Psalm 95
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Good morning. It is really sweet to be here with you all this morning. It's just an honor to be here. For those of you who don't know me super well, I'm Jared, obviously. My wife is Zoe. We have three kids, Knox, Callum, and Graham. And we've been here at Third for a little over four and a half years, which when Tim was up here and he was talking about how long he's been at third, I'm like, being at third is like dog years. It seems like that's been a lifetime, and we've just loved this place. We love you all. We've grown so much in Christ from the time that we've been here, and we're leaving soon. We're leaving in two weeks to go to Northern Ireland on the 17th.
that's crazy. So, it's just really sweet to kind of close this out with being behind the pulpit that has encouraged Zoe and I so much for so many years, and we're different people. I will address the elephant in the room, though. I think it's funny that I've asked to preach after like two months of incredible guest preachers. You have like Omar Johnson, Tom Schreiner, for Pete's sakes. Matt Smethurst, I told my wife, I feel like of the guest preachers, if they're like Jedi Knights, I'm like Jar Jar Binks. So, bear with me.
So, it's not uncommon for us to think about learning from the past, right? This is a really normal thing for us. We even have common phrases like hindsight is 20-20, right? Learning from the past is normal. I attempt to learn from the past often, and as we often do, I often fail. One way that I've thought about that recently is with Christmas in the rearview mirror, kind of fresh on the brain. Every year, I think, man, I should have bought Christmas presents earlier. I should have thought about it at all. I wait, I don't know about you guys, I wait till like the absolute last possible second to even start thinking about gifts for other people. And then every year, I say, I will definitely not do that again. And guess what I do every year? I definitely do that again.
So, this happens with mistakes all the time. We make mistakes, but we even struggle to learn from them. And this isn't just mistakes that we make. We learn from the mistakes of others, too. Think of the common counsel from parents sending their kids off to college saying, don't make the same mistakes that I made. Or we often are taught in our history books to learn from the mistakes of our own country or other nations or empires.
And a lot of times when we are taught those lessons of learning from mistakes, it's with a hard view of what not to do, right? Think of that example of your history class. Look at, you know, the sin of our country in the past. Just don't do that. Like, don't be like that. But I think that sometimes when we look to the past for the mistakes that, whether it's the mistakes that we've made or our parents have made or that nations have made, if all we do is think about what not to do and fail to kind of see what we should do, we lose the whole point of looking to the past to learn from mistakes.
and that's exactly what we see in our psalm today, in Psalm 95. In fact, the priorities of what we should do and what we shouldn't do are flipped. Before we even get to what we shouldn't do, the Lord lays out this really beautiful picture of what Christian worship looks like, what a life of devotion to God looks like, and then this really strong warning of what it looks like when you do the opposite of that. So, again, Psalm 95, if you guys would like to open your Bibles to Psalm 95, we'll read that together. It's pretty short. If you're using one of these read pew bibles here uh then that's going to be on page 499 499 so that's psalm 95 oh come let us sing to the lord let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation
let us come into his presence with thanksgiving let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains 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 hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massa in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, they are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. So, I think the main point of this passage, and hopefully the main point of the sermon is this. Worship God as King and Creator, and do not harden your heart.
Worship God as King and Creator, and do not harden your heart. And we're going to break that into two points, as is often the case here at Third Avenue. Point number one, worship your King and creator. Worship your king and creator. That's going to be verses one through seven. And then point number two, learn from the past and do not harden your heart. Learn from the past and do not harden your heart. And these points follow really easily with the structure of the psalm. So we're just going to kind of do those in order. So point number one, worship your king and creator. I love that we read that passage from Hebrews 4. We're actually going to talk about that later, but just as a way of kind of introductory comments, what's really cool about that passage in Hebrews 4 is in Psalm 95, we have no idea who wrote the psalm. Like a lot of psalms, right, have those
superscriptions, those really small words above the first verse that tell us a lot about the psalm. They'll tell us, gosh, who wrote it, when it was written, maybe the situation, sometimes even the tune that it's put to of music. But we don't have any of that in Psalm 95. We just get right into it. But later on, the author of Hebrews actually tells us that it's David who wrote Psalm 95. So because we believe the Bible can help us interpret the Bible, we're just going to believe the Bible and say that David wrote the psalm.
The theology of the psalm is not hard. That second half, we'll get to that. That is hard in the sense of, you know, kind of theologically, but it's not hard to understand, right? It's a pretty straightforward call for the people of God to worship their God, especially worship Him as the lord and ruler over the world and as the creator of the world. So, let's get into it. So, verse one, O come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. So, here from the beginning, we have not just this kind of random call to worship, but an invitation.
David is inviting the people, right? He says, oh, come, let us worship the Lord. Verse two, this continues. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. It's as if David is, like, doing this. He's like, come on, guys. Let's worship the Lord. Come, let us, let us, let us. in the first two verses, David says, let us four times. This beckoning, this invitation.
What's interesting too is he doesn't say, let you or let the individual. He says, let us. I couldn't help but think as we were singing this morning how well we were fulfilling this call in Psalm 95 to worship the Lord with songs and making joyful noise to the God of our salvation, to come in his presence with thanksgiving. This is a corporate call, right? Let us is plural.
The Christian life isn't a solo act, is it? Now, there's lots of Psalms that talk about individual devotion and things like that. Those are not unimportant. But just notice here, in our psalm, in Psalm 95, the Lord is saying, hey, my expectation for you to worship me is that that's done amongst other people who are worshiping me. If you think that solo Christianity is a thing, the people of God have never been solo. They've always been together. This is a New Testament principle as well. So, be encouraged. What we've done this morning, even, and what we're going to do, and it's not just singing, right? It's the hearing of the Word. It's the hearing of prayer. It's praying. All these things are us doing a good job as Third Avenue to fulfill the call that David has to let us come and worship the Lord. We are that us. That's pretty cool. All right, back to
the text. So, in verse 3, we shift from this invitation to kind of a grounding, right, a grounding for why this invitation should be given in the first place. Verse 3 says, the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. Verse 4 then shows us this really beautiful picture of who God is and his rule. It says, in his hands are the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains are his also. So think with me for a second. If God rules from the depths of the earth, his hand is there and his hand is at the heights of the mountains. What's the insinuation here?
he rules everything. If he rules the lowest thing and the highest thing, then of course he rules everything in between. So David's grounding for worshiping God is that he's in control of everything. He is king over everything. He's ruler over all of it. There's nothing that is not within his purview. There's nothing that his hand isn't touching. Verse 5, this continues. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. So this is similar to his hands being in the depths of the earth and in the mountains, but this time we're not talking about his hands just ruling, we're talking about his hands creating. So he's not just king, he's creator. And it's the same idea, right? If he created the sea and he created the dry land, well, like, what else is
there on earth than the sea and the dry land? It's just a poetic way of saying he created everything. He created the universe. Again, this is a grounds to worship God. Justin picked great songs for this morning. All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing. I wonder how often we can just assume that part of the Christian life, how often we assume God's being creator as it just loses its importance in many ways. I mean, think of the fool and the wise man in Proverbs. The wise man lives a life in God's creation, acknowledging God's rule. What does the fool do? The fool says in his heart, there is no God. The fool lives like an atheist.
When we pause and contemplate the importance of God as creator, it's way more than Genesis 1 and too. It's not anything less than that. But God being creator is more than just the first two chapters of the Bible. David puts this in the psalm to show us our dependence on God. If you think about it, there's really only two things in the entire universe.
there is the creator, and there are his creatures. It's either God, or if it's not God, it's created by God. There's nothing else. So when we have a foundation of God as creator, it humbles us and says, we are dependent. We are not self-existing. David is saying, you only exist because God has decided that you would exist. And then he rules everything. So, you only keep existing because he rules everything. This is foundational to the gospel, God as creator. Think of our own statement of faith here at Third Avenue that begins with the Nicene Creed. What's the first thing that we confess together as believers in the creed? I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth of all things, visible and invisible. When we go to the second part of the psalm here in a bit, we'll see that it's the kind of chief sin of Israel in the desert when they were rejecting God was not acknowledging him rightly as creator and as ruler. Why? Why is that such a chief sin? Well, because think about the logical implications of this. If God isn't the creator and the ruler, who is? You? Me?
If we're not answerable to God as kind of the fountain of all things, then I'm in charge. What standard do I have to live by? Why does the psalmist talk about God as king and ruler over the other gods? Look at verse 3. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. At first glance, that can sound kind of weird. Like, are we talking about that there's other gods out there or something? Well, in light of him, you know, exhorting people to worship God as the creator God, it makes a lot of sense. In this call to worship God as the creator of the universe, there's only two options.
You either have other gods or you have the creator God. Listen to what John Calvin says in commenting on this phrase in verse three about other gods. He says, we are to notice the opposition stated between the God of Israel and all other gods, which man has formed in the exercise of an unlicensed imagination. The psalmist aims at denouncing the vain delusions of men who have framed gods after their own foolish devices.
If we don't worship the true creator God, we end up worshiping our own created false gods. We're used to these ideas, right, that idols are not just stone things or wooden things. But we need to think about that here. What are some of the idols that we struggle to create? Is it status?
Maybe we are prone to throw coworkers under the bus to look good to our boss. Is it power? Do we secretly enjoy when the people we don't like kind of get what they deserve and we look good? Things go our way? Is it companionship? If I get married, things will be better. That's what I need. If my spouse would just love me the way that I want, things would be better. Psalm 95 comes and it says, God is the only one that can give you satisfaction. These things cannot. Why? Because He is the one who created all things.
You are creating these false gods. You are creating the things that even make your life more hard. The remedy to our sidelining of God, according to David, is to live this life of worship to God. Maybe on the other side of that, right, we need to not just better acknowledge God as creator because of our sin and our idolatry, but maybe you're suffering.
You know, God's call to worship him doesn't just apply to those who are living in sin and idolatry. We're sinners, and we're also sufferers. Life is hard. You just need to live a little bit of it to know that. We lose jobs. We lose family members. We grow old and weary in our old age and get sick more often. Maybe for you, money is just tighter than it's ever been these days.
Maybe for you, the stress of juggling young kids and everyday life and trying to get to church on Sunday morning just makes every day really hard. If that's you, think about these amazing truths. Christian, while the world presses in with trials and struggles, the Lord says, my hand is everywhere. Look at verse 7, how incredible this is.
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. You see what he says there? The sheep of his what? His hand. What else does his hand do throughout the rest of the psalm? In his hand are the depths of the earth. The sea is his and his hands formed the dry land. The same hands that rule from the depths to the heights that rule all things, those hands are the same hands that hold his sheep.
The same hands that made the sea and the dry land are the same hands that tenderly care for his people. If you're struggling with the pressures of life, be comforted that the hands that hold the universe are the hands that hold you. So, worship your king and creator. Point number two, learn from the past and do not harden your heart. Learn from the past and do not harden your heart. So, like I briefly mentioned earlier, this psalm up till now, verses one through most of seven, have been pretty standard stuff, especially as the Psalms are concerned. These are really beautiful truths. They're just not hard truths to grasp. I mean,
look at a lot of the surrounding Psalms around Psalm 95, and you'll see some really similar language. Psalm 93, Psalm 97, Psalm 99, and so on and so on and so on. This example of worshiping God as king and creator is everywhere. But this psalm ends different. This psalm ends with a warning, and a really strong one. So, what's going on? Look at this for a second. Listen to the ending of Psalm 95 compared to some of the other psalms. Psalm 97, you can flip there even if you want to, Psalm 97, how does it end? Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name.
How does Psalm 95 end? For 40 years I loathed that generation. Psalm 99, exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain. Psalm 95, what are its last words? Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. This is different. So what's going on here? Well, it's different on purpose, right? Of course, this is Holy Scripture. David is wanting us to see how stark this is so that we see how stark the warning is. The sour note is put there on purpose. It's attention grabbing. And what is it grabbing our attention for? It's saying, hey, all this stuff that I said in the first part about worshiping God, worshiping Him as our maker, as our king, as our ruler, this is the exact opposite of that. And now I'm going to show you
this example of what not to do, essentially. So, what is it? What's the opposite of singing praises to God and worshiping Him as the ruler of all things, it's acting like Israel did in the desert. So, what is that? What was Israel doing in the desert that warranted such a response from God? Well, remember, if you will with me, think about all the amazing things that happened with Israel.
So, they were in slavery in Egypt. They get freed from slavery by God through some amazing signs, right, that they're seeing firsthand. The ten plagues, they're led through the Red Sea, you know, they're led by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. They're fed every day, except for the Sabbath. They are received the law from God. They're set apart as a holy people.
I mean, Israel was front and center to one of the most important things in the history of redemption, and yet, what did they do? They looked at God's work, which they saw themselves, And they said, nope, not for me. So, what is it that David is actually saying here when he's saying, hey, remember, don't be like Israel in the desert.
What's the opposite of worshiping God like we ought to worship God? It's looking at all of the amazing things that God has done, and then rejecting Him. It's looking at God's work in the world, and then still saying, God, I don't trust you. I don't think you can provide for me. You're not the God of my life, and you definitely can't save me. It's a lack of faith, to put it simply. It's a lack of faith in God.
Before we throw Israel under the bus too hard, you have to just take a second and remember why this is in Psalm 95. It's obviously something that God thought was important as a warning to his people. Why? Well, because we're often prone to these temptations too, aren't we? We are a people, as John had prayed, that most of us here in this room believe in Christ.
We're a people that have seen God's work and yet will still struggle. We see God's work and we're still tempted to look to ourselves as the rulers of our life. Remember, here in Psalm 95, David doesn't just say that this is some outward action. Look at verse 10. He goes to the heart. He says, they went astray in their hearts. It's interesting that he's not just focused on outward actions, but the workings of the heart. Psalm 95, when we go through those moments of lack of faith in God, it shakes us awake and says, be careful, be careful. Don't be like Israel who rejected God as king and ruler recognize him as who he is. Who is he? He's the shepherd.
He's the shepherd of his people, and he holds his people in his hand. The generation of Israel did not understand that, and so God, in his righteous judgment, said, you won't enter my rest. and Psalm 95 says, look back at that. If you're like me, when somebody is preaching and they start talking a lot about Israel and the church and things like that, you get a little nervous.
You might say, oh, does that exactly apply? You know, I get it. Good principle, Jared. Be careful. Don't harden your heart. But that's an Old Testament thing. That was Israel. That was even Israel with the law. But what if I told you that the Scripture reading we actually just read earlier is a direct application of Psalm 95 to the Christian life? Turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews chapter 3. I think it's going to be worth it for you to look at Hebrews 3. Because what the author of Hebrews does is he preaches a sermon on Psalm 95.
And that sermon, he applies these warnings directly to the Christian life. So, Hebrews chapter 3, starting in verse 7, Hebrews 3, 7 says, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, And then what does he do? He quotes Psalm 95. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness. And he goes on and quotes that whole passage that we just read. And then in verse 12, look at Hebrews 3, 12. What's his response to this. What's his exposition of Psalm 95? It's, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness
of sin. For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Isn't that fascinating? I think it's worth it to take some time and pause on that for a second. This is a strong warning. Israel saw God's work in the Exodus, and yet they still rejected Him. And the author of Hebrews says, take care, brothers, lest that be the case for you.
If you're here today and you're just going through the motions of the Christian life, This warning from Psalm 95, this warning from Hebrews 3 is for you. If you are like Israel and you've seen God's work, even seen God's work this morning, if you're here and you've seen all this singing and seen our praise and our exhortations of each other, calling each other to love God, and you see all that, and you still reject God. Hebrews 3 and Psalm 95 is for you. We beg you, don't harden your heart.
Psalm 95 is in the Bible because God knows that this happens all the time. Hebrews 3 is in the Bible because God knows that this happens all the time. You know, in the several years that my wife and I have been here, one of the sweetest blessings has been the amount of baptisms that we've had. I don't know of any other Baptist church who does so well in evangelism and discipleship and then following through in baptism.
it's been really sweet and really encouraging to see so many. And if you'll, like, think just a second, think about a common thread in so many baptism testimonies that we hear all the time. Like, I feel like every time I'm just assuming it probably is going to come up in some way, right? The story goes, I thought that I might have been a Christian. I wasn't quite sure what faith was. Maybe I grew up in a Christian home, but then one day I was hanging out with CO people and I heard the gospel for the first time and I realized that I wasn't actually a Christian.
Or I hung out with a friend and we read the Bible and I realized that their faith was different than mine. We hear it all the time. Again, these stories, Psalm 95, Hebrews 3, they're in the Bible because it's so common. We can all tell stories about this. So, it's not to scare you in any way. It's just to say, be careful. This is really common. And when it comes up and somebody says, hey, I thought that I was a Christian, but I think I am one now. Don't be surprised by that. Praise God for that. They have heeded this warning. They've not hardened their hearts to the deceitfulness of sin. You know, here at Third Avenue, we're blessed to have a church covenant, a really good church covenant. What's the third statement in that church covenant?
that we will exercise a Christian care and watchfulness over each other and faithfully warn, rebuke, and admonish one another as the case shall require. And I did not know this. I looked it up. One of the scripture references for that statement in our church covenant is what? It's the author of Hebrews' exposition of Psalm 95. It's Hebrews 3, 12 through 14, which we just read. It's our responsibility as covenanted members of Third Avenue to be like David, to beckon each other and say, come, let us sing. Let us make a joyful noise. And please be careful, don't harden your heart to sin. That's our responsibility as brothers and sisters here at third. And if you're hearing this and you're thinking, man, that's a lot of law and not a lot of gospel, listen closely because that's not the case at all. Remember when I was speaking about
kind of this beautiful pattern of what true worship looks like and, you know, what not to do and don't be like this and do be like this. What is it that we do do? So we don't be like Israel in the desert, we don't see the things of God, and then reject them, what is the should? What should we do? We read it in our scripture reading in Hebrews. It's to have faith. We have faith in God. It's a call to believe. Believe in God and worship Him as King and Creator. The answer to unbelief is nothing more than belief. So Christian in the room, take heart because the answer to this warning is not a complicated one. It's not, oh, should I be like more afraid? No. It's not muster
up more of yourself. It's not just be a better person. It's not even just make sure that your Christian life is feeling really, really good? No, the answer is there in Hebrews 4.2, which we read. It's what were those people that hardened their hearts doing? They didn't have faith. So, Christian, have faith. A little, actually just right after the scripture reading that we read in Hebrews 4, 14 through 16, I think it's worth it. This is the ending of the author of Hebrews expositing Psalm 95 after everything, after all the warnings, after the don't harden your hearts to the deceitfulness of sin. Encourage one another every day as it is called today.
How does he end it? Hebrews 4, 14, he ends it by saying, since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The answer to not falling away in unbelief and being like Israel in the wilderness is Christ. In contrast to Israel's disobedience in the wilderness, Christ is tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, isn't he? And he is righteous. he is faithful. When Israel goes through desert trials, they respond with a hard heart that doesn't acknowledge God as creator and king. When Jesus is tempted by the devil in the desert, that's his exact response. His exact response is to worship God as the only true God.
When the devil says, look at all this, I'll give you all of this if you just worship me, false god. What's Jesus' answer to him? He says, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Jesus knew the God of Psalm 95. Jesus is the God of Psalm 95. being a christian is not about mustering up more of ourselves it's not about pulling ourselves up from our bootstraps it's the fact that someone else god himself the creator and sustainer of the universe came down from heaven and lived a perfect life on our behalf, where we're prone to fail
like Israel was prone to fail. Jesus lived a perfect life where we are sinful and deserving of punishment. Jesus took that punishment upon himself on the cross and was resurrected for our salvation. So the answer to what we should and should not do as we look to the past and say, okay, don't be like this. What do we be like? Well, we have faith in Christ and we seek to be like Him.
We seek to live a life to the glory of God. And if you're here this morning, again, and you haven't put that faith in Christ, we are all here to say with David, we want you to also sing to the rock of your salvation too. Don't just let that be songs and words and preaching that you hear and see the work of God and then reject Him. We want you to believe in Christ, and He does too.
Remember, it's in his hands that he holds his sheep. It's in his hands, the same hands that formed the dry land and the sea, that hold his sheep. We want you to leave this morning making a joyful noise to the rock of your salvation. And for us Christians, the application is pretty similar. How can we live a life of worship to God? Well, we're doing it this morning. That's good.
We're gathering with brothers and sisters, others who God is the rock of their salvation, and we're singing joyful noises with them. We're coming into God's presence with thanksgiving. But don't let that just be a Sunday thing, right? This is an everyday, an everyday thing for the Christian. The Christian life is all the time. And we need to hear that reminder because we are so prone to harden our hearts.
Having examples in the past is a really good thing. Whether it's examples from our own lives. For me, I need to be better buying Christmas presents. Whether it's examples from family, from parents. Whether it's examples from nations. But if we're given examples in scripture, let's heed those with a special seriousness. And a special reverence.
And remember, in Hebrews 4, that passage that we read. What's the answer? It's to find rest in Christ. So, look to the past. Don't be like Israel. Don't harden your hearts. Instead, rest in the finished work of Christ on your behalf. Let's pray. Father in heaven, like David in this psalm, we pray that we would worship you. we thank you for your creation we thank you for your rule over the world and we make a joyful noise to you thank you for saving us thank you for being the rock of our salvation pray that that would be more real to us now than it ever has been and it's in christ's name we pray amen