Worship is giving God his due, offering him what is worthy of him because of who he is. So how is that supposed to look?

What is the heart of worship? How do we make worship all about Jesus? Would you be surprised to find that one very instructive place to go to find out is the psalms, written much before the birth of Jesus, but a God-inspired record of the worshiping community of Israel. I want to show you particularly what Psalm 33 has to contribute to our understanding of “the heart of worship.” I was meditating on this psalm during our time traveling to and staying in Boston for our son’s wedding. My son-in-law Johnpaul and I spent time discussing it as a possible teaching series for college and young adults in a worship setting. I was thoroughly intrigued by the depth of its expressions on worship.

1 Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the LORD with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. 3 Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.
4 For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. 5 The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love. 6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him. 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
10 The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. 11 But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance. 13 From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind; 14 from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth- 15 he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. 16 No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. 17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.
18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, 19 to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. 20 We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. 21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. 22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you.

Now let’s begin to look at it in some depth. We’re going to see as we examine it that it suggests several ways in which we should give God his due, worship him. The first is found in the very first phrase of verse 1.

You should worship God with joy

I do not think it is possible to genuinely worship God without joy. In part, my statement depends on how I understand joy. Joy is that sense we have that no matter how bad things might be there is a solid foundation under us that is holding us up and guaranteeing that all is well in the universe. It is that certain knowledge that we are being taken care of and that our souls are safe in the hand of one mightier than we are. At times this leaves us exuberant. At times this gives us a settled peace. At times it is the only thing we can cling to in order to remain sane. How could we come to God to acknowledge that he is the sovereign of the universe, the one in whom we have found salvation, who is worthy of the utmost accolades as the greatest being in existence, and not come with that sense of joy?

What this requires, of course, is that we’re able to see God in every aspect of our lives. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the famous lines, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes— The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” If we’re to come back to the heart of worship, we’re going to have to have eyes to see how God is overseeing every facet of our lives with his love and power.

You should worship God with obedience

Our next phrase in Psalm 33 gives us another insight. “It is fitting for the upright to praise him.” Have you seen the movie, Finding Neverland? It is the story of J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, and his relationship with a widow who had four sons. Peter, one of the youngest boys, has taken his father’s death hardest, and then when his mother dies, the one he counted on to take care of him, he leaves the funeral and runs to the park to hide his emotions and attempt to cope. He has resisted anyone’s claim on his trust and taken it all on his own shoulders. Watch as Barrie approaches him in the park. [play video segment]

When he tells Peter to sit down, Peter does. Why? There is something in Barrie’s voice and character that Peter has decided to trust and take a chance on. Peter obeys. Obedience is the hallmark of trust. Worship is the act of sitting down at God’s command acknowledging that he is in charge and not us. We are not strong enough to help ourselves. And so we obey his leading. We cannot say we worship God and live lives of disobedience. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commands.” It is fitting indeed for the upright to praise him. Only the upright can do so.

 

You should worship God with music

One of the things we have to constantly remind ourselves of is that worship is not equal to singing. However, our next phrases in verse two and three indicate that music is an incredibly apt way to worship. Why is music so important in worship? It has something to do with the way music affects our souls and affects the soul of God. Why did God create music? He created it to express one’s heart intellectually and emotionally. Nothing else so thoroughly draws from every part of our being the truth of what is important to us.

Johann Sebastian Bach, the baroque era’s greatest organist and composer, and one of the most productive geniuses in the history of Western music, wrote of 2 Chronicles 5:13, which speaks of temple musicians praising God, “At a reverent performance of music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence.”

In her memoirs, Ilyasah Shabazz, the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, talks about the effect of attending church as a little girl:
Betty Shabazz took the girls to the mosque every Sunday, and when they were visiting their grandparents in Philadelphia, they went to Friendship Baptist, a church Ilyasah says she loved, especially the praying and testifying and the singing of gospel music. “I loved the singing that went on,” she writes. “I wanted to feel whatever powerful force was causing all of these people to sing and clap so heartily. I never did catch the spirit, but I always kept the hope.”
There is just something about music that is suited to worship. I wonder a lot when I see mostly men who will stand with everyone else during a time of worship and let everyone around them sing, but remain silent. Is this an American cultural thing, that men are ashamed to sing or feel they can’t? Or maybe they’re afraid of what emotions will be released if they do. But true worship is very effectively expressed in song.

 

You should worship God with skill

Is it possible, however, that this next requirement of worship contradicts what we have just said? The end of verse three is a call to sing and play with skill. We’re more inclined to think like the woman who one morning heard her 3-year-old daughter, Katherine, dancing and singing around the house as usual, but as she listened, she noticed she was singing, “I love you, Lord, and I lift my noise.” “Make a joyful noise to the Lord,” the psalmist says. What if we’re not skilled musically?

But I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. This does not mean that everyone needs to be musically capable, but we need to offer our best to God in every aspect of our worship. How else would we feel good about what we offer to God as his due if we did not do our best for our King?

Even if we’re not good at music, we can employ someone who is. If our personal effort to worship him is minimal, we can choose to become more fervent by meditating on what he’s done for us and watching to see what he’s going to do next.

Amy Carmichael, the great hymnast, observed, “I believe that if we are to be and to do for others what God means us to be and to do, we must not let Adoration and Worship slip into second place, “For it is the central service asked by God of human souls; and its neglect is responsible for much lack of spiritual depth and power.”
Perhaps we may find here the reason why we so often run dry. We do not give time enough to what makes for depth, and so we are shallow; a wind, quite a little wind, can ruffle our surface; a little hot sun, and all the moisture in us evaporates. It should not be so.

You should worship God with trust in his character

Why is it that we should be willing to worship God with joy, with obedience, with music, and with skill? It is because of who he is, it is because of the greatness of his trustworthy character. Verses four and five confirm this.

As we meditate on God’s character we can focus on what he says as a testimony to who he is. He says what is right and true. What we say springs out of who we are, and what God says reveals everything we need to know about him. His words do not tickle our ears or conceal the truth about where we’ve gone astray, yet they bring comfort and encouragement where there was none. And he never goes back on his word. He is faithful in all he does.

That is someone whom you can trust. And he has the perfect blend of holiness and compassion. We tend to get those things out of balance. We are either very focused on making sure that the right thing is done, giving no quarter to anyone who fails to come up to the standard, or we let everyone get away with everything because we feel sorry for them. The perfect God upholds the standards of righteousness and justice, requiring only the best of all. He also fills the earth with his unfailing love. And it is that love that forgives when we fail to be right or just. It is that love that teaches us how to be right and just. His character is absolutely trustworthy.

You cannot worship God if you don’t trust who he is. Worship is the putting of your life in the hands of another.

 

You should worship God with trust in his power

And so, along with putting your trust in his character, you must worship him with trust in his power. Don’t you love the picture of God gathering the seas into jars. A year ago we took our first cruise. Out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico it is easy to ponder the vastness of the ocean. Billions and billions of gallons of water and that is a mere smidgeon of the water covering the earth. But for God it is a 2-liter bottle of salt water. His power is unfathomable.

Why is that so important? Because even if he is reliable in his character, if he can’t do anything needed to demonstrate his reliability, how can he help us. There is a scene in Joe Versus the Volcano, the old Tom Hanks movie about a young man who believes he has only 6 months to live and agrees to go throw himself into a Pacific island volcano to appease the feared gods of a small island. If he does this they will sell the island to a developer. So the developer pays Joe’s way to go out with a bang. After trying to die in the volcano it spews him out and he ends up in the ocean. One night, weary, hungry and barely able to stand, he wakes and sees a giant orb of light so big and so close he feels he can touch it. The moon is so stunningly breathtaking that he stands paralyzed for a moment, and then says out loud, “Dear God, whose name I do not know. Thank you for my life. I forgot how big…. (He pauses briefly.) Thank you. Thank you for my life.”

Sometimes we forget how big He is. Worship must bring us back to this reality that is bigger than the earthly reality we are seeing before our eyes. True worship must acknowledge the Creator’s awesome and unlimited power to care for us.

 

You should worship God with evangelistic fervor

But there is one more aspect to true worship and if we will come back to the heart of worship we must also worship him with evangelistic fervor. Look at verse 8. This is always the cry of the true worshiper. You cannot worship this God, who is right and true in all he does and whose unfailing love fills the earth, and not want that for others.

Wendy Kaminer, an avowed agnostic who has authored five books, including, Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, expresses her discomfort with religious beliefs:
Apart from the comfort I might find in religious belief, when I think about the question, “Does God exist?” I put it in the category of things I can’t worry about. Questions I can’t know the answer to. My feeling is that, even if God does exist, it is really not my job to worry about him. If God exists, he’s going to exist whether or not I believe in him. He’ll be fine without me.
Something that greatly bothers me about public religiosity is the mandate to worship. I don’t have a lot of respect for the view of God as some authority figure who wants you to come and kneel before him every week. There’s this sense that you are to go to your church or your synagogue or your mosque or wherever it is that you go and, in some way, abase yourself before the Lord. That seems to me to be such a demeaning way of seeing God—such an expression of human vanity! When human beings imagine God, they imagine a king. They imagine a flawed human being who needs to be worshiped.
But that isn’t it at all, is it? God isn’t completely fine without me, and I’m certainly not fine without him. And it isn’t that he has some flaw in his character that requires us to fill him up with our worship. He is full and running over, but we need to worship because we are empty without him.

I don’t know where you are today in your worship of the Lord. It is important for us, as one pastor said, ” to get lost in the wonder of God. If you’ll get lost in that wonder, who knows what he’ll do for you.”
Whatever you give your heart to will be your source of joy and will command your obedience and skill. You will sing about it despite yourself. Is it worthy of your trust and evangelistic efforts? Can you say in all honesty with the psalmist, “We wait in hope for the LORD”?

Read that last part of the psalm again.

18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, 19 to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. 20 We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. 21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. 22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you.

If this is what you really mean, make this your prayer today and every day.