Praising God in the Psalms
Psalm 63
David was most likely in tough circumstances when he wrote Psalm 63. His situation wasn’t one to put him in a really happy, peppy sort of mood. He was in the desert and was in the midst of some of the worst possible circumstances that he would ever go through. And this was a man who fought a giant. This was a man who had the king, the government, his father-in-law sign a death warrant for him. This is a man who, at one point in time, had to go to his foreign enemy and ask for aid, the government of the people of the giant whom he had killed a few years earlier. This is a man who went through a lot. And it's not in his happiest of moments that he wrote a psalm that provides encouragement for himself and encourages God's people to praise.
We sometimes might be tricked into or might be told the lie that praise is a result of our mood, that we somehow need to conjure up the right mood or the right attitude to enter into God's presence to worship. As if we can only meet with God “if I get eight hours of sleep, if none of the kids are fighting, if there are no disagreements with my spouse if I've had two and a half cups of caffeinated coffee from Starbucks, then I will be in the right mood to offer praise to my God”. Sometimes, we believe that it is our music and our performance of music that is acceptable in God's sight. Sometimes we think maybe the sermon's too long and God might not accept that or it's too short and God might not accept it. It's got to be just right. Or maybe it just plain stinks.
Our praise of our God is not mood-dependent. Psalm 63 points to this reality. The praise of our God is dependent on two things: who God is and what he's done. That's it. It is through an experience of who God is, a relationship with God is, and what he's done that leads us into praise.
The God of the Bible loves his people and empowers us to praise him regardless of our mood or circumstance. Your praise and evangelism of who Jesus is and why he matters is based on who God is and what he's done. It's not based on you or your emotions or circumstances. It's based on him.
Psalm 63:1
“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”
David was being pursued by people who wanted to kill him. We might want to read this as David earnestly seeking a safe place and seeking some reinforcements. We might read this and think that David should instead be asking for water to quench his thirst and troops to save him. Maybe even asking God to stop his son from trying to kill him, but no. No, David says, earnestly, I seek you. I thirst for you in a dry parched land where there is no water. Why is it that David does this? What is it about his relationship with his God that leads him in a time where he is close to death to seek God rather than to seek after these other things? What experience has he had that leads him to praise in this way?
Psalm 63:2
“I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.”
Verse two tells us, I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and glory. That experience for David was seeing God, not in his [David’s] sanctuary, but rather seeing God in God's sanctuary. That experience of God's power, God’s person, and God's glory leads David into a relationship with his God such that his life is now a life of praise. Whether things are going well and he's sitting on the throne in Jerusalem empowered in peace, or if he's being chased in the desert, his life will be a life of praise. David saw God’s power and glory, and that changed his outlook on the rest of his circumstances. He sees his life is to be lived in worship to God. In the worst of life's circumstances, as he's running out of water, he says, your love is better than life, so my lips will praise you. His response to who God is and what he's done is a reaction of praise.
The praise of our God is not a mood that we create.
It's not an environment that we set.
It's not a context or culture we can create.
It's not an atmosphere that we muster up with our music and our singing.
It's not a spot where we make it holy through our prayers, decorations, our actions.
The praise of our God is a reaction to experiencing who God is and what he's done.
Romans 8:38-39
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We're told in Romans that the God who we worship is so powerful, so good, and so worthy of praise that neither heights, nor depths, nor angels, nor demons, nor powers, nor principalities, not even death itself, can separate us from the love of our God. What a God we worship! A God who, if he did nothing for us, would still be worthy of worship.
And yet our God is a God who has done so much for us. How much more is He worthy of our worship and praise? God is worthy of our praise simply because of who He is. On top of that, God is such a gracious and kind and patient God that he also does things for us and on our behalf.
Middle-Class God?
Do you worship a middle-class God? Do you worship kind of a nice God? We are all busy with our own everyday schedules and problems. We have kids to take to teach, work to do, houses to clean, people to see, etc. so God’s probably busy too. He's probably got nice places to go to, kind of God. Do you worship a God who's great, or who's just kind of nice and middle-class? Kind of not, not the top tax bracket. I mean, we're not all in the top tax bracket. A middle-class God, a nice God. A God who gives us a house, gives us a nice church, gives us a nice sanctuary, he gives us kind of a nice life. There are ups and downs in your life and relationship with God, but you know, for the most part, God is kind of nice.
Do you worship a nice God? Or do you worship a God who's worthy of your praise, even if all of the terrible things come true? Is that our God?
A God who amid all the tragedies, in all the diagnoses, is that the God we worship? That is the God of the scriptures.
A God of comfort. That is our God.
A God who is worth praising, even amid funerals and in tears.
A God who on the best of days is still worth praising.
A God who on the worst of days is still worth praising. For his love never changes.
And there's nothing in this life, or in the next, that can separate us from that God's love.
What a great God we worship. What a God who is worthy of our praise because of who he is and because of what he's done.
A Look at the 4 Characteristics of God
