Psalm 95
Let’s Worship
Woodlawn Baptist Church
August 5, 2007
In Matthew 15:8-9, Jesus said, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me…” I pray to God He would never have to say those words about me again. I say again, because I know there have been times I have given God lip service. There have been times when I have worshipped God in vain.
I like the words of the great English preacher John Stott, “true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.” But do I worship? If worship is the highest and noblest activity I am capable of, is my life a reflection of that? Is my time in His house spent in worship?
My guess is that all of us have pondered the issue of worship, and if you have been a believer in church for any length of time, then you have wanted to know whether what you’re doing is really considered worship by God. You’ve come to the end of a service and wondered whether even though you sang the songs and heard the sermon you really worshipped. You’ve seen people raise their hands and clap and sing and wondered if they were worshipping. Maybe you go through a season in your life when the songs, the words and the prayers just can’t seem to penetrate your heart – they don’t pierce your soul, they don’t move you closer, they don’t inspire you. Worship does not move you.
Here’s a question we need to answer even more: does our worship move God? Because while we’ve tried to make it something that moves us, true worship ought to move God. It ought to say something to God about us: about our desires, our priorities, our focus, about what our lives are really about. And here’s another little test for you: if you leave saying, “Those songs, that special, that sermon, that style of worship doesn’t appeal to me or move me…” then you’ve made worship about you. You see, worship isn’t supposed to move you. Worship is supposed to move God. The Holy Spirit is supposed to move you.
Some sixty years ago writer and speaker A.W. Tozer pondered this problem. Listen to what he wrote:
“Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other effective agencies for the dissemination of the Word, there are today many millions of people who hold right opinions, probably more than ever before in the history of the church. Yet I wonder if there ever was a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the church the act of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the “program.” This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.”
Listen, that was sixty years ago! And we are in worse shape today! You and I were created for worship. It really is the highest calling we have. I don’t want, you don’t want, and God doesn’t want us to waste our time in vain worship or in drawing near to him with our lips and mouths but not our hearts. In fact, He is so concerned that He receive right worship that He inspired men to write over and over about the who and what and how and when of worship.
Beginning today and for the month of August we’re going to consider just four of those passages, beginning in Psalm 95.
Let’s start with verses 1-7.
“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; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand…”
If you were to describe worship in just a word or two from these verses, how would you describe it?
There is nothing somber or sad about worship in this passage. Sure there are times and seasons of life when our worship may include sorrow or weeping. There are times when our worship may be still and silent, but they should just be times. If your worship is always sad, always silent, always still, then you have a problem. The psalmist indicates that the child of God is going to have jubilant, joyful worship.
Notice some of the words and phrases used in the psalm.
• “Let us sing” – the word sing comes from a Hebrew word that means a joyful, triumphant, rejoicing singing. The word literally means to sing joyfully. It involves singing that is emotional, expressive, happy and uplifting to the spirit.
• “Let us make a joyful noise” – probably one of the most misused and misquoted phrases in the Bible. I have misused it. But the word noise is not a noise at all. It does not mean that if you can’t sing you ought to sing anyway because you can make a joyful noise. The word noise comes from the Hebrew word roo-ah, and it literally means to shout, to split the ears, to sound an alarm, to give a shout of triumph. Real, biblical worship ought to be characterized by shouting. Not with foolish, useless shouting, but with joyful shouts of worship. Our silent services are an indictment against our hearts! There was a man here a couple of months ago that was a great example of what God wants from us – a hearty Amen! Hallelujah! are in order!
• “with thanksgiving” – gratitude, praise, for all He is and does. Are we thankful? Do we take time to praise God for answered prayers?
• “make a joyful noise to unto him with psalms” – this is the same joyful, triumphant shouting as before, only this time it is explicitly applied to the psalms. I love the praise choruses that are being sung today. I still love the hymns, but we ought to be joyfully, victoriously singing the psalms! “As the deer panteth for the water…” “Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down…”
• Verse 6 tells us to “worship” – the word worship means to prostrate ourselves before God.
• “bow down and kneel” – both words similar to prostrating ourselves. They all have the idea of humility, reverence, recognizing the great worth and holiness and majesty of the Lord our God!
Our lives should be joyful expressions of worship! If we have trouble worshipping God: if we have trouble joyfully singing, giving joyful shouts of praise to God, praising God with grateful hearts, singing joyful, triumphant psalms to Him, prostrating, kneeling, bowing ourselves before God, it is because we have lost sight of who and what He is.
• He is the Rock of our salvation – He alone is our anchor, our security. When God saved you He didn’t turn you loose to keep yourself saved – but instead holds us in His might hand.
• The Lord is a great God – The title Lord means the eternal, self-existent one, the God who needs no one and nothing. He was and is and is to come regardless of what you do or believe. He is a great God! Great in His power, in His knowledge, in His holiness, in His love for us.
• A great King – He is the high and holy Sovereign of the universe! Everything belongs to Him, and one day everything and everyone will answer to Him.
• Verses 4-5 tell us He is the Creator and Sustainer of all.
• “He is our God: our Shepherd” – who can read that without thinking of John 10:11? “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” Who else but Jesus Christ would leave His royal, righteous throne to live in poverty and shame? Who else but God would love us so much that He gave His only begotten Son? Who else but the great shepherd would lay down His life for sorry sheep like you and me, deserving of hell and damnation so we might have life, and have it more abundantly?
The answer is none! He is our God, our Shepherd. He is a great King! A great God! The Rock of our Salvation! Do you have a reason to sing and shout for joy yet? Do you have a reason to throw yourself at His feet in humble adoration? You most certainly do! That’s why our lives should be joyful expressions of worship! But God knew that many, even though they have great reason, would not do it. So He gave a warning beginning in verse 7.
“Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as 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, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.”
The warning is simply this: don’t harden your hearts. The KJV says “don’t harden your hearts, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation.” Many other versions say “don’t harden your hearts like Israel did at Meribah and in Massah.”
Either way it’s worded, the idea is that all the while Israel was in the wilderness they spent those years testing and trying and provoking God. They spent those years rebelling against His Word and His leadership. In spite of being their rock of salvation and delivering them from Egypt…in spite of being the great God and King He was…in spite of being their God and Shepherd, providing for them and protecting them and giving them a land flowing with great abundance, they hardened their hearts as they repeatedly told God no and the result was that they grieved God until He refused to let them “enter His rest” according to verse 11. They never entered the promised land.
Now, we’re talking about worship, so what does all this have to do with worship? These verses almost look out of place in this psalm about joyful singing and shouting and reverence, but they are not! True, joyful, reverent worship starts with recognizing the great worth of our God and King. But what we know has to lead to submission and obedience. Do you know why our worship services are not the emotional expressions of joy and triumph and victory they could be or ought to be? Because we continually harden our hearts by testing and tempting and provoking God!
That’s why Jesus could say, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me…”
Every time we disobey God, every time we rebel against His leading, bicker and bellyache about His work in our lives, we harden our hearts. And hardened hearts always prevent us from offering to God our lives as joyful expressions of worship.
Today God may be convicting you about your need to repent of your sin and trust Christ to save you. In fact, He may have been doing so for some time now, but you keep refusing, keep putting God off. Every time you wait and put off salvation you harden your heart just a little more until one day you’ll not be able to feel that conviction and you’ll not enter God’s rest.
The writer of Hebrews, quoting this Psalm, said,
“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. For we which have believed do enter into rest…there remains therefore a rest to the people of God.”
I pray that you would believe, that you would put your faith in Jesus Christ and enter the rest He offers. But the message is not just for those who are lost. As children of God we too can continually disobey and ignore God’s Spirit. We too can continue in sin and unbelief so that our hearts are hardened too, and when that happens, though your lips may utter the words of our songs and prayers, your heart, irregardless of what you think, is far from Him.
Worship is much more than singing and shouting, it is the offering of your life, not your words and not an hour on Sunday morning, but your life as a joyful expression of worship.
I look forward to the day when our services are dynamic and electric and joyful, from the way we sing to your joyful shouts during the sermon to seeing people make life-changing decisions during the invitation. I look forward to the time when people don’t just leave here saying that we were friendly, but that God moved during the services. I don’t want us to be known as the friendly church, but as a Spirit-filled church! I long for the day when the only thing flat around here is the floor, not our services.
But what we absolutely cannot do is try to manufacture joyful worship. It’s not about putting on a happy face or trying to be dynamic. God wants our lives to be joyful expressions of worship. He wants our services to be joyful expressions of worship, but all that comes as we see God for who He really is and respond to His leading in humble submission and obedience. If we will do that, our lives and services will be joyful expressions of worship.
Has your heart grown hard over time? Do you tempt and test God’s patience? Does your sin and disobedience provoke God? Come to God today. Is your worship lacking the joy God longs for? Confess that to Him today. Is your life a reflection of what God most wants from you, which is worship? If not, repent of it! If others were to look at your life, would they know that your greatest desire is to bring glory to God? Make it that today.
However God is leading you, you respond in humble adoration and obedience.
