COMING TO WORSHIP
Psalm 95
One Sunday, I arrived on time for the Sunday worship service, but the service did not start until a half hour late. During that time, some of the church leaders discussed how the service would be conducted. They had no hymnals and provided no words for their songs, even though I did not know any of them, nor would a visitor. I was to participate in the service, and even after being told how the service would run, I was called on to do things I had not been informed about.
I could not have sung their songs with meaning if I had words, because the songs were in Spanish. I was in the Dominican Republic. Altogether worship experiences like that have been among the most enjoyable and meaningful of my life. I have worshiped in at least 25 states in the U.S. and 4 foreign countries, but have most enjoyed my worship experiences in the Dominican Republic, even though I do not care for some of the way things happen, and I cringe when they happen in the U.S.
We have all had worship experiences, some that we have enjoyed, and others that we have not. We ought to do our best in planning for worship. But worship begins with God calling us to worship, and we need to understand that first. That is what my Dominican friends understand.
The focus of this Psalm is that God summons us to worship. This is essential to the Christian life, because before God calls us to anything else, he calls us to worship him. Ephesians 1 suggests that the reason God has called us, redeemed us, and given us his Spirit is to worship him.
Unfortunately we have defined worship by our consumer tastes. Daan W. H. Arnold and C. George Frey said it this way in Eternity Magazine in September, 1986:
"Worship...fits right into the consumerism that so characterizes American religious life. Church-shopping has become common. A believer will compare First Presbyterian, St. John’s Lutheran, Epiphany Episcopal, Brookwood Methodist, and Bethany Baptist for the ’best buy.’ The church plant, programs, and personnel are carefully scrutinized, but the bottom line is, ’How did it feel?’ Worship must be sensational. ’Start with an earthquake and work up from that,’ advised one professor of homiletics. ’Be sure you have the four prerequisites of a successful church,’ urged another; ’upbeat music, adequate parking, a warm welcome, and a dynamite sermon.’ The slogan is ’Try it, you’ll like it.’"
We need, instead, to see what true worship is, as Mark Horst wrote in The Christian Century in November 11, 1987:
"I am dismayed by the popular phrase ’worship experience’ to describe the church’s corporate worship. Worship has the capacity to transform us, because it focuses our hearts and minds on God. However, the phrase ’worship experience’ suggests that worship is important because it induces feelings. In this context worship is focused more on the worshiper than on the One worshiped.... We need to ask ourselves what a true worship experience is so that if we had one, we could recognize it."
Psalm 95 helps us see what is contained in a true worship experience. In its three movements, it gives us three summons to worship, which show us three moods in which we are to come to worship.
I. WE COME IN JOY – Vss. 1-5.
One man observed this after attending church the first time as a Christian:
"I was 53 years old when I found out there was a God. The shock and wonder of that discovery has never worn off in the more than 20 years since. But I’ve had another shock in my life, almost as great as the first. In fact, it happened the very next Sunday. It was meeting my first ’church-goers.’
"I’d never been to church in my life, and I remember how eagerly I awaited that first Sunday. I’d just had a glimpse of God Almighty – me, an alcoholic, a drug addict, rich, lonely, and miserable – and already I was beginning to know what it really was. And now, on Sunday, I was going to meet people who had known him for years! What ecstatic people, these long-time Christians would embarrass me with their love and enthusiasm.
"Well, Sunday came, and I went to church, and of course you know what I found; bowed heads, long faces, and funeral whispers. Far from alarming me with the warmth of their welcome, nobody spoke to me at all.
"At first, I was sure this was just one isolated experience. But, as time went on, and I attended other churches in various parts of the country, I made a bewildering discovery. These long-faced listless people were present in every congregation. How could they come into God’s presence Sunday after Sunday without breathing in the joy that danced in the very air?"
We have something exciting to shout about and so ought to worship with joy; verse 1 summons us to come to worship with singing and shouting.
David had this spirit when he danced before the Lord as the ark was brought to Jerusalem – 2 Samuel 6.
We want to be more reserved than that, so our church services often have no life. Perhaps we are just too uncomfortable with free expressions of joy.
Martin Luther said, "Next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the heart."
We should sing with joy before the Lord because God is great. How do you view God when you come to worship?
J. Daniel Baumann, in an article on worship, said, "When I was a child, I was given to occasional restlessness during church services. I was admonished to ’sit still, you’re in church,’ Somehow I got the wrong message. My folks never intended it--but I was getting the impression that God was a grouch; I wasn’t convinced I could even enjoy him. I’ve changed my mind, or better yet, the Bible is changing my mind.
Verses 3-5, indeed the entire Bible, give a different view of God: He is the God above all gods. What other gods? In the Old Testament world, polytheism was present everywhere, certainly among Israel’s neighbors and even among some Israelites.
But in verse 4, the Psalmist tells us that God holds the depths of the earth and the mountain peaks in his hands. The ancients believed there were different gods who inhabited these various places, but the Psalmist leaves no room for them. All the earth belongs to God. Perhaps there can be other gods in the sea, but the Psalmist (verse 5) also removes that possibility.
Whatever happens to us, great or small, good or bad, God is there and in control. Therefore we ought to sing. Here the Psalmist has in mind that God has created us. Therefore we ought to sing.
II. WE COME IN REVERENCE – Vs. 6.
That is, we come to adore God. You may have sung Chuck Girard’s song:
"Sometimes alleluia,
Sometimes praise the Lord.
Sometimes gently singing
Our hearts in one accord..."
Worship takes on various moods, and here we are to come to God with reverence and adoration – verse 6. This idea is far removed from the practice of most people, even many churches today.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Gollum is the name of the Satan-figure. He is a creature who likes riddles. He might ask a riddle like this: Why is it that in some high churches people kneel before the Lord, and that in some low churches people stand with their arms extended to God, but that in many of our churches we do neither--we merely sit? Gollum would said, "Answer that one, my precious."
You may say, "Oh, we stand." But do we stand to adore God, or merely to readjust our position? You may say, "We kneel." But do we kneel as a community?
We need to take this matter of kneeling more seriously and practice it as a means of coming before God in reverence. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the Jewish people still prostrate themselves before God in orthodox synagogues. Philippians 2:10 clearly indicates that at the return of Christ every knee will bow before the risen Christ. Kneeling is a fitting indication of humility, vulnerability, and dependence before God.
I actually experienced this in one congregation that had a Wednesday evening prayer service that was actually a prayer service. We did not talk about prayer requests and then have someone lead in prayer; we just began the service by praying. As people had a request, they prayed about it, giving enough detail in their prayer, so others would know the situation. Many people in that weekly gathering prayed on their knees as we acknowledged with our posture our need for God.
The posture by itself, though, is not the important thing, for it must come with an attitude of reverence and adoration of God. Why? Because God cares for us.
Now the Psalmist moves from seeing God as our Creator to seeing him as our Redeemer – verse 7. Here we come before him reverently because of his grace. The picture here is one of a shepherd with his sheep. Isaiah 53:6 reminds us that like sheep, we have all gone astray and turned to our own way. But God has pursued us, found us, and brought us back. This is why we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, to remember how God has pursued us and found us in the cross. But it is more than the Lord’s Supper; it is a spirit that should permeate our hearts in worship. And it should cause us to fall down adoringly before our God.
The following drama was originally reported by Peter Michelmore in the October 1987 Reader’s Digest: Normally the flight from Nassau to Miami took Walter Wyatt, Jr., only sixty-five minutes. But on December 5, 1986, he attempted it after thieves had looted the navigational equipment in his Beechcraft. With only a compass and a hand-held radio, Walter flew into skies blackened by storm clouds.
When his compass began to gyrate, Walter concluded he was headed in the wrong direction. He flew his plane below the clouds, hoping to spot something, but soon he knew he was lost. He put out a mayday call, which brought a Coast Guard Falcon search plane to lead him to an emergency landing strip only six miles away.
Suddenly Wyatt’s right engine coughed its last and died. The fuel tank had run dry. Around 8 p.m. Wyatt could do little more than glide the plane into the water. Wyatt survived the crash, but his plane disappeared quickly, leaving him bobbing on the water in a leaky life vest.
With blood on his forehead, Wyatt floated on his back. Suddenly he felt a hard bump against his body. A shark had found him. Wyatt kicked the intruder and wondered if he would survive the night. He managed to stay afloat for the next ten hours.
In the morning, Wyatt saw no airplanes, but in the water a dorsal fin was headed for him. Twisting, he felt the hide of a shark brush against him. In a moment, two more bull sharks sliced through the water toward him. Again he kicked the sharks, and they veered away, but he was nearing exhaustion.
Then he heard the hum of a distant aircraft. When it was within a half mile, he waved his orange vest. The pilot dropped a smoke canister and radioed the cutter Cape York, which was twelve minutes away: "Get moving, cutter! There’s a shark targeting this guy!"
As the Cape York pulled alongside Wyatt, a Jacob’s ladder was dropped over the side. Wyatt climbed wearily out of the water and onto the ship, where he fell to his knees and kissed the deck.
He’d been saved. He didn’t need encouragement or better techniques. Nothing less than outside intervention could have rescued him from sure death. How much we are like Walter Wyatt!
III. WE COME IN FAITH – Vss. 7-11.
We also come to worship to obey God. We need to listen to our Guide.
In A Slow and Certain Light, Elizabeth Elliot tells of two adventurers who stopped by to see her, all loaded with equipment for the rain forest east of the Andes. They sought no advice, just a few phrases to converse with the Indians. She writes, "Sometimes we come to God as the two adventurers came to me – confident and, we think, well-informed and well-equipped. But has it occurred to us that with all our accumulation of stuff, something is missing?"
She suggests that we often ask God for too little. "We know what we need – a yes or no answer, please, to a simple question. Or perhaps a road sign. Something quick and easy to point the way.
"What we really ought to have is the Guide himself. Maps, road signs, a few useful phrases are good things, but infinitely better is someone who has been there before and knows the way."
This emphasis in our text begins with the last words of verse 7, words which call for us to obey the voice of God. He calls for us to not only listen to the Word of God, but to obey it. I see this need when preaching. People look as if they are paying attention, as if they are hearing the Word of God so they can obey it. But having sat there myself, I know it is not always true. They are thinking of a variety of things.
The Psalmist reinforces his point with an illustration from Israel’s experience in the wilderness when being delivered from Egypt, that reminds us to not harden our hearts.
Just shortly after being delivered from Egypt, as recorded in Exodus 17, they found themselves without water and complained against God. They demanded that God prove himself again. They put him to the test. They did not obey God or believe in him. In Numbers 20, much the same thing happens. Here Moses even got caught in the unbelief and took credit himself for bringing water from the rock.
In Hebrews 3:7-19 these incidents are used to call us to obedience. We are to encourage each other so that we obey and hold firmly till the end (Hebrews 3:13,14).
Israel was not the only ones who had this kind of experience. This happened with the disciples after Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. That evening as they fought a storm on the Sea of Galilee the disciples became frightened, and Jesus said to them, "O you of little faith. Why do you doubt?"
We are not much different. So Colossians 3:2 calls for us to set our minds on things above.
God did not condemn Israel for asking for help, but for putting him to the test after having seen his power – verse 9. Thus God condemns them to the wilderness for forty years.
We have seen the work of God and have opportunity through our worship to hear the Word of God. We need to obey him in faith. It is not enough to shout our words of praise or kneel in adoration. Our worship needs to extend to obedience to his word as a part of our worship and as a response to it.
CONCLUSION
Make worship central to your life. It is the essence of why God has called us to be his people.
Governor Al Smith of New York illustrated how we should see God:
Governor Alfred Smith was invited to make a speech at a convention dinner. He discovered when he arrived at the convention banquet hall that the predominately out-of-state audience had a "super sillious, condescending, semi-enibriated interest in him" (I quoted that because you would never think of those words coming out of my mouth). They thought that Alfred Smith was a kind of fun joke, and his insight into what they must have been thinking was verified when the toastmaster gave the governor a "flippant, jocous introduction climaxed by the phrase, ’And now, boys, I give you a great guy, Al Smith.’"
Governor Smith was the last guy in the world to insist on idle ceremony, or on empty formality, but on this occasion, the author says, he sensed an affront to his office and his heritage, and he made his point briefly and tersely. He said, "Gentlemen, when I was a little boy on the east side, my father took me to see a great civic parade. I held his hand tightly as battalion after battalion of marching infantry came by. And then suddenly my father stiffened. I almost felt a tingling pride thrilling his being. Swiftly he said, ’Son, take off your hat. The governor of New York is passing by.’ I took off my hat.
Gentlemen, the governor of New York bids you good night." And he walked out the door.
Do we sometimes treat God like that, so that he wants to walk out because we want to meet him on middle ground that is comfortable rather than give him the honor he is due?
