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Editorial note: Rev. Dylan Rowland is Pastor of Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Mansfield, Ohio.
Recently, I have preached through various Psalms during our afternoon Lord’s Day service. In particular, I’ve preached sermons on Psalms 93 and 95 and will, Lord willing, preach from Psalms 96-100 in the near future. These Psalms are beautiful testimonies to the glory and majesty of the Lord God our King. For example:
Psalm 93:1–2 (NKJV): The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The Lord is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength. Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved. Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting.
Psalm 95:3–7 (NKJV): For the Lord is the great God, And the great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; And His hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand.
Psalm 96:6–8, 13 (NKJV): Honor and majesty are before Him; Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples, Give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due His name; Bring an offering, and come into His courts….For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with His truth.
These Psalms bring to the center of our attention the glory and majesty of theology proper (doctrine of God), and they do so in a pastoral way. The descriptions of God’s attributes were written in such a way so as to move readers to worship the Lord with humility, joy, thanksgiving, and with great adoration. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these Psalms are meant to pastorally demonstrate how the doctrine of God culminates in our worship of Him.
However, I have also been reading through the collected sermons of Samuel Davies (1723-1761), an eighteenth century Presbyterian minister. In a sermon titled, The Nature and Universality of Spiritual Death, Davies comments on the majesty of God’s divine excellence (His nature and attributes) and answers the question as to why men fail to adore the Triune God for His excellence.
The following is a quoted excerpt from Davies' sermon which is a helpful and humbling commentary detailing what an appropriate response to the nature of God should be. His insights are especially helpful in seeking to apply the wonderful truths of Psalms 93-100. Consider the following from Davies [Sermons on Important Subjects (1804 ed.), Vol. 1, pp. 133-135]:
Consider the excellency of the divine Being, the sum total, the great original of all perfections. How infinitely worthy is He of the adoration of all His creatures! How deserving of their most intense thoughts and most ardent affections! If majesty and glory can strike us with awe and veneration, does not Jehovah demand them, who is clothed with majesty and glory as with a garment, and before Him all the inhabitants of the Earth are as grasshoppers, as nothing, as less than nothing, and vanity? If wisdom excites our pleasing wonder, here is an unfathomable depth. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! If goodness, grace, and mercy attract our love and gratitude, here these amiable perfections shine in their most alluring glories. If justice strikes a damp to the guilty, here is justice in all its tremendous majesty. If veracity, if candor, if any, or all the moral virtues engage our esteem, here they all center in their highest perfection. If the presence of a king strikes a reverence; if the eye of his judge as the criminal, and restrains him from offending, certainly we should fear before the Lord all the day, for we are surrounded with His omnipresence, and He is the Inspector and Judge of all our thoughts and actions. If riches excite desire, here are unsearchable riches: if happiness has charms that draw all the world after it, here is an unbounded ocean of happiness; here is the only complete portion for an immortal mind. Men are affected with these things in one another, though found in a very imperfect degree. Power awes and commands, virtue and goodness please, beauty charms, justice strikes with solemnity and terror, a bright genius is admired, a benevolent, merciful temper is loved: thus men are affected with created excellencies. Whence is it, then, they are so stupidly unaffected with the supreme excellencies of Jehovah?
Here, my brethren, turn your eyes inward upon yourselves, and inquire, are not several of you conscious that, though you have passions for such objects as these, and you are easily moved by them, yet, with regard to the perfections of the Supreme best of beings, your hearts are habitually senseless and unaffected? It is not an easy thing to make impressions upon you by them; and what increases the wonder, and aggravates your guilt, is, that you are thus senseless and unaffected, when you believe and profess that these perfections are really in God, and that in the highest degree possible. In other cases you can love what appears amiable, you revere what is great and majestic, we eagerly desire and pursue what is valuable intends to your happiness; in all of this you do freely, spontaneously, vigorously, by the innate inclination and tendency of your nature, without reluctance, without compulsion, nay, without persuasion; but as to God and all of His perfections, you are strangely insensible, backward, and averse. Where is the one being that has any confessed excellency in the compass of human knowledge, that does not engage more of the thoughts and affections of mankind than the glorious and ever blessed God? The sun, moon, and stars have had more worshippers than the uncreated Fountain of Light from which they derive their luster. Kings and ministers of state have more punctual homage and more frequent applications made to them than the King of kings and Lord of lords. Created enjoyments are more eagerly pursued than the Supreme Good. Search all the world over, and you will find but very little motions of heart towards God; little love, little desire, little searching after Him. You will often, indeed, see Him honored with the complement of a bended knee, and a few heartless words, under the name of a prayer; but where is the heart, or where are the thoughts, where the affections? These run wild through the world, and are scattered among a thousand other objects. The heart has no prevailing tendency toward God, the thoughts are shy of Him, the affections have no innate propensity to Him. In short, in this respect, the whole man is out of order: here he does not at all act like himself; here are no affectionate thoughts, no delightful meditations, no ardent desires, no eager pursuits and vigorous endeavors; but all is listless, stupid, indisposed, inactive, and averse: and what is the matter? “Lord, what is this that has seized the souls of Thine own offspring, that they are thus utterly disordered towards Thee?” The reason is, they are dead, dead in trespasses and sins. It is impossible a living soul should be so stupid and unaffected with such an object; it must be a dead soul that has no feeling. Yes, sinners, this is the melancholy reason why you are so thoughtless, so unconcerned, so senseless about the God that made you: you are dead. And what is the reason that you, who have been begotten again to a spiritual life, and who are united to Christ as your vital head, what is the reason that you so often feel such languishments; that the pulse of spiritual life beats so faint and irregular, and that its motions or so feeble and slow? All this you feel and lament, but how comes it to pass? What can be the cause that you, who have indeed tasted that the Lord is gracious, and are sensible that He is all glorious and lovely, and your only happiness–oh, what can be the cause, that you, of all men in the world, should be so little engaged to Him? Alas, the cause is, you have been dead, and a deadly stupor has not yet left you: you have (blessed be the quickening spirit of Christ!) you have received a little life; but alas, it is a feeble spark; it finds the principles of death still strong in your constitution; there it must struggle with, and by them it is often borne down, suppressed, and just expiring. Walk humbly, then, and remember your shame, that you were once dead, and children of wrath, even as others.
This is a humbling testimony from Davies and readers would do well to meditate on it. Therefore, it seems important to ask: when we read the Bible’s testimony concerning God’s divine excellencies, are we moved to worship and adoration? If not, why? To worship and adore the Triune God because of His divine excellencies is surely the lovely truth found in Psalms 93-100. Read more about Samuel Davies at the biographical links on his page, as well as the full sermon highlighted above.
