Psalm 100

 I want you to imagine that you’ve just met someone new. Maybe its a student who was told that for a class they needed to interview someone like you. But first, they ask if they can follow you around for the day. You quickly agree. When it comes time at the end of the day for the interview, what questions do you think the student would ask? What do you think they would have noticed about you? And who or what would they say that you worship?

Because the unspoken truth is that all of us worship someone or something. In fact, worship is an action and attitude towards someone or something that we lift up. And what or who we worship says a whole lot about us, my friends. It can show folks what really in our hearts. What we value. What we desire. What we care about. It says what or who we think is worthy of praise.

Psalms were ancient poems set to music that were sung as part of a worship gathering. Think of them as an ancient hymn, where every word matters. I once had someone tell me that we need to sing every verse of hymns because it tells us some truth about God. And that person is right. We need to examine all of the words, together, to understand what the psalmist is trying to say.

Sometimes we find important words about the Psalms before we even get into the text of the Psalm itself.  Take today’s Psalm for example. What is written between “Psalm 100” and “Shout for joy to the Lord” - A psalm. For giving grateful praise.

The Psalmist wants us to know that this is a psalm about lifting up high God’s name. And then he goes on to put a really fine point on what worship is about. Worship is about shouting for joy. Coming to God in gladness. Knowing that the Lord is God. Thanking God and praising his name. Telling of God’s faithfulness.

But just as important as what worship isn’t about. Song writer and musician Chris Tomlin writes in one of his songs that “You and I are made to worship” but that doesn’t mean that worship is about us. It’s not about hearing our favorite song. Or seeing our friends. Or even to get something out of the sermon. We come together as the people of God to praise God alone. 

And the Psalmist says, we don’t just do that out of obligation. That can suck the joy and passion right out of our experience together. Worship is where we come together, and echo the words of psalm 100: “We shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth! Worship the Lord with gladness; come before the Lord with song.” When we come together there is a method to how we do things, called liturgy, and each part of the liturgy from the prelude to the benediction has a purpose. But when we get so set is how we do things, instead of why we do them, we’ve missed the point.

John Wesley was known for preaching in a variety of places, most notably outdoors. But John was raised to be an Anglican priest. He knew the liturgy and wanted people to be part of the Anglican church. He started the Methodists as a revival movement for the church, not its own entity. But along the way he had to adapt to doing things differently, to meeting the needs of the people, even if it wasn’t his choice, so that people who did not yet know Christ could connect with him deeply.

Friends, does that mean that worship doesn’t transform us? By no means! But what God offers us in worship is not the primary reason we come together to praise God in the first place. Bishop Schanse writes in a book about the five practices of a vital congregation that , “God uses worship to transform lives, heal wounded souls, renew hope, shape decisions, provoke change, inspire compassion, and bind people to one another.” But we do not come to worship demanding that from out. Another way to say this is that we do not give our praise to God in a conditional way - saying God, I’ll sing your praises, but only if you do this for me first. No. We come praise God because we are devoted to God.

In fact, it is because we praise God out of this place of devotion, that we can tell of God’s goodness and faithfulness, even when things aren’t going well. How on earth can we praise God when life hurts? Because God is still God. When we praise God for his steadfast love - that isn’t love that’s just present in the moments of joy and ease. God is holding on to us just as tightly when life feels like a mess. God is always worthy of honor and praise.

The problem, friends, is that we live a world where we now worship and praise everything. I’ve shared with you before that I struggle with the word “love” in the English language because we say that we love God and love ice cream in the same breath. It’s like that with our praise as well. We sing the praises of a team or a TV show, just as much as we sing the praises of our holy God. 

Praise should be reserved for God and it should change us. It reorients our hearts towards God in a way that makes us want to serve him and him alone. If praise of God realigns our hearts with the heart of God, it should leave nothing about us untouched. It will impact how we work at our job and how we treat our spouse. How we talk to our friends and how we talk to strangers in the grocery store. 

Now does that means we always get it right? Nope. We are humans. Our hearts stray. We do slip into praising other people and things. In fact, Augustine, who was a Bishop in the early church, famously said we love the things we ought to use and use the things we ought to love. We could just as easily say that we praise that which is meant to be used and use the God we are to be praising. 

Ouch.

But that’s why we need Psalms like this one. Psalms that have been passed down through the ages. Psalms that our Lord and Savior would have sung at the synagogue. They call us to truly remember what it means to praise our God. 

I want to go back to my odd example from the beginning of the sermon, but instead of interviewing you, the student simply observed you for a day and then had to make a list of what or who they thought you worshipped. Where do you think God would be on that list? 

Let that sink in for a moment.

Because it is really easy to say that of course we praise and worship God alone, but do our lives really show that? Has praising God so deeply changed us that people notice? Because here’s the second part of the truth that we all worship someone or something - what or who we worship says a lot about us as the worship. 

So my friends, where would God be on your list? What do we praise above God? What would other says is the focus of our time, our attention and our worship? Let us pray that God helps us always praise him and him alone. Amen.