Worship Fuels Mission
Psalm 107 reminds us that mission overflows from worship. Praising God for his redeeming love is the fuel for proclaiming that same love to our neighbors and the nations.
You do not get far in Psalm 107 before the global scope of God’s work comes into view. Those who are to praise God for his goodness and his steadfast love are those who have been “and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south” (v. 3). As the psalm progresses, it reminds us that God saves people from every corner of the earth and from every type of sin. The Lord delivers all who cry to him in their trouble (vv. 6, 13, 19, 28).
Praising God for his redeeming love is the fuel for proclaiming that same love to our neighbors and the nations
The psalm is about praising God for his redeeming love, but implicit within the psalm is the need to proclaim this love to those from every corner of the earth who are wandering in desert wastes, sitting in darkness, suffering from foolishness, and at their wits’ end. God sends out his word to heal and to redeem (v. 20), and this word comes through his messengers (Rom 10:14-17).
Not only do we see the need to proclaim God’s redeeming love, but we also see in this psalm that the motivation for announcing God’s love is the enjoyment of that love. When we savor the steadfast love of God in Christ for us, that love will swell up from within and overflow into the lives of those around us like a stream after a spring rain. The psalm calls us to enjoy the love of God by praising him for it (107:1) and meditating on it (107:43).
Far too often, we try to motivate ourselves and others to share the gospel through guilt and shame. We approach joining in the mission of God like taking out the trash—it’s a chore, a necessary drudgery. Long-time missionary to India, Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), describes it this way:
“There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of ‘the missionary mandate.’ This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel.”
Newbigin believes there’s a better way—that we need to embrace “how the mission of the Church is rooted in the gospel itself.” Surveying the New Testament, he contends,
“Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.”
Psalm 107 points us how we find a joy like this. It’s by experiencing God’s redeeming love in Christ and praising him for it. It’s by embracing the call to meditate on the steadfast love of the Lord at the end of the psalm: “Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord” (v. 43). The proclamation of God’s steadfast love begins with praising him for his steadfast love. Mission overflows from worship and leads to worship.
