Our Maker and Our Rock

August 9

(Psalm 95:1-6 NIV) “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. {2} Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. {3} For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. {4} In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. {5} The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. {6} Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”

(Isaiah 17:7-11 NIV) “In that day men will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel. {8} They will not look to the altars, the work of their hands, and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles and the incense altars their fingers have made. {9} In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation. {10} You have forgotten God your Savior; you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress. Therefore, though you set out the finest plants and plant imported vines, {11} though on the day you set them out, you make them grow, and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud, yet the harvest will be as nothing in the day of disease and incurable pain.”

Worship and praise come naturally to those who believe that God is their Maker and their Rock. If God created us and sustains us, what else can we do but worship and praise Him. But man’s heart is fickle and proud. Rather than honor God as Creator, we often create our own gods. We deify rock stars who blaspheme our Rock and Redeemer. Our music glorifies sin. We sing and shout to the wrong gods. We bow before scientists who cast doubt on our Creator. We build big things and worship the work of our hands. We forget the God who created all things. We glorify the work of our hands instead of honoring the handiwork of God, and in the end we harvest the wind. We end up with nothing that will last. Let’s get back to bowing down in worship. Let’s kneel before our Maker and our Rock. It’s what we were created to do. -- Friar Tuck’s Word of the Day