What is the most important activity in life? What is the most important thing that you will ever do? Can you guess? I would put forth, and you can sort of sum up a lot of things under this, but I would put forth that it is worship. It is why we were created. It's why we exist, to worship God, to enjoy Him, to delight in Him, to give him glory and praise. It's the most fundamental activity, the most natural thing for human beings to do. The topic of worship, therefore, is of central importance for us to understand, to know, for we were created to worship God. The Westminster Catechism famously asks this question, what is the chief end of man? And the answer is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. And you could really just say, to worship God. We worship Him through enjoying Him and magnifying His name. The topic of worship, therefore, is not impractical. It's not inconsequential. It's not a side thing, but it lies at the very heart of why we exist. why you live, why you breathe, why you are here on this earth. And so that's big, and it's worth some of our contemplation this evening in this psalm. Now Psalm 95 answers some key questions regarding worship, which might be these. How ought we to worship God? Do we get to choose whichever way we want? Do we just do what we want to honor God in this way? Or has God given us instruction? Is anything we choose to do appropriate or are there things God requires and desires for us to do? What is worship? Why should we worship? That's important. And when should we worship? Psalm 95 helps us with some of these questions. It might not give us as many certain passages, that might not give us all the answers we wanna know and some big script, but it lays the foundational blocks for what worship is, why we should do it, how we should do it, and when we should do it, and then we can build our theology from there. But before we get into those, which we'll jump into in a moment, the how, the what, the why, and the when of worship, let's first just see the state of play. Right out of the gate this morning, I think this psalm is beautiful for this reason. There's a note straight away of good news that is sounded in this psalm. As soon as the pistol fires, there is good news, and it is that word come. That is unusual. The mere fact that we are bid to come is good news and it is grace. This invitation is good news because it comes on the heels of so much distance from God and separation from God and hostility toward God due to human sin. We see this in the first several pages of the Bible. It doesn't take long for things to get messy. It doesn't take long for that relationship to be made asunder. In the beginning with Adam and Eve, it doesn't take long for them to sin and distort how they were meant to live. We see in the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve originally had this full and delightful access to God. But upon their disobedience, what happened? Were they told to draw near, to come even closer? No, they were told to go. It's a sad story. The story uses strong language. It says that God drove them out of the garden. This is like driving out an unwelcome guest, someone who's intruded into your home. It's like driving out a feral creature off your property or off your farm. Get out of here. This word brings to mind similar language to Jesus in the temple, driving out the money changers. in the cellars of animals, get out, you're not welcome in my father's house. Adam and Eve were sent away from God's presence because of their sin. God is holy, we are sinful, and therefore there must be separation, otherwise we would be consumed. And so that's the bad news that occurs in the Bible story. But here in Psalm 95, we're hearing a different tone. We hear these precious words to us to come, to come near to God. In another service that I did, so I've got here now scripture reading, but from Isaiah 55, there's this wonderful comparative wording where we hear the words, if you know these ones, come, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come, buy and eat by wine and milk without money and without price. The same wonderful words that we see in our psalm. In other words, come poor sinners, come you who are hopeless, who are needy, and who recognize your need, come find your hope in me and I will provide for you. This is the tone that we hear from a good and gracious God. God is both the judge, yes, of Genesis 3, but he's also the generous host of Isaiah 55, who remedies the very situation, the very mess that we got ourselves into. We hear these same very words on the lips of Christ. Can you think of them? Matthew 11, 28 to 30, come to me. Draw near, come, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. We who are far off from God in our sin and rebellion, I bid to come near to him. This is good news, friends. Come, we've been told in the psalm. Come, come to God. And this invitation is not free. You know, in the garden, it's not as if God changes His mind shortly and just says, ah, you know, it's been 20 minutes, you've been in the naughty corner, I'll change my mind, I'll let you back in, you've suffered enough. No, for God to allow sinners to come back to Him cost Him the very life of our Lord Jesus Christ. For God to show mercy to us and to remedy our issue. Christ had to stand in our place and receive the punishment that was due us to fix our problem that we might be welcomed back to God. If it weren't for Christ's perfect life, His death on our behalf, there would be no invitation to come. There would be no coming to God. There would be no returning to fellowship with Him. We can only come to Him because Christ was sent away. on the cross on that tree. We can only come because of his shed blood. And so with that backdrop in place, let's consider the how of worship. How are we to worship as we read the psalm? Three times we see a word with the meaning come. Verse one, verse two, and verse six. There's some repetition going on here. Do you hear that you're being summoned? All right, come. Come, seriously, come, come draw near. You're being bid, you're being welcomed to come. This psalm is firstly, as we hear here, a psalm of corporate worship, not individual worship. You're not being told to stay, but you're being bid to approach together. Both are important, right? There's a special place in God's, both individual worship and corporate worship are important. but there is a special place for corporate worship, for coming and gathering together. We can see this in the phrases here. Let us sing. Let us make a joyful noise. Let us come into his presence. Let us, it goes on. We cannot obey this passage if we do not gather together, if we do not come together as God's people. This sheds some light on a worrying trend today with social media and this ability to supposedly attend church online. Let us not think that that is sufficient. Let us not make a habit of staying at home and merely watching church, as it were. Now, the context of the psalm is that it was probably sung on the pilgrimages up to Jerusalem that first come there in verse one. has a bit of meaning to it, it can mean journey or to go together, depending on the context. So the psalmist or this group could be saying, oh come, oh journey, oh let us go together, let us sing to the Lord together as we go on pilgrimage. Jerusalem was that place of corporate worship for the people of God. That's where they came yearly or at different festival times to bring their sacrifices and offerings to God. and to collectively celebrate the festivals. In verse two it also says, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving, into his presence. Jerusalem and the temple was that place in which God dwelt in a special way amongst his people. And they were to come out and gather before him. So the point of this sort of language here at the start of the psalm is that the being bid to make a journey, to come out of their, or to come away from their ordinary activities, to come out of their homes, away from their businesses, away from their projects, to leave certain things behind that they might gather together as God's people before Him. And this is what God is also calling us to do. This is why we do what we do. This is why we come and gather as a church Sunday by Sunday, because God has called us to do so. As God's people gather together, it honors Him. And it helps us in so many ways that we are sometimes unaware of. And so that is what Psalm 95 is calling us to do. Don't live, in other words, an individualistic Christian life, isolated, by yourself, thinking that that will be enough or that that would honor the God that we serve. No, God has instructed us otherwise. Now, what should our worship then look like? If we're together together, what should it look like? In verse one and two again, we see what might be described as exuberant praise. Exuberant praise. Even when I picked that language, I thought, oh, I don't know, what does that look like? I guess it's contextual in some ways, and sometimes maybe we feel even a little bit awkward about wording like that, right? of Pentecostals or something, when we think of exuberant praise. But we are called to be a people full of joy in our God. It sort of doesn't matter too much what our singing looks like or the specific way, but there should be joy in our hearts. And that should manifest itself in some way in our outer being. We rightfully magnify God and we rightly glorify God through joyful expressions. Why is it that so many people are more excited about entering the rugby stadium, or entering a concert, or I don't know, the next Xbox game that comes out, or something like that, than they are about worshiping God? Something is surely wrong when that is the case. Those things are fun, enjoy them, do, but we need to check ourselves. Are we enthusiastic about worshiping our God? As one commentator has said, we are not to come simply drifting into his courts preoccupied and apathetic. That would dishonor God. What would that tell the world? If we come in just drifting in, you know, apathetic, preoccupied by all the other things in our minds, unjoyful. None of these words in these verses allow us to have that kind of attitude, to be mere spectators or to be indifferent as we approach our God, to have hearts that are unmoved and unawed. We are called to sing. We're called to make a joyful noise. We're called to thank God with songs of praise, to make a joyful noise, to be excited about who our God is. Again, it might look a little bit different for different people and different personalities, but there must be joy. James Montgomery Boyce said, singing expresses human thought emotionally, and Christianity is a feeling religion. More particularly, singing expresses joy. And the Bible's religion at its heart is joyful. We have much to sing about. We have much to sing about, we have much to be joyful of. And he's quite right. As believers, we have every reason to be joyful, even if life is battering us down. Even if it's hard, right? As we talked about this morning, we can sort of lift our eyes above our trials and our hardships and see the promises of God. So even if life is battering you down at the moment and things are tough and you don't feel very joyful, look, I don't blame you. Sickness, some people sit there with sickness and it's just like, oh, so hard to enjoy and to feel the way we should. But look to God, remember all that He's done and I think there will be joy that will come to you in that. This leads us to the why of worship. This is maybe where we can find some of our joy as we think of this. Verse three to five, gives us ample reason to worship God. You see, God doesn't want forced joy. That would not please him. He doesn't tell us to worship either without giving us reasons to do so. He wants to stoke the flame so that we naturally want to sing and be joyful. Verse three says this, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his for he made it. In his hands formed the dry land. Why should we worship God? We should worship him because he created everything that exists. I think that's a pretty good reason to worship God. One definition is this, worship is the act of giving God reverent honor and homage. So I think if we think about it like this, what happens if someone does something wonderful, something honorable, maybe they They throw themselves in the line of fire. What do we do? Well, naturally, do we not give that person a medal? We have a ceremony, we give them a medal, we congratulate them. What if someone at school achieves excellence? What do we do? Well, we give them a certificate, we give them awards. In business, you get rewards, promotions. In all of life, it's natural for humans to congratulate high achievement and honorable actions and the sorts. Brothers and sisters, God has done all things well. He is wonderful. He has done outstanding work that we could not even imagine. We are so small in our thinking. And it is so hard to even to even sometimes understand what God has done. There is a real disconnect, I think, in our hearts at times. God created the universe, absolutely everything that you can see and touch, and he made it from nothing. You can't even understand that. He has done all things well, and it should be natural for us to, in our hearts, congratulate him, to applaud him, to give him honor, to say, thank you. I mean, have you been outside lately? We just have a reminder after reminder after reminder before us, day in and day out. At night the stars come out, the sparkling diamonds that God's cast into the skies. Are we too busy looking down? Are we too busy focusing on all the affairs of our lives to look up and to look around and to see all that God has done. There is reason all around us to worship God, if we would just look. This point was made. I think in a powerful way, in a book that I started reading, as Daphne and I were talking this morning, I started reading it, I'm a chapter in, and it sat there for a few months. Hopefully I'll get back to it, but the point in this first chapter, it was just wonderful, and it struck me, was that we should be baffled by the magnificence and the magnitude of God in creation, and that that should lead us to white-hot worship. And the quote goes like this. The quote, and I think this might have been new to someone talking about scientists, I'm not sure, but it says this, scientists know that light travels at the speed of 5.87 trillion miles a year. They also know that the galaxy of which our solar system is a part is about 100,000 light years in diameter, about 587,000 trillion miles. It is one of about a million such galaxies in the optical range of our most powerful telescopes. It has been estimated that in just our galaxy, just our little neighborhood, that there are more than 200 billion stars. The sun is one of them, a modest star. And it goes on, so you could read on and on. It just blows you away, but the author sums it up this way. He says, know these things and are awed by them. And they say, and he's speaking of secular scientists, they say if there is a personal God, as the Christians say, who spoke the universe into being, then there is a certain respect and reverence and wonder and dread that would have to come through when we talk about him and when we worship him. Shame on scientists who have seen all that wonder and failed to give honor and worship to the God who created it all, who failed to give exuberant praise. It is just, I mean, could you even get your minds around the scope of the universe? It is just baffling, and he just made it in a moment. He made it, I don't know, maybe just to show off, or maybe just to dazzle us, maybe just to show us a little portion, a little speck of his might. Shame on the scientists who do not give him worship for these things, but shame on us if we know the God who created the same things and if we are to remain cold and quiet and lazy and just Unenthusiastic, lacking in praise as we think about our God. We know the God who created that. We know him, we know who he is. And he is a great king. His hands formed the granite mountains. He shaped them like a potter. I think he had some fun as he did it. And yet he also created the delicate wings of the monarch butterfly. He filled the basins of the sea with his bucket and yet he turned on the taps of every spring and every mountain. His hand divided the tectonic plates and sprinkled sand upon every seashore. Brothers and sisters, our God is just wonderful. He's beyond comparison. We have every reason to worship. We have every reason to come together and to be excited, to stir one another up, to remind each other, this is our God. As we discussed this morning, we will get to be with him one day. And what do you think he's gonna show us? I'm sure he'll want to impress us with some mighty acts in creation. We worship also because he owns all these things, that he didn't just make them, but he owns them. And so we see this language in our text where it says the mountains are his, the sea is his because he made it. I can point around my property at Palmerston North, and I do this with some pride sometimes, you know, and it's like, I can say, you know, the lawnmower, it's mine, the van, it's mine, but then with pride I can more importantly say the fence, it's mine. I actually built it as well. If you look down it, it's really straight. It's 40 metres of straightness. I was quite proud, I pointed it out to all my builder friends, because I'm a wannabe builder. I can say that, right, in a sense, because I own these things, but God actually says, Jamie, and he taps on my shoulder, it's mine. It's mine. Everything is mine. There is not one thing that can be pointed to in this whole universe that anyone can truly say, mine, apart from God. He looks at the mountains and he says, mine. He looks at the seas and he says, mine. He points down into some dark valley in the sea and he says, that creature down there, that creepy thing, Mine, I made it for some reason that I haven't told you yet. Who knows why, but he points to every star and he says, mine, mine, mine, and he's named them all. Why is it all his? He made it, he owns it. If you make something, you can say, mine. God says, mine, and he points at you and he points at me and he says, mine. He has ownership over everything that exists. We might have reorganized materials that he has linked to us. and say that they're ours, but they're God's ultimately, for he gave them to us. We easily forget this, and it's to our detriment when we forget this, and we get protective of our stuff, or proud of our stuff, we do ourself a disservice, because we forget to give praise to the person who truly owns these things. Even our abilities, if you have done something well, if you got an A on your test, or got a promotion, Again, we ought to give thanks to God. Now in verse six and seven, we see what worship should look like. That is the attitude of worship. We've seen some of this in the first few verses, but now in verse six, we find something of a more sober and reverential nature. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. All the words used here in this one verse, it's quite phenomenal. I think you can see a little bit more in the Greek, in the Hebrew. I'm a Hebrew scholar, but you can see it there. Just look at your Hebrew dictionaries. Each one has the idea of getting low, of humbling oneself and bowing to the earth three times. The word for worship there, I come, let us worship means to lay prostrate. to get down on the ground, to bow, to pay homage to one higher than yourself. In common usage today, it's a bit sad that this word worship has been used in so many different ways, and often people just think singing and music when they think of this word worship. That is not really what this word worship primarily means at its root. Worship is first and foremost a state of the heart, a posture. which is often then expressed in these outward forms of bowing and getting low and laying prostrate as a sign of humility and reverence to an almighty God. And so true worship is this, it's getting low, it's bowing, it's saying you are so much greater than I am, it's savoring one who is great and seeing yourself as less significant. And this then can be expressed in all those other ways that we worship in praying and singing and sacrificing the Old Testament or the giving up of our lives and fasting and giving. And so the Psalmist here in verse six is saying this, people of God, let's come and let's lay down and then let's bow down and then let's get on our knees. the verse is just down, down, down. And so we see in this passage that there are both in our worship to be the heights of exuberant praise and yet the depths of reverence and humility. Both are appropriate responses to God. And we are to express both without sacrificing one or the other. Derek Kidner has said of verse six, this is the deep and basic note of worship, without which the joyful noise of verse one and two will be shrill and self-indulgent. We need both joy and humility, praise and exuberance and reverence. Spurgeon said, it is not always easy to unite enthusiasm with reverence, and it is the frequent fault to destroy one of these qualities while straining after the other. The perfection of singing is that which unites joy and gravity, exultation with humility, fervency with sobriety. Why then do we bow so low? We've discussed these things in verse three and five, but in verse six and seven, it becomes so personal. God is your maker. He made you. He's not just the monarch of the skies, the sustainer of solar systems, but he made you. He literally made you. He formed and he fashioned you. He designed you. He made you the way you are and gave you the skills and the talents you have, like a potter puts his fingers and forms the bowl with his own hands. He made you, intimately. Do you sense that? He made you with care and he upholds you this very moment. And then in verse seven, he is our God, the psalmist says, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. These are believers singing here. For us who have trusted in Jesus, the God of the heavens, it's not just the God of the heavens, but he is our God. He is personal to us. We are his and he is ours. I love the Song of Songs where it says, my beloved is mine and I am his. We can say that of our God. He is mine. and I am his. We've been united to him. Spurgeon said that here is the master reason for worship. Jehovah has entered into covenant with us. This relationship also is so complete that there is not one metaphor that the Bible uses to describe our relationship to God. Where we read, for he is our God. It says in, scripture tells us that God says, I will be your father and you shall be my sons. I will adopt you, I will take you as my own. I will be your husband and you shall be my bride. I will be your God and you shall be my people. I am your king and you shall be my servants. I am your shepherd and you are my flock. The God of the heavens is ours. If you are in Christ and you are in his family, there is security, there is commitment, this God is our God, the God of creation. is ours. That should excite us to worship. We are closest to Him who is most important, most wonderful. Has that gripped your heart? Has that gripped your heart? I mean, in this world, we are so unimportant, aren't we? We really do not matter. You walk down the street, no one wants to know your name, but the God of the universe knows you and cares for you and has entered into relationship with you. We should sing. We should thank him. We should be exuberant and ecstatic. And finally, the wind of worship. The end of verse seven, we read, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Brothers and sisters, today is the day that God calls us to worship. Not tomorrow, not next week, today, he says. Hear my voice, do not harden your hearts. We are to come to God today. Maybe if we have lost some fervency, some excitement, some passion in our souls, today is the day to make changes. Today is the day to come to God afresh. Today is the day to give him the glory that he deserves. to be those who heed His voice, hear His words, and take them to heart. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation. Don't tell God to wait. Don't tell God, but I've got this to do and that to do. No, let us gather weekly and individually and worship Him day in and day out, for He is worthy of our praise. We ought to run to Christ even this evening while these words are fresh in our minds. I don't know if it's a coming prayer or song, but to look to God afresh and to be reminded of this in our hearts. Because the nature of us, ourselves as human beings, is to grow cold, to forget, to grow cold in our worship. And we're given here at the end of the psalm a negative example of worship in the actions of the Israelites. They are a great example of what not to do. We have received a great warning in the scriptures. It is clear as day given to us in story form. Don't be like this. Don't forget. It is shocking, at Meribah, that was the place in the wilderness where the Israelites came to just days, I think, or possibly weeks after they came out of Egypt. The people had just seen the mighty acts of God, his shepherding care, his power, and his love, and his might, and his judgment, and yet a few days later, with no water, what did they do? They began to complain, and they forgot, and they grumbled. The opposite, really, of worship. They revealed what was truly in their hearts. What should they have done? They should have gone, we're thirsty, yes. You know, are we tired, yes. But then they should have gone, but we're not gonna fear. God has delivered us once, he's gonna do it again. We can trust in him. Look what he just did. So Moses, you know, What should we do? Let's pray, let's sing, let's call out to Jehovah, but instead they grumbled and complained and showed and revealed the lack of trust in their hearts. Just before that, we see that they were singing songs. Isn't that interesting? They were singing songs of praise and deliverance, but really it was hollow in many respects. They proved by their disobedience and their grumbling that their worship was not really true worship. Let that not be the case for us. Let us not just bring words. Let us not just bring noise and sounds or do actions or something. But let us seek for that inner work in our hearts to be transformed, to really be appreciative of God. that what comes out would be both words and actions, would be song and exuberance, but obedience at the same time. Let us learn from them to not seek superficial worship, but to come to God with hearts that are bowed low. If you do not know the Lord this morning, this evening, sorry, still in this morning, he welcomes you to come. Be reminded that this passage says come, come to him, and he will receive you. And as believers this evening, may we be stood up afresh to worship God, to put God at the first place, whatever that might look like for you, to put him at the first place in your day, to put him ahead of your studies, to put him ahead in your decisions, and definitely in our minds and our meditations. If we have lost our awe and wonder of God by the cares of this world, let's ask God to help us. Ask Him, Lord, stir up my heart again that I might rejoice like I did in times past and even more, that you might be glorified. So let's pray in this way now. Father, We again just wanna thank you this evening for your word. We thank you that you know our weakness and you know our frame, that we are creatures who are prone to forget. Lord, that we are often distracted. We often are enticed by glitter and glamor. And Lord, we have this propensity to follow others and to follow You need to follow others, Lord, I guess, and just all the desires of the flesh and all these things in the world around us. And we pray, Lord, we need rescuing. We need help. We need you, Lord, to deliver us in our hearts. Help us, Lord, to put you in the first place in our minds, in our hearts, and in our devotions. Lord, if any of us this evening, if any of us maybe over even the past years, have grown cold, have begun to put aside our devotions and to forget and to neglect our times of worship with you, or to neglect to gather, or even to appreciate what we're doing here as we gather, may you, Lord, remind us this evening of your wonder and how deserving you are of all our worship and all our praise. Father, we pray that you might excite us in our hearts, open our hearts to behold wondrous things, Lord, in your Word, by your Spirit. And may this be an example to those around us. Father, may we be living examples or living pointers, little arrows to the world, that there is something greater to be pursued in this world than the things of this world. May we, through our joy, our exuberance, our passion, our delight in you, may we witness to others of your goodness and your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.