How to Worship Psalm 95 October 13, 2013 Psalms 95 through 100 are all about worship. Whether it is the worship by Israel, or by the nations, or by creation itself, they re all about worship. A lot of the Psalms we ve been talking about have been about US our problems, our suffering, our joys but these are all focused on GOD who He is and what He has done and how WE should respond to Him. You can see that in verse 3. The Psalm begins, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. And vs. 3 gives us the reason: For [that is, BECAUSE] the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. If we truly understand who God is and who we are, we don t worship Him because all is well in our lives. We worship Him because He is GOD! That doesn t me that we are FORCED in some way to worship Him. It s not as though He coerces us to worship Him. Remember the story in Daniel 3 of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Or as one kid put it, Shadrach, Meshach, and To-Bed-We-Go! The commander said, When you hear the music, you MUST bow down and worship the image of gold that Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does NOT fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing fire! There s some incentive! I wonder how attendance would be next week if I had that kind of authority!! Those people worshiped the image (at least most of them) but not particularly because they WANTED to but because they were afraid NOT to! WE worship the living God at least we should not because we feel COERCED to, but because it s simply the NATURAL thing to do when we realize WHO He is! Now, it s true, as Paul says in Philippians 2, that a day is coming when, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father But even there they will willingly give that confession because they will have realized (too late) who Jesus really is. 1
So, Psalm 95 is all about WORSHIP. So it will be a response of FEAR rather than of FAITH but it won t be forced or coerced. People will simply confess the truth of what they d denied all their lives. It certainly answers the WHY question: WHY do we worship God? We worship Him because He s the great God, the great King above all gods. That is, we worship Him for WHO He is: He s GOD. But we also worship Him because He is the Rock of our salvation, our deliverance. That is, we worship Him for WHAT He has done: He s DELIVERED us from sin and death. But this morning, I want to talk about HOW we worship God. And as I said a few months ago when we talked about worship this has very little to do with our STYLE of worship. Whether we re contemporary or traditional or a blending of the two. Whether we re more or less off-the-cuff or we follow a particular liturgy. Our two churches in Green Bay and Appleton are a great illustration of that. If you ve worshipped at Jacob s Well in Green Bay, you ll know that they have guitars and drums and keyboard and sing their worship songs in the block of songs that is so common within contemporary worship. And it attracts a lot of young people. From the beginning, Jacob s Well had worshipers coming up from Appleton. And from the beginning they planned to released those folks to start their own church as soon as there were enough and Jacob s Well was stable enough to let them go. What s interesting to me is that Emmaus Road, the new Appleton church, even though it has the same cross-section of ages as Jacob s Well has chosen to have a very formal, very liturgical service! Worship true worship is not about STYLE but about the SUBSTANCE of what we re doing. So how do we worship according to Psalm 95? I. BE JOYFUL before God When we get the WHAT and the HOW right, we can truly worship in virtually any STYLE or CULTURE. 2
95:1 2, Come, let us SING FOR JOY to the Lord; let us SHOUT ALOUD to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with THANKSGIVING and extol Him with MUSIC and SONG. We don t approach God carelessly or fearfully. There will certainly come a time (vs. 6ff) for us to humble ourselves, but we are to approach God s presence enthusiastically, joyfully, with singing! There will be times for silence and reflection worship is not all about noise And there will be time as we will see in vs. 8 11 to LISTEN. But PUBLIC WORSHIP (notice the us of vs. 1 private worship is never a substitute for coming together with God s people) public worship begins with JOY and MUSIC! We can be joyful, as I mentioned earlier, because of WHO God is (vs. 3 5). He s the great God, the great King above all gods. Our lessor gods and we all have them collapse under His Lordship. Worship (and here I m thinking of our English word) comes from the Old English word, worthship. That is, what we give WORTH to, we worship. What we VALUE, we worship. And, if we re not careful, we will begin to put those things that we value in the place reserved for God. He is to be VALUED He is to be given WORTH He is to be WORSHIPED above everything and everyone else. Our text tells us that holds the depths of the earth in His hand, that the mountain peaks belong to him, that the sea belongs to Him because He made it. Interestingly, people in the Ancient Near East had gods that they thought controlled all those places. The DEPTHS were the home of MOLECH, the MOUNTAINS belonged to BAAL, and TIAMAT owned the seas. But, in Psalm 95, all these places belong to GOD, not just because He s bigger, faster, and stronger, but because He MADE them! So we re JOYFUL before God because of who He is and what He has done! II. Get LOW before God! 3
95:6 7, Come, let us bow down in worship [that word itself means to prostrate yourself], let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture. We begin worship in JOY because of who God is and what He has done, but we quickly realize who WE are and what WE have done, and so we humble ourselves before God. We CONFESS that we are unworthy and our sinful that we have an unbearable load of debts, in the words of the Lord s Prayer. At the same time, I would just point out that the reason that the Psalm gives us for humbling ourselves is not that we are AFRAID of what God might do to us, but rather that He is our God and we are the people of his pasture. We are humbled that He desires this relationship with US, and we bow before Him. As a bit of an aside (but not really!): All these actions that he mentions are VERY PHYSICAL things: Bowing low, and bending our knees, and even falling prostrate on the ground. We Protestants especially we EVANGELICAL Protestants don t do much of that publically. We bow our HEADS and some raise their hands in worship, but not many of us literally do what the Psalm is talking about expressing our SPIRITUAL worship in these very PHYSICAL ways. It might just be that we have something to learn from our Roman Catholic friends in terms of the POSTURES of worship! So, III. Be Joyful Before God Get Low Before God RESPOND with obedience to God Vs. 8 11. Did you notice the shift in tone as Mitch read the end of the Psalm? It s so different from the rest of the Psalm that some scholars think it was added later by an inspired writer to the first part. Whether it was or not doesn t really matter it fits! This section refers back to Israel s 40 years of wandering in the desert, when God said that because of their rebellion against Him and constant TESTING of Him, that whole generation (with two exceptions Joshua and Caleb) would have to die before the their CHILDREN could enter into their rest that is, the Promised Land Canaan. You see, we can CLAIM to be God s people 4
We can point to all the things that should qualify us: We were born into a Christian home We ve lived good and decent lives We ve been baptized, catechized and homogenized. But if we re not HEARING to His voice (vs. 8) we run the danger of hardening our hearts and testing God as our forbearers in the Old Testament did! And you understand, I hope, that by hear he means obey. Years ago, my kids accused me of having hearing problems, because so often they would try to talk to me, and I didn t hear them. So, one year St. John Lutheran across the street from our house had a health fair, and I went over to pick up all the goodies. But among the booths was an audiologist, and I got a free hearing test, which demonstrated that (at least at THAT time) my hearing was pretty good. So, I proudly took that green slip home to show my kids and that s when it occurred to me: I could HEAR, but I wasn t LISTENING! That s what he means here in this last section If all we do is come together and sing and pray and give some money and sit through a sermon, we re NOT WORSHIPING! We need to HEAR HIS VOICE we need to OBEY Him and walk in His ways. But, even here, I hope you hear the GOSPEL in that word, Today. That s the point that Hebrews is trying to make in its commentary on this Psalm that we read this morning. We certainly run the risk of old Israel we can play the games and say the words and live as we please. Or we can hear that word, Today, and try with Christ s power and grace to keep in step with the Spirit, as Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians. This final section is another reminder that we always worship in HUMILITY, we re always conscious of His GRACE, because we are certainly capable of hardening OUR hearts! But as we hear His voice as we try to walk in obedience by the grace of Jesus, we are assured of a rest far beyond anything Joshua received. He entered the Land of Canaan. But because of Jesus, we get to share in God s Sabbath rest for all eternity! 5
How do we worship? Be JOYFUL before God. Get LOW before Him. RESPOND with obedience to Him. Rev. Robert Smallman Bible Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) 1605 Highway G Merrill, WI 54452 www.biblepreschurch.org 6