Resounding Praise and Reverent Worship

Thank you very much, Fiona and Van, for leading our worship so helpfully this morning.

Two weeks ago, my wife Bridget and I were up on the Isle of Lewis

visiting our daughter-in-law Kirstein's parents.

And while we were there, we went along with them to Locke's Free Church.

If you went to a free church in Edinburgh,

you might well find that the music wasn't very different from what we have here.

But up in Lewis, they still sing the Psalms exclusively with a presenter.

And as I was thinking about this psalm we're looking at this morning,

I thought it was a good reminder to me that the psalms were intended to be sung as originally written.

Nothing wrong with reading the verses or studying them.

We're going to be doing that later on.

But originally, they were written to be sung.

So for our scripture reading this morning, I thought we'd do something a little bit different.

We're going to listen to someone singing Psalm 95.

The words will come up on the screen as well.

The words are very faithful to the text.

If you want to follow them along, one or two verses repeated,

but very faithful to the text.

So it will tell us what Psalm 95 is about.

And be a good reminder to us that we're looking at Israel's songbook

at the way in which the people then used to praise God.

So let's watch this now.

And whether sung or spoken, that is God's word.

And we pray that you'll bless it to us as we think about it this morning.

While we were up in Lewis, we also went into Stornoway and spent a day there.

And while we were walking around the streets, we came across a converted shop

that had been changed into a church.

It was called the New Wine Church.

Now, I don't know much about the New Wine Church,

but I would guess that their worship, their style of worship,

is very different from the free church.

And in the window, they had guitars.

But again, a quote from the Psalms,

I will sing a new song to the Lord on the ten-stringed lyre.

And again, that was a reminder to me of the Psalms,

of the variety that we have in them.

There are times in the Psalms when we want to come exuberantly

and with lively music as we sing praise to God and rejoice in him.

And there are times also when we want, as would be normal in the free church,

to be more reverent and reflective in our worship.

And different people respond to different kinds of worship.

But good for all of us to have that variety.

And when we're in the Psalms, very often we find that even in one Psalm,

there is that variety of worship.

I don't know if you noticed, it went through Psalm 95.

It is a classic example of it.

It starts off as a really Psalm of praise, of excitement to God,

or encouraging people to sing and to shout to him and to worship God.

And then in the middle of verse 7, suddenly it changes completely.

And it changes into a warning not to harden our hearts,

not to lose the rest that God has promised to us.

And you might wonder, well, why does the Psalm change so dramatically halfway through?

Why does it start off with such joy in the Lord and then end with such a strong warning?

Well, let me paint a little picture of what I think might be the background to this Psalm.

The Israelites, during the course of the year, they had many festivals.

Now, their festivals weren't great extravaganzas of music and of drama and dance and so on,

like we'll be having in Edinburgh over the next month.

Rather, the festivals were celebrations of what God had done for his people

and coming to give him thanks and to offer sacrifices to him for them.

And it might have been the festival here was the Feast of Tabernacles.

Feast of Tabernacles was kind of a harvest Thanksgiving period,

but also a time of remembering that God led the Israelites for 40 years through the wilderness

and that he took them safe into the promised land.

Indeed, in the Feast of Tabernacles, the people sometimes lived in little tents or booths

as a reminder to themselves of what it had been like in the wilderness.

So let's imagine it's the Feast of Tabernacles,

and we've got the pilgrims who are coming to the feast.

And they're really excited about it.

This is one of the highlights of their year.

And as they're walking through the streets, they're saying to people,

come on, let's worship God together.

Let's sing and shout for joy to the Lord and remember what a great God he is.

And that is, I think, the first half of the psalm.

Then they arrive at the temple and the priest is standing there.

And he says, come in, but remember you're coming to worship the God who's our maker

and who is our shepherd.

And he's not just someone that we want to sing and shout praise to.

Our God, our great God, is someone we need to bow down before

and to recognize his greatness.

And let's make sure as we come before God that we don't come with hard hearts,

with wrong attitudes, that even though on the surface we appear to be praising God,

actually inside, we're wrong.

As your ancestors, speaking to Jews, as your ancestors going through the wilderness,

they hardened their hearts for all God's goodness to them.

They lost out on the blessing that God had planned for them because they didn't obey him.

I think that might be an explanation of the two halves of the psalm.

In the one half, you've got the call to worship and to praise God together.

And then in the second half, you have the call to come reverently before God

and to examine your hearts and then to worship him.

So I'll just give a brief outline of what I think the two halves are made up of

and then we'll go through them in a little bit more detail.

So the first half is about acclaiming God's greatness.

I'll divide that in two.

The first two verses are about irrepressible praise.

They're the ones that talk about shouting and singing and so on.

And then verses three to five talk to us about God's incomparable power,

that he is the God who is in control of everything on our earth.

And the second half of the psalm, I've said, is about accepting God's grace.

And then in verses six and seven, there's the call to sincere worship.

And that's followed then by the solemn warning that I talked about.

So we're going to go through the psalm under these headings

and just see what God has to say to us through it.

So first, irrepressible praise.

So let's read more conventionally this time what the psalm says here.

It says,

Psalm 95 is one of a string of psalms through the Psalm 90s, which we're looking at the moment,

where there is a great command to come and to praise God.

There are psalms that celebrate God as our king, as the one who is in control of everything,

as the one who deserves our praise.

And many of them do talk about praising God with singing, with musical instruments, with real joy.

Not holding back, not coming half-heartedly in worship, but rather as we come to God,

really letting go and letting him understand and know how much we appreciate him,

and letting everyone else, too, know about the greatness of our God.

If this was, as I was imagining, people walking through the streets of Jerusalem singing,

they were letting everyone else know how great God is.

And it's good, isn't it, when we can come together, and in that sense, we can let go.

We can come with real joy.

Some of the songs we've been singing this morning, which tell us about God's goodness,

and rejoice in all that he is, and all that he has done for us.

And we should come with hearts that are full of thankfulness and full of joy,

because we have such a great God.

He's called, in this verse, the rock of our salvation.

Now, when we think of God as the rock, we probably would immediately think of the rock

as being something solid and something you can build on,

like the story of the two builders Jesus told in the New Testament.

The one who built on the rock, their house was secure.

The one on the sand, it wasn't.

Psalms also talk about being hidden in the rock.

So the rock talks about security.

But I think particularly in the context of this psalm,

there's a second significance to the rock,

because as we'll see a bit later on,

one of the events that the psalmist is looking back to

is when Moses struck the rock with his rod,

and there was water came from it.

And that water was vitally needed by the Israelites,

who were really in danger of dying if they didn't get water.

And it speaks of God's salvation,

of him being able to save us from the worst things in life.

Looking forward, it looks to the salvation that we have through Jesus.

So we're looking to the one who is our rock.

We're praising him.

We're excited about him.

And we want to give him all the glory.

Good if we can come with that attitude.

I know people going through difficult times might be difficult to do that.

But if we're able to come and to praise God

and to sing our worship to him with real joy.

And why do we do that?

Well, says the psalmist, it's because of his incomparable power.

So verses 3 to 5.

For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.

In his hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.

The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

So in this part of the psalm, the psalmist is particularly concentrating on God as the all-powerful one.

The one who is the creator, and the one who keeps things moving everywhere on the earth.

He is, says the psalmist, the great God.

And he says he's the great King above all gods.

Now the psalmist is not thinking that the other gods that people around about the Israelites would worship

were in any sense real, in that they existed.

But they were real in the sense that people worshipped them and thought that they existed.

And the psalmist is saying, our God is incomparable with these false gods that other nations worship.

And it's possible as he goes through the list in verses 4 and 5,

he's thinking particularly about some of the gods, with small g, of the nations round about Israel.

So there was the god Baal or Baal.

Now the thing about Baal was he was a god where everything had to be seen and visible.

Remember when Elijah was up against the prophets of Baal in the book of 1 Kings,

that it was on the mountaintop, on Mount Carmel,

that they had this big sacrifice to see which God could answer with fire.

And that was very much taking Baal on on his own territory.

He was the god of the mountaintop.

So when the psalmist says the mountain peaks belonged to him,

may have been thinking about that false god of the nations round about Israel.

The god where things had to be seen.

And the idea was that you went up to the top of the mountain,

and you acted something out, and Baal would see it, and he would bless you.

Whether it was sacrifices you were making, or there were sexual orges,

and all sorts of things, you were supposed to give messages to Baal.

The idea was he saw them, and when he saw them, things happened.

And we don't worship gods like that in that sense in our day.

But for many people, it's perhaps not that different.

It's wanting to be seen, and to be visible,

and to look at the material things round about us.

Because all these sacrifices to Baal and so on,

they were really just to win his favor,

so that he would bless the people, so they would have good crops,

and that the nation would be prosperous.

And certainly, we think of it in that kind of sense.

A lot of people today, their big aim is that they,

that people round about should be prosperous.

The markets, getting the markets right,

getting more money for myself, getting a better job, and so on.

And that maybe is the modern equivalent of the worship of Baal.

And the psalmist says to us,

much more important than that is that we worship,

that we praise God, that we get our priorities right.

Second God was called Molech.

Now, Molech was almost the opposite of Baal.

Rather than being the god of everything being seen,

he was the god of everything that was hidden.

So it was all the kind of a coat stuff,

and things that were hidden away that weren't on the surface.

It was kind of almost a secret society type stuff.

The Molech dwelt in the underworld,

and he could have a very malevolent force on people.

And again, don't have a direct equivalent perhaps today,

but there's an awful lot of stuff today that's done in secret

that people don't want others to find out about.

I'm sure you've noticed over the last few months

the amount of things that have come out that have been secret,

the sexual improprieties of lots of celebrities in the past,

and some shocking abuse that's been revealed.

Or the kind of secret mining of data and using it in ways that it was never intended to be used,

the Facebook thing and so on.

Lots of these things that are kind of hidden away in secret,

that aren't meant to be revealed,

and yet which are very much against the way that people should be behaving.

And perhaps that again is a lesson for us,

that we need to be very careful that we are open,

that we are transparent,

that we've not got lots of things that are hidden away,

that our life is open before God,

and that our worship for him is true and is sincere.

One more example,

the god of the sea was called Timat.

And he was a god who was characterized by great strength and force.

The force of the sea as their waves crash against the land

or against the boat, if you're out in it.

And Timat represented the importance of power and of influence.

And again, in our day, many people,

the thing that they really want,

the thing that's important to them,

is to have power and to have influence

and to be seen to be important.

And again, we need to say,

let's bow down, let's worship our great God.

Beside him, we're insignificant.

Any power we have,

any power that gods of our day,

not that we imagine they're gods in the sense they did in the past,

but actually in reality, very much similar.

Nothing that they have can compare to our God.

And because he is so great,

because he is so wonderful,

then we should praise him

and we should be letting other people know how good our God is.

And particularly in the way the psalmist never could,

to talk about how God sent his son into the world

to be our saviour,

how God came as one of us

and lived our life

and died our death on the cross at Calvary.

And much of our singing this morning has been praising

God and the Lord Jesus for that great sacrifice.

So we need to be praising God.

We need to be coming before him with joyful hearts.

As I said, there's then a bit of a change in the psalm.

And instead of looking at the importance of praising God

with great joy and with singing and with shouting,

the psalmist now says,

actually, when you come to God,

another appropriate way to come

is with an attitude of worship

and to bow down before him

and just be awestruck by how great our God is

and then to go away and to obey him.

And that's what the second half of the psalm is about.

I've imagined it's the priest saying that to the people.

Might have been, might not.

But it certainly is trying to get home to us.

It's not all about being on the mountaintop

and singing and being excited all the time.

We need to come to our God with reverence

and with respect and with real awe

and to recognize that everything we are comes from him

and that we owe him our allegiance.

So verse six, he says,

come, let us bow down in worship.

Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker,

for he is our God

and we are the people of his pasture,

the flock under his care.

Now you notice the psalmist has moved here

from the general to the specific.

So in the early verses,

he's talking generally about God,

the God of creation,

the God of the mountaintops

and of the sea and so on.

Now he's talking about our God.

The God who is not just the all-powerful one,

but the God who cares for you and who cares for me.

And he says, as we come to God and reflect on that,

the right way to come is bowing down

and symbolically in thought at least,

kneeling before the Lord.

He is our maker.

He is our God.

And he is our shepherd.

We're talking earlier to the children,

but Psalm 23,

there are a way looking at it just now.

And there's a bit of an echo of that in verse seven here.

We are the people of his pasture,

the flock under his care.

Shepherd's job is to look after the sheep.

The sheep's job is to follow the shepherd

shepherd and to trust him and to do as he tells them.

Now in the olden days in the land of Israel,

at the time the psalmist was writing,

you wouldn't have a shepherd going out with a sheep dog

and using the dog to round them up.

Rather, the shepherd would do it all with his voice.

He would call his sheep,

his sheep would know his voice,

and his sheep would respond.

That's the picture the Lord Jesus picks up on

in John chapter 10,

John 10 · chapter mention

when he talks about himself as the good shepherd.

And so the psalmist now says,

we have this God who's great,

who's the master of the universe,

who's in charge of everything.

He's also our God,

and he cares for us,

and he loves us.

But our responsibility then

is to bow down and to worship

and to obey him.

The psalmist says,

I know that very often people come before God

or come into church or temple or whatever in those days,

and that's not the way they are.

And he says,

remember what happened in the wilderness.

So let's read the remaining verses of the chapter

that are called A Solemn Warning.

And this is God speaking here.

Today, if you would only hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts,

as you did at Meribah,

as you did at that day at Massah in the wilderness.

Where your ancestors tested me,

they tried me,

though they had seen what I did.

For 40 years,

I was angry with that generation.

I said,

there are 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.

The Sabbath is looking back,

particularly at two instances

that happened to the Israelites

as they went through the wilderness.

Remember,

the Israelites,

under Moses,

eventually got free from Pharaoh

and the Egyptians

after the 10 plagues.

And then there were 40 years

wandering around the wilderness

before they got to the promised land

where they would eventually settle.

Didn't need to be 40 years.

There were 40 years

because they were so disobedient

and so mistrusting of God.

And there were two instances in particular,

one near the start

of when they set out,

and one a bit further on

that the psalmist talks about here.

First one after the start,

the Israelites have come out of Egypt.

They've got stuck in front of the Red Sea

with the Egyptians charging up behind them,

and God miraculously passed the Red Sea

and the Israelites were able to get over

and the Egyptians are all drowned in it.

And there were then three incidents

where the Israelites felt

they had a great need of God.

First was they came to some water

and discovered the water was undrinkable.

The water was very bitter.

And God, through Moses,

made that water drinkable,

made it sweet.

They then went on a bit

and they were grumbling

because they were really hungry.

They were saying,

why have you brought us, Moses,

out of Egypt

just to die here

in this wilderness?

And God graciously provided for them

manna that they would get every day

or six days a week

and the seventh day

there'd be enough

on the sixth day to do

throughout their time in the wilderness.

He also provided that time quail.

So God provided what they needed.

They went on a bit

and they got thirsty.

Now you think at this point,

the Israelites would realize,

well, God can look after us.

He got us out of Egypt.

He got us across the Red Sea.

He made that water drinkable.

He's given us food to eat.

But no,

they grumble against Moses.

Moses worried

they're going to actually kill him

that they're so angry with him

because they haven't believed

in what God is doing for them.

And that's what the reference here

to Mereba and Massa is.

It's the same place

and there are two names for it

given in the passage

in Exodus chapter 17.

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

And Moses,

it was so exasperated

with Israel at that point,

quite rightly,

and God too is exasperated

because they've hardened their hearts,

they've seen his goodness,

and rather than seeing

the lack of water

as being God testing them

and an example for them

to show the faith they had in God,

rather they made it a test of God.

Well, if he's the real God,

can he do something for us?

They ignored the good

that God had done for them

and they tried to get him to do more.

That's incident number one,

as I say,

near the start of the wanderings.

Incident number two

in the second part of it

is in some ways

the culmination

of a great period

of unbelief by the Israelites.

Again and again,

the Israelites experienced

God's grace

and they throw it back in his face

and they still won't believe.

So Moses sent some spies out

to spy out the land of Canaan

where they were going to settle.

And the spies came back

and they said,

it's a wonderful land.

It's flowing with milk and honey.

It's everything

we could possibly want.

But they said,

the people there

are really strong.

There are giants among them.

They're much bigger than us.

There's no way

we can go in

and conquer that land.

And of the 12 spies

that went,

10 of them gave that message.

Two of them,

Joshua and Caleb,

came back and said,

yes, with God's help,

we can do it.

But the 10

who were unbelieving,

they won over the people

and the people

were terrified

of going forward.

They didn't believe

the God

who had led them out of Egypt,

who had done so much for them,

was able to take them

into the promised land.

They didn't really understand God

because their hearts

were hard.

And the consequence of that

was out of the Adai

to left Egypt,

only two,

Joshua and Caleb,

made it into the land

at the end,

which is referenced there

to entering my rest.

Only two of those

who left Egypt

as adults

went into Canaan

at the end

because everyone else

refused to believe God.

So this is about

hard hearts.

Hard hearts

and not believing God,

not taking up his word

and not believing

that he can continue

to be with us

as he has been

in the past.

Now these are

very important verses.

The verses are sometimes

missed when

this psalm is used

as a call to worship

as it is in some traditions,

but they're verses

that are picked up

in the book of Hebrews

and for two chapters

the writer to the Hebrews

comments on the significance

of these psalms

to us today,

of these verses

to us today.

So it's not just

about the Israelites

back in the wilderness,

back under Moses.

It's not just

about the immediate

audience

that the writer

is addressing this to

and the Israelites

as they sing the psalm.

It is very relevant

for us today

as Christians.

And the message is

we must not

harden

our hearts.

It is so easy

for us to be

led astray

by the things

of this world

and for our hearts

to become hard

before God.

Now what does a hard

heart mean

in this context?

Well I suppose

the first thing

it means

is that we forget

all that God

has done

for us.

That was the

great sin

of the Israelites

wasn't it?

They'd seen everything

that God had done

and they didn't

pay any attention

to it.

All they could see

was the problems

and the difficulties

they were facing

then.

They forgot

what God

had done

for them.

And we need

to be very careful

if we know God

if we have put

our trust

in the Lord Jesus

that we don't

forget

all that he has

done

for us.

Because if we do

forget what he's

done for us

then as we look

forward

we won't be able

to exercise

the faith in him

that we need to.

We have a God

who loved us

so much

that he sent

his son

into the world

to die for us

on the cross

and to forgive us

for all the wrong

that we've done

and to bring us

into a relationship

with him

where we can come

before him

and we can call him

our father.

And we need to look

back and say

God has been good

to me.

We also need to look

back over our lives

and to see

times when

we have needed

God

and he has been

there

and he has helped us.

Now I can't

say what these times

have been for you

but there have been

times where

I'm sure all of us

who know the Lord Jesus

when we have

struggled

and God has been there

and he has

helped us

as he helped

the Israelites

as they went

through the desert.

And we need to

remember

what God

has done

for us

and that needs

to be the thing

which gives us

faith

to know that

the God

who has been

with us

in the past

will also be

with us

in the future

whatever we may

face

in this life.

Hard hearts

forget

all that

God

has done

for them.

Second thing

I suggest

that would be

characteristic

of hard hearts

is not

believing

what God

has promised

to us.

So God

had promised

to the Israelites

he'd lead them

out of Egypt

and he would

take them

to the land

that had been

promised many

centuries before

to Abraham.

And the people

knew God's word

and yet they

clearly didn't

believe it.

They spent

an awful lot of

time going

through the wilderness

saying I wish

we could go

back to Egypt.

We'd be much

better off in Egypt

than we are now.

It was rubbish.

They were slaves

in Egypt.

They were under

oppressors.

They were in a

terrible situation

and yet they

couldn't understand

that they needed

to follow God's

plan and they

needed to believe

God's word

to them.

Important for us

too that as we

come to look

at life and look

at his problems

that we do it

believing that

God's word

is absolutely

true and it

can be the

thing that

gives us the

strength to

keep going

as we trust

in him.

If we in any

way start to

doubt God's

word then our

faith is failing,

our hearts

are becoming

hard.

Then the third

thing I think

that characterizes

hard hearts

is very much

a focus on

myself

rather than

looking

outward.

So the Israelites

were totally

focused on them

and on their

situation and

their worries

and their

anxieties and

they weren't

really interested

in anyone else

or in what God

was doing for

them.

Very easy for us

too to have

hard hearts and

to become very

self-centered.

Not focusing on

God and on

his greatness and

not focusing either

on others and

seeing their needs

and thinking well

how can I help to

meet that need.

If we just come

along on a

Sunday morning

looking for

something for

ourselves and

not really

concerned about

anyone else,

if we have no

interest in other

Christians during

the week we just

want to get what's

best for us,

then that is a

sign perhaps that

our hearts are

becoming hard.

So hard hearts,

you forget what

God's done,

you don't trust

God's word,

and you only care

about yourself.

That's where the

Israelites were,

and the

psalmist and

the writer to

the Hebrews says

there's a real

danger that that

is where we

get to as well.

And yet we

shouldn't.

We need to

remember that the

God who didn't

spare his own

son but gave

him up for us

all, he will

also freely with

him give us

all things.

In other words,

we remember what

God has done in

giving his son and

we recognize that

he will give us

all things.

We need to

recognize, as

the writer of the

Hebrews does,

the word of God

is living and

active and

sharp and

any two-edged

sword.

And when we

hear the word of

God, we need to

let him speak to

us and to

change our life,

to change our

hearts, to bring

us closer to

Jesus.

And we need to

remember that if

we are going to

reflect the love

that Jesus had,

then we need to

be outward

thinking, we need

to be concerned

about others, not

to have hard

hearts and to

be self-centered.

And why is this

important?

Well, says the

psalmist, it's so

that you can

enter God's

rest.

His race in

this desert never

got to enter

God's rest, in

that case, the

promised land.

Writer of the

Hebrews says,

picking up this

psalm, be careful

that you don't

miss out on

God's rest as

well.

And I think there

are two aspects

to God's rest.

One of it is

the kind of

present day, that

as we experience

God's rest, it is

a peace, it's an

awareness of God's

presence, it is

not being too

taken up with

events that we

can't see, that

God is there and

God will help us

through it.

So it is being

able to rest in

God and know

he has done for

us.

And then there's

the forward-looking

aspect, that

those who know

and who love the

Lord Jesus, there

is an ultimate

rest for them when

work is over,

when this life

is behind us

and we go to

be with the

Lord Jesus and

to be with him

forever.

And that in a

sense is what

is symbolized in

Israel, it's

going to the

promised land, it

is us if we

know and trust the

Lord Jesus entering

into his rest at

the end of our

lives.

The psalmist says

make sure that you

get that rest.

And one other

thing he says,

today.

And the writer

of Hebrews again

picks it up, he

says today, if

you would only

hear his voice.

Forty years the

Israelites wandered

through the

wilderness.

Forty years they

had opportunities to

believe God and to

obey him and to

have the assurance of

his rest.

Again and again as

they failed him, God

was willing to

overlook that and to

continue to bless

them despite the

fact that they

didn't trust him.

but in the end

it was too late

for them and

they didn't get

into the

promised land.

And this I think

is designed to

bring a sense of

real urgency to

us.

Getting myself

right with God

whether that's

trusting the Lord

Jesus for the

first time or

coming back to

him and

confessing the

hardness has

come into my

heart.

That is something

that can't keep

getting put off.

It will

ultimately be

too late.

Today is the

day of salvation.

Today is the

time when we

need to get

ourselves right

before God.

So as I said

a psalm of two

halves.

One half which

is joyful and

celebratory and

another half which

is really quite

solemn and is

designed to make

us think and

examine ourselves

before God.

And let's all of

us today, let's

rejoice in what

God has done for

us but let's

also examine

our hearts.

Heart disease is

one of the

biggest killers

in our country

and in the

world today.

And most heart

disease is

caused largely

by lifestyle,

by what we

eat, by not

getting enough

exercise and

so on.

And perhaps that

is one thing that

I can leave with

you as a practical

thing to think

about as we

take this psalm

away.

how can I

have a healthy

heart before

God?

Well it's partly

about taking in

the right things,

it is about

reading God's

word and

meditating on it.

And can I

challenge everyone

this week to

spend time before

God reading and

meditating on

his word.

And it's also

about what I

do.

It's about the

exercise we like

when we're talking

about our

physical hearts.

And this week,

let's go out

with hearts

that are soft

and that are

willing to

serve God

and to serve

others and to

show other

people the love

of the Lord

Jesus for us.

Let's not be

those with

hard hearts,

let's be those

who go and

who listen and

who obey and

who then can

rejoice in our

great God and

in all that he

has done for

us.

Let's pray

together.

Our Father,

we thank you

for your word,

we thank you

for the joy

that is in

the psalm

and yet the

solemnity.

And we pray

that you will

give us that

joy as we

think about

all that you

have done

for us.

But we pray

also that you

will soften

our hearts,

that you will

remove indifference

from us,

that you will

make us wholly

committed to

you,

that we will

listen to your

word and that

we will believe

it and that

we will obey

it.

For some,

that might be

for the first

time believing

that Jesus

came and

died for

their sins

and putting

their trust

in him.

And for some

of us it

might be a

returning to

you, a

softening of

our hearts as

we recognise

how far we've

gone from

you and how

much we need

to change to

get back to

the rest and

the joy that

you promised

to us.

Help us to

examine ourselves

today and to

respond appropriately,

that we may

have a joy in

the Lord,

that we may

have a real

rest in him.

We give you

thanks and we

commit ourselves

to you.

In the name

of the Lord

Jesus.

Amen.