An Inviation To Worship Series

Not only has the mood of the Psalm changed, so has the focus. It is now no longer God our Creator who is in view but it is rather God as our Redeemer and Savior. We are the flock under His care and the people of His pasture. God is our loving shepherd who pays close attention to each of us personally. This should cause us to bow down in worship and to kneel before the Lord our Maker. Bowing and kneeling helps us get “low” before God, which is really the essence of worship. We accept our place before Him while acknowledging His place before us.

I find it interesting that the call for rejoicing is based upon God’s sovereignty as Creator in the first part of the Psalm and that the call for reverence in verse 6 is based upon relationship. I would think it would be the other way around ­ that we would rejoice over our relationship and stand in awe because of His mighty deeds of creation. And then it hit me. The deeper our relationship with God is, the more profound our sense of awe and reverence.

This happened on a couple occasions with the disciples. One day, after Jesus did a miracle by providing more fish than the fisherman knew what to do with, Luke 5:8 says that Peter fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “…Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” Knowing the Lord is the means to fearing Him. Experiencing God’s caring hand in our lives should induce us to greater submission and reverence. Those who have little reverence for God may also have little intimacy with Him.

Before we move on to the final part of God’s invitation, I want to make the point that our corporate worship services should always contain elements of both expressive rejoicing and contemplative reverence. When we add a second service, it will not focus on one to the exclusion of the other. Some people believe that a contemporary service is only filled with emotional rejoicing. While that might be true in some churches, the leadership of PBC is committed to have each of our collective worship services filled with praise and prostration; shouts and silence; happiness and holiness; rejoicing and reverence.

A Call to Respond

I see the last part of verse 7 as a transition: “Today, if you hear His voice.” On the one hand it serves to conclude the first part of the psalm. At the same time, it also serves as an introduction to the final call of the invitation ­ the call to respond. The Message translation puts it this way: “Drop everything and listen, listen as He speaks and don’t turn a deaf ear.”

Let me make two general observations before we look at verses 8-11. First, there is another dramatic change of mood here. From the jubilant praise of the opening verses to the call to reverence in verse 6, we come now to a solemn warning that cannot be taken lightly. Second, there is a change in speaker. In the first seven verses, the psalmist has spoken, now we will hear from God Himself as He warns us against the dangers of a hard heart.

Let’s read verses 8-11: “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”