Turn in your Bibles, please, to Psalm 95. Psalm 95. Just before we read the text, the psalms come to us in many forms or many different flavors, if you will. Sometimes we have psalms of thanksgiving, of the psalmist, certainly rightfully, penning words of thanksgiving to our great triune God.
We have sometimes psalms of lamentation, lamenting the condition of the covenant people, lamenting the reality of enemies round about, seeking to visit hatred and violence upon God's covenant people. We have psalms of praise. We have psalms of wholesome mockery. the psalmist deriding and mocking the Gentile small G gods who are no gods at all and extolling the praises of Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, the only living and true God. Sometimes, like in Psalm 95, we have what Spurgeon calls a provocation to worship, the psalmist penning words in order to call God's people to worship.
This psalm is, Without a title, very often we'll see a title to the Psalms. We don't see a Psalm of David written here or a Psalm of Asaph. However, Paul, in the book of Hebrews, attributes Psalm 95, by inspiration of God, to David. David is the author of this psalm.
To introduce this psalm before we read it, here is C.H. Spurgeon. It is, in its original, a truly Hebrew psalm. directed both in its exhortation and warning to the Jewish people, but we have the warrants of the Holy Spirit in the epistle to the Hebrews for using its appeals and entreaties when pleading with Gentile believers. It is a psalm of invitation to worship.
It has about it a ring like that of church bells and like the bells it sounds both merrily and solemnly. at first wringing out a lively peal and then dropping into a funeral knell as if tolling at the funeral of the generation which perished in the wilderness. We will call it the psalm of the provocation. So let us read this Psalm 95. This is the word of the living and true God.
Scripture Reading: Psalm 95
Oh, come, let us sing 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 songs.
For the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills 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 and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness when your fathers tested me.
They tried me, though they saw my work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation and said, it is a people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know my ways. So I swore in my wrath They shall not enter my rest. Amen.
Well, let us pray.
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father, we ask now that you would bless this time of preaching. We ask, Lord God, that you would send the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that he would be active, working with his divine might, with great power and by your word. to convict and edify and encourage the saints gathered here, and by that same activity, to cause those who do not know you presently to leave these two doors, proclaiming the riches and the honor of Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord God, that the Holy Spirit would edify saints, would save sinners, and that all would be done, Lord God, unto the praise of your grace and unto the praise of your mighty name. And it's in Christ's name that we do pray.
Amen.
Introduction
Do you dislike coming to church? Do you lament the idea of having to get up and having to drive? Maybe it's five kilometers, maybe it's walking seven, maybe it's driving from Abbotsford, maybe it's driving from Maple Ridge, wherever you have to drive from. Is it a weariness to you to come to church?
You see, the people of God are marked by, as Psalm 95 and many other texts present, worshipful, joyful and thankful hearts. So if you dislike coming to church and if it is a weariness to you, might I invite you to believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and find the mercy of Jesus in saving faith. because the people of God are marked by such who say, oh, come, let us sing 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 songs. Praise God, though, that he's so merciful that for those who are his saints, as we roll out of bed and as we stumble to comb our hair, When we get to church, we realize that, yes, this isn't a weariness. What a blessed place to come into the house of the Lord, where the triune God has promised to commune with his people, to send his spirit, to edify, to stir up rejoicing, to stir up praise, love, honor and all glory rendered back to him. Praise God for his mercies to us.
Just before, and by way of introduction, I want to say and I want to add that do you know what? The closest thing to heaven is on earth. Sometimes we'll joke and we'll say, you know, the closest thing to heaven on earth is a large-score blizzard from Dairy Queen. You know, the closest thing to heaven on earth is a good barbecued rib with a side of, you know, grilled potatoes.
That's just heaven to me. We might or we might get more religious, spiritually ambiguous. We might say heaven on earth is standing on the Mount of Mount Sham and looking down upon, you know, the glory of God's creation, looking down upon the majestic, you know, fields and pastures and smaller rolling hills, that sort of thing. We might say heaven on earth is to cast eyes upon a newborn baby to see the beauty of his creation and the gift that that baby is.
Those things are terrific. But heaven on earth or the closest thing to heaven on earth is what is going on right now. It is God's people entering into the house of God to worship the triune God of Holy Scripture. It is here.
It is there in the place of worship where God has promised to commune with his people, to bless them, to send the living Christ who walks among his lampstands to stir up praise to the mighty one who created, who sustains, and who redeems. So if we dislike church, if we lament church, if coming to church is, oh, what a weariness, repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and see this as the closest thing to heaven on earth. Because when we get into heaven, We will. Of course, it is much perfect, much more perfect there, isn't it?
The preacher won't sing the wrong stanza in the hymn that we just sang because he'll be perfect in that bliss of paradise. The congregation of saints gathered together in heaven will be, though, gathering before the presence of the Lord, just like we do here in a foreshadowing, singing the praises of our gracious Christ. of our blessed Father and of our powerful Holy Spirit. So let us see church not in lamentation, not in dislike, not in a weariness, not in rote ritual, not as something we have to do, but by God's grace might we see it as a foretaste of heaven here on earth. Let's look at this psalm, excuse me,
Four Headings Introduced
let's look at this psalm under four headings. The call to worship, The reasons for the call to worship, the posture and position of those who worship and the warning to those who do not worship. So first off, the call to worship.
The Call to Worship
Notice first we have an emphatic and an eager invitation to worship, an emphatic and an eager invitation to worship. Oh, come. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully.
Let us come before his presence. Let us shout joyfully to him with song. It is an eager, emphatic invitation or provocation for the people of God to come and worship the Lord God of heaven and earth. This invitation is given with great emphasis and with great eagerness.
It is the immediate need and it is the immediate desire of the Saint of Christ to go into the place of worship and render religious homage to the God who redeemed him. It is an emphatic and eager invitation.
The Necessity of the Call to Worship
Notice also, this is the necessity of the call to worship. Notice the obviousness that God is to be worshipped. The obviousness that God is to be worshipped. This invitation is given because by virtue of God being God, he is to be worshipped.
Calvin Calvin says in his commentary on this passage that you see, we do not need to mount up argument after argument or rather fallacious arguments and lies or puffing up and padding the data of the Bible in order to stir people to worship. In other words, we don't need to present some fake God so that people might see the necessity of worshiping. Why? Because God is holy in himself, in self-contained and self-glorious beauty and majesty, honor and glory.
And by virtue of God being God, he is to be praised. We don't need to puff up the data of the Bible because God has revealed himself in such a way where there is nothing lacking in him and there is nothing lacking concerning his character, his perfections, his work, his being or his nature. By virtue of God being the God who he is, that necessitates the worship of the saints throughout the Bible, especially in the Psalms. We have the argument given. that nature itself speaks concerning the glory of God, don't we?
Hopefully you remember and you know Psalm 19, at least in principle, if not the entire text. But it says that the heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows his handiwork. Day after day, utter speech.
Night after night, reveals knowledge. The fact and the glory of creation presents to man the reality that there is a God, but not only the reality that there is a God, but it shows forth his glory, his majesty, the perfections of his being and his character. Creation sings the praises of the Lord God Almighty. I've said this before from the pulpit or quoted it, and it's one of the most Glorious quotes on Psalm 19 ever penned.
Who else penned by but by Spurgeon. And he says this. He says regarding Psalm 19 and creation proclaiming the glory of God. He says in the expanse above us, God flies as it were his starry flag to show that the king is at home.
And he hangs out his coat of arms bearing shield to show the atheist how much he hates their denunciations of him. Isn't that wonderful? You see, when the atheist or when the agnostic or when the unbeliever, the non-Christian, looks at the stars and looks at the heavens and then says that there is no God, Spurgeon says that they're writing themselves down as either a liar or an idiot. Because creation proclaims the glories of God.
The heavens display his majesty, his glory. And day after day, utter speech, and night after night reveals knowledge. By virtue of God being God, that necessitates and that presents the obviousness that he is to be worshipped by his people. Also, under the call to worship, the necessity of it, The necessity of this call to worship is seen in our need to be stirred, reminded, and provoked.
If you're honest, and I imagine this is everybody, but if you're honest, you will say, it is sometimes not easy for me, or it sometimes can be a weariness, or I sometimes find myself in a languor and a coldness with regards to the things of God. We have to be stirred. This is the whole thing that the whole point of the psalmist. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord more joyfully.
Let us go into the house of the Lord. There are times Spurgeon in his sermon on first Corinthians 11 on the Lord's Supper. Do this in remembrance of me. remarks and comments on his own, the own coldness of his heart. Sometimes so many things can distract us.
And we want to have so many things, our attention being poured on so many other things except the worship of the living and true God. And so the psalmist calls God's people of his pastor to come and to be provoked unto the proper worship of the God because of God, because it's only there that we have blessing. We don't We don't derive eternal blessings from pouring our attention on earthly things and the things of this world. We gain divine and eternal blessings from coming to our God, approaching Him joyfully, approaching Him with thankfulness, coming to Him and singing His praises and being found in His courts.
The natural inclination of man is not God-ward. And we need, of course, Regeneration, we need salvation, but then we need that constant reminder of spirit and word to come into the courts and sing joyfully. Turn with me to Luke 14 for a moment. Keep our fingers moving.
Keep us awake, keep us going as we. Observe the worship of God from Psalm 95 and Luke 14, there's a parable, there are parables that Christ is giving with regards to the reality that the Jews are rejecting the sent and promised Messiah and he is now going to be given as a light to the Gentiles. And notice that verse 16 of Luke 14, he begins this parable. Then he said to them, a certain man gave a great supper again, Luke 14, 16, and invited many and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, come, for all things are now ready.
But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a piece of ground and I must go go and see it. I ask you to have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I am going to test them.
I ask you to have me excused. Still another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. You see, men will make up all manner of excuses. Men will make up all manner of reasons, the smallest reasons, in order to not enter into the worship of God, in order to not come into His courts.
But you see, for anything else, the worst things can happen to us, but we'll make sure we're there. We'll travel three hours to go to a beach, but we won't travel 45 minutes to go to church. We'll travel eight hours to go to an amusement park, but we won't travel 15 minutes to go to church. will mount up before us all manner of excuses to neglect the worship of the Triune God of Holy Scripture, but have so much energy and so much time for other things. How many things do we do in a week that we enjoy, that we love, that we seek to engage in?
And when it comes to Sunday, that's our day of rest, but our day of rest from worship. We are to gather together in the house of the Lord No excuses, because there is joy, there is praise, there is love rendered unto the one who has called us out of the miry pit, out of that hole of the pit from which he digged us and from that stone of great hardness and bondage. We are, or the natural inclination of man is not Godward. We need to be provoked unto that worship.
This is what Martin Geyer says with regards to this part of the psalm. There is a silent hint here at that human listlessness and distraction of cares whereby we are more prompt to run after other things than to devote ourselves seriously to the becoming praises and service of God. Our foot has a greater proclivity to depart to the field, the oxen, and the new wife than to come to the sacred courts. Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.
You see, this is so true. Our foot has a greater proclivity to depart to the field, the oxen, and the new wife than to come to the sacred courts. It should never be among the people of God. It should never be among the saints of Christ.
Give us your fields. Give us your oxen. I'll bring my wife. But we're going to come into the house of the Lord because therein He communes with His people.
Therein we are blessed. And you need to understand, maybe you already do, but sometimes Christians need help with this, that the preacher, the man in the pulpit, isn't the end or the be-all of the worship service. Sometimes, not sometimes, we are cracked pots. It's what Paul calls us in 2 Corinthians.
Turn there with me. Because very often we can mount up excuses that really aren't valid excuses, whether it's the person, whether it's the environment, whether it's the color of the pews or the fact that there's no mattresses on them. You can bring your own if you like. Sometimes we'll make up excuses, we'll have bad notions or reasons why it is okay to exempt ourselves from the worship of God, what we need to realize is that in the midst of imperfection, in the midst of fallible preachers, in the midst of an imperfect and sin-cursed world, God shines forth the glory of His name and the treasures of His gospel. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 5.
It opens with an indictment for preachers who write autobiographies. No, not really. But it does say that we are the preacher is not to be about himself, but. about Christ, notice, for we do not preach ourselves, 2 Corinthians 4, 5, for we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves, your bondservants, for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now notice verse 7, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. See, you come to worship in this place. You come to listen to a fallible preacher with blemishes and with whatever else because that's God's designed way to have cracked pots, earthen vessels to proclaim the riches and the glories of the gospel and all the truth of God so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. Have no excuses for worship.
Have no earthly and cosmetic and circumstantial excuses to worship, but come with great joy and with great glory into the courts of trying God in order to sing his praises. Now, a qualification. Hopefully you understand. And hopefully sometimes we don't have to give the qualification.
You're providentially hindered because of illness and because of other legitimate reasons than You are not, don't be bound, don't have your consciences bound improperly from what I'm saying. It is though, or in my crosshairs are those who have a hypocrisy or a hardness of their hearts who claim to be God's people and yet find worship a weariness. We are to come, we are to cast off Our field, our oxen and the distractions of family. And we are to come to the sacred courts.
Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.
Character of Worship
Notice, secondly, the character under the call to worship. Notice the character of it. The character of it, as we turn back to Psalm 95. First off, the character of our worship is God word.
Well, preacher, that's obvious. Yeah, it should be. It should be that our worship is Godward. You see, it's not the saint's job to have a litany, whether physically or mentally, of things that they want to get out of worship.
What we get out of worship is to be a byproduct of that primary exercise in worship, which is Godward rendering of right and religious homage. Godward worship is the character of Old Covenant, and new covenant worship. Notice the language. Oh, come, let us sing 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 song. Our worship is Godward.
We come into the church, not in order to get and receive, not in order to be seen by men and to have our social standing perpetuated until next week. We come into the church. We come into the house of the living and true God to render rightly Godward worship and homage to the triune majesty of Holy Scripture. It is Godward.
It is to the Lord. It is to the rock. It is before him. and it is to Him. This strikes at the heart of manward worship, obviously.
We don't come in order to see the preacher. We don't come in order to see each other, qualified by the fact that we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. But my primary reason for coming to church, I hope this doesn't scandalize you, isn't you. I love you.
I want the best for you. I am so happy to be a brother in Christ Jesus to you. But I come to church to render homage to the Triune Majesty. I come to church in order to sing to the Lord, to shout joyfully to the rock, to come before God's presence.
That is a joy, and it ought to be, of our Christian walk. To recognize that we assemble together before the One who created the heavens and the earth, before the One who has the deep places of the earth as His and the highest hilltops of the secret mountains. We come and we worship that One. We have access by Jesus Christ to that One who providentially upholds all things that He might be magnified by His people in His church.
We come to worship that One who redeemed us, that One who brought us from out of the miry clay, We'll get to it in a moment. But the reason for our joyfulness and our thankfulness is to be seen in the recollections of our former state and the acknowledgement of our present state by virtue of the saving work of Jesus. If we're not joyful and if we're not thankful, something has to be wrong. Because how can we not be, when we've been saved from such a darkness and deadness and bondage to sin, to a standing before God as righteous in Christ Jesus, sins forgiven?
Glorious reality that ought to call us to worship, that ought to provoke us unto endless praise of our great God. Worship is Godward. Worship is congregational. O come, let us sing. to the Lord.
Worship is congregational. We come to worship together. We don't come as individuals or we don't say you go to the house of the Lord and worship. You go up to the mountain of the Lord and worship.
Let us go to the Lord. Let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully. Let us come.
Let us shout. It is a congregational worship. We come as, yes, individual Christians, but we come not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some. But as those bought by the precious blood of Jesus, we come in glorious fellowship to sing the praises of God together.
Worship is joyful. Worship is Godward. Worship is congregational. Worship is joyful.
You see, if we're not marked by joy, then... It's obviously something else, isn't it? I know that's revelatory, but if we're not marked by joy, we're marked by something else. Perhaps it's just liturgical comfort.
I roll into the doors here and I really like the structure of worship. I really like that. You know, there's not this, but there is that and there's not that, but there is this. And, you know, it's a comfort to me to be locked into the scriptures of this liturgical order that we have at Free Grace Baptist Church.
And then I can go home and have a pastrami sandwich. We are to be marked when we come into this church by joy. We'll get to the reason why. You probably already know.
It's because of Jesus, the precious Savior. It is joyful. It is thankful. It is thankful.
Worship is thankful. This is against seeking thanks and against discontentment. How can we be discontent as Christians? I submit, if we are discontent as Christians, it's because we have or we attach a greater value to the things of this world and we bring the things of eternity down to a place of bad posture where it should not be.
We must be content and we should be content because of the multitudinous reasons that the Bible sets forth to us, all summed up and summarized in Jesus Christ, the Blessed Redeemer. We have every reason to be thankful because God has pulled us from the darkness and the madness of the fictions of our own brain to the religion of Jesus Christ and salvation by Him. Worship is Godward, congregational, joyful, thankful, and it is retrospective. And this is the reason why it is to be joyful, one of the functional reasons why it is to be joyful and why it is to be thankful, because Christians are a retrospective people.
What do I mean by that? I mean that we, with recollection, think back to the redeeming activity of our Christ. Knowing our former states, knowing what we were prior to grace punctuating and coming into our lives, penetrating the madness of our sin and the darkness of our activity, God in victorious grace comes. He pulls us from out of the mud.
He takes us from the hole of that pit. And He brings us to good standing by Jesus Christ and His perfect Word. Christians are to be a retrospective people. The old covenant people were supposed to be that way.
The psalmists often bring to bear the reality of the exodus upon God's covenant people. Remember what happened. They're in bondage to Egypt for over 400 years and they're redeemed by the Lord God from out of that bondage in Egypt and they're brought into their own land. Well, the author of the Psalms, the authors of the Psalms often point the covenant people back to that and say, sing joyfully to the Lord, render thanks unto the covenant Lord for his mercy, for his grace and for his kindness.
Well, you see, for Christians, we have a greater redeeming act, don't we? That physical exodus from bondage in Egypt served typologically, that is, it pointed forward to that great act of redemption that Christ brought out upon Calvary's tree. So if you're not joyful and if you're not thankful, if we can't at least figuratively have a smile on our face, if we don't have one physically, then there's a problem. We're not either we're not saved. or were not adequately provoked unto a remembrance of the saving activity of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
I love Spurgeon's sermon on that, Do This in Remembrance of Me, because he calls the reader to be reminded of the working of Jesus in this lower world. He starts with the incarnation. He says, in a sense, and I'm paraphrasing, Be stirred out of your langer and your coldness." Well, think of the incarnation. The one who's the praise of angels, the praise of the seraphim and the cherubim, departs from heavenly glory to be born in a feed trough.
God in a feed trough. Jesus Christ, God manifested in the flesh, found in swaddling clothes, wrapped in a place where horses would eat hay out of and drink water out of. that should, knowing where you were, knowing where you are now spiritually, cause your heart to dance and sing with joy. That he would leave that glory, come into our lower ignominy, and be found in a feed trough to go on that march to Calvary and to die for his people and rise again. Spurgeon presents the dirty and filthy water of the Jordan and indicts the believer who's marked by languor and coldness by saying that even the water of the Jordan acknowledged Jesus Christ.
He says, we have reason to suspect that the conscious water trembled knowing that it contained the deity. John the Baptist brings Jesus down into the water of baptism in the Jordan and brings him out. And Spurgeon says, we have reason to suspect that that conscious and filthy water even tremble at the knowledge that it contained the deity. How much more are we indicted when we can think of everything else save for Christ and his redeeming work.
When our minds can wander upon everything else in our lives and we have to be reminded of our Savior. We have to be reminded of his glorious redemption. We should have some sort of a principle. I don't know what it is, and I'm not going to bind your conscience, but perhaps it's reading the scriptures daily as often as you can.
Whatever it is, ought we not daily to raise our heads as retrospective Christians? Jesus Christ died for me and rose again the third day and ascended in great glory to the right hand of the majesty on high. Worship is to be retrospective, remembering the perfect redemption brought out by the triune God, leading us to joyful praise and to thankful worship.
Reasons for the Call to Worship
Notice the reasons for the call to worship as we find them here in our text. The reasons for the call to worship. First off, excuse me.
God's Singular Greatness and Supremacy
First off, the singular greatness and supremacy of God. For the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. So the provocation or invitation to worship is given and the reason for that is clearly given as well. For the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods.
The singular greatness and supremacy of God. He is not a great God. Stay with me, because he is a great God. But to clarify and to bring force of exclusivity, he is not a great God.
He is the great God. You see, we're not pagans who have a pantheon of deities for every every subtle thing under heaven. We are worshipers of the great God, the king of heaven and earth, the high king of heaven, who is the only living and true God. We are those who are worshippers of the Lord, the great king, the great God.
Listen to Calvin on this, because it's wonderful. First here, when he writes, for the Lord is the great God. First, he extols the greatness of God, drawing a tacit contrast between him and such false gods as men have invented for themselves. We know that there has always been a host of gods in the world.
As Paul says, there are many on the earth who are called gods. We are to notice the opposition stated between the God of Israel and all others, which man has formed in the exercise of an unlicensed imagination. Should any object that an idol is, excuse me, should any object That an idol is nothing in the world. It is enough to reply that the psalmist aims at denouncing the vain delusions of men who have framed gods after their own foolish device.
You see, when we see and hopefully you know this, but it's good to rehearse. We do have the word gods used in the Psalms and sometimes it appears in the text that the psalmist isn't saying that there are no small g gods. I mean, here he says, for the Lord is the great God and the King above all gods. Well, what does that mean?
Well, what he is doing is he's just marching the gods of the pagan nations before his Old Covenant audience, and he's saying, knowing that they already know or they should know that these are no gods at all, he says, our God, the living and true God, the great God, is the great King above all gods. He is high above the imaginations of men. Any God that can be manufactured in the fictions of our own brains cannot approach the majesty and the glory of the thrice holy Yahweh of Israel. Any imagination of men, any deity proposed or set forth by men cannot approach the majesty of the Lord God.
Sometimes in the scriptures, though, the word God is applied to judges or rulers in the earth. For example, in Psalm 82, just turn there for a moment, just a good theological exercise, because believe it or not, you may not have come across them, but there are people who reject the inspiration of the scriptures because, as they say, at some parts it's monotheistic, but at other parts it's polytheistic. That is, it presents many gods. Here in Psalm 82, we have an example of the use of God's Psalm 82 at verse one.
God stands in the congregation of the mighty. He judges among the gods. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked, say law, et cetera. But you see, the enemies of Christianity and of biblical revelation will say, we'll see you there.
The Bible is arguing that the old covenant people here somehow acknowledge that there were small g gods and that Yahweh was the ruler of a pantheon of deities. Well, the text goes on to indict these small g gods. for not defending the poor and fatherless, for not doing justice as they should, but afflicting the needy. And they are to deliver the poor and the needy and free them from the hand of the wicked. You see, the Bible uses God there.
God by inspiration uses small g God in order or to describe the judges of the earth. They were gods in the sense that they were ambassadorial people who represented Yahweh in the earth to bring his judgments and to bring his law to the people and to exercise his wisdom in the earth. And as such ambassadors, they were ungodly. They were not performing their offices lawfully.
And so God, by Asaph, indicts them. But the point is, is that whether it's the fictional gods of the pagan nations, whether it's the human ambassadors of God in the lower world, or whether it's the majesty of angels in heaven, the great God is alone to be praised. The great God of heaven and earth is alone to be rendered thanks unto, to be rejoiced in by his people. and to be given honor because he is the only living and true God, the great God, and he is king above all gods. There is no God to be worshipped save for the triune God of Holy Scripture.
A great passage of scripture that speaks to this clearly and brings one of those elements of the Psalms before us is Psalm 115. That element of mockery of the heathen God. Psalm 115, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to your name give glory because of your mercy, because of your truth. Why should the Gentiles say, so where is their God?
Now notice, but our God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases. And this is one of the many multitudinous reasons why our God, the only living and true God, is the great God and King above all gods, Verse 4, their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak.
Eyes they have, but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Noses they have, but they do not smell. They have hands, but they do not handle.
Feet they have, but they do not walk. Nor do they murmur through their throat. Those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them.
But you see, our God is in the heavens. He does whatever He pleases. The majesty and the glory of God is seen, along with many other things, in the folly and the madness and the stupidity of pagan deities and human conceptions of God. The God of heaven and earth reveals himself in the Bible as the one who is the great and only God and king over any conceptions of deity. the singular greatness and the supremacy of God, the reasons for the call to worship.
Sovereignty in Creation and Governance
Secondly, his sovereignty in creation and governance. His sovereignty in creation and governance. In his hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it. And his hands formed the dry land. You see, contrary to pagan conceptions of deity, who are set as one God over the water, one God over this element of nature, one God over vegetables, one God over whatever. You just have to study the Greco-Roman deities of those pagan religions to see the madness and the stupidity of human conceptions of God.
You have a God, a patron deity, if you will, for everything under the sun. God, though, is the comprehensive master and owner because he is also the creator of all things. His majesty and his rule and his ownership extends to the entirety, to the breadth of the universe. His sovereignty in creation and governance.
It's often spoken of, or God's, the reality of God and in his sovereignty is spoken of in a threefold manner. CPR. Creation, providence and redemption. It's a good CPR to remember.
Hopefully you can remember the other one if anybody's ever choking or needs resuscitation. But a more important one is creation, providence and redemption. The Lord our God is the master of his creation. He is the glorious sovereign over the governance of his creation throughout history, which is Christward in its trajectory.
And he is the glorious sovereign over redemption of his own will. He brought us forth by the word of truth, his sovereignty and creation and governance.
Redeeming Love and Protection
Thirdly, under the reasons for the call to worship, his redeeming love and protection. His redeeming love and protection as we stand down in the text at verse six. Oh, 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.
You see, the the logical thrust of the text leads to redemption, which is the crux of the matter. Spurgeon said that the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the crux of Christianity. It's a little bit of a play on words. The cross of Jesus Christ is the crux of Christianity.
It is the center. That saving work upon Calvary's tree, the son of a carpenter ushered to a Roman cross, pierced with Roman implements, attached for the sacrificial substitutionary redemption of his people. That text, this text leads logically creation, providence, redemption. It is a theological crescendo to that central work of Christianity, which is Christ upon the cross, working out the salvation of sinners.
The reasons for the call to worship, the singular greatness and supremacy of God, his sovereignty and creation and governance, his redeeming love and protection toward his people.
Posture and Position of Worshippers
Thirdly, the posture and position of those who worship. Notice the text here at verse six. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker.
You see, we are to have a posture of humility. before our God. We don't march into this church like we own the world, sit down in our pew and have any sort of posture other than, we don't do that first off, but when we enter into the church of the living and true God, we are to have a twofold exercise that we do in preparation and actually as we engage in worship. A twofold exercise of preparation and engagement. That twofold exercise is this.
First, it is self-acknowledgement. We realize who we are before the living and true God. We keep texts before us like Daniel 4. Nebuchadnezzar, who's boasting in his own prominence, boasting in his own splendor, boasting in his own majesty, he's humbled by God, his senses return, and he blesses the name of the living and true God, who is sovereign over all things in the administration of his deity, in the administration of history, in the administration of redemption.
We usher texts before us, like those biblical texts that speak. to the madness, to the depravity, to the wickedness of our own hearts? Who are we to come with any measure of pride before the thrice-holy God of Holy Scripture without recognizing, without the exercise of examining who we were, what we did, and everything that we engaged in prior to God punctuating our lives by victorious grace? If we don't engage in self-examination and self-acknowledgement, we can enter this place not rendering Godward worship, but having a self-centered approach to worship and thinking ourselves something when it is God who is everything, when it is Christ who has done everything, and when we should be having that posture of kneeling before the triune God of Holy Scripture in great humility. Spurgeon, or not Spurgeon, Calvin, in preaching, in commenting on Philippians 2, 6 to 11, writes concerning Jesus Christ coming in the incarnation.
He says, since then, the Son of Man descended from so great a height, how unreasonable that we who are nothing should be lifted up with pride. You see, we come into church knowing who we are, and that second part of the exercise is the acknowledgment of who God is. Divine recognition. Self-acknowledgement and divine recognition.
We know who we are. We should. And we need to know who God is. He is this one who is the great God and the king above all gods, who in his hand holds all of the places of the earth, who is the Lord God, our maker, who is our God.
And we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. We recognize who God is in order to prepare for worship and in order to engage in worship. And we recognize who we are before his multitudinous perfections and glories, our position, our position, our posture is one of humility, our position. It is one of being under the caring ownership of God.
This language ought to light our hearts as we read it. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Hopefully, Psalm 23 is close to your hearts. There's a Psalm 22, Psalm 23 and Psalm 24 go together.
Psalm 22, you should know the psalm of the cross, right? Psalm 23, the psalm of the crook, Psalm 24, the psalm of the crown. We have Jesus going to the cross, Psalm 22. We have his resurrected glory in his office as shepherd watching over us, his rod and his staff, they comfort us.
Psalm 24, his glorious majesty being given dominion and glory in a kingdom. We have Christ, the psalm of the cross, the psalm of the crook and the psalm of the crown. In Psalm 23, though, we have the stuff of God's great shepherding of his people. Our Great Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is in the theology of shepherd and sheep but a Christ, the Great Shepherd, who gives His life for the sheep? John 10. The Great Shepherd gives His life for the sheep. Not only does He give His life for the sheep, but in one of the most blessed passages of Holy Scripture for the heart of the saint, He holds us in His inviolable grip until that great day.
No one can pluck them out of my hand. No one can snatch them out of the hand of the great shepherd. We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.
Warning to the Unworshipping Heart
Lastly, before we close in prayer, the fourth point, the warning to those who do not worship or those who assemble in hypocrisy. It's what Spurgeon means here when he says, it has about it a ring like that of church bells, and like the bells it sounds both merrily and solemnly, at first ringing out a lively peal and then dropping into a funeral knell as if tolling at the funeral of the generation which perished in the wilderness. Notice how it ends. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.
You see, the message goes out, a warning to the people gathered before, assembled before the triune majesty of heaven and earth. Listen to him. Don't gather together like those of the old covenant who were saved from out of bondage in Egypt and 75 days later said, oh, that we were back in Egypt or oh, that the Lord would have put us to death in Egypt when we had bowls of stew and our bellies were full. They had just sung the praises of being redeemed out of bondage in Egypt, and then 75 days later, they're saying, oh, that God would have killed us in Egypt.
What's the point? Is that worship your great God and listen to Him. Did He not say that He would guide you and protect you from out of bondage 75 days later, and God's not going to be good on His word? God's not going to do what He promised?
You see, one of the foundational truths that serve our remembrance, that serve our joyfulness, that serve our thankfulness is the fact that our covenant God is true to his promises. We have Christian hope. You see, earthly and worldly hope is that not so abiding hope that the Canucks will win the Stanley Cup. I'm convinced it's never going to happen, and I kind of really don't care.
Because we have, there is, true hope, true expectation of the veracity of a promise only in Jesus Christ and his perfect work. That's wherein we have hope. So why would we harden our hearts? Why would we rebel?
Why would we sing the praises of God and then when hardship and trial comes, say, oh, that he would have killed us when we had bellies full of dead animal and vegetables? We are to be marked by those who either in trial or in affliction or in blessing and great great providential smilings. We sing the praises of God and we march forward based upon His sure promises. We are to listen to the Lord, not only because it is our duty, but because of the certainty of His promises.
We are not to ignore His mighty working. Notice in verse 10, for 40 years I was grieved with that generation and said, it is a people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know my... Sorry, verse 9. When your fathers tested me, they tried me though they saw my work.
They saw what the mighty God had done for them. Nevertheless, they still turned away and rebelled from him. They saw what God did in those 10 plagues visited upon Egypt. If you were a witness to those, it's startling how you could say, oh, that we could have been back in Egypt with the pagans when you saw God visit with wholesome severity those curses upon Egypt.
How can you see my ways, God says through David, and yet still turn from me? Still test me and still try me? How can we do that as Christians? How can we not be manifested by joyful and thankful worship?
How can we want to get out of here when God has done so much for us through Jesus Christ, our precious Savior? You see, we gather together for an hour and a half I'm going to let you go soon, I promise. We gathered together in the morning for an hour and a half. We gathered together in the evening for an hour and seven point five minutes, give or take.
And we have the rest of Sunday to do, hopefully, wholesome, lawful activities that God commands us and gives us the freedom to do on His Lord's Day. And then we have another six days to do, hopefully, whatever God says is lawful for us to do. We have a lot of time to do other stuff that's lawful. So it should not be a weariness and a lamentation and a drag to come into church on Sunday, but we should acknowledge the redemption wrought out by Jesus Christ, the glorious benefit it is for his people to gather together to assemble before the courts of heaven and know that God communes with his people, that Jesus walks among his lampstands.
We should be marked by those who know God's works, who do not reject them and ignore them, but acknowledge his mighty workings in glory and therefore gather in joyful, humble, and thankful worship. We are lastly two things were to acknowledge his wrath and to acknowledge his punishment. You see, the fear of the Lord is to stir us unto reverential awe and worship. The fear of the Lord.
We are to come before the Lord acknowledging, or if we are such who are marked by hypocrisy, if we come bearing the clothes of whitewashed walls and bejeweled sepulchers, We are to know that God is full of wrath and He will not allow those who are wicked in unbelief to enter His rest. The wholesome severity of God visiting upon those who reject Him, His law, and His Son, the wholesome severity of God is to drive the unbeliever to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to drive the wayward saint back to that good way, back to the old path, wherein is blessing, and whereupon our walk is guided by our triune God. I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." An interesting way to end Psalm 95, which is a provocation to worship, but it is there to stir our hearts, which are prone to coldness and languor, to worship our glorious God through the Lord Jesus Christ, our precious redeeming King.
If you know that Jesus this morning, I do pray that you can see worship as heaven on earth. I know it's hard sometimes when the preacher preaches too long, when it's sort of warm outside and when, you know, maybe you have other things on your mind. Hopefully you don't. But sometimes in our fallibility, in our remaining corruption, in our physical bodies, it's difficult to apprehend that the gathered church on the Lord's Day is a rehearsal for the bliss of paradise.
I pray that you would see it as such. We come together, we assemble together as Christ's people in the name of our redeeming King to gather before the presence of the Lord God, where he has promised to bless his people. Let us see worship as we ought. If you don't know Jesus Christ, I impress upon you the warnings of Holy Scripture.
There is clarity to this truth. He who believes the Son has life. He who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. Hopefully that weighs heavily upon your consciences if you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is one way of salvation. See, all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. There is no wiggle room. God sees everything.
You can hide from your parents. You can hide from your teacher. You can hide from family members. You can do sin in the privacy of your closet.
But the flaming, fiery eyes of the triune Jehovah punctures through and sees all. But you see, that wrath isn't rendered. without the means of escape, if I can use that language. God is holy and will righteously judge in His wholesome severity all those who are disobedient, wicked, and who do not believe His Son, but those who do believe the Son. Glorious promise of salvation by Jesus Christ.
He came into this world to perfectly secure the salvation of all those who believe in Him. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved and hopefully with all of us who fallibly worship, you will be marked by joyful, thankful worship, being those retrospective Christians who dwell upon the majesty and the richness of Christ's saving work, and therein find safety and joy. Well, let us pray.
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Bible. We thank you, Lord God, that page after page, chapter after chapter, it points us to Christ upon the cross, working out the salvation of men. We thank you, Lord God, for All that it discloses, and we thank you that it discloses in certain truth, redemption by Jesus Christ, salvation by Him. We pray, Lord God, for those of us here who are your saints, that you would help us not to be cold, not to be indifferent, but to be marked by joyful worship, to have thankful hearts, to know that we come before your presence and that we ought to do it with great joy and with great thanksgiving.
Do help us in this, Lord God. Forgive us our sins. We know we have forgiveness, most certainly by Jesus Christ and his precious blood. So stir us up to proper worship and joyful worship as we come together as a church.
We ask, Lord God, for those who are outside of Jesus this morning that they would have heard something of the gospel, something of your holiness and your wrath and your righteousness, and something certainly of your mercy and your kindness by Jesus Christ and salvation through him. We pray that they would acknowledge their sin, that by grace you would impress upon them the weight and the gravity of their own transgressions against you, and that they would flee to the Savior and in Him find all those spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Just go with us now. Help us to worship you.
Help us to rightly give you praise. Help us to enlighten all of your salvific blessings disposed upon us. We pray that we would walk in a manner worthy of our calling by grace. We pray in Christ's precious name.