Pleasing God

Text: Psalms 147:1-11

Focus: Praise

Function: to help people feel comfortable trusting God.

¹Praise the Lord!
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
    for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.
²The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
    he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
³He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
⁴He determines the number of the stars;
    he gives to all of them their names.
⁵Great is our Lord and abundant in power;
    his understanding is beyond measure.
⁶The Lord lifts up the downtrodden;
    he casts the wicked to the ground.
⁷Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving;
    make melody to our God on the lyre.
⁸He covers the heavens with clouds,
    prepares rain for the earth,
    makes grass grow on the hills.
⁹He gives to the animals their food
    and to the young ravens when they cry.
¹⁰His delight is not in the strength of the horse
    nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner,
¹¹but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
    in those who hope in his steadfast love.

Good morning.

This morning, we are looking somewhat at the idea of worship. But our text is going to lead us beyond the idea of singing praises to God into an understanding of what it means to fear God and to live by faith.

The Psalmist declares that we praise God because God has done in the past, does in the future and will do in the future. And that is to restore God’s people and bless them by taking care of them.

The Psalmist goes on to be amazed at the power and majesty and wonder of what God has done.

I was thinking about a class I had in seminary: “The Theology of Worship.” And the professor traced the ancient history of all kinds of religious worship and showed us how God’s own self brought about a general revival that brought people away from the idea of worshiping an inanimate object like a piece of wood or stone or metal into worshiping the reality that behind all those other so called god is the one true God who has created everything.

He traced the history of people acknowledging the Creator God and abandoning idols.

And as I see it, it isn’t just the Creator aspect of God, but the Father, or Parent aspect of God.

I don’t picture God as an angry, hard to reach, stern and over bearing ruler of a Father, but a kind, loving, nurturing and compassionate caring Father. The God who created us is also our Father and we are his children.

And this is the kind of Father who, like the father in the story of the Prodigal son, longs for the return of his son and rejoices in his restoration.

And there is a contrast in this passage about that idea of worshiping an object created by human hands or praising the Creator who cares for us.

Verse 10, his delight is not in the things that we humans consider to be valuable.

It is a move away from human concepts of what makes us powerful to a spiritual principle of what connects us with the Creator/Father, God.

It brings us to the salient verse in the passage, the last one.

God takes pleasure in those who fear him.

What does that mean? To fear God?

I have wrestled all my life with the concept of fearing God.

I have wrestled with a contradiction in theological descriptions of what fearing God means.

I was raised with a hell fire and brimestone fear of judgment. When I was 4, I first placed my trust in Christ. I became a believer because I understood that I was a sinner and that if I asked Jesus into my heart, he would forgive me. I didn’t know yet that I needed forgiveness, but I did understand that at 4 years of age. I wonder about that teaching now.

I was taught to be afraid of God’s judgment.

And therefore, “the fear of God” was the terror of hell. I saw God as a God of wrath at first.

And the passage does say that God will kick aside the wicked. There will be a judgment for evil.

I’m not bitter abut the way I learned to fear God there because in the same church, I was also taught that God is love. And that God loves us very much. And that God loves us so much that God took our punishment upon God’s own self so that God’s wrath would not fall on us.

So, I thank God for learning through that Church that God loves me very much, even though my understanding of God’s wrath was pretty naive and off theologically.

You can see how a young mind was stretched beyond its ability to comprehend these two opposing attributes of God. The God of Love and the God of wrath.

But then, there are two covenants, or Testaments in our scriptures, the Old and the New.

The Old Testament certainly describes to us the concept of the God of wrath.

And then the Christ comes on the scene and tells us that there is a new Kingdom here and now and it is spiritual and it also does not need human strength and wisdom, but depends on God.

And this last verse from our text gives us the inkling of what it actually means to fear God.

He says ¹¹but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

After the words fear him is a comma, not the word and.

So, it isn’t Fear and Hope, but he is describing fearing God, in the appositive, as hoping in God’s steadfast love.

Remember, humanity is learning to move away from the worship of human strength, values and goals to praising the God who is the parent of all of us and loves us like a caring parent will. And God, I believe, steadfastly does this perfectly.

Parents are responsible for training their children and teaching them values, They don’t hate or resent their children when they make mistakes, but instead work to help them do better the next time.

A loving parent is patient and kind and has the Child’s best interest at heart.

I make the distinction between parents into the category of Loving Parent in this passage. There are bad parents who treat their children like a nuisance and there is no such thing as a perfect parent except perhaps God.

The Psalmist emphasizes the steadfast nature of God’s love.

The verse speaks to my own heart about how I also can learn to rest in the steadfast love of God when trials and temptations come to me.

The New Testament bears this out specifically in 1 John 4:18: ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

Those who fear God are not those who are afraid of God’s wrath, but according to this text, are those who trust in the fact that God loves them.

The OT showed us how retribution does not work in changing the hearts of people.

God’s wrath, and the fear of God’s wrath didn’t seem to help the people of Israel love their neighbors as themselves.

But in the New Testament, Jesus comes and literally turns the tables on the whole system of injustice by proclaiming a form of justice that cares for the individual and restores instead of shames them.

And that is because we are all God’s children.