Not To Us – Psalm 115 – Our Battle Cry!

Psalm 115:1 “Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.” I’m guessing that many of you have read this psalm before, and probably even heard the Chris Tomlin Song “Not to us.” And for a while, the idea behind the song was embraced by many worship leaders (which is not limited to just me…) and worshipers. But, it seems that for some worship has become about us, with God being secondary.

For us, this cannot be the case.

The rest of the psalm lays this out for us. vv2-8  “² Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?” ³ Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. ⁴ But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. ⁵ They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. ⁶ They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. ⁷ They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. ⁸ Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”

As you read here, even the best of idols that man can create do not even have the 5 basic senses that the majority of the human race have. We, being created in the image of our creator, have mouths with which we can speak and eyes through which we can see. Ears to hear, noses to smell, hands to feel, etc. We cannot create something in our image, but God has created us in His. Sure, we can build statues that look like us, but they do not live like we live. How could we worship anything that is a lesser creation than we are?

But it’s more than that. Even though we were created “in His image” there is much about Him that we do no have/do. This is where this scripture rings home for us as worshipers. We are not the focus, we are not the center of what we do. Our focus, our epicenter is the triune God.

The rest of the the psalm calls us to “Trust in the Lord” and He will “Bless” us and “Cause us to Flourish.” (Don’t confuse flourish with some kind of health and wealth theology…) Then the psalm ends with a declaration of just how great our God is (and just how small we are): “¹⁶ The highest heavens belong to the LORD,  but the earth he has given to mankind. ¹⁷ It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence; ¹⁸ it is we who extol the LORD, both now and forevermore. Praise the LORD.”

As we get started in our new journey together in worship, I want us to start on the right foot. And that is that we have to put everything we have into worshiping God. We can’t hold anything back for ourselves in hopes that we will receive some small praise from the lips of men for what we do. We have to give it all away for the one who gave everything for us.