Psalm 95

Mark Smith preaching from Psalm 95

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SPEAKER_02 0:18

Is Psalm ninety-five. Let us sing songs of praise. O 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 mountain 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, the sheep of His hand. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Masa 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 loathe the generation that said, They are a people who go and astray in their heart, and they do have not known my ways. Therefore I swear in my wrath they shall not enter my rest. And so reads God's Word.

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If you don't know what the Kin Fire Festival is, it's a gathering of around about uh six, seven hundred Christians down on Kilkenny that happens every August, uh, designed to uh encourage and equip the Irish uh church uh for mission in the various contexts and towns and villages where God has God has placed us, and we're delighted to have folks from uh from Portico. Where's the Portico people? There we go, all the way along there. We've got uh we've got the Livingstone Sparks people where they yes, and then we've got Minnesotans from City and Bethlehem, Cities and Bethlehem, yeah, right there. Anyone else that I've missed? And Dave. And there's also Dave from Austin. If uh if you're a part of those visiting churches, we have a lunch for you upstairs afterwards. Also, if you're on a Kinfire team and you'd like to meet some of your other team members from uh, this is for city church people. If you want to meet some team members, you can come and grab a slice of pizza as as well at 12:30 uh up in the up in the mezzanine upstairs. We're gonna be in Sam 95. We do Sam's in the summer. And uh we started Sam 1 years and years and years ago, and we just do 10 a year or so, and sound 95 is where we are today. And uh whether you are a native of Dublin or you've made City Church your home, or you're just visiting from one of those churches that I have mentioned, we joined this morning with millions of people around the world who gather to do very similar things this morning. We all gather uh in different locations. Some of us gather in the comfortable seating of a cinema, others will gather in old stone traditional church buildings, others will gather in schools or in homes, some under trees, and many will gather in secret to do one thing, to worship. But if someone was to stop you this morning as you came in and said, What do you mean by that? What is worship? When you say that you're gathering to worship this morning, what is that thing that you're doing? What's actually going on? Well, you might say, well, we we we we we sing and then we we pray, so it leads us in our in our prayers and we and we add our amen. That's certainly uh what's going on. Psalm 95 begins with singing, with joyful shouts, with thanksgiving, with praise. But then something slightly unexpected happens in Psalm 95. Halfway through the Psalm, the singing stops, all of our responding and shouting in celebration ceases, and somebody else speaks. God speaks, He speaks to us through Psalm 95 and encourages us not to harden our hearts. The question that he's asking us essentially in the second half of Psalm 95 is not, hey, did you sing it's all about Jesus just now? The question that he's gonna ask you is, when I speak, do you listen? And do you listen with a heart that's resistant? You don't really want to be here? Or you're like, no, I I want to hear what you have to say to me. In Psalm 95, God is presented as both a king and a shepherd. He is the shepherd king, and he welcomes his people into joy and delight in his presence. He calls us to bow in humble adoration, and then he speaks. And as soon as he speaks, the focus changes from our voices to our hearts. What's going on on the inside? Psalm 95 is like an MRI. You know, some uh some ailments, some diseases, they can be diagnosed from the outside. You show up with a broken arm, it's fairly clear that your arm is broken. Okay? You show up with a rash, you can see the rash. But you could be here this morning, and there could be stuff going on internally that cannot be seen. Somebody can present themselves as very healthy on the outside, and yet there's a blockage building up in their hearts that that only an internal examination will reveal. So the doctor orders an MRI to see what's going on below the surface. And Psalm 95 is an MRI for our heart, spiritually speaking, in worship. Because people sing and celebrate, we dance and raise our hands, but when God presses in and says, All right, what's actually going on in your heart right now? How are you actually responding to me? Everyone else can see hands raised, everyone else can see eyes closed, everyone else can hear your voice. But what's going on in your heart, because that's the thing that I'm concerned about. Because here's the scary part you can do all of those things, and your heart can be slowly hardening towards God. Psalm 95 is God's gracious invitation to allow him to examine our hearts before that hardening takes hold. And so, what does that look like? What does a true worshipful heart actually look like? Well, this shepherd king shows up in Psalm 95 and says that the heart that truly worships me is a heart that is joyful, a heart that is humble, and a heart that is soft. That's what we're going to look at this morning. The first is that it's a we worship with joyful hearts. Notice uh the first couple of verses and notice the energy here inside. 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. Is the invitation come and then repeated, let us, let us, let us, let us sing, let us shout, let us come, let us praise. Five invitations in two verses saying, Come on, guys, let's get together. God is worth celebrating, let's sing to him, let's sing with joy to the God of our salvation, the rock on which we build our lives. The worship that the Psalmist begins by calling us to is exuberant, it's overflowing with delight and with gladness, but it's also corporate. Let us. Biblical worship certainly is personal. We want everybody in this room to personally know the Lord Jesus, to trust him, to depend on him, to have their sins forgiven by him. But Christianity is never merely private. It's not about you just coming in and sitting in the back and uh and mumbling your way through the liturgy and then heading off. No, no. There is a corporate invitation. Let us do something here together. The Christian life was never designed to be lived in splendid isolation. There's something deeply encouraging, isn't there, about hearing God's people sing around you? About hearing that that elderly saint praising Jesus after decades of faithfulness, about hearing that young Christian who's just beginning to understand the first flushes of grace, and they're overwhelmed with enthusiasm, or to see that person that you know the road that they have walked down, and the tears might still be staining their face, and yet their eyes are closed and they are worshiping and adoration. How that stirs our own hearts. Come, let us sing to the Lord. We strengthen one another by standing together and declaring that Jesus alone is worthy of our praise. But this isn't just a going through the motions, it's not cold, it's not just a dutiful uh religious exercise that we perform, nor is it just kind of emotionalism and hype. The invitation that the psalmist gives us in those first couple of verses is then immediately grounded in verse three with reasons. Come, let's sing to God, let's celebrate, let's be joyful, let's shout. And I'm gonna tell you exactly why. So verse three begins, for. Here's what we are calling to you to do. Verse three, for, here's why you should respond this way. And that's important to recognize because biblical worship always has its reasons. Our emotional expression, our emotional life, and God wants our emotional life, God wants our emotional exuberance, but those things are grounded in and flow out of the truth of who God is and what he has done. Otherwise, you're just at a gig, right? And so the psalmist gives us reasons. Our joy flows from who God is. He is for verse 3 the Lord is a great God. Now pause over that word Lord, that capitalized L, capitalized O, capitalized R, capitalized D. That is a way of describing the Old Testament God as the relationship establishing, promise-keeping God. That's his personal name. And so he's not just some distant deity or little statue that you might have in your bedroom. No, no, he is the one who comes near to you and says, Okay, I want you to know me, and I want to know you. I will be your God, you will be my people. He is the Lord, the unwaveringly faithful one. He is a great God above all gods, the psalmist goes on to say. That is, that he is the one who reigns supreme and that his reign is good. Verses 4 and 5 show us the expanse of his good rule. From the depths to the mountains, the sea, and the dry land. Every realm imaginable is under his good care. Nothing is outside of his control. It's not just that he's bigger and stronger than the other gods and the kind of smorgasbord buffet of religions. No, it's that he alone is the creator, the maker, the sustainer. That means there is no realm of your life, whatever you're going through, a God does not have sovereign care over. The psalmist is saying that if you know this God, if you know this God who has come close to you, established a relationship with you, bound himself to you, and as if he is sovereign over all of creation, and nothing in your life surprises him or is outside of his grasp, if you belong to a God like that, then the only appropriate response is joyful, exuberant thanksgiving, worship, and adoration. But the problem is that this is not something that we can just muster up within ourselves. Don't your hearts naturally feel cold? Maybe even now there's a sense in which you've been listening to what I'm saying, and your kind of heart response is I kind of wish that I felt that way. I so often don't when we sing about that, don't we? You know, when I fear my faith will fail, he will hold me fast. Though the tempter would prevail, he will hold me fast. Though my love is often cold, he will hold me fast. That actually we uh we cling fairly feebly to God. And we struggle to kind of muster up this kind of joy and exuberance that the psalmist is is talking about. Uh, to have our hearts warmed in this way, to have our hearts warmed by the joy that the psalmist is talking about. It's a gift, it's a gift that of grace that comes from knowing Jesus. He is the great King who has come close to us in love and who holds our life in nail-pierced hands. He is the perfect worshiper who always delighted in his father, who always rejoiced in the Holy Spirit. And as he talks about in Luke chapter 10, he is the one who looks at us then and says, Come, let me invite you in. He brings us into joyful delight, and all of our worship, even when our worship feels cold, is is done in and through the perfect worshiper. Let me encourage you this one, you might feel like my heart isn't really in the place where you're describing. Well, Jesus is. And if you're trusting in him, even though you might feel cold, feel underwhelmed, if you're trusting in Jesus, you are worshiping through the perfect worshiper. Let that truth even stir and encourage your affections. What does it say? When we consider Jesus and who he is and what he has done, what emotions arise first inside of you? Is it apathy? It's kind of well, it's okay for the other people here, but it's just not my gig. It's a duty. Well, actually, my mom's gonna be ringing me later and she's gonna ask, Did you go to church today? And I'm gonna have to say, yes, I did, but it's because I want to don't want to disappoint her. Is it fear? Or shame? Or is it joyful delight that has been given to you is a gift of grace by the perfect worshiper Jesus? Joy grows in our hearts when the greatness of who He is and His kindness to us, His love for us, His unwavering commitment to us, when all of those things begin to fill the horizon of our lives. When they begin to fill our vision and we and we come into his presence and we behold him. But Psalm 95 isn't finished there. The psalmist isn't finished in describing true worship because the light alone is not enough. It's possible to admire someone from a distance without without ever entrusting yourself to them. And so in verse 6, it's as though the atmosphere kind of slightly changes. We've been standing in verses 1 to 5, singing, shouting, celebrating. And then suddenly the whole congregation begins to descend. We begin to bow and knee. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. The king we rejoice in is also the shepherd that we must trust. True worship doesn't simply lift its voices. It lowers our knees. It lowers our hearts. And so this is the second mark of true worshipful hearts, is that we worship God with humble hearts. Back in the doctor's surgery, maybe sitting there across from a world-class physician. He or she is just top of their field. And you can admire their skill. You can thank them for their insights and their expertise. But your admiration of them doesn't save your life. The question is, are you going to get onto the operating table? Are you going to climb, are you going to willingly put your life in their hands? In the same way, the psalmist rightly moves us from adoration and praise and thanksgiving through to dependence, surrender, trust. So verse 6, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, the one who made us and who loves us. Everything slows down. The posture of the whole Psalm changes. All of God's people descend together, and their physicality, in a sense, preaches what their mouths cannot. Do you realize that that some oftentimes your posture really towards anybody kind of communicates like body language, right? We're reading kind of social cues. Your posture says something of how you're responding to something. If you kind of front up to someone and you push out your chest, kind of square up with that steely stare, you're communicating something about your disposition towards that person. But our posture often betrays something of how we're responding towards God. We haven't asked the Odion to buy kneelers. But maybe we should. Because maybe there is a space for us actually, either corporately and or in the private of our own devotion. To kneel, to bow down. Because often that physicality, because you know, we're physical beings. God likes the fact that we're physical beings. Matter matters to God. The fact that you're a body is something that God has intentionally made. And so when you take a posture of worship, it can often help our heads, help our hearts get into the right sort of spiritual space. The shepherd king encourages us to bow down. He does not demand that we cower in fear, nor should we stare at him in rigid defiance. That he is, and that our lives. Are ultimately in his hands. But this kneeling is also not forced subjugation because this king is also a shepherd. And we are his sheep. And he cares for us. Your minds might also be just going immediately to probably the most famous psalm in all of the Psalter. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me to lie down beside still waters. He restores my soul. The God who holds the mountains in his hands now uses those same hands to nurture and to guide you, his people. And so the heart of worship is not just one of celebration, but of humble, joyful surrender. I understand that our world finds that to be something that is difficult to accept. We've been told to believe in yourself, follow your heart was just the worst advice ever. Trust your instincts. Psalm 95 says, no, no, trust another. Depend upon another. Put your hand in another's. And the only way that that's good news, the only way that you want to do that is if the one that you are trusting, the one that you're placing your hand in, the one that you're bowing down before, is both a shepherd and a king. Because if he's a king, then he has the power to protect and to keep you. And if he's a shepherd, he has the desire to protect and to keep you. Remember Jesus' words in John 10. He says, I am the good shepherd. I lay down my life for my sheep. No one takes my life from me. I have authority to lay it down that I might take it up again. He speaks of authority to lay down his life and to take it up again. He's saying, I'm the king, but I'm also the shepherd. Willingly, voluntarily. Jesus is our good shepherd king. He lived every moment of his earthly ministry in joyful dependence on his father. Naturally, he said a moment ago that naturally our hearts are cold. But naturally, we often grasp for independence. We want to be our own masters. We think that that's where freedom lies, like Adam before us. But Jesus walked the path of humble obedience. And he calls us to follow him. So our humility is not just. Sorry. Our humility is not an attempt to earn God's favor. It is learning to walk behind the one who has already gone before us. So if you slide into the MRI again of Psalm 95, let it ask another question of your heart. It's not simply, well, what brings you joy, but the question here is who's in control of your life? Who's in control of your life? Is it you? Maybe it's a thing that you're aiming at. Maybe it actually that actually exerts a kind of functional control. Or ask yourself this: when Jesus' words collide with your own preferences and desires, who wins? Because if you're exploring what it means to worship God, here's one of the things to know. If God is God, he will disagree with you about certain things. If the God that you worship never disagrees with you, I'm pretty sure that you're only worshiping an idealized view of your own personality. And so when Jesus disagrees with some of the choices that you might make, who wins? When following Jesus becomes costly, are you still able to trust the Good Shepherd? Is your Christianity simply one of admiration? Jesus looks and signs great. Like that world-class physician. Or is it one of surrender? Actually, I trust you. Lead me. Show me the path that I should walk in. But the silence pushes us further. Surrender is not the end of the story. Because you can bow your knees and still have a hard heart. You can kneel physically and inwardly say, I'm still going to do it my way. And that's exactly why halfway through verse 7 and through the rest of the Psalm, everything changes. The congregation stops speaking, stops singing, and begins to listen because the shepherd king is speaking. And the worship here in Psalm 95 reaches its deepest level, not simply with joyful hearts, not simply with humble hearts, but with soft hearts. It's our third and final point this morning. So we worship with soft hearts. Ask yourself this. What's the high point of any Christian worship service? What's the high point? What's the most important thing that happens in a Christian worship service? Different Christian traditions will give you different answers to that question. Some will say, well, it's when actually, when all of the congregation are raising their voice. When we're all singing together, all celebrating, when the band is killing it, and everybody is raising their voices. That's the kind of crescendo. Certain Christian uh, certain section of the Christian community will say that. Others will say, well, actually, the high point of the Christian service is when the sacraments are administered, which we'll do in a few minutes. They'll say, no, no, no, that everything in the service is pointing to receiving the bread and the wine, that that's the high point. Others will say that. But Psalm 95 says something different. Psalm 95 says the high point is when God speaks to his people. When God addresses his people and his voice is heard. So for us, City Church, the high point of the service, it's when the scriptures are read and explained. We hear God ruling us from his word. What places the singing and the sacraments have? Their responses, ultimately, their responses to God speaking to us and us receiving his word. And so we will respond in a few minutes' time as my timer clicks down. Okay, we will respond in singing. We will respond in taking bread and wine together, remembering the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. But they are responses to the crescendo that's happening now, which is that God speaks as his word is read. I'm not saying I'm God, I'm saying that as God's word is read and explained, he is meeting with you by his spirit. He's meeting with his people and encouraging your hearts, lifting your hearts to follow him. The high point of any worship service is not when we do anything, but when God addresses us, when his word is preached and proclaimed. And that's what happens in Psalm 95. The high point is not in the jubilant shit of joy, but when God Himself begins to speak from verse 7b through to the end of the Psalm. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in Meribah on the day at Manasseh in the wilderness, when your fathers put me, God speaking, put me to the test, put me to the proof. Though they had seen my works for 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, There are people who are astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways, therefore I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. So, what's God's command here in these difficult versions? What's going on? What's massive? What's marible? We'll get there. What is God's command here? It's not don't stop singing, it's don't harden your heart. When you hear me, when I come to you, don't harden your heart against me. Notice God doesn't mention ears. The problem isn't hearing, the problem is resisting. And that's what was happening earlier in the Old Testament to the people of Israel. Back in Israel's history, Israel had seen the miracles of God. They had been in Egypt, they had seen the plagues, they had walked on dry land through the Red Seas. The walls of waves were around. You've seen the Prince of Egypt, right? They had gone through the waters, they had eaten the miraculous mamma in the desert, they had eaten the quail, they had drank the water from the rock, and still they demanded that God further prove himself to them. Still they grumble, still they complained, still they demanded more from them. Hardness of heart set in on them as they refused to just to trust him despite the overwhelming evidence. They refused to look back at evidences of God's faithfulness and said, Well, what are you going to do for me today, God? They insisted that God prove himself again and again, rather than living by faith in what he had already revealed to them. And so there's an urgency here as God speaks. He says, Today, don't harden your heart. Today, right now, on the 9th of April in City Church, God's saying, Don't harden your heart to me. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, today. Because our hearts are prone to hardness. I said, you know, uh, come that I find of every breath of every blessing. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord. Take and seal it. I need you to do something to my heart. I need you to bind my heart to yours. Because mine's so hard. It's so prone to numbness. It's so prone to resentment. It's so prone to looking back to meat pots in Egypt and thinking, well, it would just be better back there. There's a daily call for God in Psalm 95 to listen to him with humility, to respond to him in joy and to not let that hardness set in. You know, a piece of leather left in the sun won't become hard overnight. But if it's left out day after day after day, exposure after exposure, eventually it will lose all softness. And our hearts harden the same way. We don't tend to wake up and go, do you know what? I'm going to commit a monstrous act of rebellion against God and just abandon all of my uh my prior faith and commitments. No, it is done through the small repeated rituals. There are 10,000 little decisions that harden our hearts along the way, as we say, well, I'll deal with that later. I know what God says, but not today. I I need this now. Some of you might sit here and have a bit of a panic, and you think, well, I mean, I struggle to trust him all the time. Come down the front, let's chat, we'll get t-shirts. That's all of us. I struggle to trust him. I feel like I'm constantly battling sin. Am I in danger of hardening my heart? The person that the psalmist, the person that God is addressing here, is not the person who is battling, wrestling, fighting with sin. It's it's aimed at the person who's beginning to become comfortable with it. The warning isn't for those with tender consciences, it's a warning to those with increasingly indifferent ones. A soft heart is not a perfect heart. A soft heart is still a heart that says, Lord, when you speak, even though I struggle, I want to listen and I want to follow you. This is where the New Testament teaches us how to read Psalm 95 as Christians and in light of who Jesus is and what he's done. There's a New Testament book called Hebrews. And Hebrews, uh, towards the end of the New Testament, spends two whole chapters reflecting on and preaching this Psalm. Because the writer of the Hebrews knows that Psalm 95 isn't simply about the past, it's not simply about what Israel had done long, long ago. But he also knows that it's not simply about us, that it's about Jesus. Israel had entered the wilderness and had failed. Their hearts had hardened, and God had let that first generation die in the desert. Jesus entered the wilderness and succeeded where Israel failed. He was faithful where they were faithless. Israel tested God, where Jesus trusted his father. Israel hardened their hearts where Jesus delighted to do his father's will. Israel, that generation, never entered God's rest. Jesus finished his saving work and he rose from the dead, he ascended to God's right hand in glory, and he sat down, and he entered into the eternal rest of his father. But Hebrews says something even more astonishing. Because Jesus has completed his work, his death upon the cross, his resurrection three days later, and his ascension to the Father's side, and his entry into rest, Hebrews goes on to say that's what he invites you and me into. He invites us to enjoy that rest through faith in him. Now when we hear the word rest, think of a holiday, a day off, an afternoon with nothing on the schedule. But Hebrews is thinking of something much deeper, speaking of something much richer than that. The rest that Hebrews has in mind is the rest of coming home. Finding peace. An end of wandering, an end of striving to prove yourself, an end of carrying the guilt and shame that you are carrying now. You can lay that burden down. An end of trying to earn someone's acceptance or God's acceptance. Jesus' invitation is open. He says, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Not because every circumstance suddenly becomes easy, but because by trusting him the deepest burden is lifted. The burden of sin, the burden of condemnation, the burden of self-salvation, and trying to prove yourself, the burden of wandering whether you'll ever be enough. Christ has done enough. So even now our souls begin to taste that rest that is stored up for us in Him that we will enjoy one day in all of its fullness. And so today, Hebrew says, Today we can enter the rest that Jesus offers us with joyful hearts, with humble hearts, with soft hearts. So let the Mri ask a final question. How will you respond to his voice as he speaks to you this morning? Will you harden just a little more? Or will you cry out to him and say, Create in me that heart that I cannot create in myself? I need you to take my heart of stone and to give me a heart of flesh, a heart that is soft to your word, a heart that is joyful in receiving your good care and rule. But Hebrews ends with hope. Why? Because in the middle stands Jesus. Between Psalm 95 and us is Jesus Christ. The only man who ever worshipped with a perfectly joyful heart, the only man who ever bowed in perfect humility, the only man who never hardened his heart to his father's voice. He is the true worshiper, he is the faithful Israel. And now through him, through his death and resurrection, we don't simply, he doesn't simply command us to worship. He brings us into worship. And so every Sunday we don't come merely to perform a religious duty or rite. We come because Christ has opened the new and living way into the Father's presence. And that he has poured out his spirit onto all of us. His spirit that enthuses and equips us and changes us as we receive his word and as we lift our voices in worship. And so we join his song. We kneel with him, our shepherd. We listen to our Father's voice. And as Hebrews reminds us, today is still the day of grace. Today is the invitation. Today the invitation remains open. Today the king welcomes sinful people, broken people, people who have felt that they have been wandering for a long, long time. The shepherd gathers his sheep, and the faithful son leads his people into the rest that they can never earn themselves. And it happens today. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Let's pray. Give us hearts that humbly look beyond ourselves and follow you. Give us hearts that are soft to who you are and what you've done and what you call us to. Come, Holy Spirit, and enable worship from hearts like that, that we might adore and honor and glorify the Father who has sent His Son, who has taken our sin, who has risen to newness of life, the Father who has adopted us by the Holy Spirit into his family who calls us children never to be sent away. Give us hearts that are soft to these rich, glorious, vital truths. Stir our affections afresh, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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