The Invitation to Worship
It’s good to be back! Vacations are wonderful, aren’t they? During our two weeks, we were in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and up in God’s Country. In the second week, we went camping and had a good time well, sort of. Megan, our one-year-old, was not a “Happy Camper.”
When it was time to go to bed, Beth, Becky, Megan and I grabbed our sleeping bags and headed into a tent. Megan was pretty wiped out so she went to sleep OK but the problems came when it started lightning. Beth picked her up and put Megan in her sleeping bag at 1:00 a.m. Later, I looked at my Timex Indiglo watch when Megan woke up again and saw that it was only 4:30 in the morning. I quickly jumped up and in the darkness made my way over to her.
Megan was wigging out it may have been how my face looked in the glow of the lightning or, how my face looks in natural light for that matter. I tried to comfort her to no avail. Beth handed Megan to me; I grabbed her diaper bag and headed for the car. I wanted to get her somewhere where her crying wouldn’t wake up the entire campsite. I put her in her car seat and just drove around the campground until she fell asleep. Unfortunately, she didn’t sleep long enough so I had to drive around in town until she took another little catnap.
When it was finally safe to come back without getting busted by Ranger Rick for disturbing the peace, I pulled in with our unhappy camper and had breakfast. Later that day, my mom and dad very graciously offered to put us up in a motel -- I’m not sure if that was for our benefit or so the other campers could get some sleep!
After trying to sleep in a tent while it was lightning outside and thundering inside, any motel with a bed looked inviting. We chose the “Dream Lodge Motel” because it was close to the campsite. The signs out front made it look fairly inviting but the mood changed when we went into the office. We knocked on the glass window. The lady behind the desk didn’t smile at all and looked bothered that we were interrupting her. As my mom paid for the room I looked around the office and saw a bunch of warnings and prohibitions. Here are a couple that I remember:
If you say you have one person in your room and you have two you will be kicked out.
Absolutely no one allowed after 10 p.m.
If you have an emergency don’t call the office -- call 911 (that would have been hard to do because there were no phones in the rooms)
The “Dream Lodge” had 16 rooms and I counted 13 rules and regulations. We were so tired and so grateful to my parents for the break from camping that it didn’t really bother us. At the same time, we both felt like the motel would have been just as happy to not have any guests stay there. By emphasizing their rules, they took the joy out of their service. They may have had a sign by the road that said, “Welcome” but their invitation seemed hollow once we took a closer look.
As I thought about this, I was reminded of how Psalm 95 begins: “Come…” God longs for us to come into His presence. He’s not concerned about laying down a bunch of rules and requirements. Instead, John 4:23 tells us that God is seeking worshippers who will adore Him in spirit and in truth. He sends out the invitation to each of us. He wants us to come without hesitation. You and I are invited into His very presence.
I see three different parts of God’s invitation to worship:
A Call to Rejoice (1-5)
A Call to Reverence (6-7a)
A Call to Respond (7b-11)
A Call to Rejoice
Let’s look at the Call to Rejoice in verses 1-5:
“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.”
This passage gives us at least 5 characteristics of worship.
1. Worship is collective. Three times in verses 1 and 2 we read, “Let us…” While worship should have a private element to it throughout the week, the psalmist here is stating that worship is designed to be congregational, not merely individual.
2. Worship is vocal. Too often we think of worship as not only private, but silent as well. We may worship God in our heart or even sing quietly, but God is longing for us to sing out to Him. If you were here on Friday night to hear the “Sounds of Liberty,” you experienced a group of young people singing their hearts out to God. It was fantastic.
3. Worship is vibrant and vigorous. We are to participate with joyful, grateful praise and to be exuberant in our worship. Someone has said that the characteristic note of Old Testament worship is exhilaration. The terms employed here describe activity which seems more appropriate at a Pontiac Indians football game than in a church sanctuary. The phrase, “sing for joy” in verse 1 could be translated, “shout for joy.”
When we are to told to “shout aloud” in the second half of verse 1, the Hebrew literally means to “raise a shout.” This was done when the Israelites were anticipating a battle or celebrating a triumph.
This expression was used in Joshua 6:20, when the Israelites were marching around the walls of Jericho: “When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed…” It’s also found in 1 Samuel 4:5, where we read about what happened when the Ark of the Covenant was brought into the camp, “…All Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook.”
Friends, I don’t really know why our worship is not as vibrant and vigorous as what we see in the Old Testament or in other places around the world. I don’t know why mine is sometimes so somber. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. Or maybe we’ve just gotten into a rut. Maybe were just not very expressive in general. Or, maybe it’s because we don’t have much joy in our hearts. I’m not sure what all the reasons are but I’m personally challenged by this Psalm to become much more exuberant and expressive in my worship.
Why is it that we’re often critical of others whose worship is too animated and enthusiastic? While there are extremes that we should avoid, very few of us even come close to being too passionate. Our tendency is to react against such worship, much like Michal disdained David’s joyful enthusiasm in 2 Samuel 6. We see in verse 12 that when David brought the ark into Jerusalem, he did it with “rejoicing.” Verse 14 tells us that he danced before the Lord with all his “might” and verse 15 says that his worship was filled with “…shouts and the sound of trumpets.” When Michal, who was Saul’s daughter, saw David leaping and dancing before the Lord, verse 16 says, “She despised him in her heart.”
David responded by saying that he was focused only on the Lord when he was expressing himself in worship. In the last part of verse 21 he says, “I will celebrate before the Lord.” David didn’t care how he looked to others because He was intent on fully engaging Himself in wholehearted worship.
And so, we are to collectively express our worship vocally with vibrancy and exuberance. When we sing songs of praise we should shout at an incredible volume level out of joyful gratitude for the Rock of our salvation. As Oswald Chambers puts it: “A joyful spirit is the nature of God in my blood.” When God Himself so penetrates our life that we are consumed by a desire to worship Him, we can’t help but break out into joyful praise.
4. Worship is God-centered. This is a good reminder because we are not to just get emotional or sing loudly for our own sake. Our focus should not be on how worship makes us feel. Our worship must be centered on God alone. Notice these first two verses. We are to “sing for joy to the Lord,” we are to “shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation,” we are to “come before Him with thanksgiving,” and we’re to “extol Him with music and song.” David danced and shouted, but he did it “before the Lord.”
We need to make sure our music is “Christocentric,” not man-centered. Instead of singing about how happy we are to be together worshipping God, the Psalms call us to sing directly to God. In other words, we are to not just talk about how we feel when we worship, but rather engage our body, soul and spirit, complete with our emotions, in a total preoccupation with the Rock of our salvation.
5. Worship is founded on truth. In verses 3-4, the sovereignty of God is given as a basis for our worship. Verse 3 expresses God’s rule in general terms: “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.” We are to shout aloud, sing for joy, and extol the Lord with music and song for He is supreme. The supremacy of God is the foundation for our joy.
John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, puts it this way: “We also believe that our joy shows the supremacy of God’s value. If His greatness is the basis of our joy, then our joy is the evidence of His greatness. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” If we are not joyful, if we don’t respond to this first call to rejoice, then we are not giving evidence of God’s greatness.
Verses 4 and 5 depict God’s sovereignty more specifically. He is in control of His creation. He is in charge of all that He has created and possesses. The expressions “depths,” “peaks,” “sea” and “dry land” emphasize the totality of His creation and control of the earth. These are the things that challenge us as humans and hold forth the promise of adventure, excitement, fascination and mystery. He made it all. He is sovereign over all. The world is not only the work of His hands -- it is in His hands.
Thus our collective, vocal, vibrant, God-centered rejoicing must be founded on the truth of who He is and what He has done. We experienced this wide range of His creation on our vacation. We saw the depths when we climbed down into a cavern in Ohio, saw peaks on some rocks and cliffs in Wisconsin, saw the sea when we went to Sea World (I know it’s not the sea, but it’s close), and we drove a total of 2,000 miles over the dry land. God is in control of everything, isn’t He? No matter where you go, He is already there. The psalmist calls each of us to rejoice in His awesome transcendence.
A Call to Reverence
Verse 6 and the first part of verse 7 give us the second invitation to worship a call to reverence: “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.” As we sang earlier, we are called now to worship the Lord in the beauty of His holiness. Notice the change of tone from enthusiastic and loud songs of joy to awe-inspired reverence and humility before God. We are called to move from praise to prostration. In verses 1 and 2, the worshipper stands in God’s presence, shouting forth praise. Now, in verse 6, the worshipper falls on His face before God in humbled silence. Worship involves both animated rejoicing and speechless reverence.
Not only has the mood of the Psalm changed, so has the focus. It is now no longer God our Creator who is in view but it is rather God as our Redeemer and Savior. We are the flock under His care and the people of His pasture. God is our loving shepherd who pays close attention to each of us personally. This should cause us to bow down in worship and to kneel before the Lord our Maker. Bowing and kneeling helps us get “low” before God, which is really the essence of worship. We accept our place before Him while acknowledging His place before us.
I find it interesting that the call for rejoicing is based upon God’s sovereignty as Creator in the first part of the Psalm and that the call for reverence in verse 6 is based upon relationship. I would think it would be the other way around that we would rejoice over our relationship and stand in awe because of His mighty deeds of creation. And then it hit me. The deeper our relationship with God is, the more profound our sense of awe and reverence.
This happened on a couple occasions with the disciples. One day, after Jesus did a miracle by providing more fish than the fisherman knew what to do with, Luke 5:8 says that Peter fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “…Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” Knowing the Lord is the means to fearing Him. Experiencing God’s caring hand in our lives should induce us to greater submission and reverence. Those who have little reverence for God may also have little intimacy with Him.
Before we move on to the final part of God’s invitation, I want to make the point that our corporate worship services should always contain elements of both expressive rejoicing and contemplative reverence. When we add a second service, it will not focus on one to the exclusion of the other. Some people believe that a contemporary service is only filled with emotional rejoicing. While that might be true in some churches, the leadership of PBC is committed to have each of our collective worship services filled with praise and prostration; shouts and silence; happiness and holiness; rejoicing and reverence.
A Call to Respond
I see the last part of verse 7 as a transition: “Today, if you hear His voice.” On the one hand it serves to conclude the first part of the psalm. At the same time, it also serves as an introduction to the final call of the invitation the call to respond. The Message translation puts it this way: “Drop everything and listen, listen as He speaks and don’t turn a deaf ear.”
Let me make two general observations before we look at verses 8-11. First, there is another dramatic change of mood here. From the jubilant praise of the opening verses to the call to reverence in verse 6, we come now to a solemn warning that cannot be taken lightly. Second, there is a change in speaker. In the first seven verses, the psalmist has spoken, now we will hear from God Himself as He warns us against the dangers of a hard heart.
Let’s read verses 8-11: “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and 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.’”
Essentially, what God wants in worship is this: that we would listen to His voice. More than just coming together to sing, He wants us to live out what we hear. That’s why we look at our entire service as corporate worship, not just the singing times. Part of worship is listening and responding to God’s Word as it is preached.
God warns us against the danger of having a hard heart. He does this by using a couple of illustrations from Israel’s history. Specifically God is referring to what happened when those who escaped Egypt failed to possess the land of Canaan. Massah and Meribah are not just geographical names, but also designate two evils, both of which characterized the conduct of God’s people who had hardened hearts. Massah is a Hebrew word for test. Meribah is derived from the word for strife or contention.
Let’s refresh our memories by turning back in our Bibles to two passages. Exodus 17 mentions the first instance of Massah and Meribah. God had recently set His people free from the bondage in Egypt by parting the Red Sea. In chapter 15, the people sang a song of praise to God for His redemption. When the Israelites thirsted and began to grumble at Marah, God sweetened their water and gave them both manna and meat.
In chapter 17 the people began to quarrel with Moses because they had run out of water. Moses told them that they were really grumbling against God and the people threatened to stone Moses. God then instructs Moses to strike the rock with his rod. Water gushed out and the people were able to drink. The place was named Massah and Meribah because the people had grumbled and tested God.
The second account is found in Numbers 20. Here only the term Meribah is used. The event is similar to the one in Exodus, but this one happened nearly 40 years later, when the people were just about to enter the Promised Land. The people are grumbling and complaining again. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces before God and His glory appears to them.
God instructs Moses to speak to the rock so that water will come out. Instead of obeying God, in anger Moses scolded the people and twice struck the rock with his rod. While water came out, God indicted Moses for his unbelief and lack of reverence before the people. We see this in verse 12: “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” As a result, Moses was not allowed to lead the Israelites into Canaan. In Exodus 17, it was the people who sinned. In Numbers 20, it was the people and their leaders.
These two accounts reveal a common problem in every generation we are all prone to grumble and put God to the test. If the truth were known, each of us can be demanding of God as we try to coerce Him into satisfying our wants. While it not wrong to ask God for help, we do have to be careful about our complaining attitudes. Like Israel in the wilderness, our grumbling proves our lack of trust in God. Massah and Meribah are historical events which expose a deep-seated and recurring tendency to become hardened in heart. That’s why the psalmist says, “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah…as at Massah.” The word “as” indicates that it is a Massah-like attitude of heart which God despises.
What then, is the message of this psalm? We should worship, both by our rejoicing and by our reverence. Our worship is to be based on God’s sovereignty as our Creator and His sufficiency as our Shepherd. Verses 7-11 remind us that we must also worship God by our response of obedience. It’s more than just the shouting of praises or our acts of reverence; wholehearted obedience is the evidence of true worship. If we worship God as our Shepherd then we must follow Him as the sheep of His pasture. Worship without obedience is worthless to God in fact, verse 10 says that it makes God angry. Failure to worship through our obedience causes our hearts to harden, which is repulsive to God and destructive to us.
Leonard Sweet, in his book called Aquachurch, points out that we like to sing and praise God, but we often don’t want to go beyond that. He writes this: “Our pews are occupied by people who want to be moved, but who don’t want to move.” Let’s make sure that our worship always leads to action. Let’s come on Sundays not wanting to be moved, but with a commitment to move!
Concluding Thoughts
I want to make two conclusions. First, worship is to be primary. The invitation from God to worship is fundamental. He is worthy of our worship and He longingly seeks people who are committed to worship Him in spirit and in truth. When we fail to worship, our hearts will become hardened which can lead to disobedience and even discipline. Someone has said that there are two times to praise ad worship God when we feel like it and when we don’t.
Second, worship is to be persistent. Every day is “today” with God. Ruth Graham keeps a sign above her kitchen sink that says, “Worship services held here three times a day.” We can’t put off God’s invitation. When we do, it’s to our own peril. Instead of waiting until another time, do it today or it may be too late.
[Drama Skit]
That reminds of a story of an old man who put a child on his knee and told the child to seek God while he was young. He told him to pray and to love God every day. The child looked up at the old man and asked, “But why don’t you seek God?” The old man was deeply moved and answered, “I would child; but my heart is hard…my heart is hard.”
Some of you are like the man in the drama this morning. You’re waiting for a better time to get serious with God. This is dangerous. Don’t put off what you know to be right. The Bible says that now is the day of salvation. Now is the time to be sold out to Christ. Now is the time to practice a lifestyle of private and corporate rejoicing, reverence and response.
This Psalm ends with a pretty blunt indictment: “They shall never enter my rest.” Moses and his people were not able to enter the Promised Land, a place of rest, because of their hard hearts. Hebrews 3 and 4 apply this psalm to us as Christians. I don’t have time this morning to jump into this passage but I encourage you to do so if you want to understand Psalm 95 better. All I will say is this: there is still a rest for the people of God that we can miss out on if we make the same mistakes that the Israelites did.
Vacations are a good thing. One of the reasons we take a timeout from our routines is so that we can find some rest and refreshment. Several people this week asked me if I was rested after our vacation. I think I’m just now recovering from Megan’s meltdown. Someone else told me that she didn’t think vacation improved me at all!
Actually, the only way to really find rest is to take part in exuberant rejoicing, with humble reverence, and with immediate response. Are you tired today? Is your heart starting to get hard? If so, listen to the Lord knocking on the door of your life and open yourself to Him right now.
Revelation 3:20 is often quoted when we’re trying to help someone understand how to become a Christian. Jesus is outside the door and He’s knocking: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.” God used this verse in my life to help me see that I needed to invite Jesus into my life I did that on October 3rd, 1979. If you’ve never done that, I plead with you today to wait no longer. Don’t allow your heart to get hard!
This verse, while providing a great word picture to help someone understand salvation, is actually directed toward believers who have grown lukewarm in their worship. They’ve lost their joy and no revere God for who He is. Jesus calls them to repentance or He will send discipline into their lives.
In short, this covers all of us. If you’re not a Christian, you need to open the door of your life to Christ. If you’re a believer, you need to make sure you’ve not shut Him out. He’s knocking. Will you let Him in?
