Accept, I beseech thee, the freewill offerings of my mouth, O LORD,
And teach me thy judgments (Psa 119.108).
Worship is fundamentally for God, not us. It is not that he needs anything from us, because he is wholly self-sufficient. “We give thee but thine own.” But God’s pleasure and glory is the all-important consideration in worship. We cannot increase his glory, but only reflect it. We are mere moons; he is the sun. Any benefit to us in worshiping him is merely a secondary consideration as to its substance, form, and worthiness. Worship is justifiable and imperative because it pleases God to glorify himself through us as his instruments.
This all-too-rare perspective is a radically God-centered view of worship, and the biblical view. Further, if any “worship” is not God-centered it is unworthy of the label. Whatever is at the center instead of God is an idol that utterly pollutes the act, however spectacular and pleasing to man it may be.
Now, we would not diminish in the slightest the salvific implications of true worship for the fallen people engaged in it. The Lord in his gracious wisdom has so ordained that our living in whole-hearted devotion to his glory is consummately harmonious with our experiencing the highest joy and eternal blessedness. Without true worship, we cannot hope to be saved. As true worshipers, it is impossible that we could finally be lost. Still, that God is glorified in our redemption makes saving us worth his doing.
If these truths are firmly established in our minds, then we will be greatly concerned that our worship will be found acceptable to him, and that our praises will be progressively purified. This holy care will lead us to earnest prayer like that of the psalmist. He makes two pleas, corresponding to the two lines of our text—accept and reform my worship.
ACCEPT MY WORSHIP
His prayer request is earnest. “I beseech thee.” Regrettably, this phrase is typically absent from modern translations, while some have the near but pitifully tepid equivalents of “please” or “I pray.” The original Hebrew uses a very strong imperative mood and has a sense of high importance and desperate urgency. Thus the older translations (e.g., KJV) are best. To beseech means to beg for earnestly or anxiously, and to request earnestly—to implore, make supplication.1 Worship is the ultimate priority.
People are typically found in earnest prayer for healing from cancer, the supply of pressing financial needs, or deliverance from any kind of threatening circumstance, but where is the comparable fervency for acceptance when we approach God?
Any carelessness here exposes some degree of apostasy. The godless have no concern whether God is pleased with their worship. It never enters their minds, or else it is never more than a fleeting thought. They continue in a form of worship without a care in the world what God thinks of their religious acts. They carry on for themselves, not God. Jesus described the wicked Pharisees as praying “with himself” (Luke 18.11). It would have shocked his pride to consider even for a moment that the Lord abominated him and his offensive pretense (Prov 15.8; 28.9). That explains why the Bible has many passages with strong language condemning “will worship” (Col 2.23). As God said through Isaiah,
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting (1.11-13).
Conversely, the most spiritually-minded saints have the greatest zeal to please God in what they do, as the psalmist’s noble example illustrates. Even King David here did not presume upon his Lord.
His request is for acceptance of his worship, and by implication, his person. Both are necessary to a great king. Let a hypocritical traitor bring ever so great a gift, and the sovereign who knows the masked infidelity is rightly offended. And the loyal one would never present a stinking heap of manure to the king, expecting to be accepted. The original for “accept” connotes more than bare toleration; it includes the senses of accepting favorably, being pleased with, and satisfied with something. Here it is a plea that God will be delighted with, even love, the offerer and his offering.
The worship itself is described figuratively as “the freewill offerings of my mouth.” Literal offerings were animals or produce brought to the temple for ritual presentation to the Lord by a priest on behalf of the Israelite. Freewill offerings were meant to express the worshiper’s gratitude to God, typically, for answered prayer. These came after various offerings related to atonement. So the psalmist had in mind thankful, verbal praises, whether spoken or sung (cf. ESV). A similar idea is found in Hebrews 13.15, “By him [Jesus] therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” The Christian believer is a NT priest, and thankful praises are the freewill offerings of his mouth.
Further, this first plea contains an implicit suggestion that the worshiper knows he stands in need of grace for such acceptance. It was the great king’s prerogative to hold out his golden scepter or sentence to death any who dared approach him in the inner court without being called (Esther 4.11), and the Most High God has no less discretion.
We ourselves and the worship we bring to God are very, very far beneath what is inherently proper and adequate for such glorious and holy Deity, and it is a great condescension of mercy and grace that he accepts us at all. He does so only through the mediation of Christ our Savior. Puritan Thomas Manton put this truth strikingly when he wrote on this verse,
All our acceptance comes from Christ’s intercession; and alas! our prayers and praises are unsavory eructations, belches of the flesh, as they come from us; a great deal of infirmity we mingle with them, we mingle brimstone with our incense and sweet spices, therefore provoke the Lord to abhor and despise us; but there is an angel stands by the altar that perfumes all our prayers and praises.2
How humbling is that? Our praises, smelly belches to God! Our incense to him, with more than traces of horrid burning sulphur! And we are so apt to be proud of the smallest motions of piety, the most paltry and defective acts of worship! No wonder we must be praying that in his grace he would be pleased with our worship.
But when we come with humble and contrite hearts, knowing that we stand on the ground of grace alone in Christ alone, we can be assured that we are accepted in the Beloved (Eph 1.6), in whom is the Father’s infinite and eternal delight.
REFORM MY WORSHIP
The psalmist’s second plea to the Lord is, “teach me thy judgments.” The immediate context justifies Matthew Henry in writing that the two things in this verse refer to acceptance of and assistance in our religious performances. Then he observed,
We cannot offer any thing to God which we have reason to think he will accept of, but what he is pleased to instruct us in the doing of; and we must be as earnest for the grace of God in us as for the favor of God towards us.
God does not leave it up to us to decide how he will be worshipped. Even though he graciously accepts less than perfect worship from us, the truly reverent yearn to purge our sanctified perfumes of every unlawful substance and to offer the holy oil and incense prepared strictly with his prescribed ingredients and procedure (Exod 30.22-38).
While the New Testament form of worship is simpler, less physical, and more spiritual than the types and shadows of the Old Covenant form, we must not from this draw the conclusion that the Lord’s ancient care for the particulars is any less today, for by his detailed prescriptions he teaches us his sovereign and unalterable prerogative to order his own worship. In heaven all worship is perfectly offered in precise conformity to God’s revealed will, and our worship on earth should aim for this.
Even when we have devoted ourselves to the study of his Word, we still need his grace to escape ignorance, prejudice, and stubbornness. It is only by the gracious, renewing ministry of the Holy Spirit to us and in us that we can ever find we really believe, desire, and comply with the biblical teaching. We have every encouragement to seek the Spirit’s aid through prayer, and sufficient promises to expect it when we beg persistently to experience the blessing of faith and obedience for the glory of Christ.
Perhaps you have been a Christian for a long time and now you are well-instructed from Scripture. Dear brother or sister, you still have much to learn. You must keep praying for more reformation to approach the standard you will finally reach by grace when you serve God in the new creation. Be relentless in your Bible study while you plead with the Author to teach you his way more perfectly. Let us fellowship in this passion. “A Reformed church is always reforming.”
In short, God is pleased when his people plead for acceptance and more instruction in worship. You need no further rationale, and you will require none if you already have a worshiping heart. Amen.
Notes:
1. MWCD
2. The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, VIII.114.