One of the old confessions of the church (Westminster) says that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to fully enjoy Him forever. That’s a pretty decent answer to why we’re all here. We were created to worship. It is man’s chief end. Worship is an end, not a means to an end. We worship “because of” not “in order to.”
Last sermon, we saw that worship is the result of God’s revelation of Himself, His drawing near to us. That is the cause. We answered the question, “Why should we worship?” This week, we’re going to look at the character of a worshipper. We might ask this question: “What does a real worshipper look like?” One happy by-product of this is that we’ll also see a portrait of Manhood. We need this badly. We live in a culture that bombards us with horrible ideas of what it means to be a man. On the one hand, we’re told that a man only becomes a good man as he becomes more and more like a woman. On the other hand, we’re told that a man is measured by things like sexual conquest or the ability to deal out death and violence.
But God created man for fellowship with himself. God made man to worship. When a man becomes a true worshipper, he becomes a man in the estimation of God. He becomes a man like Jesus, who ought to be our standard for Biblical manhood. What we will see is that a worshipper can be recognized by how he lives his life when he’s not in church. A worshipper is not recognized by how loudly he sings, how high his hands are raised during the singing, how much he puts in the offering plate, etc. A worshipper is recognized by what he does Monday thru Saturday. I intend to hold this portrait of a real worshipping man in front of your face this morning like a mirror. It will then be up to you to look into that portrait and compare it to yourself.
We’re going to be in Psalm 15 today. David wrote this psalm of course, and before I begin, I’m going to point this out. If we take Psalm 15 by itself; if we read it in isolation from the rest of the Scriptures, we might tend to think that what we’re looking at is a description of “works righteousness.” We might be tempted to think, “Look, this has so much to do with actions and behavior, with no mention of faith…this can’t apply to the New Testament Christian.” But we’d be wrong. Faith alone saves us. Faith alone makes us right with God, but the faith that saves us is never alone. The modern church needs to hear this again. Only he who has faith truly obeys, and only he who obeys has true faith. Psalm 15 is thus totally consistent with the rest of the Bible’s teaching about who is accepted by God and who is not.
In verse 1 we have the question. Simply it is this. Who may worship you, O God? Who may come into your presence for the sake of offering spiritual sacrifices? Or, Lord, what does a real worshipper look like?
Verse 2 gives us a summary of the answer, and the rest of the Psalm expands on it. A true worshipper is consistent. A true worshipper walks and acts consistent with who he is inwardly. In his heart and from his heart he confesses to God, “Lord, I am a sinner. If it is up to me to make myself acceptable to you, then I am sunk before I begin. If I will be made right with you, then you must do it.” A true worshipper looks at the promises of God and grabs hold of them by faith. He believes that when God promises to save people based purely on their trust placed in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, that He means it. He stakes his whole life on it.
In His earthly ministry, Jesus had lots of trouble with the Pharisees. If you had walked up to the average Jew of the day and asked what a worshipper looked like, he’d have pointed you to the Pharisees. They had the outward appearance down to a science. (It wasn’t an art, because art demands creativity. They had none of that.) It was a science to them. Jesus compared them to a cup that is only washed on the outside. On the inside, where it matters most, it is still dirty. It hasn’t been touched. Who wants to drink from a cup like that?
This verse is saying that the worshipper must be sincere. "Sincere" comes from two Greek words that you might’ve heard spoken in the marketplaces. Our Sincere comes from Sine and Cera. Together, they mean “No Wax.” When a potter fired his wares in the oven back then, it was common for the clay to crack. An unscrupulous potter would then take some wax and use it to fill in the cracks, then paint over it all and try to pass it off as a good piece of pottery. But a shrewd buyer of pottery knew that a simple test could show him if the pot was truly good or not. He held it up to the sunlight. Spots filled with wax would be plainly evident then as the light penetrated and shone through. A pot with no wax was thus a “sincere” pot. It had no wax. It really was consistent with its advertising.
There is no wax in the true worshipper. He is not like the Pharisee, saying on the outside that he loves God and obeys. Neither is he like the modern Evangelical Christian, who loudly proclaims his heartfelt love for Jesus, but cannot bring himself to keep the commandments. The cup is washed inside and out. He speaks the truth in his heart, and that truth is consistent with how he acts.
Why must a worshipper be the same inside and out? Because his God is this way. What God says, God means. There is no hidden agenda. No secret plan that is different than what He has said. David says in another psalm, The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. God is always, eternally consistent with His Word. Those who worship Him are called to be perfect, as He is perfect.
We can summarize verse 3 and say that a worshipper of God fulfills the law toward his neighbor. Paul said that love fulfilled the law because it does not allow any harm to be done toward a neighbor. It’s a surprising answer to our question, What does a worshipper look like? God shows us how a worshipper treats his brother, not how he sings, or prays.
“He who wrongs his neighbor will prove, in the end, to have done the greatest injury to himself.” (Matthew Henry)
Also from Henry, on the worshipper’s tongue, “He knows the worth of a good name and therefore he backbites not, defames no man, speaks evil of no man, makes not others’ faults the subject of his common talk, much less of his sport and ridicule, nor speaks of them with pleasure, nor at all but for edification.” A true worshipper, a real man, defends his neighbor’s good name. He is so far from being the one who trashes his neighbor’s name, as the east is from the west.
In the movie Rob Roy, the hero Rob is very concerned with honor. To his mind, a man without honor is no man at all. When his sons ask him what honor is, he has a couple of great things to say about it. He says, “Honor is a gift a man gives to himself, which no other man can take from him.” He goes on to say that a man of honor must never malign a man, nor stand by while others do.
That is in here. A real man, a real worshipper, defends the good name of his neighbor.
In the first part of verse 4, we have this. A true worshipper thinks God’s thoughts after Him. That is, a worshipper accepts God’s judgment of what is good and what is evil. Throughout the Scriptures, special condemnation is held out for those who pervert justice by calling evil good and good evil. The worshipper doesn’t do this, because he has submitted himself to God’s judgments. The worshipper says, “Lord, you get to tell me what is good and what is not. I am not in charge. I don’t make the rules. You do, and my only job is to love them and follow them.”
Within church history, the story is told of a certain monk who was brought before the authorities for having told some prestigious, important people of the city that they were vile sinners and headed for hell. His defense was that, “I didn’t say that.” But many people heard him and they were further outraged by the fact that he continually said, “I didn’t say that,” or, “Those are not my words.” Finally it seemed they’d gathered the whole town together to testify against this man. When they charged him with saying all these things, he said, “I have been saying all along, that those are not my words.”
“But you said them!”
“No. I repeated them. Those are the words of Jesus, and of Paul, and of Moses. Your quarrel is with them, not me.”
That’s what is being talked about here. A willingness to accept God’s judgments concerning sin and righteousness.
The Psalm goes on to say that the worshipper is a man of his word. If he makes a promise and then later realizes that keeping that promise will be costly to him, he still keeps the promise. His word is his bond, as in chain. What he says he will do, he does.
Then verse 5 tells us that the worshipper only has one God. Jesus spoke of the eternal struggle between the God of the Bible and the god of money, and said flatly that you can only serve one. The worshipper does not use monetary profit as an excuse for sin. It’s been said by cynics that every man has his price. The man of God must not have a price. A truckload of cash must not be able to purchase from him a thimble full of sin. If the worshipper does have a price, it is the costly blood of Jesus and he knows that he has been purchased with it. No amount of money, therefore, will make him serve another master.
In verse 5 it says that “he who does these things will never be moved.” The worshipper becomes like Mount Zion itself, “which cannot be moved, but abides forever.” (Psalm 125:1)
There are at least three senses I can think of to the word “moved” above. In what sense is the real worshipper immovable?
1. Moved, as in disturbed, greatly troubled, buffeted about by contrary circumstances. The worshipper knows his God and his mind is kept in that peace that passes all understanding.
2. Moved, as in cast out of God’s house, according to the first question in v.1. The worshipper abides there and enjoys the approval and presence of God without reproach. Adam and Eve were “moved” out of Eden, Israel was “moved” out of the promised Land, into exile, etc.
3. Moved, as in the opposite of abiding, the opposite of remaining. This may well be speaking eternally. The worshipper remains. He dwells in God’s presence forever.
So, what is God’s plan for man? God’s plan for man is that he might dwell with him eternally as one who worships. Biblically, a real man is a worshipper. And we’ve seen here the essential ingredient of a worshipper. He is a cup that is clean on the inside and the outside. He is a pot without wax. He is sincere. The way he acts is consistent with who he is inwardly. And who is he inwardly? He is one who has submitted himself to his Lord in all things. He is one who obeys out of a sense of love and awe and…worship.
This is the man who may dwell in peace in the Lord’s presence forever. You’ve seen his portrait. Look into it like a mirror and judge yourselves rightly, that you may not be judged harshly later. Jesus Christ is worthy of our worship. I’m not talking merely about songs and hymns here. He is worthy of lives lived sacrificially by those who name His name. Amen.
