Worship or Grumble | Psalm 95

We're in book four of the five books of the Psalms.

And this one is a particular favorite of mine, Psalm 95.

And the reason for that is, you may have noticed

that some events in the pages of scripture

are uniquely foundational to the biblical narrative.

Now of course we know every word in scripture matters,

but maybe you've noticed that some stories

and some lessons get repeated over and over again.

Certain themes show up that reinforce

for every successive generation

what God wants to communicate to his people.

And the most obvious example that pops off

at the very beginning of the Bible

is creation and the fall.

Those two events introduced to us

both the nature of God and the nature of man,

and they set the trajectory

for the entire rest of human history.

But another example of this is the Exodus.

The Exodus is foundational to our understanding

of who God is and how he works and what follows.

The actions and reactions of the Israelites

during God's sovereign plan to bring them

to the promised land through the wilderness

over a period of 40 years.

It is a story and a lesson that shows up

over and over again, both in the Old Testament

and in the New Testament.

And it's a huge part of the Psalm we're looking at today.

So grab your Bibles, we're gonna jump right into it.

We're going to Psalm 95.

Psalm 95 serves as the introduction to a series of Psalms

that runs from 95 to 100 that focuses on praise and worship.

And you'll see as you turn there

that like Psalm 91 last week,

95 does not have a superscription.

It doesn't tell us who authored it.

It doesn't give us any specific backstory.

Although there's a comment in Hebrews chapter four

which leads some scholars to believe

that perhaps David penned this,

but we don't know for sure.

But let's read through it one time

and then we're gonna come back and work our way through it.

Verse one, Psalm 95.

Oh, come, let us sing for joy to the Lord.

Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving.

Let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms.

For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods

in whose hands are the depths of the earth

and the peaks of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for it was he who made it

and his hands formed the dry land.

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.

Now, pause for a moment.

What we're about to hear in the final few verses

is a distinct shift from what we just heard,

exhortation to warning.

And it may seem at first glance that,

man, this feels like two completely different Psalms,

but trust me, we'll make the connection.

There is a very important connection

between these two sections.

So continuing in verse seven now.

Today, if you would hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,

as in the day of Massah in the wilderness,

when your fathers tested me.

They tried me, though they had seen my work.

For 40 years I loathed that generation

and said they are a people who err in their heart

and they do not know my ways.

Therefore I swore in my anger,

truly they shall not enter into my rest.

Okay, so there's a lot going on in this Psalm,

so here's how we're gonna walk through it.

We're actually gonna start with that last section,

which obviously has an important Old Testament backdrop

to it, and we'll walk through that story first,

including a map.

And then we'll come back to those remarkable exhortations

about worship in verses one to six.

We'll look again at verses eight through 11.

As we heard in that first reading,

there's this distinct and dramatic shift in tone and mood

as compared to that first section.

There's also a change in the voice of the speaker.

Look at verse nine.

The pronouns change in that first section,

one through six, from he and we to me and I

in verses nine through 11,

which means that in verses nine through 11 it's Yahweh.

He's the one who is delivering to us

this ominous warning in those final three verses.

And of course, that warning is connected

back to the days of Moses,

back to the years after the Israelites

came out of slavery in Egypt,

and then they wandered through the wilderness

of the Sinai Peninsula,

and then up into the Negev Desert,

and finally into the promised land over 40 years.

And as we know, only two faithful men, Caleb and Joshua,

of that first generation, came out of Egypt

and did not fall and die in the wilderness.

Only two survived, only two of that first generation

would be allowed into the promised land,

the land that God had promised to Abraham.

And that's what the psalmist is referring to

in verses 10 and 11 of Psalm 95.

Look at 10 and 11.

"'For 40 years I loathed that generation,' God says."

That first generation that came out of Egypt.

"'They are a people who err or go astray in their hearts.'"

And that's key to understanding this psalm.

It's not just what they did,

not just the way they reacted to things,

it was the wretched condition of their hearts

that led them into sin.

"'They are a people who go astray in their heart,

"'and they do not know my ways.'"

So catch that.

These people are in proximity to the Lord.

They are among the community of faith,

and yet still they don't know God,

and they don't know his ways.

That's very important to see right on the outset.

And then verse 11 says,

"'Therefore I, the Lord, swore in my anger,''

"'I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter my rest.'"

Now what does he mean by the rest

in the context of Psalm 95?

He's talking about the rest of being in the promised land,

coming into this land of milk and honey

that had been promised to Abraham.

Okay, where do we find this historical backdrop?

Well, you see in verse eight these two terms,

marabah and masah in the wilderness.

And what happened there?

Verse nine,

"'That was the place where your fathers tested me

"'and tried me.'"

Now there's actually two different incidents

in the Old Testament that took place

at this location called marabah.

One in the very first few months of the Exodus,

the first few months after they came out of Egypt,

and then a second incident in the latter half,

close to the point where they were coming

into the promised land.

Two distinct incidents, but with very similar stories.

So in your mind, go back to the story of the Exodus.

I don't have time to walk you through that.

We'd be here for three hours.

But go back in your mind to the book of Exodus.

In chapters 13 and 14 of Exodus,

we're told about the Israelites escaping from slavery

and then supernaturally crossing the Red Sea, right?

One of the great miracles of the Bible.

So let's get our bearings here on this map.

Okay, so we have, this is a map,

obviously you have Egypt there in the east,

and then, I'm gonna be so far in the west,

and then moving east you have the Sinai Peninsula,

and then if you move north you come into the Negev Desert,

and eventually you come to the land of Israel,

which at that time was called Canaan.

Okay, so just to get your bearings here.

The pink circle is the land of Goshen.

That's where the Hebrews had been in slavery.

And you basically see a route there.

We don't know the specific route,

but this is a pretty good scholarly look

at the route that they would have taken.

In order to get from Goshen up into the promised land,

they're gonna have to cross two bodies of water.

That orange star is likely the place

where they crossed the Red Sea, miraculously,

and then you see all the wandering,

and eventually they've gotta get to where that blue star is,

which is the Jordan River.

So we'll come back to this map a couple times,

but just to get your bearings on that.

Now it's important to remember

that that first generation of freed Israelites

had seen God do absolutely jaw-dropping miracles before them.

Things that you and I would long to see, right?

Just miracle after miracle.

In fact, that's what the psalmist is referring to.

If you look at verse nine of our text,

he says, your fathers tested me and tried me,

though they had seen my work.

They had seen what I could do.

And what had they seen?

Well, first they saw the plagues that God sent upon Pharaoh

and upon Egypt and upon all their false gods.

And then God had given the Israelites the pillar of cloud

that guided them during the day

and the pillar of fire at night.

And those were designed to let the Israelites know,

you're not alone out here,

that I, the Lord, am with you,

and I will guide you and I will protect you.

And then the Israelites watched God as part of the Red Sea.

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine that sight?

We've all seen the movie, right?

Right, we've all seen the Charlton,

no, maybe you guys are too young

to see the Charlton Heston movie.

I mean, but have you imagined that in your mind,

what it would have looked like to see God part the Red Sea

and then for God to take his people across on dry land

and then slam the water back down on the Egyptian army?

Guys, how unforgettable would that miracle have been?

Think about that.

But it turns out not to be the case

because the hearts of this people,

in spite of seeing all that, still weren't right.

They didn't know the Lord,

which is hard to believe, but true.

But they started out well.

What's interesting is after they escape out of Egypt,

in chapter 15 of Exodus,

you have the recording of this thing we know

as Moses's song and it says all of Israel

saying praises to God.

They were so happy to have been rescued

and taken out of Egypt.

And so they praise God for his kindness and his power

and his faithfulness and for rescuing them.

But here's the thing, they sang that song at a time

when things were going pretty well.

And God was doing all these miracles for them

and they felt so loved.

But things were about to get much worse.

And this is important for us to recognize in our lives.

There are times, there are seasons

when things are going really well

and we feel the Lord's blessing

and we see him working in our lives

and then there's drier seasons.

So how are we gonna react in those dry seasons?

In the very next verse,

after Moses's song in chapter 15,

after they had worshiped,

it says that Israel went three days into the wilderness

and they found no drinkable water.

Uh-oh.

So worship is over and now it's time for grumbling.

Where's the water?

And look, I don't wanna downplay

how hard that might have been.

This is a very dry and barren land

and three days without water is a serious thing

and I probably would have been struggling too.

But after seeing all those miracles,

you would have at least thought

that they said in their hearts,

okay God, we've seen what you can do

and we're in great need here.

We know you love us and so provide water for us.

Provide water for our families and children

and then they would stand back to see how he would do that.

But is that what they did?

They didn't.

They traveled to, see the green dot there,

a place called Marah and it says there

that they came to water but it was undrinkable.

It was bitter, the text says.

But thankfully the Israelites had Moses to intercede for them

and he cried out to God for help

and the Lord instructed Moses

to throw a particular log into the water

and it became drinkable.

It was another miracle

and so God provided it for them once again.

But then shortly after that,

in the next chapter, Exodus 16,

the people are grumbling again,

this time for lack of food.

And God supernaturally provides them both manna and meat,

manna, type of bread and meat.

And that is what brings us to the first incident

mentioned in Psalm 95, which comes from Exodus 17.

In fact, we're gonna turn there in our Bibles.

Go to Exodus 17,

put your little marker in Psalm 95.

We'll definitely be back.

But we're gonna read a couple of these Old Testament texts

just to get the flavor of what's going on.

We're gonna read verses one through seven in Exodus 17.

It says, in all the congregation of the sons of Israel

journeyed by stages from the wilderness of sin

according to the command of the Lord

and they camped at Rephidim, which boom,

there's your red dot.

That's the first incident of Meribah that took place.

And you can see this is just right before

the Israelites get to Mount Sinai.

So this is in the first three months of the Exodus.

They end up down there at that red dot in Rephidim.

And what does it say?

And there was no water for the people to drink.

So you see the recurring problem, right?

And why not?

This is a massive group of people

that requires a lot of water

and there's not a lot of water in the Sinai Peninsula.

And so they're grumbling again.

Verse two says,

therefore the people quarrel with Moses and said,

give us water that we may drink.

Notice now they're pointing their finger at Moses

and demanding that he fix their problem, not the Lord.

At this point in the story,

it's like Moses has become a genie to them.

Like we demand things, you go to God, you make it happen.

That's what's going on here.

And Moses said to them, why do you quarrel with me?

Why do you test the Lord?

Now there's that language that we saw in Psalm 95,

testing the Lord.

Why do you test the Lord?

Verse three, but the people thirsted there for water

and they grumbled against Moses and said,

why now have you brought us up out from Egypt

to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

Talk about believing the worst of someone, right?

Moses has this overwhelming role to play

in leading all of these people

and he's done nothing but be good and faithful to them.

And this is how they repay him with nasty accusations.

It's really, really horrible.

The flat text doesn't do it justice,

just how ugly this was becoming.

Verse four, so Moses cried out to the Lord saying,

what shall I do with these people?

Right, there's desperation in his voice.

A little more and they're gonna stone me, he says.

So it's really gotten bad.

Verse five, then the Lord said to Moses,

pass before the people and take with you

some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand

your staff with which you struck the Nile and go.

Behold, I, the Lord, will stand before you there

on the rock of Horeb and you shall strike the rock

and water will come out of it that the people may drink.

Okay, now that would take a lot of faith, right,

on Moses' part.

Oh, take this, strike the rock, water comes out.

All right, and Moses did so on the side

of the elders of Israel.

Good job, Moses, good leader.

Verse seven, and he named the place Massah and Meribah

because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel

and because they tested the Lord,

saying is the Lord among us or not?

They questioned whether God was even with them

because they lacked water.

So, Massah and Meribah are not just geographical names,

they are names given to this place

in order to symbolize these two evils.

Both of which characterize the hearts of this generation.

In Hebrew, the first word Massah means to test

and Meribah means either strife or contention.

And so, that's what this place was named.

Now, there's gonna be another incident of this.

In fact, go forward to the book of Numbers,

Numbers 20 · chapter mention

chapter 20.

We'll fast forward in the story.

So, that's the first incident

that Psalm 95 is pointing to.

This is the second, Numbers chapter 20.

Numbers 20 · chapter mention

So, time passes between Exodus 17 and here in Numbers 20,

but one thing hasn't changed,

the people are still grumbling.

They're still going through hardship,

they're still not happy,

they're still hardening their hearts against God

and hardening their hearts against God's appointed leaders.

Now, here in Numbers 20,

we're not gonna see the term Massah,

only the word Meribah,

but the events are very, very similar.

Look at verse one.

Then the sons of Israel,

the whole congregation came to the wilderness of Zin.

So, we had the wilderness of Sin first

and now we have Zin with a Z,

which is much further to the north,

and the people stayed at Kadesh.

So, back to our map.

The yellow dot is the second incident

that's referenced in Psalm 95.

So, from the red dot up to the yellow dot

are the two locations that we're talking about here.

They stayed at Kadesh.

Now, Miriam died there and was buried there,

and there was no water for the congregation.

Shocker, right?

Again, no water.

And they assembled themselves against Moses

and Aaron as well.

The people thus contended with Moses,

and there's that word, contended or Meribah.

The people contended with Moses and spoke saying,

if only we had perished when our brothers perished

before the Lord, such drama,

such so dramatic, right?

If only we had died.

We wouldn't be going through this.

Verse four, why then have you brought the Lord's assembly

into this wilderness for us and our beast to die here?

Why have you made us come up from Egypt

to bring us into this wretched place, he says.

It's not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates,

nor is there water to drink.

Do you hear the entitlement in this?

And they're clearly implying that being back in Egypt

would be much better than this,

even though that was slavery.

Think about that.

It'd be better to be in slavery

where at least there's comfort and stuff we can eat.

This is a deeply ungrateful people.

Verse six, and Moses and Aaron came in

from the presence of the assembly

to the doorway of the tender meeting,

and they fell on their faces.

And man, I feel that as a church leader.

There are times when ministry just overwhelms you

and people are coming at you,

and you're just like, I don't know what to do.

And you fall on your face and you say, Lord, I need help.

I need strength to get through this

because people are upset.

And the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

God's so faithful, right?

The glory of the Lord appeared to them,

and Lord spoke to Moses saying,

take the rod and you and your brother Aaron

assemble the congregation, now check this,

and speak to the rock before the rise.

Speak to it, that it may yield its water.

You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock

and let the congregation and their beasts drink.

So Moses took the rod from before the Lord,

just as he had commanded him,

and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock,

and he said to them, listen now, you rebels.

Moses is angry.

I know that doesn't come through on the flat page

as much as it will find out, but he's angry.

Listen, you rebellious people.

Shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?

Then Moses lifted up his hand

and struck the rock twice with his rod,

and water came forth abundantly, God's grace,

and the congregation and their beasts drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron,

because you've not believed me,

to treat me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel,

therefore you shall not bring this assembly

into the land which I have given them.

Those were the waters of Meribah,

or the waters of contention,

because the sons of Israel contended with the Lord,

and he proved himself holy among them.

So Moses scolded the people in anger, right?

And then he struck the rock twice

rather than speaking to it as the Lord had commanded him,

and so I know it's tough, right?

But Moses and Aaron then were indicted by the Lord

for their lack of faith,

for doing what they were not commanded to do,

and for their lack of reverence before the people.

And so neither were permitted to lead Israel

into the promised land.

Aaron dies soon after this,

and Moses too will die outside of the land,

and the task of bringing the Israelites

into the promised land will fall to a man named Joshua.

Joshua.

So that's the backdrop of Psalm 95.

So hold onto those two stories in your head.

Let's go back to Psalm 95 now,

and let's see how that story fits in

with verses one through six.

And trust me, we're gonna make a connection here at the end,

so hang with me.

So back to Psalm 95.

We're gonna start by taking an aerial view

of the structure of the Psalm.

We've been doing this almost every week.

Again, I don't expect your eyes to be this good,

but I'm one of those people

who likes to draw lines in my Bible

to sort of parse it out and to say,

here's the basic flow.

So there's three lines there that you can draw

between verses two and three,

verses five and six, and verses six and seven.

We just covered that bottom section.

That's the warning part of the Psalm.

And then we'll get to the rest here as we walk through it.

So you see there are two calls to worship.

Two calls to worship, and then two reasons why

we're being called to worship.

It's actually nicely laid out.

In verses one to six, you see the phrase, come let us.

Those are calls to worship.

And verses three and seven begin with the word for,

which is a transition word that basically says,

I'm about to explain what was just said.

Do this for, here comes the reason.

Does that make sense?

By the way, perhaps you've noticed this,

but every Sunday at Oak Hill, we do a call to worship

because we're following the pattern we see in scripture.

We think this is very important.

It's done by design.

When we come together here on Sundays,

we wanna begin by calling this congregation

to hear the word of the Lord,

and then to enter into singing praises to him.

And so we do that on purpose.

So don't miss that, and try not to walk in late

so that you miss the call to worship because it matters.

It's the pattern that God has given us in his word.

Okay, so look at verse one of Psalm 95,

the first call to worship.

Oh, come let us sing for joy to the Lord.

Let us shout joyfully.

Now I know some translations,

this is where that funny phrase is,

make a joyful noise comes in.

The NASB says shout joyfully,

but your translation may say make a joyful noise.

And everybody who can't sing like me, we love that.

I cannot sing a lick.

I mean, I'll belt it out anyway, sorry about that.

But make a joyful noise.

That's basically what he says here.

Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before or let us come into his presence

with what?

With thanksgiving.

Let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms.

Now that's the NAS says Psalms,

your translation may say songs of praise,

which is what we've already done this morning.

So a few things jump off the page here

in these first two verses.

First, four times you see the phrase let us, right?

It's a plural number.

And that is obviously intended to show us

that worship should be a consistent part

of the life that we live together.

It's something we do collectively and congregationally.

Worship should be collective and congregational.

Now that's not to disparage personal individual worship.

You can and should do that as well.

I hope you worship the Lord individually each and every day,

but there is something special,

special to God and special for us to gather together, right?

And as Peter puts it to be those living stones

that are built up as a spiritual house

that offers spiritual sacrifices to God.

How?

By our lifting our hearts, by lifting our minds

and lifting our voices to him because we're his people.

And so there's something special in that.

And that's what the Psalmist is talking about here,

collective and congregational.

Second thing you see here in these verses

is that the congregational worship being promoted is vocal,

is to be done out loud together.

Again, I know not everybody sings well.

We're still called to be vocal, to sing out loud.

I mean, first you see the word sing in verse one.

That means actual sound coming from your lips.

And then you see the word shout twice.

So I don't think you can make the argument

that this form of worship is anything but vocal.

If you're gonna make a joyful noise,

you gotta make a noise, right?

And listen, I know, I've known many, many people

in the church over the years.

If you're as old as me, you have too.

People who say, well, Jeff, you know,

I know I look quiet in stoic during the worship time,

but trust me, I'm worshiping in my heart.

I've heard that so many times.

And that's great if it's true.

I hope you are worshiping in your heart,

but sometimes I wonder if that's just a convenient excuse

not to sing out loud for whatever personal reason.

Again, maybe you don't sing well and you're embarrassed.

That's not a good reason.

It's just not a good reason.

Or more likely an excuse for not wanting to show emotion

before other people because culturally

we're uncomfortable with that.

Whatever that might be.

But take careful note of these verses.

The psalmist is strongly exhorting us here.

So any discomfort we have in singing,

any discomfort we have in singing out loud

and showing emotion, we need to work at that.

We need to overcome that for the sake of obedience.

And I mean that because it's a strong exhortation.

Third thing you see here is that our worship

should be joyful and exuberant.

Listen, look at the language.

Psalm 95 is not describing subdued praise or somber praise.

This is not just mumbling through a few songs

so we can get to the sermon.

As good as the sermon may be.

Right?

I mean, as much as I look forward to the sermon,

it's not about, hey, if we can just mumble

through these songs, let's just get on with it.

If that's your heart's attitude,

you're missing out on a great blessing.

Okay?

This is focused, enthusiastic worship

and it's peppered with thanksgiving.

Catch this, the expression translated here,

shout joyfully, comes from a Hebrew word

that describes the raising of a war cry

or the cry of triumph after a victory in battle.

It is anything but quiet and subdued.

And I think God is honored.

When his people come before him happy and enthusiastic,

I think the Lord is pleased with that.

Rather than looking down and seeing us,

you know, looking all mopey and mumbling through songs

where our heart really isn't in it,

we should be happy and enthusiastic.

Now listen, as a caveat to that,

there is definitely a place for lamenting in worship.

When it should be more somber,

when we are being more reflective,

but the dominant tone of our worship should be this,

joyful and exuberant,

because God's people have so much to shout about.

If we understand who God is and what he's done for us,

we have so much to shout about.

I wanna give you a quote from a guy named,

you know this guy, James Montgomery Boyce,

a great quote about this Psalm.

And trigger warning, this quote may bother some of you,

but I think it's true and I think it's helpful.

He says this,

singing expresses human thought emotionally

and Christianity is a feeling religion.

Somebody steady me here.

You mean we can feel things?

In conservative Bible teaching churches like ours,

that can be a trigger for some people.

The idea that we can be emotional

is uncomfortable for some of us.

It shouldn't be, but it is.

He goes on to say more particularly,

singing expresses joy and the Bible's religion

at its heart is joyful.

You cannot argue with that.

And just add on to that, yes,

I affirm that Christianity is a word-based faith.

Truth is absolutely essential to what we trust in.

In fact, truth is what grounds the words that we sing,

but that doesn't preclude us from expressing

our deep feelings for the Lord in worship,

because of who he is and because of what he's done for us.

All right, I'll let that one sit.

Fourth thing, last thing,

is that the worship being described here

is radically God-centered.

And this is a necessary correction

for so much of what passes for evangelical worship today.

It's radically God-centered.

So although we should be exuberant in our emotions,

this is so important, now listen,

we should be exuberant in our emotions,

the object of our singing and shouting

is not to feed our emotions.

That's where the church often falls into error.

The object of our worship is the Lord, not our emotions.

So the congregation of Israel is not being encouraged

to just get excited

through some type of self-energized enthusiasm.

The call here isn't to go into worship

and have a worship experience,

but that's often what the church teaches today.

The object of worship is the Lord himself.

It's the greatness and the goodness of God

that brings about the singing and the shouting

and the adoration.

So we gotta make sure we correct that.

If we're just coming, I wanna go on Sunday

and have this great worship experience.

No, no, no, you wanna go and meet with God.

And if God produces that emotion in you,

let it out because it's from him.

That make sense?

And so the psalmist says in verse two,

let us enter into his presence.

And of course, God is present everywhere, right?

But he is uniquely present whenever we gather together

to honor him.

So this is really important as we sing

because I think sometimes we don't fully understand

what we're doing in the singing part of a worship service.

It's important they're aware of the fact

that he is present,

that we have a conscious sense of his presence

when we sing praises.

Sometimes I see folks stumble into the service

here on Sundays and they're coming in so casually,

sometimes late, sometimes frazzled,

and I get it, life is hard.

But they're missing that sacred sense

that as I come in and as we sing,

we are coming into the presence of Almighty God.

Here's the thing, you have to understand,

when we sing lyrics,

we're not singing them into the ether.

They're not just, they just rattle around the room

and that's it.

We're not just singing for the sake of singing.

The words that flow from our hearts

and come through our lips

are like offerings before God's throne.

Think about that.

When you sing to the Lord,

you're bringing an offering to him.

So why would you mumble through it?

Right?

Why would you be distracted?

Why would you not sing with passion?

Because it's an offering.

And so what we do is we take those lyrics

and we believe them for ourselves

and we say, Lord, this is true about me

and so I'm lifting this up to you as we sing.

All of that is happening in this transaction

of what we call worship.

It's actually more beautiful

and larger than you can imagine.

But renew your minds on this

so that when you come in,

you're understanding all that is taking place

as we sing praises.

It's important they're aware,

that we're aware of that true and vital connection

that we have with God when we sing.

Okay, we're gonna move quickly through verses three through

five because they're pretty self-explanatory.

But what I want you to see here is three through five

are the first set of reasons why we should worship

in this way.

This is important.

I love that the psalmist does this.

He's grounding his command of worship

in theological truth.

Make sure you hear that.

He's not just saying sing for a motion sake.

He's saying sing because these things are true about God.

Look at verse three.

The first one is God's sovereignty.

For the Lord is a great God

and a great King above all gods.

That's about as straightforward as it gets, right?

He sovereignly rules over all things,

including the so-called gods and the nations,

which aren't really gods,

even though people worship them.

Do we see people worshiping their gods today?

Of course we do, even though they're not gods.

Regardless of what foolish people do,

there is only one true King.

And he sovereignly rules over all of creation.

And that's the truth you see in verses four and five.

Here's a second reason to worship.

In whose hand are the depths of the earth,

the peaks or the heights of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for it was he who made it

and his hands formed the dry land.

Again, very straightforward, right?

Yahweh's the creator of everything,

from the lowest point to the highest point.

From Death Valley to Mount Everest,

Yahweh rules over all of it.

And from the surface of the water to the deepest trench,

which human beings have not even gotten

to the deepest trenches of the ocean.

God is present there too.

He created it all.

It all belongs to him.

So the point of verses three through five

is to raise the question, who is like Yahweh?

And the answer is, there is none.

There is none.

Who's able to form the land and the seas

and the vastness of the universe out of nothing?

There's nothing, and suddenly there's a universe

that human beings can't even fathom

simply by speaking it into existence.

Who is like Yahweh?

That's the point here.

Only our God.

Only he is that way.

And that's the reason that we worship, the psalmist says.

How can you walk in and go,

I'm in the presence of this being who made all these things

and mumble through songs?

How do you do that?

Unless you're just not renewing your mind,

you're not having that awareness of what's going on.

Okay, beat that dead horse, right?

Okay, verse six.

A second call to worship.

He comes back to it.

Come, let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker.

Now, hear the tone of the worship changes, doesn't it?

We went from exuberant, joyful singing,

probably in a standing posture,

maybe even with hands raised,

to here bowing down and kneeling before God.

Last one, with great humility and reverence.

Humility and reverence.

And here's a truth that most human beings don't understand,

but as Christians, we should understand this.

It is our duty and obligation as created beings

to bow before our maker.

It's a duty, it's an obligation.

It's something you can lay on every single person

that you meet.

You have a duty and an obligation

because you are a contingent being.

You didn't create your existence.

You can't sustain your existence.

You have a duty and an obligation to worship your maker.

Know that.

Without him, we don't exist.

Without him, we don't get another breath.

And so he's owed the worship and praise

described in this psalm.

And then comes what I think is the best news

of the whole psalm.

Verse seven is another reason why we must worship.

For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture

and the sheep of his hand.

So catch the progression here on this.

First we read that God is great,

then that he's a king, then that he's the creator,

then that he's the maker of all human beings,

but now in verse seven, look how personal it gets.

He's our God.

He's not just the God, that's true, but he is our God.

And then you have this metaphor of the good shepherd, right?

Which so beautifully draws the picture for us.

This God who is so transcendent and so powerful

that he can make things ex nihilo from nothing,

bring the universe into being.

And yet he's also a gentle shepherd who knows your name,

knows his sheep, who leads us out into good pasture

and cares for each of us in a personal way.

How is that possible that a God can be that transcendent

and that close?

Who is like Yahweh?

None.

And of course, Jesus claims this very title for himself,

doesn't he?

In John chapter 10, Jesus claims it.

John 10 · chapter mention

I am the good shepherd, he says.

And I know my own and my own know me.

Even as the father knows me and I know the father,

and I lay down my life for the sheep.

So look at that list on the screen.

Step back now, look at these six verses from above.

It's important to recognize this is the type of worship

that God desires.

And it's good for us to do some analysis.

How am I doing?

How am I doing in terms of obeying this?

Joyfully, exuberantly, with thanksgiving,

sung to our creator and king, and then second,

humbly and reverently before our good shepherd.

Both are required of us, amen?

All right, now how do we put all this together?

Give me some time now to make some connections here

and to lay out some practical applications for us.

Here's the, in its simplest terms,

here's the connection between these two sections.

Section on worship and the warning.

Psalm 95 presents two options to us.

Either be a people who worships the Lord

with joy and reverence, or be a people who grumble

and harden their hearts against him.

I mean, just in the simplest, most stark terms,

this is the option that's being given to us.

We dare not fail to worship God properly

because failure to worship is one of the principal causes

of a hardened heart.

If we're not worshiping properly,

it's gonna lead to us having a hardened heart.

That's the warning here.

And we should take this seriously.

By the way, notice how the Psalm ends.

Where's the good news, man?

Where's the happy ending?

There is none.

It's literally designed to leave you sober and warned.

Make sure you see that.

So what do the two incidents that Massa and Meribah tell us?

Well, there's an interesting little detail that helps us.

In the book of Deuteronomy, if you know Deuteronomy,

Moses, he restates God's law to a new generation

of Israelites before they go into the Promised Land.

And in chapter eight of Deuteronomy,

he looks back at these wilderness wanderings

and he gives sort of a commentary on the purposes

that God had in bringing his people through these 40 years.

I mean, what was God doing?

Why put them through that?

Have you ever wondered that?

You read the Exodus, you're like,

why don't you zip up to the Promised Land?

I mean, it's a straight shot,

wouldn't it have taken you 40 years, right?

Why all that?

Right?

Why all that?

Right?

It's a good question.

Here's what he says.

The key in this, and I'm gonna put this one on the screen.

The key is God wanted to put his people

into a situation of adversity.

He sovereignly desired that.

It says, all the commandments, this is Moses now,

speaking to Israel, all the commandments

that I'm commanding you today, you shall be careful to do,

that you may live and multiply and go in and possess

the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers.

Now, here comes his lesson from history.

You should remember all the ways which the Lord your God

has led you in the wilderness these 40 years

that he might, what, humble you.

Were they humbled?

Or did they grow more entitled,

more angry and more grumbly?

Then he goes on testing you to know what was in your heart,

whether you would keep his commandments or not.

By the way, what's the best way to test either people

or things is to put them under pressure.

In engineering, they call it a stress test, right?

You put them under pressure.

You put them into adversity because adversity brings out

the true nature and character of a person.

In fact, you hear, for you guys,

who love sports, you hear this from championship athletes

and coaches all the time, right?

They'll get to the microphone and they'll go,

well, you know, the beginning of the season,

you know, we had some injuries and we lost some tough games,

but you know what, that adversity made us stronger.

We went through that period of adversity and boy,

it brought out the best in us.

Hear that all the time.

But for the Israelites, the opposite was true.

They got put into adversity and it brought out

the worst in them.

What was revealed was unbelief and disobedience.

They interpreted every crisis that came their way

as an occasion for their death

rather than for their deliverance.

Every one of them, oh, we're gonna die out here.

They didn't like or appreciate the way God was leading them

and definitely not through Moses and Aaron.

They didn't like any of it.

Now you might be thinking, and this struck me as well,

well, it was pretty, I mean, it's pretty rough

what they went through, right?

The fact that God put them through that type

of extreme testing, maybe that's not so fair.

I mean, that might be your first gut reaction,

but then Moses goes on to say,

he humbled you and let you be hungry.

He let you be hungry, but fed you with manna,

which you did not know, nor did your fathers know,

that he might make you understand.

That man does not live by bread alone,

but man lives by everything that proceeds

out of the mouth of the Lord.

So in spite of their grumbling and disobedience,

the Lord still never failed to provide for them.

God didn't abandon them in the wilderness and say,

well, good luck to you guys.

You're gonna die of hunger and thirst,

but them's the breaks.

No, he supernaturally led them,

and he graciously gave them everything they needed

to survive.

And here's the thing, here's what God knew

about these people.

They were not spiritually ready to just waltz

into the promised land and take it over.

They weren't mature enough.

Listen, he could have given them that easy way.

You know, he could have sent a plague into Canaan,

wiped out the Canaanites, and then said to the Israelites,

well, just make a beeline for the border.

You'll be up there in a year, and just take it over,

just move in.

And he did that.

He did that.

He did that.

He did that, and just take it over, just move in.

But would that have been good for them?

Absolutely not.

They weren't ready.

Because if that had happened,

they wouldn't have had to trust in God at all.

And that would have led to even more sin once they arrived

and more spiritual failure and more falling away.

So those 40 years, God knew,

were necessary for their testing.

God needed those 40 years to show them something

about themselves, to see their own hearts.

And because they refused to trust God

in the midst of the adversity, he said,

I swear in my wrath that you will not find my rest.

It's an irrevocable, I swear, God says.

It's irrevocable.

You will not enter my rest.

So here's a lesson for us,

and it's right there in the text.

Today, do not harden your hearts.

End of verse seven, beginning of verse eight.

Today, do not harden your hearts.

And now, listen, if you've been thinking this whole time,

well, this is just Old Testament stuff.

Doesn't apply to us.

Let me set you straight.

First of all, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10

that this entire story

about the Israelites' wilderness wanderings

was given to us so that we might learn from it.

1 Corinthians 10, six, Paul says,

these things happened as an example for us,

New Testament Christians.

So we can't just write this off as Old Covenant.

It was written for us.

Second, you should know that the author of Hebrews

cites the entire warning section of Psalm 95

in his first century letter, the entire thing.

In fact, scholars consider Hebrews use of Psalm 95

as the single most thorough citing

of any Old Testament passage in the New Testament.

Three times in two chapters,

the author of Hebrews comes back to this story.

It's important for us.

It's important for the church.

And it was the perfect warning for that day.

If you know the backstory of the book of Hebrews,

you know what was going on, right?

The author is writing to this group of,

get this now, Jewish Christians,

Jewish followers of Jesus, right?

That's who he's writing to.

And they're in the midst of really, really tough things.

They are in the midst of pressure and adversity.

Their fellow Jews who had refused to trust in Christ

were now persecuting them.

And some were falling away.

Many were in danger.

And a lot of them were thinking to themselves,

you know what, maybe we should just go back to Judaism.

It's easier.

You know, I don't need this.

I'm trying to follow Christ,

but my family, my friends, my synagogue,

they're all giving me a hard time.

I fear for my life.

Maybe I'll just go back to Judaism.

That's where it's safer.

Does that sound familiar?

Israelites said, maybe we just go back to Egypt.

I know it means slavery, but you know,

there's comfort there.

There's security there.

So that's why the author of Hebrews

uses this story so profoundly.

Listen again.

This is Hebrews four, verses one and two.

It says this, therefore let us fear,

lest while a promise remains of entering his rest,

that any one of you should seem to have come short of it.

For indeed we have good news preached to us

just as they, the Israelites also,

but the word they heard did not profit them, the Israelites.

Why?

Because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

This is the lesson.

So catch what Hebrews is saying here.

The Israelites heard the news about God's salvation,

but they didn't unite that word with faith, right?

They didn't trust Yahweh in the wilderness.

And they fell.

They were unable to enter the rest in the promised land.

So you're like, okay, that's great.

What does that mean for New Testament believers?

Notice how Hebrews says that that promise

of entering God's rest still remains,

meaning it's future, right?

In the New Testament, it's future.

What does that mean?

It means we're no longer talking about coming into Canaan.

That's long since past.

The author of Hebrews is applying this

to a whole different thing.

It's not about coming into the promised land

from a New Testament perspective.

God's rest is now eternal salvation in Christ.

Don't come short of eternal salvation in Christ.

So you've heard the good news of the gospel, he says.

Great.

Now make sure you unite it with saving faith,

believe God's promises, trust in Christ alone,

and you will not fall short of God's rest.

That's what he's saying to the Christian church

in the first century.

Friends, let me say this again.

This story is told over and over in the Bible for a reason.

It is a true warning.

And I've seen this, man, you talk to Adam

or any of the other elders, we've seen this

too many times in the church.

This is the warning, friends, pay close attention.

It is possible for someone to be in proximity

to the people of God and associated

with a worshiping community and still harden

his heart against God when the trust

and his heart against God, when the trials

of life come against him.

And to fall away and to not enter God's rest.

That's the warning here.

And even though the Lord never leaves that man,

even though the Lord might be guiding him

and actively meeting his needs, still that man

makes accusations against God's chosen leaders,

and he grumbles against God and he says,

I don't deserve this hardship, so I'm going back to Egypt.

And he doesn't enter God's rest.

That man decides that Egypt looks better

than his current circumstances, so he turns his back

on the church and he goes back to the things of the world.

We've seen it.

People you thought were believers, people you thought

were part of this worshiping community say,

no, I won't accept God's ways.

I won't walk through this hardship

with my brothers and sisters.

I won't walk through it with God,

I'm going back to the world.

We've seen it.

That's how you end up coming short of God's rest,

because the truth about a faithless heart

gets revealed in time and especially through adversity.

Be warned, do not harden your heart, friends.

Listen to how fierce Spurgeon was about this.

You ready for this?

He said, is God to wait as a lackey upon you?

You deserve his wrath.

Will you slight his love?

He speaks in amazing tenderness.

Will you exhibit astounding hardness?

Don't harden your hearts today.

And that's the last thing I wanna talk about

and then we'll be done.

The emphasis in Hebrews three and four

is the use of that word today.

That word today is chock full of meaning.

Adam read a portion of this in our call to worship.

Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you

an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away

from the living God, but encourage one another.

We need each other, right?

Encourage one another day after day

as long as it is called today,

so that none of you will be hardened

by the deceitfulness of sin.

That use of the word today is so important.

It means our joyful and reverent worship

has to be steady and consistent

because every day is today.

Every day is today.

Every day we have to take care

to guard our hearts from unbelief.

Every day we have to persist in the things

that are fundamental to our walk with Christ.

Worshipping, trusting, obeying,

so that we're not hardened by adversity

and circumstances in life

and we're not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

The warning to the Hebrews was this,

you cannot rest on the past because every day is today.

So we wake up each and every day

and we say, I will persist in belief.

I will persist in worshiping.

I will persist in obedience.

Will we do it perfectly?

Absolutely not.

Is there grace?

Absolutely.

But we continue to walk with God each and every day

because every day is today.

Guard your hearts, friends.

Proper worship leads us to having a listening ear

and a soft, surrendered heart to the Lord.

Soft hearts are worshiping hearts.

Know that.

Soft hearts submit to God's ways.

Soft hearts submit to his rightful lordship

even when adversity comes our way.

Why?

Because the soft heart knows and trusts

that our God is our good shepherd

and that he cares for us.

Let's bow our heads.

Father, we thank you for this warning.

As hard as it may be to hear, Lord,

we thank you for this warning

because we all need to be shaken out of any lethargy

that we have, any sense of casualness in your presence.

Lord, any sense of unbelief, any sin

that we are now hardened in.

Lord, shake us from this so that nobody in this room today

come short of your rest.

And God, we thank you for your instructions about worship.

It's so good, Lord, that we don't have to figure this out

down here on our own, but you have told us

exactly what you want us to do.

Come, let us sing with joy.

Come, let us be humble and reverent before you.

Oh, Lord, so many times,

we've been told, oh, Lord, so many practical things

we can learn from this passage.

I pray now for myself, for my brothers and sisters,

that we just won't be hearers of this

because we all have a tendency to do that,

to hear a sermon and go home and see no change in our lives.

Today, right now, as we begin to sing,

may we be doers of your word.

Give us the strength to do that, Lord.

We know that we can do nothing apart from you,

Lord, cause us to be great worshipers with a passion for you.

For your glory, for our good, we pray, amen.