Worship is never just about feeling good in God’s presence. Worship is about hearing God’s Word, responding to it, embracing it to our hearts, and then being caught up into a life of obedience and ongoing praise. So, Asaph gets us thinking in Psalm 81.
In this worship psalm, celebration and praise are ignited. The people are called to remember the powerful grace of God that delivered them from Egypt and the harsh realities of the pharaoh. They are reminded that in the past, under the leadership of Moses, God’s people, “did not listen” to his voice (see vs. 11). They had refused to go with God. He had called them to be free of strange and foreign gods, and to live for Him, the LORD, Yahweh, who brought them up out of Egypt, with a promise of blessings and continual guidance, but they would have nothing to do with it.
So, in worship, the people remember. They look back, reflect, examine their own hearts, and hopefully, “listen” to God’s voice this time, and commit again to live in obedience to His delivering, sustaining, and empowering will. Sadly, Israel continued to have its ups-and-downs. They would draw near to God and then move away again. They would seek His face and then turn from His ways. They wanted the blessings of God’s covenant with them, but didn’t want to live in a covenant relationship with God.
Now, Fast forward to 2020. Fast forward to your life and mine. Fast forward into our stories. Are we faithful? Do we too easily slip away from the embrace of God? Do we set up shrines to our own gods? May it not be said of us, as God said of ancient Israel, “My people did not listen to My voice, and Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices” (vs. 11-12).
Sadly, too often I have walked in my “own devices,” and the mess created has been less than pretty. How about you? I have learned, by God’s patient grace that life in His embrace is much better than life in my mess. Maybe that’s why worship with fellow believers means so much to me. We gather and greet and laugh and hug and shake hands and give high-fives, and sing and pray and hear God’s Word, and the Holy Spirit, somehow, someway, creates within us a deep and abiding hunger to live in God. Not only does He give us the hunger, God gives us the power to get out of and to stay out of the mess.
So, my fellow believers, “Sing for joy to God our strength; shout joyfully…raise a song, strike the timbrel…blow the trumpet” (vss. 1-3). Let there be no strange god among us. Let there be no foreign god among us. Let us listen to God’s voice and obey His will for us. Let us walk in God’s ways, and let God be God in our midst.
Praise my soul, the King of heaven;
To His feet your tribute bring.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
evermore His praises sing.
-- Henry F. Lyte, 1834
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