11.23.25 Psalm 95:1–7a
1 Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us. 2 Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving. With music we will shout to him. 3 For the LORD is the great God and the great King above all gods. 4 He holds the unexplored places of the earth in his hand, and the peaks of the mountains belong to him. 5 The sea belongs to him, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him. Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker, 7 for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the flock in his hand.
Jesus is LORD and King. Let’s Sing. Let’s Shout. Let’s Kneel.
In the explanation to the Second Article of the Apostles Creed, we teach our children to confess, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, is my Lord.” That’s quite the statement if you think about it. If Jesus is your Lord, it means that you are submitting to His authority, letting him tell you what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.
This stands in contrast to so much of the American ideal and the sinful nature. We don’t like it when people tell us what to do. One of my daughter’s favorite sayings growing up was, “I can’t want to.” When class starts and I tell the kids to put away their other books and open up to a certain page, I sometimes get the feeling like I’ve just asked them to do a hundred pushups. I see videos on Youtube of police officers asking people to do simple things, but they absolutely refuse. We are becoming a more stubborn society, failing to listen to orders.
In 1875 William Ernest Henly was recovering from the amputation of his left leg due to tuberculosis, and he was facing the possibility of the losing his right leg as well. It was while he was in the hospital that he wrote the poem, “Invictus,” which means “Unconquered.” The poem has been repeated through the ages as a defiant cry against those who would oppress them. Nelson Mandela was said to have used it to motivate his fellow prisoners during his 27 years of imprisonment. It goes,
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
Sometimes we have to be bold and assertive in life, and maybe even defiant against authorities when they overstep their bounds. But God also desires a humble type of an attitude. A recognition that I am not King and I am not Lord. I am not in charge of life, as much as I’d like to think I am. In Luke 12 Jesus told the story of the Rich Fool who thought he had a lifetime of pleasure all ahead of him after having received a huge crop. 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ The man had a plan. But God had a different one, and the man had no choice in the matter. His life was demanded when GOD decided, not Him. And then he had to answer to God, to the King.
We have to think about this as well. In our Lutheran heritage we focus on the fact that He is my Savior. That’s a great thing. That’s what we love, that Jesus is our Savior. He is gracious, merciful, forgiving, and kind. Nothing wrong with that. That should be our primary focus. But we should also remember the fact that He is my Lord, too. So if He tells me to do something, I shouldn’t treat it as optional, just because He is merciful.
Think about our explanations to the Ten Commandments.
We should fear and love God that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it. But plenty of people are NOT doing that within our own congregation. And they don’t seem to think there is anything wrong with that.
We should fear and love God that we do not dishonor or anger our parents and others in authority, but honor, serve, and obey them, and give them love and respect. Yet how many of us have loved to make fun of politicians. I can’t tell you how many times my phone calls have been ignored. And how many elderly parents do not get the care and attention they deserve?
We should fear and love God that we lead a pure and decent life in words and actions. But how many of our young people have been ignoring the Sixth Commandment as they establish relationships?
It’s much easier to rely on Jesus as Savior but not fear Him as Lord. So we listen to Him when it’s convenient, and we use His grace to shield us from His Lordship. By our actions and our attitude we inadvertently say, “You can be my Savior, but you can’t be my Lord.” We don’t really listen to much of anything God has to say unless it is convenient for us and lines up with what we want a lot of the time. We sequester our lives and say to Him, “You can be in charge of this part of my life, but stay away from that part.”
The Psalmist makes it clear that God is in charge of EVERYTHING. The deep places of the earth are in HIS hand, and His hand formed the dry land. The heights of the hills are also His. The sea is His for He made it. If you think about the context of this Psalm, the surrounding nations had the idea that you needed a god for the hills and a god for the seas, along with all kinds of other geographical locations. (Some of you might be most familiar with Thor, called the god of Thunder, from the Marvel movies. It’s that kind of idea.) So they would build these gods and carry them around, and worship different gods for different things.
There’s an interesting story in 1 Kings 20 about how the Israelites were warring against Aram. It says, “The officials of the king of Aram advised him, “Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they.” So they purpose timed it to try and fight them on the plains, thinking that the Lord wouldn’t be able to win a battle there. So the prophet told the king of Israel, “Because the Arameans think the LORD is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the LORD.” What happened? The Israelites inflicted a hundred thousand casualties on the Aramean foot soldiers in one day. When the rest of them seemed to escape to a nearby city, a wall collapsed on twenty-seven thousand of them. God’s message was clear. I’m in charge of the valleys and the cities too.
So the Psalmist says, “The LORD is the great God and the great King above all gods.” He is excited about this. He likes the fact that God is in charge of everything. He wants us to be excited about it too. Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout . . Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving. With music we will shout to him. . . . Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him. Let us kneel before the LORD. It takes work to do these things, shouting loudly, singing joyfully. It takes reverence too and humility, to bow down before Him. That’s a part of what it means to have a King.
I think about the Presidential and gubernatorial elections. When your guy gets elected, you get excited about it. You think about the future, and you have hope for your state or your country. You cheer. You clap. You think to yourself, “Now the laws will change hopefully!” Maybe you get excited about crime going down, abortion being more limited, or taxes going down. You get on board with it. Post about it online. Maybe you’re not that much into politics, but you see people that are. You see their excitement when their people win.
That’s how the Psalmist wants us to come into worship. We show JOY and REVERENCE here as we approach our King. We prepare music to sing to Him as well. We aren’t here just to sing rock songs or love songs to a divine boyfriend. We are here to worship our majestic, powerful, and divine King.
But it’s not just worshiping the King BECAUSE He’s the King. There’s more to it than that. Throughout this Psalm the Psalmist gives us other reasons, besides just mentioning that He is the King, that we worship the King. When I mentioned getting excited about an election, you get excited when you think that the politician will actually do what he or she campaigned to do. And how often isn’t it disappointing when the politician doesn’t do just that, when they turn out to be . . . politicians. But the thing that makes this King so wonderful is that He doesn’t just sit on a throne in order to be praised by the people. He is praised because of HOW He uses His power. There are four different things that the Psalmist mentions as great reasons for praising Him beyond His sheer power and consuming authority as well -
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. This could be an entire sermon in itself - it’s in the NAME that the LORD uses to define Himself by to the Israelites. It was a unique name, different than “God,” which primarily just refers more to POWER. We think it would have been pronounced Yahweh. This name referred to God’s faithfulness. How He would come to the rescue of His people, provide for them, forgive them, and be with them through the thick and the thin. He explained to Moses that He was, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger. Abounding in love and faithfulness.” It was such a profound and holy name that the Israelites refused to even speak it as it was spelled out. They would substitute another word. They would say Adonai instead of Yahweh. It would be like saying “master” instead of LORD whenever the word came up in the Scriptures. This name reminded the Israelites of how God had faithfully taken them to the Promised Land and provided for them, and how He would ultimately save them through a Messiah.
Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us. It’s interesting to note how God used a rock to save the Israelites in the desert, when He had Moses strike the rock to have water come forth when they were starving to death. In another instance, Moses wanted to SEE the LORD face to face after He had promised not to destroy the Israelites. The LORD said, “You can’t see me and live.” Instead, He allowed Moses to see His back side, in a sense, through a tiny tear in the rock of a mountain. Later on, we think of how Jesus was buried in a rock after having died for the sins of the world. He came forth from that rock to declare to the world that He had officially conquered death and sin to save us. It reminds me of the song that we sing, “Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. May the water and the blood, from thy riven side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from it’s guilt and power.” And, of course, a Rock is symbolic of a solid foundation to stand on and build a house on. Jesus gives us a solid place to stand in the midst of the storms of this world. We pray to Him. We rely on Him. We come to Him for mercy and forgiveness. The King is a gracious God. With all of His power, He uses His power to protect and save. Yes, that’s a good reason to praise the King.
Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. First Article stuff here from our catechism. Delve into the wonders of creation, even after the Fall, and it’s amazing to dive into God’s design of our world. In Catechism a week ago we took a minute to look at God’s design of a woodpecker. Amazing things, how He created the woodpecker to stand on a tree, to pound its beak against the wood, and with an incredibly long and barbed tongue to be able to grab insects. I have a great admiration for people who invent things, and God is the greatest builder and inventor of all.
for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the flock in his hand. What an amazing thing, that the King comes down to the farm and becomes a farmer. He does the dirty work of feeding the sheep, protecting the sheep, and even holding the dirty sheep in His hand. This is not a King who just sits on His throne in an ivory tower and does nothing dirty, nothing that requires work and sacrifice. No, this King is a Shepherd King. He takes care of me. He cares for me. He uses His power for ME. He treats each and every one of us as if we were His one and only sheep, giving us the love and attention we truly need. He listens to our prayers. He knows what we need and when we need it.
All of these are reasons all the more, not to just come to church and mumble through the service, but to shout to the LORD, and bow the knee before Him, to come into His presence with Thanksgiving!
Not too long ago some of our countrymen held a protest called, “No Kings.” It was in protest to President Trump, whom they say is overstepping his bounds, trying to become a king instead of a president. They are trying to influence the fellow citizens of our country to get him out of office in some way. The good and the bad of our democracy is that terms are limited, at least for presidents, to 8 years. Usually, if the president does a bad enough job, he doesn’t get reelected. Then the next guy comes in, only to probably let you down as well. Psalm 146 says, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.” Good advice.
Did you know that the “No Kings” protest was originally called, "No King But Christ?" In the English Civil War of the 17th Century, the Puritans used it to reject the Divine Right of Kings, asserting that Jesus, not the reigning monarch, held ultimate and absolute authority. One century later, in America, the Colonists used it to oppose the perceived tyranny of King George III, arguing that their allegiance was solely to a higher moral authority, thereby justifying their political break from the monarchy. But even this is against what Paul wrote in Romans 13 when he said, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” He told Timothy and us to PRAY for those in authoritative positions, not to rebel.
The good news is that no matter who is the president or the king on this earth, there is only one true KING of kings and LORD of Lords. His name is Jesus. Every knee will bow to Him on Judgment Day, whether they want to or not. It may not appear like He is in charge when the world is falling apart and Christians are being martyred. It may not have appeared that He was King as He hung on the cross either. But right there, above His head, stood the plaque. King of the Jews. And we would add, King of the world. He is a powerful King of the seas, the mountains, the past and the future. He is a gracious and giving King. He is a merciful King, who died for those who sinfully rebel against Him. Our faith is in Jesus. He is OUR King. Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us. 2 Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving. With music we will shout to him. 3 For the LORD is the great God and the great King above all gods. Amen.
