Psalm 95, as we consider our theme, a call to worship. Of course, we see that in this psalm, as in many other places as well. We read here, Psalm 95, this is God's holy word. O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with songs. For the Lord is the great God. and the great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness when your fathers tested me. They tried me, though they saw my work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation and said, it is a people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know my ways. So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." God's holy Word. Let's pray again together. Father, help us now, we pray, to give attention to this Word, to receive it for what it is, the very Word of God. Now we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, this morning we want to ponder something that's very important to our worship. And it is, very simply put, that God Himself, as we often say this, God Himself, by His Word and Spirit, calls us to worship Him. God Himself calls us to worship Him. Now, we could say, if we get this straight from the very start, we're wonderfully helped, at least in this respect, that God will then be the focus and center of our worship. Now, in one respect, it might sound odd that we need to say such a thing, Oftentimes in those things that go on that are called worship, God is not the center of it. Something else is the center of it. So we hasten to say again, by the nature of the case, worship is God-centered. It's not man-centered. I'm not worshiping myself. I'm ascribing worth to God. I'm coming to God. I'm seeking Him. I'm standing before Him. I'm presenting myself to Him. So what we want to see very simply this morning from this passage, and we could really demonstrate this in many other places, but we see it here pointedly. When God calls us into his worship, what is he calling us to do? What's the nature of this call? He's calling us. What is he calling us to do when he calls us into worship? Well, certainly when we say three things here. He's calling us to, this is very simple. He's calling us to come to him. Secondly, he's calling us to present ourselves to him. And thirdly, he's calling us to hear his voice. That's what he's calling us to. We say first, and he's calling us to come to him. The psalm here says, Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. We say, he himself calls us by his word and spirit. And we say, in one respect, that's very simple. We can only truly come to God by faith. So, of course, worship is always, true worship is always properly, it's an exercise of faith. I'm really coming to God. And the only way I can really come to God is by faith. Faith is able to hear and speak. Faith, you see, is able to hear his welcome voice. That's what I'm seeking to hear, isn't it, when I come to worship. I want to hear him speak. And of course, as we often say, There's nothing more important in the world than this. Nothing. Than for a human being to hear God speak. There's nothing more important than that. So consider this morning, as you come this morning, we come in worship. We already had the call to worship from the Word of God, so we come to worship. Is that what you've done this morning? Is that what you're doing? In these moments now, is that what you're doing? That's what we're to be doing. As the Word is preached, that's what I'm to be doing. Coming to God. I'm seeking Him. I'm seeking to hear Him. If I can come that way, as God enables me, if I can come that way, we understand this now in the preaching, if I can come that way, this is true, we understand it. I'd rather lose sight of the preacher, don't I? If I can get this. It's not about the preacher. It's not about the man. It's about Jesus Christ Himself speaking. That's what I want to hear. Is that what you're doing this morning? Some people come into a worship service and that's not what they're doing. They're here for some other reason. And I say today to you, if you're here for some other reason, examine your heart. This is the reason we worship. This is worship. So he calls us, and you can think of this in two ways really. He calls us, and when he calls us by his word, and we could demonstrate calls to worship in many places in the scripture. Sometimes God speaks it directly, most often he speaks it through his servant, but it's the call to worship. It's his authoritative beckoning that we would come and worship him. So we want to bear that in mind first, I believe. It's his authoritative command So we can say, well, what kind of warrant do we need to come and worship? Well, the best warrant, the true warrant, the proper warrant is that God himself calls us. Now think about that. His authoritative word. What if you got a phone call from the White House? And said, you know, Mr. Moliterno, President Obama would like to speak with you. I'm busy today. I've got classes, you know. If you've got a word from the White House to come and meet this man, to speak with him, to have audience with him, this man who holds the highest office in the country, man, wow, the President's called me to meet with him. I'm going to go meet with him. So I say the word. Now again, I don't think you could say you'd be breaking the law if you didn't go, But in this case you live! You what? God commands our worship. There's this authoritative word. Wonderfully, that's not all it is, right? It's not merely an authoritative word. Come and appear before me! It's not merely an authoritative word, but as we often emphasize, it's a gospel word. It's a gospel word. Think of the hymn that says, I hear thy welcome voice that calls me Lord to thee. I hear thy welcome voice. That's what we need to hear, isn't it? His welcoming voice, and it's a welcoming voice because of the gospel. Now that's in the very first line of the psalm. You see it there? Can you see it? Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. There it is. Two places really. Let us sing to the Lord. All caps there, right? That's his redeeming name. In other words, come now, come. Sing to your Savior. That's how we approach, isn't it? And that's the only way we can approach. Come! Sing to your Savior! Sing to your redeeming God! Sing to Him! Very important. We hear His welcome voice. We hear his welcome voice. We hear a word of grace in the call of worship. It's a word of grace. Come, he's saying in effect, come because I've made you mine. Come because I've provided everything for you. Come because you can come clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Come because you can come by virtue of the blood of Christ shed for you. I don't ever seek to come, I'm not ever to come in my own righteousness. I should never say, I should never think to say, you know, I feel a little more confident about coming into worship today. I've been a pretty good person this week. I think I pray just about every day. Good. Read the Bible every day this week. Wow. Great. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm feeling, you know, I'm feeling today in a particularly spiritual frame of mind. I think I'll come back. Don't ever come that way. Don't ever come that way. The sure way to come. What is it? We come into worship. We're invited to come into worship in this way and this is the only way we can really come. We say, come into worship praising your Savior that has made a perfect way for you to come into the presence of God and lift your voice to Him and He hears you and He delights in this worship. He delights in us. Isn't this amazing? It's amazing. So we say this call to worship, it's an authoritative word and it's a word of grace as well, isn't it? It's a word of grace. It's a word from the redeeming God. This is how we approach. Our focus is on Christ, His person, His work. So we, not only in our call to worship, but really you see that or you should hear that threaded through all of the worship. That's the way it ought to be. It's threaded through all of our worship, this recognition, this self-conscious recognition that we stand before God, that we can expect blessing from God. Right now, in these moments, we can really expect blessing from God because of Jesus Christ. That's wonderful. What's your confidence right now in these moments that the Spirit of Christ would work in your heart? What's your confidence in that? This is your proper confidence. Jesus Christ died for you. And God has given you the righteousness of Christ by faith in which you're clothed. That's your whole confidence. Oftentimes we need to say to the Lord, Lord forgive me for placing my confidence in something else. Forgive me for thinking I have to work myself back into your favor by my works. I cannot work myself back into God's favor by my works. I could never get myself into God's favor by my works. And I cannot maintain His favor by my works. Oftentimes we have to ask God's forgiveness for this. I've been living again in my performance. Living in my performance. Our focus is Christ in his person and work, our redeeming God, the rock of our salvation. Christ is the rock of our salvation, isn't he? Let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully. to the rock of our salvation. Look at this. The Lord is our redeeming God. We sing of Him. He's the rock of our salvation. In Him we have perfect refuge in Christ. The Scripture says here, the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. There's no one greater than our Savior. This is the true God and our great God and He's our Savior. So, I don't know how big your needs are. Mine are pretty big. Very big. Bigger than anybody else's, as far as I know. But they're not too big for God, are they? The Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His for He made it and His hands formed the dry land. Our great saving God is sovereign over all of creation. He's sovereign over all of the creation. Our redeeming God who purposes to carry forward His sanctifying work in our hearts. He's the sovereign of all creation. So maybe we have something to praise Him about. Maybe we have something to sing about. Maybe we have something to sing about. Oh man, we have so much to sing about. So we think of joy and passion here. This is a difficult thing for us. Joy and passion, I think. The enemy barks at us. The psalm here says, Oh come, let us sing to the Lord. Listen to this. You have this other places too. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. I submit to you, Presbyterians aren't very good at this. I don't mean every service we've got to be shouting. Hey, but sometimes we ought to shout. I mean, okay, I've got to be careful here, alright? We're Presbyterians. But look! Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. I mean, that's something like, Praise God! It's something like that, I think, isn't it? Praise God! You know, sometimes people will say to me, you know, they'll say, oh, pastor, I just wanted to say amen. And you know, I'm holding back, you know, presbyterian, holding back, you know. I didn't, I wanted to say amen and I just felt like maybe I shouldn't, you know. You should. You should. We say this is difficult for us. We're really commanded here. We're to come into his presence singing joyfully. But again, you've got to see that two-fold call to worship, don't you? It's not merely the authoritative command. It's the welcoming voice. It's the word of grace whereby we're called into worship. I mean, how is it then that we can sing with joy and passion? We understand this very well, I think. But you've got to hear it. The only way we can sing with joy and passion is as we're gripped by the gospel. That's the only way. It's not possible any other way. As we focus upon grace. So we need to come realizing that we're already perfectly accepted of God in Christ. We need to come realizing that our life is hid with Christ in God. We need to come not in our own righteous performance, but rejoicing in the righteousness of another. We need to focus on God alone in our worship. Those two things really. This is all we need to sing joyfully, to sing with passion. You need to be gripped by the gospel. And you need to learn to worship to focus on God alone. That's the nature of worship though, isn't it? To focus on God alone. Maybe you say, maybe you're thinking this morning, oh, I'm not much of a singer. Pete says this a lot, you know. I'm not much of a singer. Not that he doesn't sing, he sings, okay. But sometimes we can get caught up in thinking about those around us too much, right? And the enemy beats up on us at the same time. He's beaten up on us with respect to our performance, isn't he? How dare you think you can sing with a robust heart? Remember your sin? Hey, if that's the thing, none of us can sing then. If that's the way it is, if that's the way it goes, none of us can sing. How dare you presume to sin with passion? You hypocrite! Isn't that what the enemy says all the time? What do we say to him in that? I mean short version here. What do we say to him in that? True, I'm a hypocrite. And I have more sin than you've pointed out. It's much worse than you say. But I'm covered by Christ. He answers all of my sin. He answers all the problems of my guilt. Therefore, I consume with all of my heart when I come into worship. That's how we want it to be, isn't it? That's what's appropriate. Now, we've made this point before with respect to our singing. We're going to have a sermon particularly on singing, but we've made this point before with respect to our singing. And I just forgot what I was going to say. Oh, here it is. Do you ever forget what you're going to say in front of about 120 people? And I forgot it again. What is it? Oh, it's this. And you see it in the call to worship. You see it in the call to worship, really, because when God calls us as his people to worship him, he is calling us as his people. We're his people. And we sing to him, we are his people, we his care, our souls and all our mortal frame. What lasting honor shall we rear? Almighty maker to your name. I just love that. We are singing right now. Wonderful hymn. We'll crowd your gates with thankful songs. High as the heavens our voices raise. Isn't that wonderful? And earth with her 10,000 tons shall fill your courts with sounding praise. Isn't that wonderful? It's a great hymn. I'd sing it every week if I could get away with it. But my point, when God calls us into worship, He calls us into worship as His people. What I mean just now is this. If you're trusting Christ, this is who you really are. What I mean just now to say is this. This is your true identity. I put it that way just now because the enemy often shouts something else, whispers something else in our ears. Sometimes he shouts it, sometimes he whispers it. Something else in our ears, doesn't he? This isn't who you really are. You're the hypocrite. You're the sinner. That's who you really are. No. Who I really am is one who's found refuge in Christ. That's what I am. That's who I am. So we make the point again. I am. I make this point sincerely. I am, in worship, most of all, who I really am. Most of all, in worship. That's who I am. Truly. Now, I'm inconsistent with that, aren't I? I'm often inconsistent with that. I see a mixture in myself. There are the remnants of sin that are still in my members. So, yeah, I'm a mixture. There's all kinds of inconsistency in me. Yes. But you want to know who I am and do you know who you are? You're a child of God. And we live that and I think there's a sense in which we live that and we breathe that best when we come into worship. So, our joy and our passion. Brothers and sisters, sing with passion. Sing with joy. You men, sing with passion. Sing from a full heart. Sing with joy. This is not the place to hold anything back. This ain't the place to hold anything back. Sing with all your heart. This is who you are. The angels rejoice in it. Your Savior rejoices in it. The only one who really has a problem with it is Satan. He's the only one who has a problem with it. We worship with joy and passion. And so, we come in our worship. We come to Him. We come to our God. We sing to Him. This is the focus of our worship. This is what we're called to. Secondly, we present ourselves to Him. We've as much as said this already, haven't we? But see it there, verses 5-7. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Here it is. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. What do we do when we come into worship? We present ourselves to Him. We humble ourselves before Him as He is our Maker. We don't lose sight of that. We seek to not lose sight of that. He is my Maker. I bow down before Him. I present myself to him. Let me ask the question again this morning. As you're here in worship, is that the disposition of your heart? Because that's the true disposition of worship. Of course, we focused the whole sermon on this one, didn't we? That's the proper disposition of worship. That's the only proper disposition. Bowing down, which is to say a true submission of my heart to God. presenting myself to Him, rendering a loving submission to Him as He is our God. He is our God. We're the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand. A loving submission to Him. That's what I bring Him. That's what He wants. That's what He delights in this morning. We entrust ourselves to Him as He is our Shepherd. Isn't that wonderful? We're the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. He promises to lead us and guide us. Today it's His promise to feed us. Isn't that wonderful? Christ feeds us today. We worship Him for it. So we come to Him. We present ourselves to Him. And we come, we're called to hear His voice. Today if you will hear His voice, There's a warning here in these verses, 7-11, a warning. Think of Israel of old. This is a sobering lesson from history. Israel heard, but didn't obey. Israel rebelled. They tested God. Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me, they tried me, though they saw my work. Well, those people had a fundamental problem. It was unbelief. The Scripture says they go astray in their hearts. That means characteristically. God says they did not know my ways. They do not know my ways. They didn't have any true knowledge of God. So they heard God's Word. Today, if you will hear His voice, they heard His Word. But we would say they did not heed His Word. So God calls us into worship. We say He calls us to come to Him. He calls us to present ourselves to Him sincerely. He calls us to hear his voice, by which he means to heed his voice, to do what he says, to obey his commands, to walk with him. Of course, this is why the Word of God is central in all of our worship, isn't it? The reason the Word of God is central in all of our worship is because we come to hear His voice. Isn't it very strange if you should go into a worship service and they never open this? Never read it? This is very odd. It's worse than odd. Very strange. We're called to come to our God. We're called to present ourselves to Him. We're called to listen to Him and to heed His voice. So there's the exhortation, the admonition. And the admonition is coupled with a warning. And the reason the admonition is coupled with a warning is because many have gone astray in this respect. So the question for us today, as we close, the question is this. Very simple. Today. Are you hearing his voice today? We could flesh it out, can't we? It's a question for our generation, because you think of the generation of Israelites in the wilderness who did not heed God, they didn't follow him. It's a question for every generation, isn't it? In other words, what will be said, put it this way, what will be said by future generations of New Covenant Community Church What will be said by the next generation about us? What will be said? That was a generation, man, that was a group of people who really loved the Word of God and they wanted to hear it because they wanted to do it. They did it. What will be said of our generation? Now that's a question for each individual too, isn't it? question for each individual. For my own life, does my own life reflect this? Young person, does your life reflect this? Older person, does your life reflect this? A hearing and a heeding of God's Word. So this morning as we preach, we've come to this Word. We're almost at the end here. We come to this Word. We preach the Word. This is where you want your heart to be. I want to do this. It should mean something. So how will you be different? The theme of the sermon this morning is to call to worship. It's God's authoritative, gracious call to worship. What will you do? How about this? As God gives me strength, as God gives me strength, I will never miss worship for the rest of my life. That's healing. Very simple, isn't it? It's a very simple lesson. It's a question for each individual. It's a question for the present moment too, isn't it? For the present moment. So we put it this way. Where is your heart right now? Right now. That's the crucial question. Where is your heart right now? Oh, Pastor, I've got all kinds of need. I didn't say that. That wasn't quite the question. All of us have all kinds of need. Where is your heart right now? Is it your purpose to do today Whatever your Savior tells you to do. Whatever He tells you to do. That's true worship. I come to Him. I present myself to Him sincerely. I heed His Word. That's true worship. That is what He calls us to every Lord's Day. That is what he calls us to. Let's pray. Father, how we thank you for your welcome voice today. How we thank you that you've shown us grace in our Lord Jesus Christ and we know it is your purpose to ever build us up and ever bless us and sanctify us and make us more and more like Christ. What a wonder that you never lose sight of this that we often, often do. So we rest in our Savior once again. As we come to the close of this worship, Father, we would rest in your great love again. And we would say to you, Father, as your people, Lord, I would obey your voice. I would follow your leading. Father, I would reflect on how it is you would change me, how I would be different. Give me grace to that end. We wait upon you for it, Father. In Jesus' name, Amen.