SUNDAY - NOVEMBER 30, 2025 "Oh, Come Let Us Adore Him"

Welcome to DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

Our Sunday morning services are weekly at 9 and 10 30 a.m.

You're listening to an audio recast of this past week's service.

We hope you enjoy.

God bless.

As the chorus of a song called O Come All You Faithful, I know you are probably familiar with that.

We sing it at Christmas time.

It's one of my one of my favorite uh Christmas carols that we sing.

The interesting story behind this Christmas carol is it's really hard to figure out and pinpoint who exactly wrote it.

It's written down and and pieces and bits of it are all throughout places, but but really in 1751 was the first time anybody found it written, and it was written by a guy named John F.

Wade.

It was the first time he wrote it.

It was written down in a song, uh, and it was written in Latin.

Later in 1841, a guy named Frederick Oak Frederick Oakley translated it into English, and it was sing and sung, and it's it's been added on to.

If you open a hymnal sometimes, people say, What are hymnals?

Um it's a book with songs in it.

If you open a hymnal sometime and see and find that there are there are lots of verses to that, though that has been added on to.

Some verses have been added from the original and things like that.

But today, I as and as we start this Advent season, I just, as I was preparing and thinking through this, um I kept coming to this course.

Oh come, let us adore him.

And and as I was doing research on the chorus, really many believe that Psalm 95, the sixth verse, really kind of points us, and it's where they got the the meat for this course.

It says this in Psalm 95, verse 6, Oh, come, let us worship and bow down.

Psalms 95:6

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

So while this is a Christmas carol, a carol or a song that we sing at Christmas time, really, this song can translate into every day.

It's really an all-year song.

Oh, come, let us worship the King.

Let us bow down before Him.

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

And so it's a song that we can sing.

And as we explore this psalm today, what we're gonna see is the psalmist, he called the congregation to praise God and warned them.

He warned them of what could happen when they don't.

When they don't stop and praise God, what happens?

And he's gonna give them this stark warning at the end of this psalm.

And so the challenge for us today is to stop and praise God.

Because we need to recognize when we don't, when we don't stop and and praise God and praise him for what he has done in our lives, when we don't come and adore him, we can quickly forget his worthiness of praise.

Now it doesn't mean that he stopped being worthy.

It just means we can forget about it and we don't do it.

And we can get this attitude of God, what have you done for me lately?

Which is not a great attitude to have.

So this morning we're going to be challenged to, oh, come, let us adore him.

So the question that we want to answer today is how did this psalmist, how did he call them to praise?

What did he do?

How did he call them to do that?

Now, before we read, we need to recognize a thing about the psalms.

We we have to read them a little bit differently because they are songs or poems that were written, and so it's it's it's poetic.

And so we we see it in this psalm, it's it's very similar to the songs we sing.

There are verses or stanzas.

There's a first stanza, there's a second stanza, and then there's what I call a bridge.

Now, I don't write songs, so I don't know if it's actually a bridge, but hey, it's close enough for me.

So so he's gonna, so so he does that, so we need to notice that and realize that as we read from Psalm 95.

So I invite you this morning, if you are able, to stand with us as we read this great psalm.

Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord.

Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.

Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.

For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.

In his hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are his also, the sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

O 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.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Messiah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation and said, They are a people who go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.

Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

Let's pray together.

God, you are so good, and we thank you for today.

Father, we do want to draw around your throne and come and adore you.

Change our lives today through your word.

Jesus, it's in your wonderful name that we pray.

Amen.

So again, how did the psalmist call them to praise?

Well, well, let's start and look at each verse or each stanza.

The first stanza really starts in verses one through five, and it starts very similar to anything.

Now, while I told you, I'm I know my strengths and weaknesses, that I'm not gonna stand up and lead you.

Now, here's the thing.

At Troy Baptist Church, the little church that I grew up in, I did not know my strengths and weaknesses.

And also, high attendance Sunday was 50 people.

Okay?

So when you have 50 people to draw from, sometimes you get the bottom of the barrel.

So there were some Sundays that I stood and chose songs and led the music at Troy Baptist Church.

And that first song, always when you're when you're putting together a thing, and I remember in the bulletin at Troy Baptist Church, not the worship guide, in the bulletin at Troy Baptist Church, that first song was always called The Call to Worship.

And it was usually a song, it was more up-tempo, maybe a little bit louder.

We didn't clap hands at Troy, but you might find some people patting their foot in it.

Usually it would be a song that we stand up all through the words, through the praise time at the Soda Hills, and I like it.

I'm not complaining, but we didn't always at Troy Baptist Church.

But at the call to worship, that first song, guess what you did?

You stood up because it was a call to worship.

It was a time in the service where you wanted to stop and let the world go away and draw your attention toward the throne.

Sometimes it was it was it was more upbeat, but the reason for that is because people were still asleep.

Y'all don't do that, but people were still asleep, so you had to make them stand up and move a little bit to wake them up, to draw to the throne.

It was a call to worship.

Well, he's doing the same thing at the beginning of in the first couple of verses in this in this first stanza here.

Hear what he says in his call to worship.

He says, Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord.

Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.

Let us make a joyful noise to him with the songs of praise.

Well, there's something, some things I want us to see in this call to worship.

The first one is this.

I want us to see who we're worshiping.

He says, Oh, come, let us worship the Lord.

Let us worship Yahweh.

Let us worship the God of all creation.

Come, let us worship him.

Because hear me.

True worship, when we are going to truly worship, is worship that is centered and focused upon God.

Now listen, I know you're gonna say, but Grant, in O come when we sing, oh come, let us adore him.

We sing, oh come, let us adore Christ the King.

Yeah, I do.

We do.

But I can still say that true worship is worship that is focused on God.

Whether it's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, one of one part of the Trinity or all aspects of the Trinity, true worship comes and adores Him.

So he is calling the people not to worship their achievements, not to worship what they have done, not to worship anything, but come and to worship the Lord.

Let us sing to the Lord.

And then he says this a couple of times.

Let us make a joyful noise.

He's gonna say it again in verse 2, to make a joyful noise.

Now listen, people like me are gonna take that verse and say, you don't have to sing well, you just gotta make a joyful noise.

Because and there are places in Scripture where he calls us to do that, but but that's not really the intention of what's happening here.

When he says, let us make a joyful noise, more of what he is talking about is a shout of victory.

When he is saying make a joyful noise, the word that he is using here is the noise that people would make when the king returned from a conquest and the armies had won, or the armies had defeated an enemy, and they are returning to the city, and the people are they are parading through the city, and the people are shouting and they are exclaiming and they are making a joyful noise.

It is a shout of victory.

And he says, Oh, come, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

Yes, it is a victory shout because God provides our salvation.

Listen, we can't.

I can't save myself, you can't save yourself.

We can't be good enough, we can't do the things that we need to do because we are sinful in our flesh.

But God, God in his righteousness, in his wisdom, he provided a salvation for us.

He is providing a salvation for Israel here.

But listen, for us today, God provides salvation for us.

He sent Jesus Christ on that Christmas day.

Jesus was born and he was born for one purpose.

He was born to die.

Now, through along the way, he taught us and he led us and he did all of those things.

But don't be mistaken, Jesus was born to die.

He was born to come and live a perfect life and on the cross take the penalty, take the wrath of God that I deserve, that you deserve upon him himself.

And that should make us sing victory.

My favorite old hymn is Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever.

Victory in Jesus, we should shout a victory praise, not because I have won anything, but because our King has provided.

So make a joyful noise.

What a call to praise.

Come.

Let us sing to the Lord.

Let us shout to God in victory.

But then he gives us reasons for worship.

Verse 3 through 5, he says, For the Lord is a great God.

He is a great God.

See?

Well, and then he goes on, and even the second thing he says, and a great king above all.

And some translations say kings there, but the ESV says this, above all gods.

He is a great king above all gods.

Listen, because we we need to understand this.

All other gods are false gods.

They are fake gods.

Now listen, let me let me see if I can explain it.

Like if you know me and know growing up and not growing up, I grew up, I'll tell you, I grew up a Mississippi State fan.

But then when I was at Southern Ms.

I interned at the BSU at Southern Miss and kind of was converted to become a golden eagle.

Some of you like to pick on me and say golden buzzards.

But it kind of became a golden eagle.

But then something happened in my life when I was in Crystal Springs.

It wasn't too hard to be a golden eagle fan.

We're only an hour and a half away, so I could still slip off to a game and slip off and do things.

And at the time, part of the reason I became a fan is because I was leading a Bible study with the baseball team.

And it's easy to cheer for people that you know.

And so I would go to baseball games and I knew the guys.

I sat at a table with them earlier that week and had a meal.

Like I knew them.

So it was really easy to become a fan.

But as we have moved up to the north part of state, it's either red and blue or maroon and white.

It's not much black and gold.

This year, even at the beginning of the year, somebody came and said, Grant, are you excited about football this year?

I was like, sure.

Excited about your Eagles?

It's like, yeah.

He's like, I can't believe what they did with their coach.

What did they do with their coach?

I had no clue, no idea.

Some of you who are sports fans know that they went and got a coach from uh from Marshall who was in their conference and he came to the Soda Hills and brought half the Marshall team with him.

We should have been green and white this year.

I had no idea.

Somebody asked me about my brother just at Thanksgiving the other day.

He said, Grant, what happened to Southern Miss this year?

I said, What are you talking about?

He said, Well, y'all were doing great.

You were like seven and three or something like that, and then you've lost like the last three games.

I said, I have no idea.

I haven't watched a single game.

So while I may say I'm a Southern Miss fan, I'm really not.

Nothing against them.

Just don't watch.

I don't know what's going on.

I'm not keeping up.

Kind of fake.

Listen, all other gods are made up by mankind to try to explain things.

And they are not real.

But our God.

He is a great God.

And he is the king of all gods.

Because he is the only real God.

What is our reason for worshiping?

It's because he is the only real God.

In his hands are the depths of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for he made it.

And his hands formed the dry ground.

Why should we worship God?

Because he is our Maker.

He formed not only the earth, from the heights of the mountains to the depths of the seas, he formed it.

And you and I, He formed us.

While we were still in our mother's womb, He knew us.

He formed us.

He made us.

Why should we worship God?

His reasoning is because He is the only true God who made us.

So we have a call to worship in the first stanza.

He gives us reasons to worship in the second stanza.

Then in the first stanza.

Then we come to the second stanza, verses six and seven.

It's a short one.

You'll like it.

Verse six, we've already talked about it.

How it is really the what, oh come, let us adore him was possibly based off of.

Verse six, he says, Oh, come, let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

Daniel Estes, the author of one of the commentaries that I read, he pointed out three words in this.

Three words that intentionally uh bring us to the mind of reverence.

He says, Oh, come, let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

The three words that we see here is worship, is bow down and kneel.

All of these words would have been words to use as people understood kings.

All of these things that you do to come show fealty and subservience to the king.

When you enter into the king's presence, you bow down, you kneel, and you worship, and you come as you come into his presence.

As we come into the presence of God, what he is saying is come, showing the honor that he is due.

Because he is the true God.

Oh, come.

Let us worship, let us bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.

And then He gives us the reason for worship in verse 7.

For He is our God.

We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.

To me, the biggest word in this is the smallest.

Come, for He is our God.

See, Israel could come and worship because God, the one true God, was their God.

He said, God promised them, I will be your God, and you will be my people.

You will be the sheep of my pasture.

Israel could say, our God, as they look to heaven, as they look to the one true King.

And today, the same is true for us as believers.

He is our God.

He is our Savior.

We are the sheep of his pasture.

John tells us using that same language in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

He talks about being the sheep, my sheep.

He says, Know my voice.

They follow after me.

He says, I am the good shepherd.

They know his voice.

We can worship God because He is not just a great God.

He is not just the great God.

He is my great God.

And as a believer, we can say, as believers, we can say, He is our great God.

Oh, come.

Let us adore Him.

So we see in this, we see stanza one with a call to worship and reasons to worship.

We see stanza two with a call to worship and a reason to worship.

And then to we come to again what I call the bridge.

I don't know anything about songwriting, so I'm just going to call it that.

Really, the bridge here is a warning.

It's a warning.

Listen to what he says at the end of verse 7 through verse 11.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Messiah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to proof, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation and said, They are a people who go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.

Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

Man, it takes a sharp turn, doesn't he?

To go from praising God into now this harsh warning.

But he knows why.

There's really two warnings in this.

The first warning, we we really see the background of it in Exodus chapter 17.

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

In Exodus chapter 17, we we find this in verses 1 through 7.

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

He writes this all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord, and kept at Rephedim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink.

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

Why do you test the Lord?

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried to the Lord, What shall I do with this people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

And the Lord said to Moses, Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.

Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and people will drink.

Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he can't call the name of the place Messiah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, because they tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

Hear that last question?

Is the Lord among us or not?

Understand where they are here in the story.

Sometimes as we read, we we we we lose track of time.

If you turn back in Exodus, just a little bit, if you turn back in Exodus 14, they cross the Red Sea.

In Exodus 14, they cross the Red Sea.

We know from evidence from reading that from the time that they cross the Red Sea to the time that they show up at Mount Sinai, it's about three months.

Give or take a little bit.

About three months.

They are in between that time.

They are less than three months from crossing the Red Sea, from the ten plagues, from the Passover angel.

They are less than three months away.

And in within that three months, see what happens.

In chapter 16, they are, or in chapter 15, they're thirsty.

The place that they're camped, while there's water, it's bitter.

They can't drink it.

So guess what they did?

They complained to God.

And you know what he did?

He provided clean water for them.

In chapter 16, they get hungry and they complain again, talking about going back to Egypt.

Do you know what God did?

He provided food.

Now, as we come to chapter 17.

New place, same story.

They come and there's no water.

Interesting word used.

They quarrel with Moses.

Only three months, less than three months.

All the spectacular things that God had done in Egypt.

Days, maybe even weeks, from God miraculously providing water and food.

And yet they harden their hearts when they go through something harsh.

The next warning that we see here, while the place is not mentioned, is really making reference to Numbers.

In Numbers chapter 13, what we see is Israel, they stand on the precipice of the promised land.

Numbers 13 · chapter mention

It is time for them to enter into the promised land.

Time for them to go in.

God has led them out of Egypt.

He's taken them to Sinai.

He has given them the Ten Commandments so they could be His people and He could be their God.

He has entered into this covenant relationship with them.

He has brought them to the borders of the land which they are going to go, which he has promised to give them.

And they stand on this land and they send 12 spies in just to scope it out, just to check it out and see how awesome it's going to be.

And the 12 spies, they come back, and two of them say, Hey, let's go.

Let's hit it.

But 10.

10 of the spies.

Talked about how hard it's going to be.

That there were giants in the land.

There was no way that they could overcome the people there.

In chapter 14, they rebel against God.

Listen to what, even to the point, understand that even to the point, in verse 4 they say, let us, or in 3 and 4, they were saying let us get rid of Moses and choose another leader who will take us back to Egypt.

And in verse 11 and 12, God says this.

And the Lord said to Moses, How long will this people despise me?

And how long will they not believe in me?

In spite of all the signs that I have done among them, I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.

God was fed up.

To which Moses at that point intercedes for the people.

And God relents.

But there's still consequences to their rebellion.

That generation who rebelled, who hardened their hearts, did not enter into the promised land.

They did not enter into the rest of God.

To the point that in Psalms, God says, I loathed that generation.

But while they suffered the consequences, let's also understand where they are as they read Psalm 95, where Israel is as they read Psalm 95.

They are in the promised land.

And while they suffered the consequences for their rebellion and their hardness of heart, God still provided.

Eating every day, having water to drink, enemies attacked and were destroyed.

Day after day, week after week, year after year.

Even to the point that the writer of Hebrews points back and looks at this time.

And what he tells to the writer of Hebrews tells the church, really building off this lesson is this it's not that they didn't enter into the promised land.

Here's the problem with Israel they did not enter and inherit and receive all the blessing that they could have if they would have simply obeyed.

There would have been no wilderness wandering.

They would have Just entered into the promised land.

For the church, hear me.

God has blessings in store.

And he wants to move.

And he's going to move.

But are we going to receive all the blessing by not hardening our heart and by focusing on him?

The warning is this.

Oh, come.

Let us adore him.

Because he is our God.

We are his people.

He has saved us.

And he wants to pour out blessings upon us.

Do not harden your heart.

Do not become like the Israelites in the wilderness.

And try to turn back.

And really try to ask the question, God, what have you done for me lately?

Because see, when we don't praise the God, when it praise God, when it is not a daily occurrence in our life where we come and worship Him and adore Him, what can quickly happen is we become like them.

And we forget what God has done.

May we never.

May we never do that.

Oh, may we daily come and adore Him.

We're about to enter into a time of invitation.

If you have never trusted God as your Savior, He is the rock of your salvation.

You may say, Grant, He doesn't want to save me.

You don't know what I've done.

Oh, but He does.

He loves us so much that He sent His Son to live a perfect life and die on the cross in your place.

You just need to trust in Him.

If you've never done that, during this time of invitation, when we stand and sing, we invite you to come.

To come and adore Him who saves you from the punishment of your sin and brings you into a relationship with the one true God.

Or if you have, if you've trusted Him, my challenge to you is this during this invitation, draw a line in the sand and say, Oh, I am going to come and adore Him.

May I not forget, God, what you have done for me.

Listen, if all God has done is saved you, that would be worthy of every bit of praise you have to do and you have to offer.

But He has given us so much more.

Oh, come, let us adore Him.

If you are in that place, if you're in that place of God, what have you done for me lately?

This invitation is an offering to you to repent, to come before His throne and say, God, I am wrong.

You can do that from your seat.

We invite you to come.

Maybe you need to kneel at these steps and pray.

Oh, come.

Let us adore Him.

If you're looking for a church home, we would love to have you here at DeSoda Heels.

Understand what the church is for.

God has given us the church so together we can come and adore Him.

Didn't create us to be just me and Jesus.

He created us to be part of something bigger.

That's what the church is for.

We would love to have you here at DeSoda Hills.

I'm going to pray for us.

We're going to stand and sing.

As we sing, we invite you to come and make whatever decision God is leading you to.

Let's pray together.

God, we love you.

We thank you for this opportunity that we have now to respond to your word.

Oh God.

Let us come and bow down, kneel before our Maker.

And adore you.

God, give us the faith that we need to make the decisions you are calling us to.

Jesus is in your name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's sermon.

If you have any questions for our pastor, feel free to reach out at DeSotoHills.com.