Praise Ye the Lord
by Dr. J. Vernon McGee

Very few people actually worship God. Worship is divine intoxication. How many would get the impression that we are intoxicated with God today? We need an ecclesiastical ecstasy. We need a theological thrill in this day in which we live. There are three words that we must associate with worship, and these three words denote an experience of the human heart and the human soul as it comes into God's presence to worship.

Prostration: I am not trying to insist on a posture of the body, but we do need to have our souls prostrated before God. The Book of Revelation does not tell us much about heaven, but one thing we are sure about - every time we read of someone in heaven they are either getting down on their faces to worship God or getting up off their faces from worshiping God. Friend, when was the last time you got down on your face before God? Oh, it would do us good. It would deliver us from the shell in which we live. It would create within our hearts a different attitude if we would learn to prostrate our souls before God.

Adoration: It is a term of endearment. There is passion in that word. "O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness" (Psalm 96:9). Worship is a love affair. When King David brought the ark into Jerusalem, the record tells us: "As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the LORD..." (2 Samuel 6:16). Worship without love is like a flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower without perfume. Worship should have a spontaneity. It should not be synthetic. It should have an expectancy, a tenderness, and an eagerness in it. Oh, to have a heart that goes out to God in adoration. Gregory Nazianzen said, "I love God because I know Him; I adore Him because I cannot understand Him; I bow before Him in awe and in worship and adoration." Have you found that adoration in your worship?

Exaltation: I am speaking now of the exaltation of man. Humanism with its deadening philosophy has been leading man back to the jungle. When man turns his back on God, he will worship a man. No atheist, no agnostic, has ever turned his back on God who did not get his tongue black by licking somebody's boots. There is nothing that will exalt man, there is nothing that will give dignity to man, like worshiping God. The liberal doesn't like you to worship Jesus. My friend, I worship Him. I do not find it humiliating to fall down before Him. There is nothing as exalting and as thrilling as to get down on your face before Jesus Christ. In Acts 9, the record tells us that Paul fell into the dust of the Damascus Road, and the Lord Jesus dealt with him there. Then notice that He told him to arise - stand up on his feet. Only the Christian faith has ever lifted a man out of the dust and put him on his feet. The creature now can come to the Creator. Man, who has been lost in sin, who has gone down and down, can come up and up and worship Christ.

--from Edited Messages on Psalms by Dr. J. Vernon McGee

Wednesday, October 01, 2008