Why We Worship 5

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

Psalm 99 

The Lord reigns;
Let the peoples tremble!
He dwells between the cherubim;
Let the earth be moved!
2 The Lord is great in Zion,
And He is high above all the peoples.
3 Let them praise Your great and awesome name—
He is holy.

4 The King’s strength also loves justice;
You have established equity;
You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.
5 Exalt the Lord our God,
And worship at His footstool—
He is holy.

6 Moses and Aaron were among His priests,
And Samuel was among those who called upon His name;
They called upon the Lord, and He answered them.
7 He spoke to them in the cloudy pillar;
They kept His testimonies and the ordinance He gave them.

8 You answered them, O Lord our God;
You were to them God-Who-Forgives,
Though You took vengeance on their deeds.
9 Exalt the Lord our God,
And worship at His holy hill;
For the Lord our God is holy.

Psalm 99 

has only 9 verses and three of those verses proclaim the reason for worshipping God that we are considering today.

          Verse 3
                 Let them praise Thy great and terrible Name for it is Holy

          Verse 5
                 Exalt ye the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool; for He is Holy.

          Verse 9
                 Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His Holy hill; for the Lord our God is Holy

Why would the Psalmist need to tell us what appears to be the same thing?

Simply because it is not the same.

I believe this Psalm was very deliberately written with these three verses, it is not idle repetition.

Repetition with God's Word shows us how important something is and it is to be carefully noted.

Firstly   we are told that God's Name is Holy

and then 

Twice   we are told that God is Holy.

An indication that everything about God is Holy.

Yes in two of the verses we are told to worship God because He is Holy but in each case a different place is mentioned.

We are meant to worship God wherever we are 

because He is Holy no matter where we are.

There is never a time or place when God is not Holy.

We may feel as if some place is holier than another but God is always Holy 

and the place will not determine what He is like 

nor how we should treat Him.

Do you worship God differently depending on where you are?

Do you believe God is Holy?

           

Why We Worship 4

I am taking time each week to ask myself

 "Why we worship"

One of the things about God that we may find hard to understand is that God cannot be measured or defined.

Our minds are so finite that we can not really understand that there can possibly be something that is infinite.

Except if you are a Maths teacher as I was and then you have often had to talk about positive and negative numbers both going on to infinity.

 ( I love the symbol used for infinity  ∞ )

infinite adjective

1. limitless or endless in space, extent, or size; impossible to measure or calculate
2. 
   

Isn't that marvellous to think about?  

God has no limits!

So God has no start or finish.

 

                                                                                                       
  
Do you ever ask God to help you appreciate how different He is to us?        

Why We Worship 3

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship".

I am not presuming that there is one overall right answer.

Perhaps because we are all uniquely different people we may also believe we have uniquely different reasons for worshipping God.

I believe we will have some uniquely different ways of worshipping but there are many reasons why we worship that must be common to us all.

In this series I'm really focusing on the attributes of God at the moment with

       
          God is GREAT

               
                    God is WORTHY 

                             

                                   

and for today I'm taking the bible verse   1 John 4 v 8

How do we know that He is Love?


The Bible tells us He is Love as in the verse above.


Our pastors and leaders in church explain to us that He is Love


But most of all our personal relationship with Him cries out to us that He is Love.

We would not even be able to have this relationship with Him if He was not Love.

We would not have been given the only way of Salvation through Jesus if He was not Love. 

We would never be able to get beyond our sinful nature if He was not Love.

I am thankful that God is Love and I have experienced His great Love for me.

Without a doubt God is Love!

Do you have this relationship where you can say without a doubt that 

God is Love?

Why We Worship 2

If someone were to ask you today why you worship God would you know how to answer?

We dealt more with that in the first one in the series featuring GOD IS GREAT                             
         Today let's look at                          

Revelation 4 v 10 - 11

        the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

If the 24 elders who are before the throne of God worship Him because He is worthy then we can not disagree but need to proclaim exactly the same thing now here before we need to do it in Heaven.

   

Some people might say
  

                              "Let's Practice what we will be doing for eternity"

                       

               
 but instead we should say

"Let's worship and let's do it now" 

Let's declare it now "God is Worthy to be praised".

because

                                                         

                                                              now and for eternity.

Why We Worship #1

If someone were to ask you today why you worship God would you know how to answer?

If we are honest most of us would stutter or hmm and haw because we would either not have thought about it or we would be trying to think what the "expected" or "right" answer is.


Probably we all worship God for different reasons because worship is a very personal thing.

Perhaps because  we feel so blessed,

                             or  we feel so thankful,

                                    or  we feel that God has rescued us from a broken life,

                                           or  etc......


However if we ask a Theologian what answer would we get?

Well those who know me well will know that I can easily do that because my eldest son is a Theologian, so I did and this is what he said

"To respond with thanksgiving for God's grace to us in Christ"

                                                       Jonathan Black   
                                                          APOSTOLIC THEOLOGY BLOG

For myself I have always equated worship with glorifying God and so I thought of the Catechism I learnt growing up in the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland.



Q:   What is man's chief end?


A:   Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever




But I think in plain terms I would just have said because

We see this in Job 36 v 26

Taking it in context of the passage around the verse we see that it is voiced by one of Job's friends.

Elihu Proclaims God’s Majesty

24 “Remember to magnify His work,
Of which men have sung.
25 Everyone has seen it;
Man looks on it from afar.

26 “Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him;
Nor can the number of His years be discovered.
27 For He draws up drops of water,
Which distill as rain from the mist,
28 Which the clouds drop down
And pour abundantly on man.
29 Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds,
The thunder from His canopy?
30 Look, He scatters His light upon it,
And covers the depths of the sea.
31 For by these He judges the peoples;
He gives food in abundance.
32 He covers His hands with lightning,
And commands it to strike.
33 His thunder declares it,
The cattle also, concerning the rising storm.

There is no doubt that God is Great.

 In the evidence of creation of the world around us 

there is no doubt that 

God is great.