When we are overly occupied with world events, what people say and do, and situations beyond our control, these potentially take all of our attention and control of our emotions. I will begin to orient my life and resources around these things, and it is a form of worship. And eventually I begin to reflect what I worship. For example:
A person who is focused on:
Status/security/money - becomes greedy
Avoiding failure - becomes a perfectionist
Being affirmed - becomes a people pleaser
Self - becomes a narcissist
Psalm 95 is an invitation to a community of believers to come together and worship the Lord. That is to move their attention away from self, from the world, from everything and anything else and to re-center their focus on God Almighty, the Creator of the universe.
By doing so, the way they think and everything they do would be reoriented and rightly aligned with God and their relationship with Him.
1 Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.”11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” (Psalm 95:1-11)
Worship is expressed through:
Rejoicing in God our Maker
Reverencing God
Responding in Obedience
Rejoice in God our Maker
In Psalm 95: 1-2 the psalmist is calling the community of believers to experience the Lord through worship, through rejoicing and thanksgiving to God. Why? Because the Lord is a great God and above all other gods, above every situation and every person, He is the Rock of our salvation, He created the earth and everything in it from the mountain peaks to the depths of the sea.
Psalm 62 tells us to rejoice in God because He alone is our rock of unyielding strength, our fortress and refuge, our defense and strong tower. He is the One on whom our salvation and honor rests.
Some Christians seem to think that worship cannot and should not be exuberant or loud. Though there is a place for a somber, reflective mood in worship, it should not be the dominant tone as the psalmist is saying we are to rejoice as one who triumphed in war.
“Worship changes the way we view everything”
God you are greater than any fear or challenge we would ever face. We give you thanks. God you are the reason for our joy. There is no one and nothing greater than You.
Reverencing our God
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 (Psalm 95:6-7).
When we worship God in spirit and in truth we have a conscious awareness that we are in the presence of the sovereign King of the universe, and this realization ought to humble us in a way that affects our thoughts and actions.
In vs. 7 God is not just all-knowing and infinitely wise, the God of all creation, He is our God, He created us, and we are His sheep and as a congregation, no matter what happens, we can choose to follow Him alone.
He knows us, He cares for us and leads us just as a shepherd cares for, protects, and leads His flock. We are the people He watches over, the flock under His personal care.
Psalm 103 tells us we should praise the Lord with our whole heart because He forgives all of our sins, heals us, redeems our lives from the pit, lavishly crowns us with loving kindness and tender mercy; He satisfies us with good things because He is our great Shepherd.
God who created the world by his hand, who sustains all things by His powerful word, holds us in the palm of His hand.
Even when the journey is rough, when tragedy strikes, even if our dreams and desires are never realized, I can find rest because God is my Shepherd and my life is in His hands.
Jesus said,
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all ; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand (John 10:27-29).
Responding in Obedience
After the psalmist speaks about the blessings of corporate worship, he changes the tone from worship to a warning from God. God tells us, “Today if you hear my voice do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness.”
“If you would hear His voice” - refers to hearing in such a way that we take to heart, we let the Word of God sink in, to the point the Holy Spirit changes our hearts and the way we live. The psalmist is warning the community not to be like those in the past who refused to listen and rebelled against their God.
No matter what God did for them, it was never good enough and they quickly forgot all of His benefits, all the miracles He performed on their behalf.
Instead of humbling themselves they hardened their hearts (Psalm 95:8). That is where the problem was, in their hearts. God was testing them to reveal and remove things that were in their hearts but they kept failing each test. The tests revealed that their hearts were not devoted to their God but to the idols they brought from Egypt (Ezekiel 20:1-16).
It is no different today, in Hebrews 4:7-11, the author is looking through Psalm 95 from a New Testament perspective. He wants to encourage a struggling Christian community to listen to what the Lord is saying, to let what He is saying to sink in, to trust God so they find rest in Him.
God sends tests to prove our character and tells us not to harden our hearts.
Because outside of Christ there is no promise of rest, no promise of peace in this life, and no assurance of salvation in the next.
Through genuine worship you can be changed. You can experience the hope and assurance of eternal life right now, you can have peace with God now. Therefore, do everything possible to experience that rest by worshiping the One true God. Set your affections on things above, not on the things of this earth.
The question is:
Today, when the Lord speaks through His Word
are we willing to listen to His voice and learn in humility?
We will all face difficult times, we will fail, others will fail, we will all have to handle difficult situations, one day we may get that telephone call with the bad news we feared. If we focus only on those events, we will become negative and bitter but if in the midst of all that life brings we focus on/worship the one true God, if we let His truth dwell in our hearts, if we listen the Spirit of God speak to us in those times, instead of being bitter we will be broken, instead of being hardened we will be humbled.
“When we truly worship the Creator of universe we will be changed”
