Psalm 8 - Worship Forever?

I think one of the unspoken conundrums of the Christian world is that we will worship God for all eternity in heaven yet most believers can't handle a worship service lasting longer than an hour. There is a disconnect there. The conundrum is not found in the fact that we will do it, or whether or not we love to worship, but it’s found in our inability to truly fathom the mental desire or even question our physical capacity to do it forever.

Many of us love to worship. Personally, it’s my love language to God. We may even be able to worship for a few hours at a time. I’ve been to a Passion OneDay event that lasted (ironically) three days, but even that was a series of worship sets followed by intermissions, eating, and sleeping. Falling seriously short of eternity.

Psalm 8 gives us some perspective on how this will be a reality. First, we have to recognize that the common theme of David’s Psalms is to Glorify God. We always see him putting God in his place.

“O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.” – Psalm 8:1

In Psalm 8, we see that after David puts God and His Glory in His high place, even above the heavens, he then puts man in his place as well. Below the heavens.

"What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly and crowned him with glory and honor.” – Psalm 8:4-5

Verse 4 certainly places authority in our hands over the earth, and is an undeserved assignment, but it also reminds us that we are not only under God’s care, but also His authority. If we were to connect the dots, we’d also see that there is a whole level of worshipers in heaven who are between us, and the placement of the Glory of God, which is “above the heavens” (vs.1).

So how does this explain worshiping for eternity? While we have seen God’s grace through the person of Jesus and God is truly with us in Spirit, we have yet to see His full Glory completely absent of our sin and earthly flesh (selfishness, insecurity, ego, agenda, wounds, etc...). When we finally do, there will be only one response. I think Matthew Henry does a great job of describing this:

“How bright this glory shines even in this lower world! He is ours, for he made us, protects us, and takes special care of us. The birth, life, preaching, miracles, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are known through the world. No name is so universal, no power and influence so generally felt, as those of the Savior of mankind. But how much brighter it shines in the upper world! We, on this earth, only hear God's excellent name, and praise that; the angels and blessed spirits above, see his glory, and praise that; yet he is exalted far above even their blessing and praise. Sometimes the grace of God appears wonderfully in young children. Sometimes the power of God brings to pass great things in his church, by very weak and unlikely instruments, that the excellency of the power might the more evidently appear to be of God, and not of man. This he does, because of his enemies, that he may put them to silence. (Ps 8:3-9)”

One day, we will see and comprehend. I want to resist the attitude of believers that we are simply “surviving” this world and waiting for the afterlife. There is much to do AND live for today. But this day will be amazing. When we see clearly for the first time, we will worship like never before.