6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
What a testimony to the commitment that a child of God should have towards the public worship of God! Now and then, I come across people who claim to be Christians but would not join others to worship Him. There are also those who ‘drag their feet’ to church, and find it a chore to spend a few hours to worship and serve Him on the Lord’s Day. But this verse, together with many suchlike ones, shows that God’s people count it their pleasure to gather and worship Him.
The palmist is eager not only to worship God together with others, but also to urge others to join him in the worship of God. He beckons to all God’s people, saying, “O come”. The fact that he could say “come” to others, clearly implies that he has already been to the place of worship or he is on his way there. So by beckoning to others, he is testifying to them the blessing of worship, and also being an example and encouragement for others to consider the joy of worship.
In order to encourage others to worship the Lord, the psalmist repeatedly uses the phrase “let us”. Though this phrase of exhortation is found only twice in our English translation, if we carefully read it we would see that it is meant to be used with all the three verbs in the verse, namely “worship,” “bow down” and “kneel”. In fact, in the Hebrew text, all those three verbs are presented as a plea to the hearers. The repeated mood of imploring in the psalmist’s exhortation makes him a great promoter of congregational or public worship of God. True worshippers of God are great advocates of His worship. They spare no effort to promote worship for the ultimate glory of God and further blessing of others.
The psalmist is also careful to remind the people that God is “our maker”, thus making another effort to compel them to join him and all other worshippers to bow before Him. He reminds one and all that it is their individual and collective obligation to render praise to the One who has made them all. Isn’t our Creator worthy of our adoration? Ironically, there are those who bow before the idols, which they themselves make. Rather, we must kneel before our God who created and redeemed us to be His own people. Hence with profound postures of worship (“bow down” and “kneel”), let us exalt Him as His thankful and reverential people.