Two Reasons God Wants Us to Praise Him
It’s an easy target for critics. They tell us that the God we worship is so insecure He had to create beings to worship Him. He’s always talking about His glory and His name, and He’s always telling people to praise Him.
There. Did I articulate that critique clearly enough? Did it make the hair stand up on the back of your neck?
But let’s be candid: have you ever wondered why God wants people to worship Him?
I have.
I can think of several reasons, the most obvious of which is that He is God. If there was ever anyone who had the right to demand worship, it is God.
But even though it’s clear that He is worthy of our worship, the question persists: why does God care whether we worship Him? Why would our opinion of Him matter to Him at all?
Like so many of our problems with God, this caricature of the insecure deity reveals a profound misunderstanding of the character of God. And it is there – in God’s character – that we find two good reasons God wants us to praise Him.
1. God wants us to worship Him because our worship aligns us with the grain of the universe.
The whole universe is hard-wired to bring honor and glory to the Creator.
Remember when Jesus was riding into Jerusalem and His followers were praising Him so vigorously that the religious leaders told Him He should tell them to stop. Jesus answered that it was so inevitable that He be praised that if His followers had been silent, the rocks themselves would cry out (Luke 19:40).
Remember also the psalmist’s words: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Before the Hubble telescope was launched, there were vast swaths of the glories of the heavens that had hidden from human eyes since the beginning of time. Once Hubble came online, we could see what we’d been missing; those images are simply breath-taking! And now the recently launched Webb telescope will exponentially increase our ability to see and understand what the psalmist was talking about three thousand years ago: the heavens declare the glory of the Creator.
So when we offer our worship to God, we are stepping into the stream of the worship that flows from nature, from the angels, from believers all over the world.
And when we neglect to worship, we are out of sync with the way things ought to be.
In fact, worship of God is so normal, such a given, you might say that there are only two possible reasons a human might not worship God:
Ignorance of God
Rebellion against God
But ignorance isn’t actually an option because no one is ignorant of God’s glory. As Paul reminds us, everyone who has any contact with nature – that is, every one of us – has no excuse for ignorance of God’s eternal power and divine attributes (Romans 1:19-20).
This means that the only real reason I might withhold worship from God is rebellion.
God loves us. It grieves Him to see us out of step with the purpose for which the entire cosmos was designed. It grieves Him to see us in rebellion against Him, the prodigal son in the far country, miserable in his sin. He yearns for us to return.
So, yes, God wants us to worship Him because the whole of creation cries out in worship and praise to the Creator, and when we refrain, we are going against the grain of the universe itself.
2. God wants us to worship Him because worship is the language of heaven.
God loves us, and He knows there is nothing better for us than to know Him and commune with Him. That is why He wants us to learn the language of worship.
How can any mortal being interact with the Almighty? We can see from Scripture that even the angels in heaven cry out in worship to God. Worship is the language of the heavenly courts, and worship is the language we mortals must use to commune with God.
If I were going to live in Albania, I would take it upon myself to learn Albanian. Worship is the language of the world we will inhabit for eternity. God wants us to learn it to speak with Him here and now. And worship is the tongue that we will speak forever, along with all His people, in the New Jerusalem.
So, yes, God does want us to worship Him.
But His motivation doesn’t spring out of some cosmic inferiority complex; rather, He wants us to worship Him because of His great love for us.
He wants us to flourish, to work along – not against – the grain of the universe, which is constantly crying out in worship to her Creator.
And He wants us to commune with Him now and prepare to live in His Kingdom, where worship is the common tongue.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship