Worship Notes for Sunday, June 10, 2012
“If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. We must ask how we can understand the Psalms and God’s Word, and then we shall be able to pray them. It does not depend, therefore, on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. If we were dependent entirely on ourselves, we would probably pray only the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. But God wants it otherwise. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)As we consider Psalm 2 this morning, we encounter an extension of the dichotomy set up in Psalm 1 of the way of wisdom and blessedness versus the path of foolishness and destruction. This is seen in the contrast between the Anointed One of God and the kings of the earth. So we begin with Psalm 89 as the Call to Worship for “who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?” We continue in worship with All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name because he is the King above all other kings and Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise who “rulest in might.”
The Old Testament Reading picks up Psalm 89 from the Call to Worship and uses language very similar to Psalm 2. The Prayer of Confession from Isaiah 47 reveals our deepest heart of motivations thinking that we can manage without God in our human wisdom and knowledge. Psalm 38 follows with singing I Will Give You Thanks and Praise You for “all the kings of the earth will praise” the Lord God.
Our second Communion Hymn is My Heart is Filled With Thankfulness—“to Him who reigns above whose wisdom is my perfect peace, whose every thought is love.” We conclude by singing The Lord is King—through earth and heaven one song shall ring, “The Lord omnipotent is King!”
