Worship
Text: Psalm 95 ESV
The first thing we did this morning was call each other to sing. "Come! Let us sing to the LORD. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation." And that’s what we did. Ultimately, each one of us was responding to God's living and active word. The LORD has called us to sing.
When you were called this morning to sing to Yahweh, why did you do it? Was it because you were told to? Was it because you wanted to? Was it because it would feel awkward if you didn't when all these people around you were doing so? Why did we as a church do what we just did? With God's help, I want to look together at how Psalm 95 addresses why his people should sing.
Main point: Those who rejoice in, revere, and follow God today will rest in his presence forever.
This psalm can be split into 2 major sections, Verses 1–7 and verses 8–11. There are three points to this sermon:
1) the nature of our worship,
2) the object of or reason for our worship, and
3) the obstacle to worship.
Points 1 and 2 are in verses 1–7 and point 3 is in verses 8–11.
The Nature of Our Worship
vv. 1–2, 6
In the first major section, verses 1–2 and verse 6 describe the nature of worship, what our worship ought to look like. Verse 1 says,
Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. (Psalm 95:1 ESV)
The first thing we notice in verse 1 is singing. God gave us singing and commanded us to sing. There are around 50 commands in Scripture for us to sing and around 400 other references to singing. God cares that singing would mark his people. Since this is a sermon on worship and not specifically on singing, though they obviously overlap, suffice it to say for now that the Scriptures often connect our singing to joy and thanksgiving. Singing is a fitting response of hearts that are full of reasons to rejoice in God and stand in awe of him.
As we read further in verse 1, the psalmist calls for a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Verse 2 makes it clear that our songs of praise themselves can be joyful noise. He says,
"let us make a joyful noise with songs of praise." (Psalm 95:2 ESV)
Singing can be one type of joyful noise, but joyful noise is actually much more broad. He intentionally uses a different Hebrew word here that typically means to "raise a shout" or "blast a horn."
This observation should expand our horizons for worshipful expression to the Lord. It is fitting to praise the Lord with loud shouts. Many of us do this when our favorite sports team makes an incredible play that puts them into position to win the game. The psalmist intentionally says something specific about the one we're making a joyful noise to. He's the rock of our salvation. He has made the definitive play in history to secure our salvation, our deliverance from sin and death, and our guarantee of receiving an eternal kingdom that will not be shaken. We will live forever with the King of kings. It is fitting to make loud shouts of praise to him when we remember these things together.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving (Psalm 95:2 ESV)
Now this is key. Paul actually picks this up in both Ephesians and Colossians when he refers to singing in the corporate gathering. In Colossians 3 we are called to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And in Ephesians 5 he helps us further to make the tight connection between singing and the condition of the heart. Paul says,
Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
(not your lips, your heart)
giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Ephesians 5:18b–20 ESV)
As much as God is pleased with our external forms of worship (and he is!), he is only pleased with them to the extent that they are expressions of the actual condition of our hearts.
In Keith and Kristyn Getty's recent book, "Sing!" they write about the proper disposition of our hearts so well I want to quote them at length here:
The disposition of our hearts is not begrudging—'I sing because I must—but rather 'with thankfulness in your hearts to God'—'I sing because he is marvelous.' Thankfulness is more than saying the words with your lips. In fact, you are not singing Christianly if you are singing only with your lips. The root of true thankfulness is the gratitude in our hearts for the unmerited benefits of God's goodness in our lives.
But Keith and Kristyn don't write this to say that the external aspect of worship is unimportant. On the contrary, in fact, they write:
It is hard—impossible, in fact—to sing what you are excited about in your spirit and grateful for in your heart in a way that is tepid [lukewarm], tentative [with hesitation], and withdrawn [distant]. Deeply felt thankfulness produces a sound from our voices that is robust and enthusiastic. What is happening when we sing is about so much more than the audible sound we create, but not less. How we sing does reveal how we think and feel about something… our singing betrays the truth about us, for better and for worse.
Now I want to add something here. There are times in our lives where our sadness or our suffering is so great, or our bodies so feeble, that we feel like we can barely make sounds in our throats. The LORD sees you. He hears what nobody else can hear. The strength of your thankfulness before him is more important than the strength of your voice—in volume, tone, or pitch.
Now if we look at verse 6, we see that our worship includes not only expressions of joy and thankfulness but expressions of humble submission.
"Let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker." (Psalm 95:6 ESV)
All three of these words, worship, bow down, and kneel are expressions of humble deference, getting low before the LORD. Once again, it is fitting to kneel before the king of the universe, especially in those moments where you are overwhelmed by the implications of his kingly reign and his holiness. We ought to feel the freedom and fittingness of kneeling in corporate worship.
Do we see all of these expressions as normal?
I was recently at a church, sitting in the pew during the sermon, and a brother over to my left was worshiping throughout the sermon. He would repeat phrases that the pastor said, treasuring them in his heart and saying, “Amen!” Now the man directly in front of me was either annoyed or confused at the other man. Every time the man to my left opened his mouth, the man in front of me looked over at him with a concerned look on his face. I tell this story just to say, brothers and sisters, do not be annoyed or confused in our gatherings when fellow saints sing loudly, make loud shouts, kneel, dance, etc. These things are not only normal but fitting. It is normal to worship our great God in these external ways. Our default should be to be built up by the expressiveness of others around us in worship rather than think others are strange, distracting, or disruptive. Yes, there could certainly be ways we could wrongfully distract one another in worship, but this is often not the end of the spectrum we struggle with.
So the nature of our worship in Psalm 95 could be summed up with the words joy and reverence, both of which exude forth things like thankful singing and humble submission. Now what or who causes this worship to pour out?
The Object of or Reason for Our Worship
vv. 3–5, 7ab
Verses 3-5 give the first reason for our worship. Look at verse 3. Why do we worship with joy, thankfulness, and reverence? FOR Yahweh is a great God! Always pay attention to those FORs. And he isn't just a great God, he is the great King above all gods. The psalmist draws attention to the fact that there is no one like Yahweh. No one compares to him. He is above all gods.
In Psalm 115, after stating that Yahweh is in the heavens and does all that he pleases, the psalmist describes the futility of worshiping other gods.
"Their idols are silver and gold the work of human hands." (Psalm 115:4 ESV)
One of the most essential differences between Yahweh and all other gods, the psalmist says, is that Yahweh is not man-made. The idols of the nations, however,
"they have mouths but do not speak; eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear; noses but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat." (Psalm 115:5–7 ESV)
In other words, they are lifeless. They cannot hear you. They cannot respond to you. They cannot help you.
In 1 Kings 18, Yahweh uses a faceoff between Elijah and the prophets of Baal to show how he is high above the man-made gods of the nations. Elijah asks the prophets in verse 21.
"How long will you be limping between two different opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." (1 Kings 18:21 ESV)
Elijah then finds two bulls and they make two altars, one to Baal and one to Yahweh.
"The God who answers by fire, he is God." (1 Kings 18:24 ESV)
The prophets call out to Baal for hours while Elijah raises the stakes. He asks the people to pour water over the altar 3 times until the water filled the trench around the altar. Meanwhile, the prophets of Baal begin to cut themselves to get Baal to answer them until Elijah speaks to their foolishness of worshiping Baal with some sober trash talking.
"Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." (1 Kings 18:27 ESV)
The author, in verse 29, makes sure to be crystal clear about Baal.
"As midday passed, they (the prophets) raved on until the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention." (1 Kings 18:29 ESV)
Baal could not hear them. He could not respond to them. He could not help them. He was lifeless.
Praise Yahweh that he is not like that. Rejoice, Table Rock, that Yahweh, the God we serve, does speak! He has spoken and revealed himself to men. Yahweh does see.
"The eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine." (Psalm 33:18–19 ESV)
Yahweh does hear.
"When the righteous call for help," Yahweh hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. Yahweh is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in Spirit." (Psalm 34:17–18 ESV)
The story ends with Elijah calling out to Yahweh to answer him and to show that he is God. Yahweh then sends fire and consumes the altar and all that was around it.
And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, 'Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God!' (1 Kings 18:39 ESV)
So Yahweh is the great King above all gods. Back to Psalm 95. Verses 4 and 5 illustrate a massive feature of God's greatness:
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. (Psalm 95:4–5 ESV)
When verse four says, "In his hand are the depths of the earth" and then says "the heights are his also," the psalmist is seeking to illustrate the scope of God's dominion. The depths and heights of the earth—and everything in between—is all his. Then he does it again. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Both the sea and dry land, he made it all. As Psalm 24:1–2 declares: The whole
"earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." (Psalm 24:1–2 ESV)
He made it. He owns it.
Creation alone ought to stir up a wealth of admiration toward God. Psalm 148 begins ecstatically:
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord! (Psalm 148:1–5a ESV)
The psalmist continues several more verses of this and also commands:
Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord!" (Psalm 148:11–13a ESV)
Why?
For he commanded || and they were created.
That's amazing.
Have you ever tried to do that? Star, be made! Tree, sprout forth! Rain, fall from the sky!
That's amazing! Do we marvel at that? Do we praise him for that? This wonder of creation he has made, including our very selves, it all points to his beauty. Everything you love about this created world, it's from him. If you love creation, you ought to love the one who created it.
One of my favorite songwriters, Josh Garrels, shares something about creation when he talks about the arts. He says,
"I think it's a natural human response to want to meet the creator of something because the creation isn't the end. It's beautiful, but it always reflects a person behind it."
Yahweh is a great God. His hands formed the dry land. He made the wind and rain and used them over many years to sculpt things like the Grand Canyon. And he made you. Each of you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
And here we are at verse 7. This is where things get really personal for us as his people. It is a type of hinge point, the reason why this psalm has so much rejoicing and thankfulness involved and not only fear and trembling before him. This great king above all gods (verse 7)—he is OUR God. This is the best news. It is the center of our confidence in approaching him.
Table Rock, once we were not a people. Once we had not received mercy. We were strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2). Why were we without him? Was it because he deserted us, cut all ties with us, refusing to be our God? No. We cut ties with him. We exchanged the glory of God for a lie and worshiped and served ourselves rather than him. We became his enemies, refusing to acknowledge him so that we could run our own way. But our own way was the way of death. His way was the way to life.
"We were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked…we lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." (Ephesians 2:1–5 ESV, edited slightly)
Brothers and sisters, now we are a people—and not just a people but his people. Why? Because Jesus the Good Shepherd came to seek and to save the lost. We, sheep who had gone astray, have now been made
"the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." (Psalm 95:7 ESV)
I love that the psalmist uses this image of a shepherd with his sheep here because it speaks of a sort of tenderness to our relationship with the great King rather than one of fearful expectation of judgment.
Friends, we need to remember that the sovereign rule of the King is not good news for us if we do not have Jesus who died for our sin so that we could be reconciled to God. Without Jesus, Yahweh will not be a rock of our salvation, he will be a rock that will crush us. We deserve wrath and death for our rebellion against this great King.
But those who have heard the good news of Jesus' saving work on their behalf and believe, turning from their wicked ways to follow him, they are in the safest place. Listen to Jesus in John 10:
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." (John 10:27–30 ESV)
Those who believe in Jesus can rejoice in the Great King above all gods! For in Jesus, God is for us and not against us. The Good Shepherd has laid his life down for the sheep, pulling his helpless sheep back from the jaws of death. And nothing can now separate them from his care.
Notice that Jesus says his sheep, or the "sheep of his hand" as Psalm 95 says, are those who hear his voice and follow him. This brings us to the final point of our psalm
Today, if you hear his voice, follow him! Do not harden your hearts! The rest of this psalm can feel a bit startling or abrupt at first, and we can wonder what place it has in a seemingly upbeat psalm on worship. It can feel like a downer, so to speak. But it's supposed to be startling so that we'll pay attention.
The Obstacle to Our Worship
vv. 7–11
"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, 'They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.' Therefore, I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.' " (Psalm 95:7–11 ESV)
Basically, this final section is saying, "Do not be like the hard-hearted wilderness generation or you will end up like them."
Who were they? The psalm is referring to Exodus 17. They were a people who gave up their trust in the God who redeemed them from slavery. This people—at the beginning of Exodus—had been groaning under harsh slavery in Egypt. But God heard their groaning. He remembered his covenant with their fathers. He knew their trial and had compassion on them by raising up Moses and Aaron, sending them to Pharaoh. When Pharaoh refused to let the people go, God sent miraculous plagues to judge Egypt and to save his people. Once Pharaoh released them, he led his people by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. When the Egyptian army pursued them, he opened the Red Sea that they could cross to the other side in safety. And now the Israelites in Exodus 17, after witnessing all of these wonders, grumble before Moses and say, "Is the Lord among us or not?" We need to feel the weight of this, that this people could go through all of those miraculous events simply to say to Moses, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" This was after they already were miraculously given water and food when they needed it in chapter 16 and in chapter 15. Psalm 95 reminds us that he loathed that generation and that they did not enter his rest.
Now we have a temptation to see this generation as foolish and thank God that we are not like them, but Psalm 95 and the book of Hebrews bring this text up to warn us that our propensity to harden our hearts and refuse to trust God is the same now as it was for that people. Prone to wander, Lord, we feel it. Prone to leave the God we love.
And so the rest of Psalm 95 is a challenge regarding the integrity of our worship. It is a warning to those who claim to worship God to continue believing him, loving him, and obeying him. Directly after the writer of Hebrews quotes this passage in chapter 3, the writer says,
"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." (Hebrews 3:12 ESV)
Then he says,
"But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called, 'today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13 ESV)
There’s our word: hardened.
When the Israelites reached the other side of the Red Sea and the Egyptian army had been defeated by Yahweh, they broke out in song:
The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him." (Exodus 15:2 ESV)
But many of the Israelites had hard hearts, and their lives showed that they didn't believe God like they sang. They were not only forgetful of his faithfulness to them, doubting his ability to save them, but they began to accuse God of unfaithfulness and evil intentions toward them.
So this warning clarifies that our worship is so much more than our external forms of praise, though he cares about these things and even commands them. Do we honor him and treasure him in our hearts, or do we honor him with our lips while our hearts are far from him? The way we live will give us the answer. Do we claim to worship God while ignoring the word of God? This is so important for us to get. Worship is more than just our time of singing but our whole life (heart and action) response to the king. Those who respond to the king in genuine rejoicing and reverence will do so not only in their words and in the quality of their singing but also in their humble obedience to his word shown by the life they live. These things will go together.
It is often said that right living flows from right worship, but Paul shows us in Romans 12 that this statement isn't strong enough. Right living, obedience to God's word worked out in how you live, is worship.
"I appeal to you brothers, by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." (Romans 12: 1 ESV)
And then Paul says,
"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2 ESV)
That renewal of our minds, the same renewal that now causes us to respond to the greatness and kindness of our God with thankfulness and loud singing, ought to also cause us to stop living like the world and to instead live like people who believe what they sing about him and find him worthy of obeying. A life of obedience displays the integrity of our praise!
Just one more point of application here. I'll use one of Ryan's last sermons on ‘Loving All People’. He exhorted us to not withhold our love from others based on their particular sin struggle. Whether or not we obey God's word on this issue will be a testimony before God on whether our worship is genuine or not. We cannot look one way and sing "thank you God for not counting my sin against me," and then turn and count others' sins against them by withholding our love.
Life is complex, but this suggests that we don't truly love the one who saved us; we're just glad to feel safe from death. But we aren't safe if we will not obey him. Jesus said in John, "If you love me, you'll obey my commands." If you love Jesus, you'll want to be like him. The call to worship is a call to our whole person (our affections and the life we live).
We cannot celebrate the lordship of God over all creation—including his lordship over us—and celebrate the covenant relationship we have with him and then ignore his word. Those of us who do this, as verse 11 threatens, should not have confidence that they are in the safety of his pasture or that they will enter his rest. Yes, we struggle with sin, and he gives us grace in Jesus. But if we make peace with sin, if we make a habit of sin and we are characterized by it and will not repent, we will not enter his rest. So today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Repent from sin, believe the gospel, and find rest for your soul.
Lastly, remember that genuine worship is extremely rewarding. Those who truly trust God and obey him will find rest even now in worship. Worship becomes restful to those who understand gospel rest, something secured for them through faith in Jesus. Recounting and celebrating the promises he has made to you and the faithfulness he has shown to you—which secures your eternal rest forever—is a restful activity.