He Is God

Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
​(Psalm 33:8)

​God is to be praised and worshipped not for what he has done and the way he blesses us and enriches our lives, but simply for who he is--God.  Even if God does nothing good for us, even if our lives are racked with pain and suffering and misery, God is still to be worshipped and praised.  Job understood this well when he said, after all his property had been destroyed and his children had all been tragically killed, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed [praised] be the name of the LORD" (1:21).  Why does Job respond this way?  How is this possible?  Though the psalms had not yet been written at the time of Job’s life, he instinctively understood what the psalmist put into words in Psalm 33:6-9, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.  He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; he puts the deeps in storehouses.  Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!  For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”  All the earth should fear God and all the inhabitants of the world should stand in awe of him simply because he spoke into existence all there is by the power of his word.  God simply willed the universe into being.  God is to be worshipped and praised and obeyed because he is God…and we are not.