How Great Thou Art Series

If you have your Bible, please open it to Psalm Chapter 145. A man and his ten-year-old son were on a fishing trip miles away from home. At the boy’s insistence, they decided to attend the Sunday worship service at a small rural church. The father forgot to bring any cash, so he reached in his pocket and gave his son a dime to drop into the offering plate as it passed. As they walked back to their car after the service, the father complained, “the service was too long,” he lamented. “The sermon was boring, and the singing was off key!” Finally, the boy said, “Dad, I thought it was pretty good for a dime!”

Today is the second of a four-part series on old hymnals. Last week, we looked at God`s Amazing Grace and what grace is and how grace affects us. This week, we will look at another famous hymn... How Great Thou Art. This is without a doubt my favorite hymn. Often, we get caught up in our church roles and jobs that we tend to accidentally look over and forget why we have church. We tend to get so caught up in our church responsibilities and events that we do not do one of the most important things of all... praise God. Now do not get me wrong, those things are important. It is important that people serve. The Bible makes that clear, but serving should never come before your relationship with God or your praise for God. Burnout comes when you let other things in the church take priority over praising God and building your relationship with God. One of the many reasons that I love the hymnal How Great Thou Art is because of the chorus that says:

“Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;

How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;

How great Thou art, how great Thou art!”

When was the last time that you put everything aside and just praised and worshipped and focused on God? When was the last time that you did not focus on what you are going through or what responsibilities you have in the church or things you need to get done and just focused on praising God because of how great He is? Now, when I say worship and praise Him, I do not mean just merely sitting or standing there reading lyrics and moping through the song. That is not praise or worship. That song says:

“Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;

When is the last time you sang from your soul to God? When was the last time that you poured your heart out to God? That is praise and worship. We serve a God worthy of our praise and worship. In Psalm 145, we see 5 reasons why God is worthy of our praise.

God is Great

READ PSALM 145:1-7

God is worthy of our praise because God is great. Hence the name of the hymn How Great Thou Art. We serve a God that is great. Everything else we talk about today falls under the fact that God deserves our worship and praise because of how great He truly is. Verse 3 says:

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,

and His greatness is unsearchable.

His greatness is unsearchable meaning that His greatness is past what the human mind can fully comprehend or describe. God is greater than anything we could ever truly describe or understand. Back when I was taking classes at Southern Union, 2 of the electives that I chose to take was a Survey of the Old Testament and then I took a Survey of the New Testament. Both times I took the class with the same professor named Bob Harvey or as we called him, Pastor Bob. Pastor Bob is also a pastor at a church in Auburn so me and him have stayed in touch since then. One day in class, he was telling us this story that happened to him. He was in his church office and hanging on the wall was his master's degree that he got from a seminary. Someone came in and was asking questions about God and Pastor Bob kept giving him the same answer to every question. His answer was “I do not know.” He said that the man looked up at his degree and looked kind of confused when seeing his master's degree in theology. Pastor Bob said something to him that has stuck with me ever since he told the story. He looked at that man and said:

“Would not it bother you more if I knew everything about God? Because if I knew everything about God then that would mean that either I am as big as God or, God is as little as me.”