Introduction

This talk was given at St. Peter’s Church on August 17, 2025. Revd. Mark Fletcher explores God as our compass, examining how what we choose to praise becomes the navigation system for our lives and why setting God as our true north leads to freedom and purpose. Rather than following the false stars of celebrity and fame, we discover how to orient our lives toward the greatest good.

We live in a world fixated on fame, captivated by celebrity. We love a good bit of celebrity gossip. We want to know all about their lives. We want to know about how they achieved what they did. Nothing sells things so well as a celebrity endorsement. And whether that is pop stars or film stars or influencers, whatever they are, or sports stars or even business tycoons, we love a bit of fame and celebrity.

And when you see them being interviewed, people are always a little bit gushing, aren’t they? They’re always like, well, obviously you are amazing and we love your work. It’s a strange thing, in actual fact. And of course the irony is that there’s only really one person, one being in this universe who is really worthy of our praise and yet the one who gave us life, the one who created this vast, elegant, wonderful universe, we find it really quite hard to praise God to say to him, you are amazing. I love your work. So I want to think a little bit on the basis of that wonderful psalm about this theme of praise and how what you choose to praise really matters. So we are at the end of this summer series where we’ve been looking at some of the great Psalms, and it’s a wonderful journey through that great songbook of praise at the heart of the Bible.

But of course, it’s not as simple praise because in the Psalms every human emotion, all of the heights and depths of what it means to be human are found. But fittingly it all ends in praise. Verse one, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from heavens. Praise him. From the heights above. At the end of all things, at the end of the journey, we will sing songs of praise when we see how it all works together, how it all works out, and who God really is.

But I just want to ask that question really, because why is praise so central to what we do here at church? Why is it so important? My thinking is this. What we choose to praise is a statement about what we value the most highly. What we aspire to in our lives, what we believe to be the greatest good. And so with a child, when you praise their behavior, it’s because that is the kind of behavior that we want to see them live in their life that they might live life as best they can. When we praise a person, I would hope that it’s because we see the sort of behavior that we would like to aspire to be like. You become like the thing that you praise. Praise is the compass by which we navigate through our lives. It’s our sort of north star, which sets the course for where we go.

And so if that’s true, do you see that it’s essential that we are intentional about that, which we elevate that which we celebrate, that which we praise. And celebrity, you do not need me to tell you, is a terrible star to navigate by. There’s a great quote by Bob Dylan who talks about that experience of celebrity and how toxic it is for real life.

He talks about the experience of looking into a room where life was happening and people were relating to one another, having a great time, and just getting on with ordinary life. And then he would walk into the room and all of that would stop. And if that sounds like fun, it gets dull very quickly. Fame is toxic to real life.

No, it is far better that we set our hearts on one who can give us life and life in all its fullness.

Why do we praise God? I suppose the simplest answer to that is because that is what we were created for. That this whole wonderful, elegant, ordered universe is an act of such profound and intricate creation that it is there to speak of the majesty and the wonder and the glory of the creator. And so we praise because that’s what we are here for.

If you remember the Genesis story, you remember God creates everything in its order and at each stage of creation, he says it’s good. Until he creates man and woman puts them in the garden and then he says, it’s very good. That we, when we do our job, when we take our right place in creation, we are the pinnacle of creation and our job is not just to nurture and steward this good earth, but to celebrate all that is best about it and the God who created it.

Because if we don’t do that, who will? It may well be that we are the only creatures in the universe able to express the wonder of all this. To speak of the majesty and the grandeur of creation. How sad it is that we are tempted to describe this whole thing as some kind of random, meaningless, cosmic accident.

And when we praise, we join in with the heavens. Verse two says, praise him all his angels. Praise him his heavenly hosts. Our praise is like a little taste of eternity. We speak of the goodness of God in a world that has chosen to turn its back and to fail to hear. We need to speak so that people might know. We need to tell these stories to the next generation so that they too can encounter the goodness of God.

And when we praise, we are putting the world to rights. So much that is wrong with this world is because human beings turn their back on God and turn towards themselves. And when we praise God, we are putting creation back in the order that it’s intended to be. We are celebrating God who is the great good.

Who is the thing to which we aspire, the one that we love, the greatest ideal. So we praise because that’s what we were created for. Secondly, we praise God for his marvelous acts of redemption. Verse 14 says, he has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his faithful servants. That picture of a horn is a picture of salvation, of strength and victory.

And we speak of a God who has not given up on his people, though they turn away. We tell stories of God’s marvelous acts of his faithfulness and his mercy and his love, and we celebrate those things and we celebrate because the victory has been won. But it has been won not by the exercise of power or the strength of armies, but by the way of love and mercy and sacrifice at the cross of Jesus Christ.

We celebrate these things because if we don’t tell of these stories, then who will? This is the greatest good, the thing towards which we aspire. And finally we praise because it sets us free.

You don’t need me to remind you that the pursuit of fame and celebrity, or any number of the other false gods of this world is simply the most obvious and extreme version of our oldest failing. That innate tendency to make it all about me. As Saint Augustine describes it, our pride turns us in upon ourselves and that self-centeredness that self conceit, that self pity and that self obsession cuts us off from others and from God. And ultimately that is isolating and lonely and desperate. I saw a great quote by Jim Carey, who I’ve quoted more often than I ever expected that I would. And he said this, he said behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

Isn’t that brilliant? A sense in which we make it all about us and it just gets embarrassing very quickly. There’s a good story about JS Bach, the most important composer of his age and of course one of the greats. He was sought out by kings and emperors. I don’t know if you know, midway through his life, musical styles and tastes changed.

And J.S. Bach, amazing to think of it, was out of date. Suddenly nobody was calling on him. Nobody was interested in his music and it could have destroyed him, but it didn’t because he changed and he cast off all of the trappings of fame that in actual fact had weighed him down. And he doubled down on his faith and his service of other people.

He became a great teacher and he said this. The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. Isn’t that wonderful? And our lives need to be oriented the same way. The end and final goal of all of our lives should be none other than the glory of God and the service of his people.

And he went on to make his life all about the glory of God and blessing other people. In fact, if you see his later manuscripts, every one of them at the very end has these three letters. SDG, which stands for Soli Deo Gloria. Glory to God alone. Isn’t that amazing? Let praise the name of the Lord says our passage, for his name alone is exalted.

Set God as your compass as the greatest good to which you aspire. Navigate your life, not by the stars, but by the creator of the stars. Day by day, enthrone, God as God. It can be hard. I remember one of my struggles, in the early days of me taking my faith seriously, was about this because praising God I found difficult and uncomfortable.

But you know, the reason why? It was because I was having to take myself, my ego, off the throne of my life. And that’s not an easy process. But when we do, it sets us free. In your hearts, enthrone Jesus Christ as Lord, tell the stories of his goodness and his wonder, and his majesty and his mercy. Celebrate who he is above all the things of this world. And in your words and in the lives that you live and in who you are, enthrone God above all things.

Because this is your spiritual act of worship. In this way, we praise the greatest good that we might say Soli Gloria Deo. Glory to God alone. Amen.