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I want to invite you to take
your Bibles tonight and turn with me to the 95th Psalm. Psalm
95, verse 1. O come, let us sing unto the
Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a
joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places
of the earth, the strength of the hills is His also. The sea
is His, and 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. We are the people of
his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will
hear his voice, harden not your heart as in the day of provocation
and in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your
fathers tempted me. proved me and saw my work. Forty
years long was I grieved with this generation. Instead, it
is the people that do err in their heart. They have not known
my ways. Unto whom I swear in my wrath,
they should not enter into my rest." Obviously, as we begin
Psalm 95, it's very familiar. It's a psalm that begins as it
would seem that many psalms carry the same theme. Oh come, let
us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock
of our salvation. It's a wonderful song of worship,
of praise, of adoration. It is a high call for the people
of God to lift up their voices and to praise and to worship
and magnify our God. But the problem is, I'm afraid
there are many times, and perhaps if we're honest we might all
confess this, There are many times that we can read a psalm
such as this without our hearts being stirred. Is that the case? Does it seem ordinary to you? As I read it a few moments ago,
as we began to read this, and, Oh, come, let us sing unto the
Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. And does it
seem like something worn out to you? Something old? Something dry that doesn't really
stir your heart. You want it to, you desire for
it to, you come and you gather with the people of God in worship,
but it's just not there. Your heart just simply is not
stirred. Well, there are times I suppose
that the people of God can become very dry, very cold towards the
things of God. It truly is an issue of the heart.
And it is possible to be involved with the holy things, to be involved
with the people of God, to be involved in the very presence
of the living God, and to lose all sense of awe. such as the
history of religious people from the beginning. And we can remember
the priests, the Levites, they were in the presence of God all
the time. They dealt with holy things. They dealt with the very
instruments of the holy of holies. They would sometimes become so
accustomed to the work that it meant nothing to them. They would
become bored with the whole affair. So we have the sons of the priest
brought up in the temple work, trained at the hands of the priest. Men like Nadab and Abihu, we
know the names, we know them well. These are the ones that
offered up strange fire to the Lord and God consumed them in
his wrath. These were the sons of Aaron.
These were young men that were trained for the priesthood. They
knew fully well what was required. They knew what God demanded.
They knew what kind of incense to offer up. But you get bored
with the whole affair. You lose the awe. So they decided,
let's try something new today, something different. So they
offered up strange fire. We're not told what the strange
fire it is, except for the fact it wasn't what God commanded. And they were consumed in the
wrath of God. And then we know of another couple
of priest's sons. We know of Eli. And Eli had two
sons, just like Nadab and Abihu, brought up in the holy things,
brought up around the holy things of God, in the temple work. But
Hophni and Phinehas were wicked men. Can you imagine being brought
up among the people of God? brought up in the holy things
of God, brought up in the worship of God. And they were wicked
men and it meant nothing. Or perhaps there's some of you.
You know, I've been at Trinity long enough and many of you have
been here long enough that I've seen many of our little children
born. I mean, seconds after you breathe
your first breath, I saw you, many times held you, and now
you're older. You were brought up among the
things of God, among the holy things, with the people of God,
in the worship of God. It means nothing to you. It's all so common, so indifferent
towards the things of God. Perhaps there are some adults
here We go through the motions every week and we sing the same
hymns every week. Become quite accustomed to it.
You can sing thee thou my vision from heart. You can mouth the
words without even thinking it. You know the tune very well.
So you can go through the motions and the thing about having things
memorized like that is your mind can be very active thinking about
many different things and still singing the words that you know
quite well. You put your mind on autopilot
and then you can think on other things, what you're going to
do tomorrow, what you did yesterday, the things that, you know, any
number of things, what you're going to cook tomorrow for supper,
what you have at the office to do tomorrow. You begin to lose
the sense of all, of all of these things. So we find Psalm 95,
and I'm telling you, you can't read it without being gripped
with the sense of God's greatness. Come, let us sing to the Lord.
Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. This
isn't a small thing. This is huge. Come, let us, let
us come before his presence for Thanksgiving. Make a joyful noise
unto him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God. He's a great God. He's awe-inspiring. He is large to behold. This isn't a small thing. This
is a big thing. But we don't know who the psalmist
is, but you can kind of get an idea. This is probably King David. It's so much like one of David's
songs. In fact, although we don't have
a superscription here, superscription being that small print, usually
at the beginning of the songs, which is inspired, it's a part
of the original, We don't have a superscription with 95, nor
94, and most would presume that since this group of Psalms, beginning
with 93 and going through 100, most assume that these are Psalms
of David. But the interesting thing is, if you check the Septuagint,
the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It
does say a Psalm of David. So this is probably King David
speaking here. And David is absolutely in awe. David's been brought up around
the holy things of God. He's a Jew. He's an Israelite. brought up among the things of
God." You can remember when he stood before Goliath, you can
remember him saying to Goliath, basically, who are you to speak
against the God of Israel? This great God, don't you dare,
you heathen! And I'm reading a lot into it,
but you can imagine the heart of David. Don't you dare lift
up your voice against the living God. David had a heart for God. A man after God's own heart.
A godly man, not a perfect man. Because there aren't any, except
for the Lord Jesus Christ. So David knew sin, read Psalm
51, but a man who loved God with a passion. So he's calling upon
the people of God, to worship. Notice here, this is a call for
congregational worship, for corporate worship, for the community of
faith to come together for worship. And so you can see the plurality
here. O come, let us make a joyful
noise to the rock of our salvation. Verse 2, let us come before his
presence with thanksgiving. and make a joyful noise with
songs, for the Lord is a great God and a great King above all
gods." And so it's a great sense in which this is the people of
God coming together to worship this God that they do not take
for granted. He is a great God. He is the
King of kings. He is worthy of all worship. So tonight I want to just kind
of unfold this psalm before us. We'll look at it. under three
different headings, and it divides them quite nicely. Verses 1 through
6, we find the way that God must be worshipped. The way that God
should be worshipped. In verses 3 through 7, we find
the why God must be worshipped. The why God must be worshipped. In verses 7 through 11, we find
a warning to all who would worship God. So the way God must be worshipped,
why God must be worshipped, and then the solemn warning to all
who would set themselves forth to worship God. Well, let's look
at these one at a time. The first is the way God must
be worshipped. Because God is not just worshipped
any old way. A great sense in which God must
be worshiped in the proper way. And this isn't a message that's
going to deal with the regulative principle and how we include
certain elements in our worship. This is very generalities. We're
talking about the worship of God's people for all ages. We're not even talking about
the worship of the church, though we are talking about the worship
of the church. First of all, God is to be worshipped
with joy. This is a universal thing. Again,
I'm not laying before you the regulative principle, the certain
elements in worship. I'm talking about worship in
general. He should be worshipped with
joy. So we see in verse 1, let us
make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. The word for
joyful noise here literally means Let us shout for joy. I don't know if you've ever been
in a boring, dead worship service where people are just kind of
mouthing the words, and I hope we never fall into that. This
is exuberant worship. This is worship from the heart.
Let us make a joyful noise, or literally, let us shout for joy. Then the second expression here
also means to shout for joy. So, verse 1 says basically, O
come let us shout for joy unto the Lord, and then it says again,
and let us make a joyful shout to the Lord, the rock of our
salvation. The second expression literally
refers to a battle cry. When the people of God would
worship, you remember when Joshua And Moses are coming down and
they hear noise in the camp. They're thinking, wow, it sounds
like the noise of battle. This is horrible noise going
on. No, it was the sound of worship. Only it was false worship. They're
worshiping around the golden calf. But they're singing and
shouting before this golden calf. Well, that's what David is talking
about here. Worship filled with singing. Singing as expressions of joy. And as we consider joy, joy is
not just unbridled emotion. It is emotion. You can't have
joy without it affecting your emotions. You can't say that
I'm filled with joy and be completely emotionless. Remember, there's
several aspects. Chad and I were talking this
afternoon. We were reading through a book and talking about the
nature of preaching. the nature of preaching should,
there's three elements, it should be pressed to the mind, it must
be solid biblically and doctrinally, and so there must be good, sound,
biblical doctrine with preaching. But second of all, we preach
to the emotions, to stir the heart, and so good biblical preaching
will have some passion and a desire to stir the emotions, But thirdly,
sound biblical preaching speaks to the will. There's a sense
in which we apply these things, that God makes demands upon people. And the interesting thing is,
as you consider preaching, the first two are well received.
People will receive doctrine. They really will. You can preach
reformed doctrine. They'll receive it. They really
will. They may not agree with everything
that you say, but they'll receive it. Second of all, all men like
experiential preaching. You know, tell me what Jesus
can do for me. Let me know about my felt needs. Let me feel excited about my
life. Let me feel what Christ is doing
for me. So everyone likes the experiential
side of it. But then you begin to hold the
demands of Christ upon their life. And that's where you lose
them. That's where Christ lost them.
They loved his doctrine. They said, we've never heard
a man preach like this. He doesn't preach like the scribes.
This man preaches with authority. Tell us more. They gathered around
him in flocks to hear him preach. They loved the experiential side
of it. He fed them. He healed them. They saw the
miracles. They saw him cast out demons.
They loved this. But as soon as he made demands
upon their life, they despised him, would not have this. And so, joy is not simply, it
is emotion, but it's not just simply emotion. Because Christian
joy is focused upon Christ. and it's harnessed by objective
truth. You have to know something about
Christ to truly be filled with joy about Christ. You can't just
have joy about some nebulous idea about Christ. It's not just
an emotion. There are many people that have
emotional feelings about what they call Christ, but it's not
even the biblical Christ. Jesus says there shall be many
Christ out there, many who call themselves Lord, and such is
that which is preached today. You have the preaching of, well,
perhaps I shouldn't start going down a list of the false preaching
that takes place in our generation. But you know, the reality is, it's not the biblical
Christ. And so, you can't have joy apart
from objective truth. But it is also that which is
created in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It's one of the fruit
of the Spirit. So the fruit of the Spirit is
love and joy and peace and long-suffering and gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance. So it is a grace created in the
heart by the Spirit of God. So just like love is that which
is kindled in our heart through the Spirit of God who dwells
in us, He also kindles in our heart joy for Christ. So true joy is this fervency
based upon a delight in the biblical Christ and it is the sense of
being satisfied with Him. And when you are satisfied with
Christ, He will fill your heart with all manner of joy because
you will look for nothing else. And then when you come into worship,
your heart is so filled with Him that you will find yourself
worshiping in joy. And it is a work of the Spirit
which then tells us that The Spirit of God is a person, just
like Christ is a person. The Scripture tells us we can
grieve the Spirit, we can resist the Spirit, and so what ends
up happening, the Scripture also says we can quench the Spirit.
So what ends up happening is through sinful carelessness and
our stiff neck and our resistance to the Spirit of God in our life,
we begin to find our joy departing. Then you come into worship and
it does seem dry. It does seem difficult. Not only
your worship, but you find your prayer life is dry and dull. You find it difficult to read
the scriptures. So you find the joy that you
long for and desire quite difficult indeed. As well as the love that
you long for and all the other graces of the Christian life.
Because of your sinful neglect and your sinful stubbornness
and you continuing to resist the Holy Spirit, wherein Paul
says, Be not drunk with wine, but be ye filled with the Spirit.
Submit yourself to the Spirit of God. Sometimes we can say, I will
not. Not that blatantly, and that's not the heart of the believer.
But you know what I'm talking about. You can become so distracted
with other things that you lose all manner of joy and all sense
of being satisfied with Christ. And as soon as He's not sufficient
in your life, there are plenty of other things out there to
fill the void and you then begin finding yourself down that slippery
slope looking at other things to give you joy and they will
not. Well, first of all, worship must
be filled with joy. Come, let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation. But second of all, Goddess be
worshipped with thanksgiving. I'm not going to spend a great
deal of time on this, because the danger is if I spend a lot
of time on this, I'll be eating up the message I'll be speaking
in a few weeks, because Psalm 100 is a glorious psalm. Psalm
100, and it says a psalm of praise, But the word there is todah,
and it literally means a psalm of thanksgiving. And so, Psalm
100 begins the same way. Make a joyful noise unto the
Lord, all ye lands. And right away you go, oh, not
more of that worship stuff. And I say, yes, more of that
worship stuff. And hallelujah. And so, serve
the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with
singing. And he says, know you the Lord,
that he is God. It is he that hath made us, and
we are not ourselves. We're his people, the sheep of
his pasture. And then it says in verse four, enter into his
gates with thanksgiving. It's a psalm of thanksgiving.
And so, you know, hold on. We'll be dealing a lot with thanksgiving,
but I'll give you a taste of it tonight, because truly, God
is to be worshipped with thanksgiving. And so you look at verse two,
Psalm 95. Let us come before his presence
with thanksgiving. The word is todah, and it can
be translated either thanksgiving or praise, most often thanksgiving,
but it can be translated praise as well, which then tells us
that the very essence of praise is thanksgiving. And if you do
not have a thankful heart, you will not be filled with praise.
And if you do not have a thankful heart, you will not be drawn
into perfect worship. You will not. You don't have
the incentive. There's nothing to draw you.
And when I think of this, my mind is immediately drawn to
Mary. And I'm sure I'll bring her up
again when we get to Psalm 100. But here's Mary that's been forgiven
much And her heart is so overwhelmed with thanksgiving that she worships.
She worships with her whole heart. Everyone around her is amazed
and everyone's complaining at her extravagance. Wouldn't that
be great if people came to Trinity and they would almost be offended?
These people are absolutely too extravagant in their worship. Well, that's okay. I mean, it's
okay for us to be so overwhelmed with thanksgiving towards God,
but it should characterize our whole life. Our whole life should
be a matter of thanksgiving before God. So again, we worship and
we worship out of the heart of thanksgiving. And by the way,
and Jesus was pleased at her extravagance. Luke 7, 47, wherefore
I say unto thee her sins which are many are forgiven for she
loved much but to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little
so you have to ask yourself then do I really have a sense of gratitude
unto God when the scriptures continually hold before us the
need of this Thanksgiving. I've got several passages here.
I didn't want to skip over them to leave more time for the remaining
part of the message. I've got several songs talking
about Thanksgiving. I've got the passage, if you
want to look at these yourself, the passage in First Chronicles
16, where the ark is being carried from Obed-Edom to Jerusalem and
David is overwhelmed with Thanksgiving and the psalm or the song that
he sings then. So you can look at First Chronicles
16. And then the return from Babylon
and in the book of Ezra, they're rebuilding the temple, rebuilding
the wall. And the scripture says that they
sang together by chorus in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord.
And then it adds, because he is good, for his mercy endureth
forever towards Israel. And all the people shouted with
a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation
of the house of the Lord was laid. worshiping with thanksgiving. Well, not only do we worship
with joy and thanksgiving, we're simply recounting the way that
God should be worshiped, not only with joy and thanksgiving,
but with reverence, holy reverence. Now you look at verse two and
verse two says, let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. make a joyful noise unto him
with psalms before his presence. Now, this should cause you to
stop immediately anyway. I mean, if nothing else, just
go back and recount the message this morning. As we just consider
the presence of God, what that means. But then you skip ahead
to verse six. David, assuming this is David,
He says, O come, let us worship, and bow down, let us kneel before
the Lord our Maker. Three times here, the word for
worship means bow down. So he says basically, let us
bow down, and then he says again, and bow down, and then he says,
and let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. In other words, bow,
bow, bow before God. This is not a God that you approach
lightly. He is a holy God. And we approach
Him with the highest fear and reverence. To worship God properly
is to come before Him with absolute holy reverence. Again, both of
these Hebrew words mean bow down because He is holy. Now, Nadab
and Abihu Call your attention to them again. Remember, they
offered strange fire. Well, you can imagine, God kills
them. I'm telling you that they enter
into the temple to offer this strange incense and fire comes
down and consumes them. Well, every daddy loves his children. So you can imagine Aaron wasn't
too happy about this. I mean, here's his sons and from
his perspective, my sons are doing their duty. God killed
them. Just like they weren't too thrilled
when Uzzah reached out to study the ark and God killed him. And
people are going, what in the world? What kind of a God is
this? He's a holy God. Well, listen to what Moses tells
Aaron. Now, Moses would have loved Nadab
and Abihu too. They are his nephews. Don't you
think he had any regard for his own nephews? But in Leviticus
10 verse 3, Then Moses said to Aaron, This is that the Lord
spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and
before all the people I will be glorified. Scripture says
that Aaron held his tongue, basically. Well, the word for sanctified
here, this word in the Septuagint, remember the Septuagint is the
Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. And so, we're reading
the English translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, but in the
days of Christ, the world was a Greek speaking world, and so
they had their translation of the Scriptures. They, when we
read the New Testament, and we read, you know, when Paul's reading
the Scriptures, he's reading the Septuagint. He's reading
the, he's not reading the Hebrew Scriptures, he's reading the
Septuagint. Well, the Septuagint of this passage, where Moses
tells Aaron, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh to me.
It is the same word translated, hallowed, in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. God is a holy God, and we must
bow before him as a holy God. Now, we understand that God is
everywhere. He is. When you got up this morning
and you climbed out of bed and you went into the bathroom and
you brushed your teeth, God was there. God's everywhere. His
presence is everywhere. But that doesn't mean that every
place that we meet God is of equal significance. It's like
when Moses comes upon the burning bush. Now, everywhere in the
wilderness, God's there. He's everywhere. But when Moses
came into the presence of the burning bush, God says, Moses,
take off your shoes. This is holy ground. And so it
is true that God's in the parking lot. When you pulled your car
up, God's in the parking lot. When you were upstairs in the
dining room this afternoon, He's up there. But you come in here
and you come in here with the people of God to worship. This
place becomes holy. Now, the rest of the week, though,
we do treat this room with a bit of a different understanding
because this is the place we come to meet God. So we do understand
that in its essence, it's just brick and mortar and sheetrock
and carpet and chairs. But this is where we come to
meet God. That's the reason we try to restrain
our children from running around. Why is that? Because there's
something special about this carpet? No, we're trying to teach
them that this is where we come to meet God. Charles Spurgeon
says, Everywhere God is present, but there is a peculiar presence
of grace and glory into which men should never come without
the profoundest reverence. That's the reason I impress upon
you over and over and over. We come here to worship God. This is not a small thing. We
have come into the presence of Almighty, of Absolute, of Infinite. We have come into His presence
and it's not like the same presence of God in your bedroom, or in
your car, or in the parking lot. any place else where he is everywhere
we have come into his presence for worship just like as all
the talks in the four shadows and the four tastes that we find
in the old covenant you've got the temple you got the small
little room in the center of the temple there's a place with
a thick curtain Only the high priest could enter in once a
year. And in this temple was the Ark of the Covenant and the
Mercy Seat. Now God is everywhere. He was
outside the Holy of Holies and He's in the courtyard of the
temple. He's in the holy place. He's everywhere. But that Holy
of Holies was the very throne room of God. It was treated differently. You go in there when you weren't
supposed to and you died. God is a holy God. We enter into
this place with the highest of reverence. He must be worshipped
with reverence. I love the line in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. We know the huge lion that represents
Christ. And despite his gentle and loving
nature, he was powerful. He could be dangerous. And of
Aslan, it is said, he is not a tame lion. He's not a tame
lion. So we worship God with the highest
of reverence. So that's how God should be worshiped. He should be worshipped with
great joy, and with great thanksgiving, and with the greatest of reverence.
Let's move on. What about the why He should
be worshipped? Verses 3 through 7. Well, first
of all, because of His greatness. Because He's God. And so we see
in verse 3, after the call to worship in verses 1 and 2, we
find the conjunction, the connective word in verse 3, for The Lord
is a great God and a great king above all gods. David actually uses three names
for God here in this one verse. He says, for the Lord, and I
presume that all of your translations probably have Lord in all caps,
capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Most English translations
translated that way to distinguish it from Adonai. So this is the
word Yahweh. It's what we call in the Hebrew
a tetragrammaton. It is a form of the word to be. It is a Hebrew word that had
no what's called vowel pointings. It's all consonants. The best
you can spell it is Y-H-W-H or something like that. It's a word
that's almost impossible to pronounce. We can't pronounce words without
vowels. The best we can do is Yahweh. Yahweh. Some translate it, particularly
even the King James, Jehovah, but Jehovah is not the best transliteration. The word Yahweh is the best way
to pronounce it. It's the highest name for God. When Moses says, When I go and
I say that you sent me, who should I say sent me? God said basically,
I am that I am. It's that Hebrew form of the
verb to be, which is what this Tetragrammaton is. It simply
means, I am. And we translate it Yahweh. Well, that's the first. The great
I am. But second of all, it uses the
Hebrew word, for the Lord is a great God. The Hebrew word
here is El. And there are many Hebrew names
that have this in it, like Bethel, house of God, Beth El, or Elijah. A lot of names have the word
El in it. El is actually short for Elohim,
which is the Hebrew name for God. And so the Lord, Jehovah,
is a great God. And then the third is, and a
great king. That's simply the Hebrew word
melech. And it means king, but he is the king of kings. Remember,
These Psalms, Psalms 93 through 100, are referred to as the Royal
Psalms. And over and over we find God
sitting upon His throne. Look at Psalm 97. The Lord reigneth. Let the earth rejoice. Or Psalm
93, I think. Yep. The Lord reigneth. He's clothed with majesty. These
are the Royal Psalms. And so, verse 3, Yahweh, The
I Am, the Lord, is a great God and a great King above all other
gods. Now you say, well, there aren't
any other gods. And I say, you're right, there are no other gods,
but every human being has their gods. We are so prone to idolatry. The reason people will not come
fleeing to Christ is because they have their gods. They don't
have room for Christ. They have their own gods. It may be their friends, it may
be what they perceive as the life they want to live, but they
don't want the living God to be their God. So there are many
gods. And what verse 3 says, but you
may have your gods, which remember, the very last phrase, the very
last verse, In 1st John, just to tell you how prone we are
to idolatry, the very last verse in 1st John, 1st John 5, 21,
John says, Little children, keep yourself from idols. Amen. Can you imagine? This is
written to Christians. Keep yourself from idols. Yeah,
there are a lot of gods out there. And what God is saying here,
thou shalt have no other God before me. I am it. I am supreme. I am majestic. I am on the throne. I am the great God. I am the
living God. You will bow before me and before
none other. That's the God we serve. So why
should He be worshipped? Because there's none other. Because
He is the Great God. He is the One that rules all
things. He is the Creator. He is the
One that has all things in His hands. There's no molecule, there's
nothing upon this earth or in this universe that's outside
the sovereign rule of God. We worship Him because He is
worthy. Verse 4 says, In His hand are
the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is
His also. He's the Great God. He rules
over all things, and so He is worthy of worship. Oh, and by
the way, and He adds, and the strength of the hills is His
also. So, He's a great God. In His hand are the deep places
of the earth, and the strength of the hills are His also. In
other words, the deep places, the low places, and the high
places, it's all God's. He's worthy of worship. Second of all, He's worthy of
worship because He's our Creator. He made you. And so, the very
reasonable thing, he says here in verse 5, he says, the sea
is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Verse
6, O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before
the Lord our Maker. And the very reasonable thing
is that if he's creator, he made you. And as Paul tells the Athenian
philosophers, and in him we live and move and have our being.
You don't take a breath apart from his hand. You live by his
hand. You exist by his power. Your very being depends on him. then is he not worthy of your
obedience and your worship and your life? It is the highest
mark of rebellion. That's the reason I tremble at
some of you who just simply refuse to embrace Christ. The gospel
is so clear and so simple and so freely offered. Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Simply, oh God,
I'm tired. I am tired of being God. I am tired of serving other gods. I bow before you. I bow before
you. You are the creator, the great
God, who rules all things, and I want you to rule my life. The
only reason people will not do that is because of the greatest
wickedness of their heart. They will not have God. And I
tremble at some of you. who simply will not have God. When the Bible is so clear, come.
Jesus says, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.
He's talking about the weight and the burden of the law. You
try to live a good life. You know that your sin condemns
you. Well, I'll try to do better.
Oh, but you cannot. Come unto me all ye who labor
and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. He says,
come, come. He says, My yoke is easy, and
my burden is light. Come! And most people say, I
will not. Well, He's worthy of worship
because He's our Creator. But then thirdly, because we're
talking about corporate worship here, and we're talking about
the worship that God's people do. So thirdly, because we are
His covenant people. So verse 7, For He is our God,
and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His
hand. We're His covenant people. So
all of creation has a duty to worship God, without exception.
All of creation. The birds worship God. The heavens
worship God. The psalmist says, let everything
that hath breath praise the Lord. All of creation praises God. God created all things for His
glory. But God's covenant people in
particular, It's not the people at home right now watching television
that are worshiping God. We've gathered together as His
covenant people with one heart and one mind to worship God.
And God's covenant people have a particular duty to worship
Him for He is our God. He's the God of all creation.
He's the Creator. And He's worthy as Creator to
be worshiped. But He is our God. Remember the
New Covenant? This is the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord.
I will put my law in their hearts. And then it says, and they will
be my people and I will be their God. He is our God. We are His people. So He is worthy
of worship. And to worship Him in the way
that He deserves to be worshipped, So the essence of corporate worship
is the community of faith gather together in unity to worship
their God. And they have the expectation
that God's in their midst. So that's the glorious thing.
He's in our midst tonight, not just in the sense of omnipresence,
but in the particular gathering of God with His people tonight. That He comes and He says, these
are My people. And we say, yes Lord, we are
Your people and You are our God and we bow before You. So we
come with an expectation of meeting with our God. So being in covenant
with God, sets us on a heightened responsibility to reflect His
glory among the nations, and to worship Him in a manner that
He has designed, and there is an expectation that we will be
holy. 2 Corinthians 6, 17, and 18. God says, Wherefore come out
from among them And be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not
the unclean thing, and I will receive you and will be a father
unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the
Lord Almighty. That's a covenant relationship. He's our God. Well, moving on
really quickly, the warning. That's the fearful part. Verses
seven through 11, and they almost don't look like they fit. It
really looks like Psalm 95 ought to start with verse 1, and then
it ought to end partway through verse 7. For he is our God, and
we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Period. The end. But then, all of a sudden,
we hear this. Today, if you hear his voice,
harden not your heart as in the provocation. In other words,
when wicked Israel provoked God to anger in the wilderness, as
in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the
wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, tested God, and proved
me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved
with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in
their heart, and they have not known my ways. unto whom I swear
in my wrath they should not enter into my rest." You hear what's
going on here? This is the highest call to worship. Corporate worship of the people
of God. Again, notice verse 2, the plural. Let us come before
his presence for thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto
him with songs. Corporate worship. And we find
here in verse 7, he's our God. We are the people of his pasture
and the sheep of his hand. But then all of a sudden we're
reminded of those who profess to be the people of God. Because
they did. We're the sons of Abraham. Abraham is our father. And they provoked God to wrath
and they did not enter into the promise. So verse 11 says, unto
whom I swear in my wrath, they should not enter into my rest.
They didn't make it into Canaan. The whole generation perished
in the wilderness, except for just a handful. Even Moses, we'll
see this as we look at the next few Psalms. Even Moses didn't
enter in. Because of sin. And neither did
Aaron. Joshua did. Caleb did. And the younger of that generation
did. But a whole generation of sinful,
stiff-necked rebels did not enter into their rest. You say, well,
I'm sure glad that that doesn't have anything to do with us.
I'm sure glad that we don't have to worry about that. Well, I'd
love to be able to tell you that. Now, this is just the Psalms. written many, many years ago. This has nothing to do with us,
except we get to the New Testament. And the New Testament applies
this Old Testament passage to salvation through faith in Christ
and the danger of professing with your lips to know Christ,
but your heart is far from Him. And so in the book of Hebrews,
we find these very words. Hebrews 3, 6, But Christ is a
son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast
the confidence and the rejoicing of hope firm to the end. That's
frightening. If we hold fast. Now, here's
the point. The people of God can have absolute
confidence before God. Paul said, Sometimes you think,
well Paul absolutely was confused because he'd say one thing one
moment and another thing the next. So at one time he'd say,
I discipline myself and I discipline my body and bring it under subjection
or make it my slave lest after having preached to others I find
myself to be disqualified. He said I don't give myself an
inch. But then on the other hand, he
says, I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. And
then he says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Then he says, for it is God that works in you both to will and
to do of his good pleasure. So I have these two tensions
going back and forth. One, we've been saved by his
grace, not by works lest any man should boast. He says, And
Titus 1, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost,
he says, he says, not by works of righteousness, which we have
done, but according to his mercy he saved us. Well, all of this
is true. We have absolute confidence as
the people of God. It's not by our works and nothing
we can do. It is all by grace. It is all
the work of God. And we glory in his wondrous
grace and salvation. But we also know, and we've seen
it with our own eyes, and we grieve and mourn. There are those
that profess to know Christ, but their hearts are far from
Him. Scripture gives examples. Simon the sorcerer. We have examples
in John chapter 6, where multitudes had followed him, and then it
says, and from that time, many of his disciples turned back
and followed him no more. Fearful thing. When in the book
of Hebrews, because Hebrews is written to Jewish Christians
that many of them were on the verge of turning back. And so
the writer writes these terrifying phrases. He says, you know, if
we sin willfully after having received the knowledge of the
truth, there's no more. There's no more repentance of
sin, no more sacrifice of sin. Well, here he says in Hebrews
three, six, but Christ as a son over his own house. Remember,
he's the Savior that came to save his people from their sins.
When he hung upon the cross, he saw his seed accomplishing
their redemption. Christ is a son over his own
house, whose house we are. We are it. We are those people. We are a chosen generation, a
royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are those people whose house
we are. If we hold fast. How do you know that you're a
child of God? One of the ways you know is that you press on.
If you hold fast. If we hold fast the confidence
and the rejoicing of hope firm until the end. And then he says
in Hebrews 3.12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an
evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort
one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you
be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Let us therefore, Hebrews
4.1, let us therefore fear. We don't like that. It's not
consistent with our theology, modern theology. The theology
of the modern church. We don't like that. We don't
want to say fear. So we diminish that. We don't
want fear. Well, Hebrews 4.1, let us therefore
fear. We should. We should take these
things very seriously. We love the Lord Jesus Christ
with our whole heart and we press on and we cling to him. We've
also seen people who also profess to follow Christ and follow away.
And we say, oh my goodness, how deceitful Satan is. How lying
he is and how cunning he is to appear as an angel of light.
Well, let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering
into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." He's
talking to professing Christians here. "...lest any of you should
seem to come short of it." Well, the gospel must be received by
faith. But faith will always be accompanied
by faithful obedience. And so, verse 2 of Hebrews 4,
For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them. Who's the
them? Those that are falling away.
The gospel was preached, for unto us was the gospel preached
as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit
them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Well,
Psalm 95 then does have great application for us, and it is
a warning. And so it describes how God should
be worshipped, and it describes why we should worship God, because
the people of God are a worshipping people. But there is a strict
warning that many disregard to their own peril. The people of
God are those who follow hard after Christ. Those are the people
of God and there are none others. And we say, well, that doesn't
fit my gospel. That doesn't fit what I think the gospel is. It
doesn't fit the theology that I hold to. Then I suggest you
line your theology up with the theology of Christ. Because it's
precisely the theology that he preached. It's the gospel that
he preached. If you want to come after me,
he says, then fine. Go and sell everything you have
and give it to the poor. In other words, you follow him and him
alone. You got other gods, you can't have them. He says you
can't serve God and mammon. In other words, you can't serve
Christ and money too. So you rule that out. And then
he says to the rich young ruler, you're God, you got your wealth,
go and give it away and then come and follow me. And then
he looks at these over here that are so tied to their family that
they have no room for Christ. And family is exalted in Scripture.
It truly is. But nothing takes the place of
Christ. That's why he says, except a
man hate his father and his mother and his brothers and his sisters,
and yea, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. We say,
goodness gracious, that's not the gospel that I've ever heard.
It's the only gospel there is. He says, if any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow
me. It's the only gospel there is. He says it's a narrow way.
If you want to enter this narrow way, men press into the kingdom,
and there will be few that find it. It's a narrow way. There's
a broad way that many are on that leads to destruction, but
the one true way is a narrow way. It's the only gospel there
is. We will have him as Lord, or
we will have him not at all. And so the psalmist here says,
he's glorious to worship, but there's a warning. Harden not
your heart as in the day of provocation. Take heed, Hebrews 3.12, take
heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of
unbelief in departing from the living God. But then the covenant
community, this is so wonderful. Let me read it again. Take heed,
brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief
in departing from the living God, but exhort one another daily
while it is called to day, lest any of you be hardened through
the deceitfulness of sin. And so it's a warning to each
of us as individuals to guard your heart, to hold on to Christ,
to love Him with your whole heart, to not embrace the gods of this
world, and then to us as a covenant community, to watch over one
another, to provoke one another, to love unto good works, to encourage
one another, to pray for one another, to help one another.
And if you are not one of these true worshipers, then there's
still time. If you're breathing tonight,
there's time. If you're alive, where there's
life, there's hope. If you're alive, don't presume
that tomorrow you'll be alive, but if you're alive tonight,
there's hope. And so, Hebrews 3, 7 and 8, today,
if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts. And I'll leave
you with that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that
You would take Your Word Press it upon our hearts as your covenant
people, Father, help us to worship you with our whole heart. You
are a great God and worthy of all praise and worship. We love
you with our whole heart. We thank you for Christ Jesus,
our Lord. We thank you for the life that
we have in Christ. We thank you that we have found
full joy in him. And there's nothing else in this
world that will ever give us joy. And we ask your forgiveness,
Father, for the times that we look to other things, expecting
to find joy there. And every time, ultimately, we're
disappointed, only to turn back once again and see the wonder
and glory of Christ. Father, I pray that we will continue
to watch over one another, to love one another, to care for
one another. to pray for one another, to warn
one another when we see one of us begin to falter. Father, may
we take the words very seriously to guard our hearts, lest we
find within our hearts an evil heart of unbelief. Father, help
us to continue to press towards the mark of the high calling,
to press toward Christ with our whole heart, and to continue
to discover how worthy he is of worship. Father, thank you
for these things and we thank you for your continued teaching
that you bring to us from your word. Father, as we consider
now a time of fellowship and sharing good food together and
enjoying each other's company as the community of faith. Father,
we thank you for the food and I do thank you for the hands
of those who prepared it. Our ladies continue
A Call to Worship
Series Psalms
| Sermon ID | 2712834171 |
| Duration | 1:01:15 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Psalm 95 |
| Language | English |
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