Years ago, I experimented with postures in prayer.  Instead of bowing my head and closing my eyes, I lifted my eyes to heaven, as Jesus did (John 17:1).  Instead of folding my hands, I lifted them, as the psalmist did (Psalm 141:2).  Instead of praying silently, I spoke or cried or shouted to God.  This audibility I had often found this in the psalms, but I had never taken it literally or seriously for myself.  At first, it felt awkward—even distracting—but eventually my own body language was prompting my spirit to be more free and open and joyful in prayer.  Form has a way of cuing us like that.

Now for some of you, it may seem legalistic to focus at all on posture in prayer—and if that was all that I was interested in, you would be correct.  However, let me ask you a question or two.  How often do you change your posture in prayer?  And if not, why not?  Routine itself can feel like a law.  And if it feels like a law, who is the lawgiver?

In day-to-day life, when do you naturally bow your head and decline to look someone in the eye?  Is it not when you are ashamed?  This shame may be appropriate at times, as when Ezra mourned the sins of his people (Ezra 9:6), but should it be our normal posture in prayer?  Body language is a language, so what are we communicating to God when we pray?

In Psalm 95, we are summoned to two postures of worship—the first is joyful and noisy; the second, reverent and submissive—and both are linked to truth about God.  In the first, it is objective truth about the size of God, that He is “a great God” and “a great King above all gods” (v. 3).  Literally, God is BIG.  He owns everything from Death Valley to Mount Everest.  He made the Atlantic and the Pacific and the continent in between, so that when we consider Him in contrast to all that humans worship, whether the gods of the East or the wealth of the West, He towers above them.  He alone is God of gods.

For such a God, wimpy worship will not do.

In contrast, the posture of reverent submission results from knowing that this big God is our God.  We “worship and bow down” and “kneel” because He is “our God and we are the people of His pasture” (vv. 6-7).  This is the subjective side of worship, and it has its own appropriate posture, the posture of kneeling, whether with hands or head lifted up or not.  Interestingly, the order makes sense.  It is the bigness of God that makes His careful, attentiveness to sinful, little me so amazing!  Finding such favor, should we not kneel and pour out grateful tears, as the forgiven prostitute did at the feet of Jesus (Luke 7:37-38)?

For such a God as ours, disobedience will not do.

Abruptly, once kneeling is mentioned, the psalm warns us: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (vv. 7-8).  Ultimately, posture is nothing, if my life does not practice what my body is preaching.  My body may kneel, but does my heart believe and obey?  Is this not the best posture of worship?

“The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the outcasts of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.

Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147:2-5).

The healing of a hurting heart—between the gathering of a nation and the numbering of the stars.

How sympathetic that God acknowledges the challenge of a hurting heart!

How hopeful that God builds and heals and numbers, as One great in strength and infinite in mind!

But why would such a personal trait be placed between incidents of such magnitude?  Could it be that there is a connection—a flow of ideas, from one line to the next?

Let us start with the wonder of naming stars.  Beyond the fact that there must be a finite “number” of stars—though countless to our gaze—this act of naming stars speaks of the manifold majesty of God.  Not only can He make a countless number of stars, He can individually identify these stars, He can invent enough names for these stars, and He can keep track of which star has which name.  Like a shepherd who knows all his hundred sheep by name, the Lord knows all His starry host by name, and loses not one in the crowd.  That’s an amazing mind and eye!  To us, the countless stars of the heavens strike us as faces in a foreign crowd, with one face looking so much as the next.  To God, the stars are numbered and personally named.

Such an amazing power of mind and eye applies directly to the plight of the Jews.  Like the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven, the Jews have multiplied, in fulfillment of Abraham’s promise—but now they have been scattered to the winds!  Who has the power to see every one of the promised seed, and to gather them back?  Like Abraham staring at the night sky, hearing that such will be your seed, we too stare bewildered at such a task, unable to discern the wheat from the tares, or even to find where all the elect reside.  God knows.  He sees, even as He has numbered and named, and He will not lose one.

As amazing as this is, even such a feat could be done impersonally.  Like the draft, a notice could go out, the rosters read, and the names enrolled.  God, however, does not operate in that way.  As the One who not only stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, He also formed the spirit of man within him, and He knows intimately all the working and ways of the human heart.  “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  He counts to make sure they are all there, and He heals to make sure they are all well.

Christian, fellow pilgrim in passage to heaven, be assured that you will never be lost, and that you will never be ignored.  You are more than a number.  He knows your name and He knows your heart.  You will not always be broken.  He will come and He will heal; He will call you by name and you will come to Him.  He who knows the vastness of the universe also knows the vexations of your heart.  Take hold of this hope, and weep no more.

Astronomy is one of the traditional disciplines of a liberal arts education.  And yet, how many of us were actually taught about the stars or have given them much thought?  This is sad, because the stars have a lot to say.  The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God, night after night revealing knowledge and day after day pouring forth speech (Psalm 19:1-2).  So what are the stars saying to us?

For starters, the stars have a lot to say about size.  As an example, consider the lyrics of this song:

“One tear in the driving rain, one voice in a sea of pain;

Could the maker of the stars hear the sound of my breaking heart?”

—Tenth Avenue North, “Hold My Heart”

Could the sound of something so small catch the attention of someone so big as the Maker of Billions—especially when the billions are all making noise?  Billions of stars in space, billions of souls on earth.

Compared to God and the stars He has made, we are small.  Twice the psalmist asks:

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

What is man that You remember him, and the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).

“O LORD, what is man, that you remember him?  Or the son of man, that You visit him?

Man is like a mere breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Psalm 144:3-4).

Both in space and in time, we are very small.

But if the skies have a lot to say about our size, relative to the stars, what about God?  The same stars that speak of our smallness also speak of His bigness—His greatness—and this thought gives us hope:

“The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the outcasts of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.

Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147:2-5).

Now catch the reasoning of this psalm.  Three things are very numerous—the exiles scattered worldwide, the hearts broken inside, and the stars visible outside—yet God Himself is “great” (literally big), abundant in strength and infinite in mind.  He not only made the stars and knows the stars, He names the stars, which implies His ability to imagine a billion names and then assign a billion names without confusing one star with another or forgetting even one.  Such is our Sovereign Lord: infinite in understanding.

For Jews in exile, this was extremely good news.  In fulfillment to the promises given to their fathers, they were as numerous as the stars in the sky or as the sand upon the shore, and yet where were they now?  Had God lost track of them—one tear in the driving rain, one voice in a sea of pain?  No, the Maker of the stars could hear the sound of one breaking heart.  That thought is so precious.  Jesus has a lot of sheep, but, as our good and great Shepherd, He loses not one.  He calls each by name and will raise him up on the last day.  Every exile will come home.

Now let’s press the analogy inward.  When God told Abram to look up and to count the stars, saying, “So shall your seed be,” there were only so many stars visible to Abram’s vision.  Similarly, when God tells us that in the days of Solomon, the Jews were as numerous as the sand on the seashore, there were still only so many grains of sand available for examination.  Beneath the waves were myriads and myriads of sand granules, and as we now know, beyond the gaze of Abram were myriads and myriads of stars—and yet our God has each star named.  He knows the size and shape of every particular grain of sand.  And He knows the hurt and pain of each thought buried deep in our hearts, beneath the facial expressions we reveal to others.

We may be small compared to the stars, but God is big—He hears and heals each breaking heart.

Summed up in Sayings…

As sand is numerous on the earth, so stars are numerous in the heavens.

As sand on the shore, so stars in the sky.

Can we press the metaphor literally?  The metaphor speaks of an infinite amount, so God’s mind does know all.

The sand and the stars represent calculus—the infinite stars and the infinitesimal sand.

So too are the mysteries of theology—who can explain the infinite mind of God or the infinitesimal will of Adam?

Neither the mind of God in His sovereignty nor the will of Adam in his freedom can be parsed out in an algorithm.

So stars beyond our gaze and sands beneath the waves, so are thoughts behind our consciousness (Ps. 19:12).

Exiles worldwide, heartaches inside, and stars outside—the great God knows them all by name and loses none.

There are two basic reasons for worshipping the Lord: He is God and He is good.  Ironically, both of these words seem to be related in English, as in other European languages, almost as if to say, “God alone is the Good One”—something that Jesus Himself said.  Together, these two themes form the simple outline of Psalm 100:

“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!

Serve the LORD with gladness!  Come into his presence with singing!

        Know that the LORD, he is God!

        It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!  Give thanks to him; bless his name!

        For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

Do you see the simple outline?

Be joyful, glad, and sing, knowing that the Lord is God.

Give thanks, praise, and bless, knowing that the Lord is good.

Are we?  Do we?

Interestingly, out of all the commands of the Bible, one would think that commands such as “Rejoice!” or “Be glad!” would be some of the easiest to obey.  Who would not want to be joyful?  And yet, in our everyday experience, joy is often elusive, and our loss of joy shows we have lost sight of God as God!  We need to know this afresh, and this becomes one of the chief reasons to come before Him, week after week, in public worship.

Another chief reason for coming to worship is thanksgiving.  Literally, the command is to make verbal confession about the Lord.  Public worship is a confession of faith.  If there is anything this psalm pushes against, it is a deer-stand Christians who refuses to come public with his faith, joining with fellow believers in united song.  There is no “moment of silence” here!

In thanking God, let us remember that God is good, not indulgent.  His eye is on the long-term that lasts “to all generations.”  Our faith must eye the same.

So there you go.  The Lord is God and the Lord is good.

Everything we have is from Him, and everything we have from Him is good.

Therefore, let us come and worship.