Invitation and Warning: Psalm 95
Message Notes
Psalm 95
“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.
For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Today, if only you would hear his voice,
“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
where your ancestors tested me;
they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’””
Enthronement Psalms
Psalms that were composed for major religious festivals in Israel.
Psalm 95 is an invitation and a warning.
There are different kinds of worship, but mostly it is joyous.
Hālak
to walk, go, often translated to “move”
Psalm 16:11
“You will fill me with joy in your presence.”
Invitation to Worship
1. Reverence for God
The motivation for worship is that God is worthy. It isn’t for us to get something but it about us worshiping God who made the seas and the depths of the earth. He owns it.
It’s also about connecting with God and experiencing the creator of everything we know.
Psalm 29:1-2
“Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.”
2. Listening to God
This is where God goes from that “big creator God” to “God who cares for us”
Psalm 23:1
“The Lord is my Shepard, I lack nothing”
Worship is not all about telling God things, it is also about him talking to us and listening to him.
Worship with Warnings
Today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as you did in Meribah as you did that day at Massah in the desert.
Massah and Meribah mean testing and quarreling
This is from the book of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and they were in the wilderness.
Sama
to hear, listen, obey
1. Don’t harden your heart
“We can harden our hearts to God’s voice, in many ways but there are few things so many people resist as God’s call to worship!”
Charles Spurgeon
Hebrews 3:12-14
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
But encourage one another daily as long as it is called “Today” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
We have come to share in Christ”
There is an urgency for Today, for us to believe in Christ and to turn toward God.
- we don’t know how many “today’s we have
2. Obey God
God wasn’t upset that the Israelites asked him for help, he was angry when they put him to the test after already seeing his power.
Our worship ends with obedience.
It is not enough to shout our words of praise or kneel in adoration.
Our worship needs to extend to obedience to his word as a part of our worship and as a response to it.
1. Worship God with joy and reverence—He is worthy!
2. Listen to His voice today—don’t delay obedience.
3. Guard against a hardened heart—respond with faith