Psalm 95
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Introduction
Introduction
As we come to , we are to consider the how, the why, and the so what of coming before God in worship.
This psalm makes me a bit sad given our present circumstances. The writer begs us to come together for the purpose of worshipping God. Obviously, we can’t do that right now.
But we can come before God with our families or even on our own to worship Him in all the ways this psalm instructs us.
Even in isolation, we can come before God singing for joy!
We can bow down before Him!
And we can examine ourselves to make sure that we are living lives of repentance and obedience during this time of crisis and always.
[Prayer] Let’s pray together before we go any further...
This psalm is expounded in the NT—.
Now, there is some question as to who wrote this psalm and for what occasion it was written.
Now, I love it when this happens. We actually have this psalm preached to us in the NT. In , the author of Hebrews
{Author} doesn’t list an author, but says this psalm was spoken “in David” or “through David.”
In the Bible says this psalm was spoken “in David” or “through David.” If it is “through David,” then David is the author of . If it is “in David,” it may simply be a way of saying “in the psalms.” But it doesn’t really matter if David wrote it or not. As says, it was inspired by God the Holy Spirit.
If it is “through David,” then David is the author of .
If the correct translation of is “in David,” that phrase may have simply been a way of saying “in the psalms.”
In the end though, although it might have helped us to understand the psalm a bit better, it doesn’t really matter if David wrote it or not because, as says, it was spoken by God the Holy Spirit.
This is true of every word of Scripture, of course, but let’s remind ourselves that as we come to , we come to the words of God.
It’s God that calls us to come before Him singing for joy.
It’s God that calls us to bow down before Him.
It’s God that calls us (and all of God’s people in all time in all places) to heed His voice, to repent, obey, and enter His rest.
{Occasion} As for the occasion during which this psalm might have been sung, some have suggested the Feast of Tabernacles, when God’s people remembered and re-lived in tents and booths the time of their wandering in the wilderness after their rescue from Egypt and entrance into the Promised Land.
Although that occasion certainly fits with the last part of the psalm, which references the wilderness wandering, it is only a guess, but one that will nonetheless help us as we seek to apply this psalm to our own lives.
[CIT] is a psalm calling God’s people to worship with exuberance and also reverence, and perhaps most of all, obedience.
[PROP] Let us be sure that we are worshipping God according to His Word, which always looks like obedience to His Word.
[TS] Let’s look at the text...
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
LET US COME & WORSHIP WITH EXUBERANCE (vv. 1-5).
LET US COME & SING FOR THE LORD IS A GREAT GOD! (vv. 1-5)
O 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 hand are the depths of the earth, 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.
[Exp] How do you come to worship?
“O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD, Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.” 1
“Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.” 2
“
“For the LORD is a great God
And a great King above all gods,
In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
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.” 3-5
[Exp] How do you come to worship?
A lot of us probably come distracted; something happened before, will happen during, or might happen after worship that pulls our hearts attention away from God.
Some of us come irritated; someone in the family woke up in a bad mood and that bad mood reproduced itself in the rest of the family. (I’m glad that never happens in our family!)
Perhaps most of us come automated; gathering for worship is just something we do and, if we’re honest, we’re likely not preparing our hearts for worship or expecting much to happen during worship. It’s just another ho hum day worshipping God.
Compare that distraction, irritation, or automation to the celebration we find in , “O 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.”
Certainly this kind of celebration or exuberance is not the only way to come to worship. In other psalms we are told to come before the LORD in silence or with tears, but always with heart engaged; and here in it’s a heart engaged in exuberant praise.
Why should the people of God sing for joy and shout joyfully to God? Why should they come before Him with thanksgiving and joyful psalms?
Let’s list the reasons we see in vv. 1-5...
Reason #1: He is the LORD— YHWH, the I AM, truth, reality, the unchanging One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever—the rock of our salvation.
The Lord is truth and determines what is true, good, and real. And because truth and reality are rooted in Him, they never change.
Our world believes that truth can change. Our world believes that it can redefine reality. But unless it agrees with God, the world can only twist the truth and distort reality. But all that twisting and distorting will not change what is true and real.
Truth and reality are determined by God—the very same God who has made Himself known to us through faith in His Son, Jesus.
So let us come before Him and worship with exuberance rejoicing that He has revealed truth, goodness, and reality to us in Jesus!
We come to worship with excitement because we are His people! Thanks to Him we are no longer lost! Thanks to Him we are no longer in the dark!
Thanks to Him we stand on Jesus, the rock of our salvation!
Reason #2: He is a great God—a great King above all gods.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “No matter how good you think you are, there’s always someone better.” Or, “No matter how tough you think you are, there’s always someone tougher.” We could use that same statement in reference to rank, “No matter how high you rank, there’s always someone that outranks you.”
That’s true for everyone—every so-called god and king—except for the one true God and King overall—the LORD.
No one is better than Him!
No one is tougher than Him!
No one outranks Him!
No one
He is the greatest!
What makes Him the greatest?
He holds all things.
Verse 4 says that He holds the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains in His hand! (You might take a marble and hold it in your hand and think to yourself, “This is how the earth is in the hand of God.”)
Verse 4 says that He holds the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains in His hand! (You might take a marble and hold it in your hand and think to yourself, “This is how the earth—with all of its depths and heights— is in the hand of God.”)
Verse 4 says that He holds the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains in His hand! (You might take a marble and hold it in your hand and think to yourself, “This is how the earth is in the hand of God.”)
The world and everything in it is finite. He is infinite. He is immeasurable. He holds all things.
But this doesn’t mean that He is impersonal, for He also forms all things.
He forms all things.
Verse 5 says He made the sea and with His hands formed the dry land. The LORD is intimately involved with His creation. Although He is immeasurable, He is also personal.
He also owns all things.
Verses 4-5 show God as the possessor of all things. The depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains, the sea, the dry land—He owns it all!
Verse 5
Therefore, He is a great God, a King above all so let’s worship Him with exuberance!
Let’s sing for joy and shout joyfully to Him!
[Illus]
[App] The same God of who formed all things, formed you and I in the wombs of our mothers. The same God of who owns all things, owns you and I as our Creator. And the same God of who holds all things, hold you and I in the palm of His hand.
He holds us in good times and bad; in times of gathering together and times of quarantine; in times of celebration and times of sorrow; and nothing shall ever snatch us from His hand!
That reminds me of , which says...
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
To praise God with exuberance is the right response to having been delivered from the wrath of God and welcomed into the love of God. It is the right response to being saved by God’s grace through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus.
To praise God; to worship Him with exuberance is the right response to being saved by His grace through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus.
In light of God’s saving grace, says...
speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;
Speaking of Jesus, the One who bore our sins and offered Himself as the sacrifice for our sins, says that...
Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.
Here’s a convicting thought: Lips that don’t praise God for Jesus indicate a heart that is not thankful for Jesus.
Are we thankful for Jesus? If we are, then let us...
…sing for joy to the Lord...
…shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation...
…come before His presence with thanksgiving...
…shout joyfully to Him with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs...
For He is the One great God and King who...
…formed us...
…owns us...
…and holds us in the palm of His hand!
[TS] Let us come & worship Him with exuberance.
LET US COME & WORSHIP WITH REVERENCE (vv. 6-7a).
LET US COME & BOW FOR HE IS OUR GOD! (vv. 6-7a)
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 would hear His voice,
“Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.” 6
[Exp] Just as there is a difference between hype, which is an empty excitement, and exuberance, which (at least in terms of ) is based on who God is and what He has done, so there is difference between being somber or gloomy and being reverent.
“For He is our God,
Verses 6-7 call us to reverence, which has less to do with being sad and more to do understanding who God is and who we are in relationship to Him.
We are called to come and worship once again, but this time not with joyous shouts and songs, but with bowing and kneeling.
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.” 7a
Why should bow and kneel before the LORD?
There are two reasons that I see communicated in vv. 6-7...
Because He is our Creator.
We are to worship and bow down and kneel before the LORD because He is our Maker.
He is our Creator.
And because He is our Shepherd.
There’s a relationship between God and His people. He can be described as “our God” and we can be described “His people.”
He pastures us. (I.e., He provides for us.)
And He does with His own hand.
He doesn’t hire someone else to do it or appoint manager over our case.
No, He personally cares for each and every one of us.
He is also our Maker.
[Illus]
He is our God.
This remind me, of course, of Jesus’ words in
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
[Exp]
[Illus]
[App] This remind me, of course, of Jesus’ words in where He says that He is the door of the sheep and the Good Shepherd.
In , Jesus said...
So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
Only as we come to God through Jesus do we find pasture, i.e., provision for our souls.
Jesus goes on in to say...
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. “He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. “He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.
Just as we read in , here in Jesus said that He didn’t delegate the care of His sheep to someone.
We are His sheep, so Jesus, our Good Shepherd, laid down His life for us. It doesn’t get more personally involved than that!
But I’m also reminded of Jesus words in , which says...
“Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.
These are verses I tend to think of when I think of Jesus’ personal care for each one of us.
As transcendent as God is, He doesn’t just know that we are humans and that humans have hair; he doesn’t just know about our individual hair styles; No, He knows every hair on every head.
That is the Shepherd’s meticulous care for us, His sheep.
Because of His great care for us, we should want to bow and kneel before Him. In fact, we should count it a great honor to do so!
To humble ourselves before the Lord, is no sacrifice but a reverent pleasure for all who are thankful what God has done for us in Christ.
When’s the last time you bowed, knelt, or lay prostrate before God?
Perhaps sometime today, we could come before God in reverent prayer, bowing before Him and lifting up astonished wonder at His care for us.
[TS] Let’s look at the third section of this psalm...
LET US COME & WORSHIP WITH OBEDIENCE (vv. 7b-11).
LET US NOT HARDEN OUR HEARTS FOR HE LOATHES THE UNREPENTANT (vv. 7b-11)
For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. 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 forty 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.”
“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. 7b-9
“For forty 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.] 10-11
[Exp] Here the voice of God breaks in like an interruption that completes the thought began with “Today, if you would hear His voice...” If God’s people do hear His voice in the preceeding verses of this psalm or in other Scriptures, they must not harden their hearts.
What does it mean to harden the heart? It means to make the heart dull or numb to God by refusing to believe God and obey God.
That’s what God’s people did at Meribah (place of dispute) and Massah (place of tempting).
Meribah and Massah bring to mind.
In the wilderness the people grumbled for water. Moses prayed and the LORD provided water through the rock that He commanded Moses to strike.
Even so, that place would always carry the name Meribah and Massah because God’s people disputed with Him there and put Him to the test.
Meribah and Massah also bring to mind .
That time, Moses was commanded to speak to a rock to draw water from it. It would have been a miracle for which none but God could take credit.
But Moses struck the rock like he had before. As a result Moses would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land.
These were God’s people who had heard God’s Word, but at Meribah and Massah they tested God and tried Him.
What does that mean that they tested and tried God?
One thing it means is that they didn’t believe God.
They didn’t believe that God could provide for them in the wilderness and didn’t believe that God could bring them into the Promised Land.
Another thing it means is that they did not obey God. T
They didn’t obey His commandments. They didn’t obey His orders to march into the Promised Land.
They didn’t obey Him because they didn’t believe Him.
And the more they did this, the more hardened their hearts became toward God.
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 95
The combination of Meribah and Massah shows that the psalm draws its lesson from the Israelites’ grumbling against Moses because they had no water (Ex. 17:1–7).
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 95
At the same time, this event did not lead to God’s decisive oath found in the psalm. That oath comes in Num. 14:21–35, after the people had listened to the report of the 10 faithless spies and refused to enter the land to take it. The Lord swore (“as I live,” Num. 14:21, 28) that not one of those who grumbled in disbelief “shall come into the land” (Num. 14:29–30); the 40 days of spying would yield 40 years of wandering (Num. 14:34). That is, those who refuse in unbelief to obey God’s voice (Num. 14:11) would be removed from the people, and there would be a delay in the people carrying out their calling to occupy the land. The psalm takes the incident at Meribah and Massah as an early installment of this persistent unbelief, which culminated in refusal to enter the land.
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 95
Hebrews 3:7–11 uses Ps. 95:7b–11, placing its audience in an analogous situation to the Israelites in the wilderness: for these Jews to abandon their explicit faith in Jesus in order to return to the safety of “ordinary” Judaism would be like the rebellion of Israel in the wilderness, a mark of unbelief. As in the psalm, Hebrews makes every day a “today” that calls for renewed faithfulness.
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 95
the psalm uses Ex. 17:1–7 together with Num. 14:21–35 to make its point. God will preserve the corporate entity, the “people,” in order to achieve his purposes in the world; but he wants the members of the people to be joined to him in true faith. If they rebel, they must be removed.
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 95
The biblical writers use “heart” for the central core of the person’s thoughts, feelings, and choices (cf. Prov. 4:23). To “harden the heart” is to make it dull and unresponsive to God, and thus to strengthen it in disbelief.
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 95
95:8 Israel’s rebellion (Numbers 14; Deut. 32:5) serves as a negative example for all time (Heb. 4:7–12). Faith in God, culminating in faith in Christ, is the proper response to God (Heb. 4:2).
95:11 They shall not enter my rest. In the wilderness context, the “rest” is specifically the place of rest, i.e., the land (cf. Deut. 12:9; finally secured with David’s reign, cf. 2 Sam. 7:1, 11); but, since the singing congregation is already in the land, it follows that the psalm is using “rest” as an image of enjoying God’s presence forever (much as Heb. 4:1, 11 does).
Incredibly, they did this even though they had seen YHWH’s work.
That generation of Israelite that wondered in the wilderness for 40 years had seen amazing things—the plagues, the Red Sea parting and then collapsing in on itself again, the pillar of fire by night to lead them and cloud by day, and on and on.
But even though they witnessed all these things, their hearts didn’t change. They were still an unbelieving and disobeying bunch.
They did not (even though they had God’s Law)—they did not know God’s ways and they would not enter into the Promised Land—the land of God’s rest.
They would perish in the desert wilderness because the LORD loathed that unbelieving and disobedient generation.
In fact, in v. 10, it
[App] Now, I love it when this happens. We actually have this psalm preached to us in the NT. In , the author of Hebrews applies the last part of this psalm (vv. 7b-11) to all Christians at all times in all places.
[Illus]
The author of Hebrews was likely writing to Christians who had converted from Judaism and were tempted to return to Judaism or at least try to hold onto the temple worship of Judaism while still embracing Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.
The author of Hebrews, however, says that the old way of worship through temple sacrifices is over because Jesus who is the better sacrifice, the better High Priest, and whose blood establishes a better covenant has come.
After quoting , the author of Hebrews says in ...
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 day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Hebrews 3:12
That’s what had happened to that wilderness generation! They had become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin and so they fell away!
Sin is a liar.
It promises that slave meat in Egypt is better than free milk and honey in the Promised Land.
It promises fulfillment and leaves you empty.
It promises pleasure but ultimately brings eternal pain.
It says that God isn’t good and that He can be trusted.
It says that we should not obey Him.
That wilderness generation didn’t obey Him and they didn’t enter God’s rest (i.e., the Promised Land) as a result.
The author of Hebrews says we ought to learn from their example and fear lest we fail to enter God’s rest (i.e., the Promised Land of salvation). says...
Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
This is the difference between those who perished in the wilderness and those who entered the Promised Land.
Both groups heard the Word of God, the good news.
But the group that perished didn’t believe and so didn’t obey it.
But the group that did enter did believe and so they obeyed it.
The author of Hebrews is not saying that if you believe and obey that you will earn your salvation.
He is saying that one who has been saved will believe and obey.
In other words, the one who has been saved will worship God with obedience.
[App] Consider your own heart...
Have you hardened your heart toward God through unbelief and disobedience?
It won’t be too late for you if you turn from your unbelief and believe on Jesus for salvation.
If you do, you will find rest for you soul.
[TS] {see below}
Conclusion
Conclusion
{prayer}
