Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy! For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. —Psalm 47:1–2
All churches have liturgies; it is simply a question of whether they have a good one or a bad one. Liturgy is simply the form or ordering of a worship gathering. At Meridian Church, after some preliminaries, our worship gatherings formally begin with a “call to worship.” This historically common practice unfortunately is foreign to many who visit our body.
What is a call to worship? It is simply a reading of a passage of Scripture to usher forth our hearts unto God. God speaks; we respond. This is the Biblical pattern of worship from Genesis to Revelation. He initiates; we reciprocate. He reveals; we revere. The bride of Christ did not propose to her Bridegroom. In the dance of discipleship and worship that follows their union, He still leads; she still follows. Worship is not something we stir up within. It is something God stirs up within His people. Worship is not generated by man. It is summoned forth by God.
The 47th psalm is a call to worship par excellence and God gives it through His people. The psalms are a gigantic call to worship by our gigantic God. God calls us to worship Himself. Have you ever contemplated that? C.S. Lewis did, and initially, it irritated him.
“When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should ‘praise’ God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and of His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way…”.
How did Lewis solve this problem of praise? He gives a few answers, but here are the two I find most satisfying.
“What do we mean when we say that a picture is ‘admirable’? We certainly don’t mean that it is admired (that’s as may be) for bad work is admired by thousands and good work may be ignored. Nor that it ‘deserves’ admiration in the sense in which a candidate deserves a high mark from the examiners—i.e. that a human being will have suffered injustice if it is not awarded. The sense in which the picture ‘deserves’ or ‘demands’ admiration is rather this; that admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate, response to it, that, if paid, admiration will not be ‘thrown away’, and that if we do not admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something. In that way many objects both in Nature and in Art may be said to deserve, or merit, or demand, admiration. It was from this end, which will seem to some irreverent, that I found it best to approach the idea that God ‘demands’ praise. He is that Object to admire which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all.”
Lewis goes on to clarify that God does indeed demand praise as the just law giver, but He demands (commands) praise as one who demands (compels) praise. God doesn’t call us to worship Himself as some wicked tyrant, distracting us from that which is transcendently good, true, and beautiful. God calls us to worship Himself as the transcendently good God, the true God, the beautiful God. God’s call to worship then is a call to our greatest joy. This is the second insight of Lewis I appreciate.
“But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. …I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.”
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”
The call to worship is an invitation to delight in what is most delightful. Evangelism, proper and good evangelism, is public praise inviting others to rejoice in the good news of Christ. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8). Missions is praise calling for praise. It is worship calling for worship. It is joy calling for joy.
No Other Boast 