A Call to Worship

Psalm 89:1-18

Main Idea: The Lord is worthy of our worship because of his steadfast love and covenant faithfulness.

I. Remembering God’s Faithfulness (89:1-4)

The Psalmist opens this song by praising the Lord for his “steadfast love” (hesed) and “faithfulness,” a pairing that shows up 7x throughout Psalm 89 (cf. Ex. 34:6). The Psalmist gives thanks that this love and faithfulness will last “forever” and to “all generations.”

All of Psalm 89 is a reflection on the Lord’s covenant promises to David, recorded in 2 Samuel 7. The promises of this covenant have an emphasis on:

God’s incarnational presence (2 Sam. 7:6): the Lord has always dwelt among his chosen people
God’s unrelenting grace (2 Sam. 7:11): God will build David a “house,” not the other way around
God’s enduring faithfulness (2 Sam. 7:13, 16): the throne of David will be established forever

In Christ, the throne of David has become the throne of Jesus (cf. Isa. 9:6-7); Luke 1:31-33: “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

“Whatever we may experience, we ought still to praise God for his mercies, since they most certainly remain the same, whether we can perceive them or not. Sense sings but now and then, but faith is an eternal songster. Whether others sing or not, believers must never give over; in them should be constancy of praise, since God’s love to them cannot by any possibility have changed, however providence may seem to frown. We are not only to believe the Lord’s goodness, but to rejoice in it evermore; it is the source of all our joy; and as it cannot be dried up, so the stream ought never to fail to flow. It is [the Lord] who is the all-sufficient and immutable God; therefore, our rejoicing in him must never suffer lessening… Even time itself must not bound our praises—they must leap into eternity; he blesses us with eternal mercies—let us sing unto him forever.”
~ Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David

II. Beholding God’s Glory (89:5-14)

The Psalmist shifts his attention to the glory and majesty of the Lord in two broad realms:

1. His Heavenly Transcendence (89:5-8; cf. Ps. 29:1-2; 86:4)

The heavenly beings and council are summoned to give praise to the Lord, who is incomparable in majesty and unapproachable in glory, worthy of fearful, awe-filled worship.

“We must not think of God as highest in an ascending order of beings, starting with the single cell and going on up from the fish to the bird to the animal to man to angel to cherub to God. God is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite.”
~ A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

Revelation 4:8–10: And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!”

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever.

2. His Sovereign Rule over the Earth (89:9-12)

The Psalmist praises God for his reign over the:

Raging seas (89:9; cf. Mk. 4:41)
Earthly powers (89:10; cf. Ps. 2)
The created order itself (89:11-12; cf. Isa. 55:12; Ps. 98:8; Lk. 19:40)

III. Praising God’s Name (89:13-18)

The Mighty One who rules and reigns over the heavens and the earth is also the God who has shown his “mighty arm” of salvation toward his people, as an expression of his "righteousness and justice… steadfast love and faithfulness,” which are the foundation and overflow of his throne.

For those who have received this salvation and favor from the Lord, they are the “blessed” ones who can’t help but respond with worship. This worship is marked by:

Shouting forth God’s praise (89:15a)
Walking in the light (89:15b); 1 John 1:7: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Exulting and rejoicing in God’s name “all the day” (89:16)
Finding strength in God’s glory and protection (89:17-18)

“The basis of worship is the covenant relationship whereby God has bound himself to those whom he has saved and claimed… The Spirit of covenant worship is a blend of awe and joy at the privilege of drawing near to the mighty Creator with radical self-humbling and honest confession of sin. Since God is holy and we humans are faulty, it must ever be so in this world. As worship will be central in the life of heaven, so it must be central in the life of the church on earth, and it should already be the main activity, both private and corporate, in each believer’s life.”
~ J.I. Packer, Concise Theology