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This is the First Mustang Pulpit Podcast, a podcast of the weekly preaching and teaching at First Mustang.! Thank you for joining us. Thank you, John, for leading us through worship after recovering from sickness. You're like Michael Jordan.
! I'd like to extend a thank you to everyone who volunteered with our pastors conference on Monday and Tuesday of this past week. We had volunteers show up in droves, so thank you to those who freely gave of your time to serve the pastors of our state and our denomination.
Our church became a haven to many weary pastors from throughout the state, so thank you guys so much for serving with excellence. It was a fun couple of days. If you would, open your Bibles with me to Psalm 95.
As you turn to Psalm 95, I want to ask a couple of questions. What is worship and how do we worship?
What is worship and how do we worship? The book of Psalms answers these questions for us by giving us examples of what true worship is and what it should look like and what it should accomplish.
There are many different understandings of what worship is. There are many different takes on what worship should look like in our churches. And so if you visited all the different churches in Mustang, I don't know that you'd get a repeat of music.
There would be identical flavors in each church because each church has different understandings of what worship should be. A couple of years ago, Lacey and I got a flyer in the mail for a new church that was opening in our area.
And on the flyer, it said on opening day, they would have a concession stand and a petting zoo. It said it's a church that's primarily meant for your kids to have fun at.
I'm not opposed to kids having fun at church. I'm a youth pastor, but that's not the primary purpose of the church. On the back of this flyer, it said, quote, we think, not we believe, we think church should be more like a party and less like a funeral.
Church should be more like a party and less like a funeral. And by that, if we read it favorably, I think they're saying we should rejoice in the victory of Christ.
But what they actually communicated and what they actually practice is an error that's very prevalent in our area of Christianity. And by area, I don't mean Mustang, Oklahoma, but our denomination.
And it's this error that worship is only meant to be positive, encouraging, smiley, fun, clap happy, cool, and casual.
And many of us can fall into this way of thinking about worship. Many of us can take in this error and think that our songs should only be positive, encouraging.
But Psalm 95 brings some much-needed balance to our sometimes lopsided view of worship. Psalm 95 brings balance to our view of God.
This psalm encourages joy-filled, exuberant, loud, and celebratory worship of God. But this psalm reminds us that worshiping God can be dangerous.
We cannot worship Him in whatever way seems good to us. We must worship Him in the way that He demands. And the end of this psalm summons its singers to consider the outcome of a previous generation who heard God's voice, but hardened their hearts against Him.
Hebrews 3 and 4 quotes this psalm and attributes it to David. And so we will assume that David is the author of Psalm 95. Let me read Psalm 95 in its entirety for us.
O come, let us sing to Yahweh. Lords in all caps, that's an indication that Yahweh is used. O come, let us sing to Yahweh. 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 Yahweh 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 Yahweh, 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, there are 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.
This is the word of the living God. And this psalm will divide into two parts for us. The first section is verses 1 through 7. And we see a welcome to worship.
A welcome to worship. And in verses 1 through 7, we're given two motivations for worshiping God. And you may have noticed when I was reading through it, but verses 1 through 7 divides into two subsections, and there's a pattern we can follow.
In verse 1, it says, O come, followed by commands, starting with let us. And then in verse 3, there's an explanation, beginning with the word for.
And this pattern repeats itself in verse 6, with an invitation to come, followed by commands, starting with let us, and verse 7, beginning with the word for.
And so the two motivations we're given for worshiping God is, number one, that he is the universal sovereign. He's the universal sovereign. And secondly, he is Israel's shepherd.
And so the psalm starts out, O come, let us sing to Yahweh. And as John just told us, singing is an appropriate way to approach God because it's something that he has commanded us to do.
Singing is the way we come into his presence. And it says, Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. And this word joyful noise is a shout of joy, a cry for joy.
This is used to describe victorious war cries. It's loud and resonant. And true worship is something that should not leave us flat. It should ignite our hearts.
And if our hearts are ignited, if our hearts are engaged in the truth about which we're singing, it will raise the level of our volume as well. Give a war cry to the rock of our salvation.
This is how I yell when I win a pastor's game at VBS, which admittedly has been a little while, but don't give up on me. And it says, Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
And the way these first two lines are structured, the name of Yahweh is set parallel to this metaphor of the rock of our salvation. Yahweh is described as being immovable, stable, unchanging, and saving.
He is the rock who saved us, the rock of our salvation. Verse two, Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.
Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. As we come before the Lord with singing, we should be marked by thankfulness. We should be thankful to him for all that he has done for us.
And as simple as this command is, this is difficult to put into practice. There are days it's challenging to be thankful to the Lord. But this is a command from God's word to come into his presence with thankful singing.
And so the opening invitation of this psalm calls us to come into his presence singing loudly and thankfully. And I wonder, could your singing this morning be described in that way?
Could your singing in general be described as loud and thankful? This is what Psalm 95 commands of us. In verses three through five, here's the reasoning.
For Yahweh is a great God and a great king above all gods. We are not ready to worship the Lord unless we know something of him.
Our knowledge of God provides fuel for our hearts to sing to him. And so are you growing in your knowledge of him? That's the fuel for your worship. And it says Yahweh is a great God and a great king above all gods.
He is the king over all other so-called gods. He is the king of all earthly kings and he's the king of all demonically powered gods.
It says Yahweh is great. He's a great king. And this word great means mighty. It means massive. This is not typically how we use the word.
When you come home from work and your wife says, how was your day? And you say, great. Great. This word conveys a sense of majesty, of mighty incomprehensibility and unsearchability to who God is.
He is beyond all of our thoughts and imaginations. And the proof of this is in verses four and five. In his hand are the depths of the earth.
The deep recesses and dangerous caves of the earth are under his thumb and the heights of the mountains are his also. And so from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the foreboding summit of Mount Everest, all is God's.
He is the one who created everything. Verse five, the sea is his for he made it and his hands formed the dry land. And so in verses four and five, we have this all-encompassing description of creation.
The depths and the heights, the sea and the dry land, everything belongs to God because he has made it. Everything belongs to him vertically and horizontally.
Everything in between belongs to him. And these verses actually undercut every single pagan religion that existed at the time.
If you read through the Old Testament, you'll get a sense of what the surrounding nations believe. They thought that the mountains were controlled by certain local deities and the plains were controlled by another god and the sea had its own god.
But Yahweh is their king. Yahweh is the one over all because he has made all these things. He has power over everything. And so God's greatness and his kingship can be seen in that he is the creator and controller of creation.
His sovereign majesty is displayed in the things that he has made. And if you remember the events of the Exodus, it was Yahweh versus Pharaoh.
Pharaoh was thought to be an Egyptian god. And God defeated him, not with weapons, but with creation itself. There's only one true God and he is the creator.
And so we need to praise the Lord first off because he is the universal sovereign. In verses six and seven, we see he's also Israel's shepherd. O come, let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before Yahweh, our maker. The word worship in Hebrew literally means to bow. And so we have bow, bow down, kneel before the Lord.
This is a sign of reverence and submission. This is a foreign concept to us, but in the ancient world, when royalty was encountered, it meant your forehead touched the floor. You laid yourself down before his sovereign majesty as a sign of submission and humility and reverence for his power.
This is how we're to worship the Lord in our hearts. Our praise should be marked by joy and exuberance, but also a humble reverence for who he is.
And the explanation in verse seven, for he is our God. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
This is covenant language. God is their God and they are his people. God is described here as the shepherd of Israel.
David also had this in mind in Psalm 23 when he said, Yahweh is my shepherd. And Jesus had both of these psalms in mind when he said, I am the good shepherd.
The Lord is seen to be Israel's shepherd here in that he is their maker. He is the one who formed their nation. He is the one who called Abraham. He is magnificent and beyond them, but he is also near to them as he leads them.
And if you look at verse seven, it seems like the word people and sheep are flipped. Seems like it would make more sense to say we're the sheep of his pasture, but I think David did this intentionally to show that the pasture that he's talking about is the promised land.
Israel is the people of God and he is their shepherd, leading them in the land that he has given them. His people are following his lead in his land.
He is almighty God, the creator of everything, and yet he tenderly cares for his people and it's only fitting that his people respond to him with praise and thanksgiving.
And so God's transcendence, his magnificence, his majesty is reason enough to worship him, but he is also near. He can be known personally. And so the privilege of Israel in the Old Testament was that God was their shepherd, the creator of everything, was their king.
And he's also the maker of their nation. God was their shepherd king. And this theme repeats itself throughout the Old Testament and into the new and it's fulfilled in Christ who is our shepherd king made flesh.
He is the creator. He is the one who was with God in the beginning and yet he's the one who has promised to be with us to the end of the age. And Jesus, the good shepherd, is the one who has made us a people.
He is the one who is building his church. And so this reality for us should give us peace in the present. It should give us gratitude for the past and hope for the future.
Because God is our shepherd, we can look back on our past and see his providence. We can see his guiding hand leading us even through the bleakest moments of our past.
My dad and I were talking to this guy at the gym this week and he was telling us that he's a fellow believer. He had lived a difficult and rough life.
His first marriage ended in a divorce. But the Lord saved him. And he is now married to another fellow believer. He said, looking back at my past, it was difficult, but I wouldn't change a thing.
And I think that's an expression of faith. That's what happens when we know that God is our shepherd. We look back on our sin. We look back on the difficulties that we've walked through. And while we're not proud, we are thankful that he has been with us.
He is in control even of our worst days. We can look back on the past with gratitude because we are the people of his pasture.
We're the sheep of his hand. And in light of such a privilege, who could think of being hostile towards him? Who could think of neglecting such a great savior? Who could think of treating this truth lightly?
But the danger is much closer than we might think. The first part of this psalm is a welcome to worship. It's an invitation to enter the presence of the Lord with worship that is both joyful and celebratory and humble.
But the second part of this psalm is a warning to worshipers. This psalm is a welcome and a warning to worshipers.
This exuberant psalm is now interrupted by an unexpected warning from God himself. God interrupts this worship service and speaks directly now.
We would expect this psalm to conclude with a hallelujah. We'd expect this psalm to conclude with reflections on God being our shepherd, but it comes to a screeching halt as it's interrupted by God speaking now in the first person.
He has a word to speak to his people. He says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
The word today is significant and conveys a sense of urgency. And any time this psalm is read, it's today. Today is your opportunity to respond to God's voice.
David did not say on this particular day in roughly 1,000 B.C. if you hear his voice. He said, today, knowing that for generations into the future, this urgency would go out with this psalm.
If you hear his voice. It's assumed that when David speaks in Scripture, God is the one speaking. God's voice is in the Scriptures.
Whenever the Scripture is read, God's voice is heard. And so everyone in this room this morning has heard God's voice because the Scriptures have been read.
And as the Bible is explained and unpacked, God is speaking to the hearts of the listeners. So how will you respond? Today, if you hear his voice, will you harden your heart or will you respond with joyful obedience?
David says, do not harden your hearts. The emphasis in the second half is on the heart. Verse eight mentions hearts. Verse 10, God says that the people of Israel were a people that went astray in their hearts.
All of our outward disobedience is a display of the corruption of our heart. Every action you commit, whether good or bad, is an expression of what is in your heart.
So Jesus says in Matthew 12, 34, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The words you choose show what's in your heart.
In Matthew chapter 15, verse 19, Jesus says, out of the heart come evil thoughts and murder, and adultery and sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Any outward act of disobedience is a manifestation of what's in your heart.
And David says, do not harden your hearts. And to harden your heart is to be dull and unresponsive to God's word, to stubborn refusal to obey.
This is how Pharaoh's described in the beginning of the book of Exodus, when he stubbornly refused to listen to God's voice to let his people go. David says, do not harden your hearts.
And there is zero middle ground here. You are either thanking God for what he's done and obeying him, or you are hardening your heart against him. And so this hardening of our hearts can be much more subtle than we might imagine.
Sometimes the most common way this shows up is by being convicted from God's word and not changing the way you live. That's an example of hardening your heart against the Lord.
And he gives an example. He says, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massa in the wilderness. So he says, today, don't let this day be like those days.
Don't let today be like our past. And so what are Meribah and Massa? What are these things? These are locations. And if you read the Old Testament, Meribah, or Massa is in Exodus 17.
Meribah appears in Numbers 20. And both of these events involve water. The Israelites were going through the wilderness and complained that they didn't have water.
In both situations, God brought water miraculously out of a rock to give his people drink. And David pulls these two events together and says, this is early evidence that Israel's disobedience was in their hearts.
This culminated when Israel refused to enter and take the land, but the seed of their unbelief, the seed of their disobedience can be seen early on when they refused to trust God.
The word Meribah means quarreling. Massa means testing. And so these locations were a perpetual reminder of Israel's disobedience in the wilderness.
Whenever these names were mentioned, it brought to mind a national tragedy. It's like me saying Pearl Harbor or Columbine.
These are locations in our country, but they have a greater connotation than that because of the evil that took place there. Meribah and Massa are like that for Israel. A perpetual reminder that they failed to believe God.
In both of these events, God brought water out of a rock, which makes it very fitting that David called the Lord the rock of our salvation in verse one.
Israel's primary sin was unbelief on these occasions. In verse nine, the Lord describes this as when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
They tested God, which was something he explicitly condemned in Deuteronomy six. They demanded that God conform to their expectations and their desires.
And God says they did this even though they had seen my work. This wilderness generation had seen the Lord's work as their shepherd king as he delivered them from Egypt and shepherded them through the wilderness.
And yet at these two points, they doubted his power and failed to trust his motives. They'd experienced God plucking them from the shackles of Pharaoh and leading them through the Red Sea whose dry ground became a temporary private highway, escorting them to the safety of God's presence.
But instead of contemplating and remembering everything that God had done, they were focused on the one thing they didn't have at the moment, water.
And in light of everything that God had done, it's a silly thing to get hung up on him not providing water for his people. They accused God of leading them into the wilderness to kill them.
They did not trust him. Their sin was unbelief. Instead of praising God and thanking God and trusting God, they were grumbling and complaining about him.
They had God's promise. They had seen his provision, but they still refused to trust him. And very often, we are guilty of this same sin.
We are guilty of doing this in our trials. And just this past week, a couple of nights ago, Lacey and I got to bed later than we intended.
As soon as we laid down, Charlie, our almost one-year-old, started screaming. And you know, he's almost one and teething. It's a whole thing. And we're like, maybe he'll go back to sleep. And he wasn't.
He just continued to cry out and scream. And in my heart, I didn't say this out loud, but in my heart, I said, why is this happening? As I was reflecting on this passage, I was like, I was questioning God.
God wasn't conforming to my expectations. God, my life wasn't going how I wanted or expected at the moment. We can do this all the time.
All the time, we question God's motives. All the time, we can be guilty of failing to trust him. And trials reveal what's in our hearts. We can tend to make excuses for people.
Yeah, they shouldn't have responded in that way, but look at all the pressure they're under. We would even make excuses for Israel if we knew them. We'd say, yes, they shouldn't have tested God, but they didn't have any water.
But the way the Bible views these trials is that it actually reveals what's already in our hearts. This pressure exposes our hearts. And so if we contemplate what frustrates us, what makes us angry, in our life or in our work or in our family, I think we'll realize that this sin is much more ingrained in our hearts than we'd like to admit.
This is lingering unbelief. It's what Israel did in the wilderness. And because of that, verse 10, God says, for 40 years, for 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, there are people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways.
They wandered in their hearts and so God made them wander in the wilderness. They refused to believe and obey God. And after 40 years, they died, failing to enter the promised land that God had said was for them, all by simply following their hearts.
They just followed their heart and it led to their death. We need something more sure. We need something more reliable than our hearts because our hearts are wicked. Our hearts are unstable.
We need God's word. We need the rock to speak to us. Just following your heart leads to God's loathing, his animosity, his hatred.
And he says that they have not known my ways. The people that God had formed, the people that God had redeemed out of slavery did not know him.
And later in Israel's history, the prophet Hosea would speak about Israel's disobedience and in Hosea 4, 6, he says, my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.
Israel was destroyed in the wilderness for this same thing. They did not know God's ways. Therefore, verse 11, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.
God swore an oath in his anger because of their disobedience. They would not enter his rest. The rest here refers to the promised land. They would not enter the promised land because of their disobedience.
And this is where the psalm ends. There's no resolution. There's no offer of forgiveness. There's simply a stern history lesson that God was angry with their forefathers and killed them in the wilderness.
If God, who made heaven and earth, the one who holds the depths of the earth in his hand, who possesses the heights of the mountain as well, if he is angry with you, there is no deliverance, if you are under God's wrath, what hope is there for you?
God will abandon people in their restless and stubborn hearts if they refuse to hear his voice just like he did in the wilderness. And in worship today, we can have a very unbalanced view of God.
We can view him as all mercy with zero judgment, all love but no wrath, all forgiveness with no element of justice, but worshiping God is serious business.
God is mighty and powerful and demands that we worship in a way that's pleasing to him. Worship can be dangerous. God's presence is not inherently safe, and true worship must keep this warning in mind.
Ecclesiastes 5.1 says, guard your steps when you go to the house of God. We need to listen to this warning. This psalm that began with a call to worship leaves us breathlessly contemplating the consequences of a former generation's sin.
Are we really prepared to encounter God? Are we really prepared to go into his presence? Does our attitude when we came here this morning reflect this seriousness?
All the joy and the triumph and the thanksgiving in the beginning of this psalm is only legitimate if it's accompanied by a readiness to obey God's voice.
If you claim to worship God and do not obey him, that's a recipe for wrath. If you worship God but fail to listen to his voice, it does not please him.
Who can deliver from God's wrath? How do we escape this dangerous God? How can we be safe if God is angry with us? Only God himself can deliver from his wrath.
Only God himself can save us from his wrath. And that's exactly what he's done in sending Jesus to bear his wrath in our place so that we can enter in with thanksgiveness.
That is the only hope that we have to stand before him. So have you entered his rest?
Or are you under his wrath? Just as God in the beginning created, he worked and then rested, so he worked to redeem Israel and then provided rest for them.
But they failed to enter it. And David is actually once again extending this promise of rest to Israel if they will listen to God's voice.
As Psalm 95 is being written, it's been hundreds of years since Israel has conquered the promised land. If rest was only limited to inhabiting the promised land, then Joshua would have been the one that obtained this for his people when he led them in.
And yet they've been living in the promised land for hundreds of years and this promise of rest still stands. So the idea of rest extends beyond merely living in Israel.
It includes being at peace with him. And David is saying this same fate awaits us if we fail to listen to God's voice. And I want you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 3.
The author of Hebrews in chapter 3 and 4 is interacting with Psalm 95 at length.
And if you see in Hebrews 3 starting in verse 7 through verse 11, he's quoting the second half of Psalm 95. In verse 12 of chapter 3 he says, 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.
The author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95 and applies it directly to his audience. This very day. As long as it is called today if you hear his voice do not let sin harden your hearts.
Do not let sin deceive you. And he talks about in chapter 4 verse 8 that if this rest only meant living in Israel then Joshua should have obtained it.
In chapter 4 verse 8 he says, For if Joshua had given them rest God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. This offer of rest still stands today.
Psalm 95 by extending this promise of rest indicates that there's a new salvation coming. There's a new exodus on the horizon.
There's a new deliverance that's coming and when it happens the people of Israel must not rebel like the previous generation did. And so when a prophet comes on the scene who's able to work miracles with creation who's able to create food out of nothing when he appears the people of Israel still harden their hearts against him.
They still rejected him. This offer of rest still stands and it's through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the hope we have of entering into God's rest fully and finally is by belief in Jesus.
God has worked a new creation and it's through the death and resurrection of Jesus that we can enter this rest. if you refuse to hear God's voice if you refuse to enter this rest today the judgment that fell on Israel in the wilderness is but a small shadow of the eternal destruction that awaits you in hell.
God has provided rest for us in Jesus. Will you respond to his voice with humility and obedience or will you walk the wilderness path of stubborn obstinance?
Hearing God's voice can be dangerous. God's presence is not inherently safe.
I love the Chronicles of Narnia book series it's written for kids which may tell you something about me and in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the first one the Pevensey kids are in Narnia for the first time and they're being told about Aslan who's a symbol of Christ and he's a lion and as they're talking with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver they're hearing that Aslan is a lion and Lucy the youngest says then he isn't safe and Mr. Beaver says safe of course he isn't safe but he's good he's the king I tell you and that's a beautiful picture of what we have in Psalm 95 God is not safe but he is good and he offers you rest today the theologian from early church history named Augustine said our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you if you are not in Christ this morning your heart will be bouncing from hobby to hobby it will exchange one habit for another seeking rest seeking peace and you will not find it unless you repent of your sins and believe in Christ obedience to him is not safe it will lead to suffering we'll be disciplined for our sins but the reward for our labors is eternal rest in the victory of Jesus over death and in chapter 4 of Hebrews verse 11 he says let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience brothers and sisters let us strive to enter the rest of God through faith in Christ
Jesus stands and calls to us in Matthew 11 come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden I will give you rest in Christ we have rest from our labors we have peace with God through the death of his son do not fail to enter this rest through unbelief look to Jesus who died and rose for our sins believe in him and rest from all of your works of trying to earn this rest for yourself believe in Jesus and enter his rest let us worship God in a way that's pleasing to him let us approach him with joy and humility and fear as we praise him for punishing his son in our place let's enter into his presence with thanksgiving let's come before him with joy but remember that his presence can be dangerous let's pray Father you are a great God and a great king above all gods you have created everything we see around us you have made us for yourself and the only way we find rest is through belief in your son so Father help us to walk in that rest help us to rest from our worthless works of trying to earn favor with you and rest in the promise of forgiveness that comes through your son
I pray that this gospel would transform our hearts that it would shape our church and it would be the message that we proclaim to a restless world so Father help us to live for your glory help us to live for your honor and fear of you and give us the holiness without which we will not see your face it's for the glory of your son that we pray amen thank you for for your honor and care of you and for your honor and for your honor and for your honor and for your honor and for your honor and for your honor and for your honor and for your honor and we want to go so far and with your honor and with your honor and for your honor and for your honor and we want to get us and for your honor and we want to have and for your honor and we want to we want to have and we want to fathers and we want to fathers and we want to save us