START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 99
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OBSERVE:
This Psalm of praise extols the holiness of God as King over all. The character of Yahweh is declared three times:
He is Holy!
God’s holiness describes his unique separateness from all other reality. God is, as theologians might say, Wholly Other. Creation is finite, and God is infinite and transcendent.
Some of the imagery in this Psalm describes a supernatural realm beyond the realm of normal human experience. Yahweh:
sits enthroned among the cherubim.
Not only are the people to tremble but even the earthquakes because of his supernatural power.
The term cherubim is the plural form of an order of angels that appear at various points in Scripture:
- They guard the entrance to Eden after Adam and Eve are expelled (Genesis 3:24).
- The cherubim are represented as two figures of gold on the ark of the covenant (Exodus 25:18-22).
- The Lord spoke to Moses from the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant between the two cherubim (Numbers 7:89).
- When the ark of the covenant is installed in the temple after the reign of Solomon, prayers are directed toward the Lord who is perceived as seated above the cherubim (2 Kings 19:15, Isaiah 37:15-17).
- In Ezekiel, the cherubim are part of the unearthly “wheel within a wheel” vision that appears to the prophet (Ezekiel 10). In this vision they fly and deliver God’s fire to be scattered over the city.
Needless to say, the cherubim are beyond normal human experience.
And yet this same God, who sits enthroned upon the cherubim and who is holy and transcendent and otherworldly, also reigns in human affairs:
The King’s strength also loves justice.
You do establish equity.
You execute justice and righteousness in Jacob.
Yahweh works not only through the ministering angels known as cherubim, but through his human agents:
Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
Samuel among those who call on his name;
they called on Yahweh, and he answered them.
He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud.
They kept his testimonies,
the statute that he gave them.
There are actually three orders represented by these men — Moses the prophet, Aaron the priest and Samuel the judge.
The Psalmist points out that the original self-disclosure of God is given in the pillar of cloud which guided the Israelites in the wilderness, and which filled the tabernacle in their camp when Yahweh met with Moses face to face. And further, the decrees and statutes were also a form of God’s self-disclosure.
God speaks through the extraordinary and miraculous means of the pillar of cloud, but also through the moral and ritual guidance of the law.
And the Psalmist suggests that God’s self-revelation discloses the balanced nature of God, both compassionate and just:
You answered them, Yahweh our God.
You are a God who forgave them,
although you took vengeance for their doings.
Finally, in this Psalm there is a kind of “refrain” that is repeated twice (almost identically).
Verse 5:
Exalt Yahweh our God.
Worship at his footstool.
He is Holy!
Verse 9:
Exalt Yahweh, our God.
Worship at his holy hill,
for Yahweh, our God, is holy!
The reason for such worship is the same — God is holy and is worthy of our worship.
APPLY:
Why do we worship God? Because we are exhorted to do so by a worship leader? Perhaps. Because we see his magnificence in the world around us? Certainly. Because of his characteristics of justice and righteousness and forgiveness? Of course.
But perhaps the most telling motivation for worship is simply the very nature of God — he is holy. Holiness means that he is uniquely set apart by his transcendence, majesty and ethical purity.
This same sense of his holiness is suggested when the people are exhorted to:
Exalt Yahweh, our God.
Worship at his holy hill,
for Yahweh, our God, is holy!
The name revealed to Moses — Yahweh, the “Tetragrammaton,” i.e., the four letters of the “I Am” (YHWH) — reveals the nature and identity of God. We get the same sense from Revelation 1:8, where God says,
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Our only proper response to the Creator and Finisher of all things, and to the Eternal One, is worship!
RESPOND:
I ran across a wonderful little “meme” on Facebook recently, entitled “Leibnez’ Contingency Argument” by Dr. William Lane Craig. This is a fast-paced, fun, and visually entertaining Youtube exposition on a very sophisticated argument for the existence of God.
I will try to sum it up as simply and briefly as possible:
- Everything which exists has an explanation of its existence.
- If the universe had an explanation of its existence, that explanation must be God.
- The universe exists.
- Therefore — The explanation of the universe’s existence is God.
If the first three premises are true, then the fourth premise must follow. Some people, the Youtube narrator suggests, might question the obvious logic of the first premise. They picture Bertrand Russell smoking a pipe and saying “The universe is just there, that’s all. No explanation needed. End of discussion.”
The Youtube video then offers a wonderful little rebuttal to this nonsensical idea by picturing the viewer and a friend as two cartoon friends hiking through the woods and coming upon a shiny sphere in the middle of the forest. You would wonder how the sphere came to be there, and you would think it odd if your friend said “There’s no explanation for it. Stop wondering. It just IS.” Not a very satisfactory answer, I daresay!
And the video goes on to say: if the ball were larger, even to the size of the universe, the change in its size wouldn’t remove the desire for an explanation. We are predisposed to require explanations, scientifically and intuitively — and I would add theologically!
The Youtube meme continues and does an excellent job of demonstrating that while some things exist contingently (depending on the existence of other things — e.g., your birth depends on your parents), God exists necessarily because everything that exists depends ultimately on him.
I recommend that you check out this video on Youtube: Leibniz’ Contingency Argument.
The bottom line for me is that I believe in and worship God not because of a philosophical argument — although I find that helpful and encouraging. Ultimately, I believe because I have experienced God through Scripture and through personal faith.
Lord, as the Psalmist exhorts me, I exalt you and worship you because you are holy. Thank you for your forgiveness and your love. Amen.
PHOTOS:
"Psalm 99" uses this photo: "M31 - Andromeda Galaxy (NGC 224) [Explored 5/9/2010 #20]" by Cyrus II is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
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