"All In" Worship

The Psalms on Worship “All In” Worship Psalm 67 Pastor Pat Damiani August 11, 2019 NOTE: This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript. I don’t usually watch poker on TV, but the other day Mary and I were at a restaurant where the TV was tuned into a poker tournament. I am far from an expert on poker, but one of the things that I do know is that the most exciting time in a poker tournament is when one of the players is so sure that he or she has a winning hand that the player goes “all in”. That player is so convinced that no one else can beat the hand he or she holds that the player bets all their remaining chips, knowing that this one hand will determine whether that player is out of the tournament completely or whether he or she will win. Obviously I’m not going to preach a message on poker this morning, but I do want to ask you to think about whether you’re “all in” when it comes to your relationship with Jesus and especially when it comes to your worship. That is an extremely important question for each of us to answer individually and for us to answer as a church family because the answer to that question has a tremendous impact on how effective we are going to be in carrying out our mission. Today is the second message in our six-week series titled “The Psalms on Worship”. Over these six weeks we are seeing what the Psalms can teach us about how to be better worshipers, both individually and as a body. This morning we’ll continue with Psalm 67. [Read Psalm 67] I preached a message on this same Psalm a little over 6 years ago. At that time, I used this Psalm to emphasize our mission as a church and the main idea I developed in that message was: God blesses His people so that they can bless others with the knowledge of God’s way and His saving power. And obviously that is still true today and I’ll touch on that idea briefly again today. But what I want us to take away today is an appreciation of how our worship plays an indispensable role in the process of us blessing others like that. Before we get into some of the details of this passage, I want to point out a couple important features when it come to the structure of this Psalm. In the Hebrew, the Psalm, excluding the superscription, consists of exactly 49 words that break down like this: • Verse 1 – 7 words • Verse 2 – 6 words • Verse 3 – 6 words • Verse 4 – 11 words • Verse 5 – 6 words • Verse 6 – 6 words • Verse 7 – 7 words But there is not just a noticeable pattern when it comes to the number of words, there are certain key words in this Psalm that reveal this structure: May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him! This kind of structure is what is known as a chiasm. You will notice that verses 1 and 7 contain parallel thoughts that are tied together by the word bless, verses 2 and 6 are tied together with the word earth and verses 3 and 5 are clearly parallel since they are exactly the same. This structure is clearly no accident. It is used intentionally by the author to bring attention to the main idea of the Psalm, which is found in verse 4. The Psalmist is looking forward to the time when all the nations will be glad and sing for joy as they experience God’s rule in their lives - a rule that is just and provides them with the guidance they need as they live upon the earth. We know that there is a time in the future where that is going to be brought to complete fulfillment when Jesus returns to the earth and establishes His physical kingdom, first here on earth and ultimately in the New Jerusalem. But it is also possible to experience that at least in part right here and now and our worship is one of the keys to spreading that kind of jubilation for God in our world. So here is the simple idea I want us to take away from this passage this morning: The structure of this Psalm reveals that the people who have been blessed by God – that includes us – surround the peoples and nations on this earth with that blessing. And the way that we become conduits of that blessing is by going “all in” with our worship. Let’s face it, if we don’t worship God like that, then how can we expect that a relationship with God is going to be something that is attractive to those who are not yet disciples of Jesus? I like the way Pastor John Piper expresses this idea: If we are not real and deep and fervent in our worship of God, we will not commend him among the peoples with genuineness. How can you say to the nations, “Be glad in God!” if you are not glad in God? So with this overall idea in mind, let’s take a look at this Psalm. The Psalmist begins with a request that sounds a lot like the Aaronic blessing that will also serve as our benediction later this morning: The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26 ESV) At first glance, this prayer request seems to be a bit selfish, doesn’t it? But it is what one pastor that I read this week calls “sanctified selfishness”. That is because in verse 2, we see the reason that the Psalmist is asking God to bless him. The blessing is not just for his own comfort or his own benefit. He isn’t praying for God to bless him with a trophy wife and obedient children, a nice house with a Mercedes in the garage and a great job so that he can be happy. Instead, he is asking God to bless him in a way that God’s way may be known on earth and his saving power among all the nations. It may very well be that God chooses to bless some of us with those kind of material things. But as we see here when God does that it is not just for our own benefit, but so that we can be a blessing to others by helping them see God’s way and His saving power. It’s also important to note that the Psalmist is praying for God to be gracious to “us” and to bless “us”. The implication here is that the task of making God’s way and His saving power known to all nations is not something any of us can do on our own, but only as we work together as a body. This had been God’s plan for Israel from the very beginning, but they had often lost sight of that. If you’ve been here at TFC for any time at all, you’re probably familiar with the promise that God made to Abram in Genesis 12 because we refer to it frequently, but let’s look at it briefly again: Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3 ESV) God promised to bless Abram and make his descendants into a great nation. But that blessing was not just for them to enjoy themselves. It was so that they could be a blessing to all the other nations of the earth. As pastor John Piper puts it, they were to be a conduit for God’s blessings and not a cul-de-sac. And that is still true today. God’s blessings are not just for us to hoard for ourselves, but rather for us to pass on to others, so that, as we see in verse 4, all the nations will be glad and sing for joy. And the Psalm ends with a promise that God will indeed bless His people with an abundant harvest and that, as a result, all the ends of the earth will fear Him. But exactly how is God going to accomplish that work? That is where verses 3 and 5 come in. There is a reason why those words are repeated exactly in both those verses and why those verses envelop the main idea which we find in verse 4. And that is why we can say that… As you may have guessed by now, we’re going to spend some time this morning focusing on the word translated “praise” in those two verses. That fact that it is repeated four times is a pretty good clue that it is a key word in this Psalm. That is why I challenged all of you to try and use the Faithlife resources that we’ve made available to you to see if you could identify the underlying Hebrew word. And as promised, right now I’m going to draw the name of one of you who did that this week and I’ll be personally giving you a gift card to your favorite restaurant. [Draw name] Once again this week, I’ll share some screenshots with you to show you how you can do this on your own. Based on some feedback this week from some of you, I did discover that the Android version of the Logos app does work a bit differently than the iPhone version I use, but it should be similar enough for you to be able to find the information regardless of which version you use. Using the Logos Bible app, I navigated to Psalm 67 and then I held my finger down on the word “praise” and I got a screen that looks like this: I found that this is the Hebrew word “yadah”, not to be confused with the wise Jedi master from Star Wars [show picture of Yoda]. If you did some further study, you would find that word is used over 120 times in the Old Testament, including over 70 times in the Psalms, four of which are right here in Psalm 67. It is also the root word from which the name Judah is derived. The word yadah comes from the root word yad, which means “hand” and so yadah literally means “to extend the hands”. It describes worship in which we extend our hands toward God. Some of you literally did that this morning as we sang to the Lord. And if that is something that you feel comfortable with I want to encourage you to keep doing that. Maybe there are others of you here this morning that just don’t feel comfortable raising your hands like that. If that is the case, then perhaps this video will help you get started. [Tim Hawkins video] Although, as we’ll see in a moment, this idea of yadah worship goes beyond just the physical raising of hands, we also talked last week about how our body language ought to be consistent with what our lips are saying. Probably more than any other Hebrew word of worship we’ll study in this series, yadah best expresses the kind of worship that is “all in” for God and which is therefore contagious. So let’s take a few minutes to talk about how that verb reveals… 4 ELEMENTS OF “ALL IN” WORSHIP 1. Confession Of all the meanings of yadah, this one is probably the least apparent. But in the Hebrew mind, there was a close connection between the idea of praise and confession. In fact, the words “praise” and “confess” could almost be used interchangeably when we think about acknowledging God’s intrinsic value and worthiness. I could say “God I praise you that you are sovereign” or I could say “God I confess that you are sovereign” and both would essentially mean the same thing. Confession of sin is also tied closely to God since it is the acknowledgement that I have violated God’s character, so essentially, as David writes in Psalm 51, when I sin I have sinned against God alone. And therefore, God is also the only source of forgiveness and atonement. So in the Hebrew mind, confession is not merely an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgement that I have violated God’s nature. So it’s not surprising that 14 times in the Old Testament, the verb yadah is translated “confess”, like it is in Psalm 32:5” I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess [yadah] my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah (Psalm 32:5 ESV) As we saw last week, it’s really not possible for me to go “all in” with my worship when I have unconfessed sin in my life. 2. Thanksgiving Reaching out our hands to God in worship is a way for us to get beyond ourselves and our circumstances and to acknowledge to God that all we have is from His hands, including our salvation. So it’s not surprising that over half of the times that yadah is used in the Old Testament, it is translated “thank” or “give thanks”, including almost 40 times in the Psalms. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you’re not a grateful person, it is impossible for your worship to make God attractive to other people. Think about it, If I’m one of those people who is always looking around and comparing myself to others around me and complaining about what I don’t have that they do, what does that reveal about what I think of God? And why would anyone else want to commit their lives to a God who would withhold good things from His children? 3. Adoration Yadah is the picture of three-year-old child running hands raised towards his daddy crying “Hold me daddy” because of his adoration for his father. I still remember a sermon from over 30 years ago when a pastor described yadah worship like that and then asked, “What father would ever look at that child and say, ‘Get out of here you little charismatic’?” One of the things I’m not going to do this morning is to tell you that if you don’t raise your hands in worship, that you’re not worshiping God like you should. I know that some of you are rather reserved and introverted and that might be a really hard thing for you to do. But if that’s the case, let me ask you a question. When you’re at a sporting event or you’re watching your favorite team at home with your friends, or when you’re at a concert with your favorite artist or you see a good friend you haven’t seen for a long time, how do you react to them? Don’t you just naturally extend your hands toward them in adoration? So if your really adore God, shouldn’t there at least be some times that your adoration is going to just naturally overflow and without even thinking of it that you’ll reach out your hands toward Him in adoration? When we raise our hands to God in worship we are affirming that we’re not ashamed to admit our adoration for Him. 4. Surrender When a criminal is caught by the police, what does he do? When a soldier in a war is captured by his enemy, what does he do? Or let’s suppose that you are out swimming in the ocean and you begin to drown and you need help, what do you do? In every one of those situations, you raise your hands. Raising our hands is what we do when we can’t handle the situation ourselves and it is also the international sign of surrender. Lifting my hands to God in worship is an expression of my need for God. It is my cry for help to God to come do what I can’t do myself, a cry for Him to come and free me from my sin and brokenness. It is an acknowledgment that only He can save me. That’s what it means to surrender to God. It means that I quit trying to handle things on my own and that I surrender my life to Him as my Lord and I commit to doing things His way and not mine. Obviously not everyone in this world is going to be attracted by the kind of “all in” worship we have been talking about this morning. But I am convinced that going “all in” for Jesus is the most effective way that we can bless the world around us by helping them know God’s way and His saving power. So will you join me in working, with God’s help, to go “all in” for Jesus in our worship? As we do each week, we want to give you an opportunity to respond to God’s Word this morning. On the back of your sermon outline the bulletin, you will find some suggestions on how you might want to respond to God today, but that is certainly far from an exhaustive list so we invite you to respond however God might lead you. After our offering, we will have a few moments of quiet time for you to do that. You can certainly do that right where you sit, but we encourage you to come to the front either on your own or with your family and pray about any commitments you have made this morning. If you would like someone to pray with you, our elders and some of their wives will be both up front and at the back of the room and they would love to pray with you. We’ll begin our response time with a time of offering. As we do that, the words of David in Psalm 54 remind us that giving an offering is an important aspect of yadah worship: With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you; I will give thanks [yadah] to your name, O LORD, for it is good. (Psalm 54:6 ESV) Discussion questions for Bible Roundtable 1. How important is the physical act of raising hands in worship? What are some reasons that people are uncomfortable doing that? How can we overcome those inhibitions? 2. What do we mean when we say that asking for God’s blessing is a form of “sanctified selfishness”? How does that relate to the idea that we are to be a conduit and not a cul-de-sac when it comes to God’s blessing? 3. How is “all in” worship contagious for other disciples of Jesus? How is it contagious for those outside the church? 4. Which of the five aspects of yadah worship that we discussed this morning is the easiest for you? Which is the hardest? What steps could you take to improve your worship in that area?