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