This morning, my brothers and sisters, you have been personally invited into the very presence of God. “O come, all ye faithful (stanza 1) … “come into His presence” (Psalm 95:2). What a singular, unspeakable honor, amen? We have been invited to come into the presence of the “King above all gods” (Psalm 95:3) … “the King of Heaven and earth” … “True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal” (stanza 2). We are invited to come into the very presence of “our Maker” (Psalm 95:6) … whose hands hold “the depths of the earth … the heights of the mountains (Psalm 95: 4). Whose hands formed “the sea … and the dry land” (Psalm 95:5).
And how should you come into the presence of the One whose hands both made and now holds the cosmos in them? Joyfully, triumphantly, singing His praises and making a joyful noise with trumpets and lyres, harps and drums. And then we bow down in submission and wait for our Great Shepherd to speak to “the people of His pasture … the sheep of His hand” (Psalm 95:7).
John F. Wade’s hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” is filled with “invitations” … twenty to be exact. Sixteen times Wade invites us to “come.” Twelve times he invites us to “adore” Christ. In the original Latin, Wade’s chorus invites us to “venite adoramus” three times. “Venite” means “come you” or “you” come and “adoramus” means “we adore.” While the English translation says “O come, let us adore Him,” a more accurate, and I feel more beautiful translation is “you” … the person singing this hymn … “you come and adore Christ the Lord with us” who are also singing this hymn.
Worship is a combining of the individual with the congregation as we praise and worship the Lord, our King. Psalm 95 doesn’t start out: “O come, let me sing to the LORD” or “O come, let you sing to the Lord.” It says: “O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!” (Psalm 95:1-2; emphasis mine). The writer of Psalm 95 invites us to come together and sing to the Lord … to come together to shout to the Rock of our salvation … to come together into God’s presence with thanksgiving … to come together and make a joyful noise with song and praise … to bow down and worship the Lord our Maker together.
Wade’s hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” is also a call for all believers, all the faithful who adore Christ, to come together in worship. Again, I want you to hear the call for the individual to become a part of the faithful. O come, you who are faithful … O come, you who are joyful … O come, you who are triumphant … come, join with us, who are faithful … come join with us who are triumphant … come join with us as we adore the common focus and source of our worship and praise.
In verses 4 and 5 of Psalm 95, the psalmist connects Genesis and Exodus as a way of describing and emphasizing God’s role as “Maker” in verse 7. In Genesis, or the “beginning,” God separated the land from the sea on the third day (Genesis 1:9). In Exodus, God parted the Red Sea and the escaping Israelite slaves passed through on dry land. The repeated image of God’s hands in verses 4 and 5 creates a picture of God using His hands like a potter or sculptor to mold and shape His creation and those same hands holding and encompassing what He has created … and so, because He created us and because He sustains us and upholds us as part of His creation, we praise and worship Him and acknowledge that He is “our Maker” (Psalm 95:6) and “our God” (v. 7).
The psalmist’s allusion to Exodus in verses 4 and 5 and his more specific references in verses 8 through 11 suggest a more personal aspect of God’s creation. God, the Israelites’ “Maker,” brought the them out of Egypt and made them into a people … His people … who are now praising Him and worshiping Him in the Temple, in the city of Jerusalem, in the fruitful land and fertile pastures that He had promised them … leading them like a shepherd leads his flocks.
The image of “shepherd” in Psalm 95 and “shepherds” in Wade’s hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful” create a significant and powerful contrast. In Psalm 95, the congregation knows that they belong to the Lord because He is their “Maker.” He brought them into existence. He formed them into a people and a nation in the wilderness. And He continues to watch over “the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalm 95:7). “The shepherd image used to interpret the relation of God to people is far more than a lovely pastoral metaphor,” says Bible commentator James Mays. “It is a royal image of the relation of a king to those he rules and portrays his role as leader, provider, and protector. … The LORD rules this people, not only because they live in His world,” says Mays, “but even more because they owe Him their existence” (Mays, J.L. Psalms. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press; 1994; p. 306). Contrast that with Wade’s reference to shepherds in his hymn.
“O Come, All Ye Faithful” uses beautiful poetic language to call us … to invite us … to join with the angels and the shepherds that night in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. It calls us to imagine what it would have been like to be one of the shepherds out tending his flocks as they usually did every night and suddenly have an angel standing before you announcing the birth of the long-hoped for messiah.
In Psalm 95, the poet compares God to a shepherd, drawing on a tradition of describing kings as the shepherds of their people. In the eyes of the religious folks in Jesus’ day, however, the shepherds would not have been considered among the “faithful” that are called to come and adore a king, let alone a king like God. The shepherds were the great unwashed … coarse laborers who did the manual labor of looking after the sheep day in and day out. It was nearly impossible for shepherds to observe all the rules and traditions regarding ritual washing. The nature of their work also made it impossible for them to observe the Sabbath and the religious holy days and festivals. After all, sheep can’t tend themselves. Free-range livestock had to be protected and fed and cared for 24/7 … which is exactly what the shepherds were doing when an angel of the Lord appeared and Heaven burst into song.
In Psalm 95, the poet paints a picture of worshippers coming together to worship their Maker in Heaven. The movement or focus of worship in Psalm 95 goes from us to our God in Heaven who created us and the world in which we live. In the hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” Heaven and earth come together to worship God. “Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation; O sing, all ye citizens of heaven above!” (stanza 3). Not only were Mary and Joseph and the shepherds there that night to worship and adore this new born king, the angels were also there to worship and adore this “King of angels” (stanza 1). And so, the “us” of “venite adoramus” … “O come you and let us adore Him” … is the “us” of Heaven and earth, singing and praising this newborn King together. And when we sing hymns and carols, like “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” we who are faithful, joyful, and triumphant join with the angels and the shepherds and all the others … today and throughout the ages past … who are faithful, joyful, and triumphant in praising and adoring our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us’” (Luke 2:15). When they got there, they found everything just as the angel had told them. They found the manger. They found Mary. They found Joseph. They saw a child wrapped in bands of cloth lying in a manger. “When they saw this,” says Luke, “they made know what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds had told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:17-19).
Mary and the shepherds thought about the things that were said to them. They pondered upon what they had heard. And it was so incredible that they “wondered at the things which were told them” (Luke 2:18). That’s what it means to “adore.” “Adore” means to worship. But it also means much more than that. “Adore” means to love … to search … to be amazed … to be filled with awe … as all who were there in the manger were doing that night. They were pondering and thinking and marveling at what God was doing.
I’m sure that they didn’t fully understand what was going on in that moment. Just like the Disciples who walked and talked with Jesus and sat at Jesus’ feet, they knew a little … but after the fact. When they had time to reflect on everything … when they had time to digest it … when they had a chance to filter what they had experienced through the Scriptures … when the Holy Spirit came and gave illumination … then they, like us, could understand that Jesus was the Christ and that He had come to suffer and die for our sins.
As we ponder the events of that night can we understand them any more than Mary or the shepherds? There in the manger lay God …our great God (Psalm 95:3), our Maker (v. 6) … “True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal” (stanza 2) … born of a virgin … “the Son of the Father, begotten, not created” (stanza 2).
The babe wrapped in bands of cloth is the One who “set the heavens in place,” who “marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,” who “established the clouds above and fixed securely the mountains of the deep,” who “gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep His command” … and “marked out the foundations of the earth” (Proverbs 8:27-29). Those tiny hands that clung to Mary also held the universe. The voice that cries for a mother’s attention spoke the very universe into existence. The great God who provides for the sheep of His pasture is also a helpless baby who has to depend upon others for protection or to get His needs met. The great mystery of Christmas is that God descended from Heaven, took on flesh, was human in every way and yet still God. And it is this great mystery that we are called to ponder and it is this great mystery that causes us to join with the angels and heavenly host in joyfully singing to the Lord, to come into His presence with thanksgiving … to kneel before this baby in a manger, the “rock of our salvation” (Psalm 95:2) lying in an animal’s feeding trough.
Both Psalm 95 and Ward’s hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful, are a passionate summons to come: “O come, people of God … come and join me … come and join the angels … come join with the shepherds … come join with us and sing and adore the miracle that was born that night in Bethlehem. Please … come and join us.” And in the very act of singing Psalm 95 and “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” we are, in fact, answering the summons. By singing, we have joined with the angels … we have joined with the shepherds … we have joined with Ward … we have joined with our faithful, joyful, triumphant Christian brothers and sisters around the world and through the ages in worshipping, praising, and adoring Jesus … Emmanuel … God made flesh in the womb of a virgin. The three-fold repetition of “O come, let us adore Him” in the chorus truly highlights our joy and our excitement and pushes us to sing louder and louder. “O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.” Yeah!
John’s gospel tells us that Christ is the “Word” … capital “W.” And that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” “… He shuns not the virgin’s womb; Son of the Father, begotten not created” (stanza 2). And because of what happened that night in Bethlehem, “we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
This truly amazing truth is the core doctrine and the very heart and spirit of Christmas! Take a few moments today to think, to “ponder,” upon the magnitude of that statement. The Word of God, who was in the beginning with God and who was God … the Word of God who has no beginning and who has no end … the Word of God through whom and for whom all things were created … took on created human flesh and subjected Himself to being born as a human being … a baby human being at that. He didn’t have to do this … put Himself in this helpless, disabled state. Is there any greater humility than this? And yet it reveals to us how great and worthy of praise this child truly was and is! O come, let us adore Him, Christ the babe … Christ the Lord … Christ our great God … our Maker … our Shepherd.
We are called to “come” … to sing … to make a joyful noise … to worship our great God but worship also means bowing before our Maker and awaiting His command or commands. One of the goals of worship is to move us into the presence of our sovereign, our rock of salvation and “there bow down in submission awaiting a royal declaration from the throne” (Mays, Ibid., p. 304). “In worship,” says Bible commentator J. Clinton McCann, “we profess who is sovereign, and we actualize today the reality of God’s claim upon us. To be sure,” he goes on to explain, “worship [has] something to do with the past, but it also clearly has to do with the present. Worship really is a ‘service’ in the sense that we act out our servanthood, our submission to the God whom we profess rules the world and our lives” (New Interpreter’s Bible. Volume IV. Nashville: Abingdon Press; 1996; p. 1063). Implied in our kneeling and waiting is our desire to recognize and submit to the authority of our God and King, but …
God warns us not to harden our hearts like the people did at Meribah and Massah, where they tested God and challenged Him to prove Himself even after all that they had seen Him do in Egypt. The name “Masseh” means “testing” and the name “Meribah” means “quarreling.” At Masseh, the Israelites demanded that God prove Himself by providing them with water.
Verses 10 and 11 are a warning not provoke the Lord. “For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.’ Therefore in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (Psalm 95:10-11). God’s angry resolve that the wilderness generation would not enter “His rest” refers to His decision not to allow them to enter the Promised Land. The Lord was provoked by their behavior then and He can be provoked again. Even though the congregation singing Psalm 95 is living in the Promised Land, if they do not heed His voice they will once again find themselves wandering in a spiritual wilderness, lost, not knowing the ways of the Lord because they didn’t listen to God’s voice. “Putting God to the test,” says Mays, “is a self-centered demand for signs and wonders for me and us in the present, as though the signs and wonders of Gods’ creation and salvation [in the past] were not enough reason to trust Him, and Him alone” (Ibid., p. 307).
I mean, think about it. Are we any better today? We come to church. We worship God, we praise God. We bow down and kneel before the Lord, our Maker … and then we do like the Israelites in the wilderness and we test God and put Him to the proof even though we have seen His work.
Remember that baby in the manger? “Everyone then who hears these words of mine,” Jesus tells us, “will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matthew 7:24) … the rock of our salvation mentioned in Psalm 95, perhaps? “The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall!” (Matthew 7:25-27).
If we listen to the voice of the Lord, then we will find rest because we’ve built our faith upon the rock of our salvation. We will have no rest if we build our house on sand because we will be constantly looking out the window for rain, amen?
The great miracle of Christmas is the fact that this little baby wrapped in bands of cloth, this child lying in a manger is God with us. This little baby came to live the perfect life. He never disobeyed His Father’s plans and He lived perfectly so that He would be a perfect sacrifice on the cross. He rose from the dead after His death in order that He would be able to offer us the gift of hope … the gift of Heaven … the gift of eternal peace and rest. “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden,” He calls, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest” (Matthew 11:28-30). The author of Hebrews uses Psalm 95 as a text for a sermon exhorting the early church not “to fall away from the living God” (Hebrews 4:1) so that they may complete their wandering in the wilderness of this world and enter into the rest of God … today because we listen to His voice … today because our faith is built upon the rock of our salvation … today because we know that when our wandering in this world is done we have the sure and certain hope of Heaven because of a little child born in a manger 2,000 years ago.
Psalm 95 is an invitation, a summons to authentic worship, which is a matter of word and deed. It identifies God as sovereign of all and as shepherd of the church and then teaches us that “worship is the devotion of life, trust, and obedience to this God and to God alone” (Mays, Ibid., p. 307). This same call to worship the True God of true God is also found in “O Come, All Ye Faithful:
“Child, for us sinners poor and in the manger, we would embrace thee with love and awe. Who would not love Thee, loving us so dearly? Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning, Jesus, to thee be all glory given. Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing (stanzas 5 and 6).
And so, in the spirit of Psalm 95 and this great carol:
Venite!
Come!
Venite all you faithful!
Venite all you joyful!
Venite all you who are triumphant!
Venite all you angels in Heaven!
Venite adoramus!
Come, all of you, and let us adore this King of Angels … Christ the Lord!
