The Scriptures emphatically insist that God’s praise should ring out in all the world. Though the Psalms are Israel’s song book, they refuse to limit the scope of worship to a narrow geographical realm. God’s glory is boundless and warrants allegiance in all corners of the earth “from where the sun rises to where it sets” (Psalm 113:3).

Worship is always an expression of worth. We serve what we deem to be valuable. We spend time, energy and physical resource on things that matter.

As the God of the whole earth, Israel’s God–Yahweh–stands over all other so called “gods”, rendering them impotent and proving them unworthy of their name. Such gods are man made inventions, void of any spiritual substance. To worship them in their emptiness is to attribute worth to nothing. It is, as Jesus says, to build a house on sand. Yahweh alone is worthy.

There is none like him. He stands alone as the creator and sustainer of all things. He engineered/crafted/composed every aspect of life as we know it–and even as we are yet to know it. His governance over time and space, head and heart, earth and sky, right and wrong is without fault. Enthroned over all, we can and should entrust ourselves to him in all humility.

Wonderfully, it is in this humility where we find our greatest strength. For the Lord “raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” He loves to give good things to his children. He does not resent us in our weakness and vulnerability. He wants to be our God. He wants to serve us and give himself for us.

How good, then, that he stooped so low in giving himself to us in the person of his son; that in Christ he made himself nothing by taking the form of a servant and humbling himself to death on a cross. Here is the fullness of God’s love for us.

And in this we have every reason to sing to the ends of the earth. For it is at the name of jesus that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess in heaven and on earth and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.

There is none like him.