Sermon 22/06/08 Psalm 24 How should we worship?
Every communion service we sing these words, “Ye gates lift up your head on high”. It’s not so often that we have time to ponder what these words mean, so we hope be able to do that today as we look at this psalm together.
Some traditions we have are so old or have been done for so long, it’s easy for us to forget why we did them in the first place.
A bit like the, two young newlyweds were preparing to enjoy their first baked ham dinner in their new house. After unwrapping the meat and setting it on the cutting board, the wife chopped off both ends of the ham with a knife, tossing the two small ends in the bin.
Confused the husband asked his wife, “Why did you just cut off the ends of the ham like that?” So his wife said, “I don’t know. My mum always did it like that, and my granny always did it like that too. Maybe it helps bring out the flavour.”
Unsatisfied with this answer, the husband called his wife’s gran, “Can you tell me why you cut the two ends off of a ham before you cook it?” Granny then answered, “Oh my yes, I cut the ends of the ham off so it would fit in my pan.”
So it it’s important that we know why we do things.
If the whole of Psalm 24 were to be summed up in one line, it’s an answer to the question, “How should we worship God?” And it’s a very relevant question for today, because the word worship means many things to different people.
The bible isn’t going to tell us what style of music we should use or anything like that, but I believe it can help us know how we are to worship.
Firstly, we need to know the God we worship.
The God we worship is not just any God among a selection of gods that we can choose from, but he is the creator of the whole universe and the planet we live on. See verse 1, “The world and all that is in it belong to the Lord, the earth and all who live in it are his.”
The apostle Paul quoted this verse in 1 Corinthians 10:25-26, when he tells the Corinthian Christians that they are free to eat meat offered to idols, because God is the one who made all the animals in the first place. And more than that, the idols they were concerned about were no gods at all, compared to the God who created all things.
So despite the fact that God is our creator, he is not a God who is distant from us, but he’s a God we can know. Moses was a man who knew God. It tells us in Exodus 33:11 that ‘The Lord would speak with Moses face to face, just as someone speaks with a friend’. It says in Jeremiah 24:7, “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” And then in Jesus, God has come to us in the flesh that we might know what he is really like. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul calls Jesus, ‘the image of the invisible God… through whom all things were created’.
The God we worship is a God that can be known. And it’s important that we understand that as we approach God in worship.
We should expect God to make his presence known to us, because we do not worship dead idols, but a living saviour.
Secondly, we need to know how to approach God.
The Old Testament priests had to approach God in a certain way and this is the background to verses 3-6 of Psalm 24. King David has brought the Ark of the Covenant, back to Jerusalem, to Mount Zion which is the hill of the Lord. The Ark was a gold covered box that contained the ten commandments and Aaron’s staff. So when the Psalm asks, “Who has the right to go up the Lord’s hill?”, it would be understood that only a priest who had purified himself first, was allowed to approach the Ark.
In Old Testament times, the priest had to offer a blood sacrifice to God, so that he would be made acceptable. In the same way under the New Covenant, the only way that we are made acceptable to God is through the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
In verse 5 of the psalm it says, “The Lord will bless them and save them, God will declare them innocent.” That’s what happens to us when we turn away from sin and accept Jesus as our saviour. No matter what you have done in your past, God declares you innocent. He washes you whiter than snow through the blood of Jesus.
When that happens, we can come right into his presence without fear. Verse 6, says, “Such are the people who come to God, who come into the presence of the God of Jacob.”
You can all go through the motions of singing hymns or songs to God, or lifting our hands to God in praise, but if you come to God with sin in you life, God isn’t going to show up.
At the end of an Elvis Presley concert, the announcer would tell the audience, ‘Elvis has left the building’. How many of our worship services are like that, where ‘God has left the building’, because we fail to come to worship with pure hearts?
Lastly, we need to know how to worship God.
Those words that we know so well and sing, “Fling wide the gates, open the ancient doors and the great king will come in.” These are the very words that were sung as the Ark of the Covenant was brought through the city gates. But Jerusalem wasn’t originally built by the Jews, but by their enemies, the Jebusites. So we have to see this as a kind of victory parade and a big celebration as God conquers the city of his enemies.
“Who is this great king?” the psalm asks, “He is the Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, victorious in battle.”
We can sometimes forget that there is a spiritual world beyond what we can understand. The bible is clear that God fights on our behalf in a real spiritual battle, with evil forces and powers. We see this in the ministry of Jesus as he confronts evil spirits and the power of the devil at work in peoples lives.
The apostle Paul seems to have Psalm 24 in mind when he talks about God’s victory over evil when Jesus died on the cross.
In Colossians 2:15 he says, “And on that cross Christ freed himself from the power of the spiritual rulers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them by leading them as captives in his victory procession.”
In other words the Satanic powers of this world who have held us captive in sin, have been captured by Christ through his cross, and in this way setting us free.
When you worship, it should always be cross centred. For we don’t just praise the God who made us, but we praise the God who saved us. And cross centred worship doesn’t need to be solemn, because we remember Jesus’ death, but it can be full of joy and thanksgiving.
So much of the African-American gospel music was born out of their experience of slavery, and I think that’s why it’s so joyful, because it’s real to them.
Maybe you’ll remember the words of Martin Luther King, when he used the words of an old Negro Spiritual in his most famous speech. “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
Surely as we think of all that Jesus has done for us, that should be our song too.
So if we want to worship God in a truly biblical way, we perhaps need to pay attention to these three things that the Psalm reminds us of. To know the God we worship, to prepare our hearts before we approach God, and that all worship should be cross centred as we celebrate the victory that Christ has won for us. And so as we bring our worship, whether in our private time with God, or as we gather as a congregation, may we truly experience the presence of the God of Jacob with us.
