Scratching the Surface of the Psalms
#66
“No Enabling in the Kingdom”
Psalm 66 in an invitation to authentic worship and discipleship.
I like how the late William MacDonald, President of Emmaus Bible College from 1959-1965, paraphrased David’s call to worship in the first four verses of this psalm in his Believer’s Bible Commentary: “Lord, Your accomplishments are tremendous. Your power is so devastating that Your enemies cringe before You. At last the whole earth bows before You in worship. Everywhere people praise Your name in song.”
Between verse 4 and the rest of the psalm, David inserts this instruction: “Selah.”
While a precise definition of selah has escaped even the finest etymologists, most agree it means something like this: “Pause, ponder, and promote.”
Psalm 66 is David’s urging us to come into worship to pause then ponder then promote God’s awesomeness.
David wants to us to take time for worship to pause then ponder then promote God’s sovereignty to create and conserve.
Within the context of our faith, Psalm 66 is a call to worship the Lord God almighty who made everything and saves everyone by grace through faith in Jesus.
Or as Dr. Macleod drilled into our souls back in seminary, “Worship is what we say and what we do when we stand together before God and realize in highest degree who He is and what He has done for us and our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.”
Worship isn’t about you and me – what we like or don’t like about the sermon or music or any of our other human attempts to esteem His awesomeness and herald His sustaining graces in time and saving graces forever.
Worship isn’t about waiting for a missed note or finding a misspelling in the bulletin or bantering and moaning about it being too hot or too cold in the sanctuary or looking for something in the sermon that we’ll always find that we don’t like or…
Worship is about Him!
Worship is about praising Him for who He is as
Sovereign, Source, Starter, Sustainer, and Savior.
Worship is about thanking God for loving us with His forgiveness that keeps us keepin’ on in time and unlocks paradise for us après the temple of our souls’ expiration.
Worship isn’t about our idiosyncratic prejudices, stupidities, and idolatries.
Worship isn’t about what we like.
Worship is about honoring who He is.
Worship is about honoring God because God is to be honored as God.
True worship esteems God and never enables our whining and whims and sins.
Yes, we are special.
We’ve been created “in the image of God” for holy communion with Him.
We know John 3:16-17.
Annnnnnnnd we are especially designed to worship Him as Father God, Savior Jesus, and sustaining/encouraging/enlightening Holy Spirit.
Worship is our selah devotion to pause on God’s awesomeness then ponder God’s awesomeness and then promote God’s awesomeness from the sanctuary to the streets.
We worship God with David for His creativity: “Come and see the works of God!…He rules!…He reigns!…So everybody applaud God!”
We worship God with David for saving us in time and forever: “God keeps us alive...God doesn’t allow our feet to slip…God doesn’t turn away from us…God saves us…God never turns a deaf ear to us…God stays with us…God is loyal to us…”
That’s why true believers are compelled to true worship.
True worship is about Him not us; or, rather, about what He has done for us that keeps our focus on Him in praise and thanks and compels us to filter our responses in what we say and do to the end that He may be esteemed by everyone with the Pauline expectation that “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord!”
A proof of true worship is when we stop enabling anyone and anything that dishonors our awesomely creative and saving Father God, Savior Jesus, and sustaining/encouraging/enlightening Holy Spirit.
That’s why we have parents and congregations that keep baptismal promises to nurture and care for children in the Lord and have Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, deacons, elders, and pastors that care more about honoring God than enabling people that don’t.
It’s like John Calvin said, “A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.”
Christians follow Jesus by the book and as enlightened by the Holy Spirit that never contradicts Jesus by the book; and Christians don’t care about anybody’s opinions if they are contrary to Jesus, Holy Scripture, and common sense enlightened by the Holy Spirit that never contradicts Jesus by the book.
That’s why Christians have always concurred with Martin Luther’s exemplary witness at Worms, Germany on April 18, 1521 against a church that had lost its way and substituted institutional loyalties and idolatries for the Word incarnated in Jesus, explained in the Bible, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit: “Unless I am convinced by Holy Scripture and clear reason, for I do not trust in the Pope or in the councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves, I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience in captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. God help me. Amen.”
Let me repeat that because it is the Kingdom of God’s formula for not enabling beliefs and behaviors antithetical to God’s revelation of true worship and discipleship.
If a Christian can be shown by the example of Jesus, explanations of Holy Scripture, and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit that she or he is wrong, a Christian will confess the error, repent from the error, and ask forgiveness for the error.
Pero if a Christian is disputed by anyone or anything less than Jesus, the Bible, and Holy Spirit, she or he will say and act with the apostles, “We must obey God not man!”
While it’s always a little uncomfortable to shine light into darkness, shake salt that must sting to alert and heal, and bring God’s good leaven to mix in to make better, William Taylor of Victory Outreach is right: “You can’t fix what you won’t face!”
So here goes with some comfort to the afflicted and affliction to the comfortable after pausing to engage the Word then pondering the Word’s existential and eternal implications for disciples then promoting fidelity rather than enabling whining, whims, and sins.
When America legalized infanticide in New York and Virginia with Illinois on their heels, my 91 year old daddy said, “Well, I guess it won’t be long before we’re expendable. When any part of life is devalued from womb to tomb, it’s not long before…”
Doesn’t a follower of Jesus protect life from womb to tomb?
Would a follower of Jesus engage in the kind of name-calling on all sides of the political aisles that degrades, dehumanizes, defames, and insults God’s design that all people are “endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights”?
Would America and the world be better off if more people followed Mohammed or Jesus?
Who would you rather lead America and the world? Followers of Jesus or followers of Mohammed?
Would women, gays, children, and every color, class, and culture be safer in an Islamic country and world where people follow Mohammed closely or where people follow Jesus closely?
Parenthetically, I choke at those comparisons because any fool can see people that really follow Jesus by the book are a lot more about grace, mercy, and forgiveness wrapped in love than people that really follow Mohammed by his book.
Those are just a few interrogatives that test fidelity – if we’ve really been pausing then pondering then promoting Christianity as defined by Jesus, Holy Scripture, and the Holy Spirit that never contradicts Jesus and Holy Scripture.
Truly, anyone that isn’t following Jesus by the book and advocating government and education and all of the rest to honor Jesus by the book is enabling anti-Christianity and catastrophe apart from Jesus by the book.
Of course, it takes courage not to enable.
I remember when Tyler finally said to me, “I’m not fixing your old computer anymore. It’s outdated and you’ll be better off with a new one.”
I’m glad he didn’t enable me.
I’ll never forget when I started chairing a group of clergy and elders for a denominational judicatory.
The people – a lot of them – that thought it’s rude to be on time and that everybody should wait for them before starting because their time is so much more important than anyone else’s time and the world doesn’t start until they click in were, uh, always late and even seemed incensed that we would start before they arrived.
I got tired of me enabling them and told them a little story about athletes.
Successful coaches say, “Practice starts at 3. We don’t gather to meet and greet and settle in at 3. We begin at 3. Be ready to go at 3.”
Miraculously in a Skinnerian kinda way, everybody now comes on time because the meetings are important and I no longer enable tardiness.
I don’t know if you can name any other parallels; pero maybe you can.
Simply, do you enable the bad behaviors of your children or government or school board or…yourself?
Or do you salt, shine, and leavenate after pausing to get into the Word then pondering on the Word’s implications then promoting the Word as the answer to our interrogatives and antidote from infidelity to discipleship?
I like how Oswald Chambers put it: “Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mount with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness.”
Nothing heavenly happens when we enable infidelity.
Everyone benefits when God is honored and that always happens when we pause in the Word then ponder on the Word’s implications then promote the Word with energy and enthusiasm without equivocation
One more word.
Solomon said, “As a father disciplines a child, God disciplines the family that He loves.”
Enabling is not love because it doesn’t do much for God’s sake.
True love doesn’t enable.
True love is faithful.
