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Sermons from the pulpit of Charity Baptist Church in Kannapolis, NC.
I wanna read to you from Psalm 95. I'm excited about this passage today. The Psalmist, possibly David said this, oh, come, let us sing to the lord. Let us make a joyful noise, the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: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, and 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. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down.
Speaker 1: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 Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof though they had seen my work. For forty years, I loathed that generation and said there are people who go astray in their heart and they've not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Lord, I pray that you will speak to us through your word.
Speaker 1:I pray that you will open our ears and our hearts that we may receive it. I pray that you'll change lives today, however that looks, and that you will get all the glory for it. We pray it in Jesus name, and all God's people say it. Amen. Amen.
Speaker 1:Please be seated. Whoo. Are you excited to be here? Whoo. How many of you are really thankful that the book of James is done?
Speaker 1:He beat the snot out of us, didn't he? He did me. So today, we start a brand new series, a series called summer in the Psalms, which I would prefer pa summer in the pa Psalms. I think that would make it's got a good ring to it. Right?
Speaker 1:But obviously, we can't cover all of the book of Psalms in just one summer. There's a 150 of them. They're very long. A lot of them are like Psalm one nineteen. So, you know, just for this summer, we'll be between the three of us.
Speaker 1:We'll just be going through Psalms that the Lord has impressed upon our hearts. I would say random Psalms, but it's not like that. We pray and we want God to show us what to preach. Trusting him to do that. The book of Psalms is a collection of Hebrew songs that people of Israel would sing and they would they would pray through whether corporately as a body, as a as a community, they would do it together or as privately as an individual, but it was like it was their hymnal.
Speaker 1:The Psalms are their hymnal, their repertoire of music that was used for the purpose of singing to or praying to and about God. There's a 150 Psalms. They were written by David and Asaph and his family, the sons of Korah and a few others that were attributed to Moses and Solomon and Ethan and Haman, and some anonymous Psalms that we don't know who wrote them, but they're great Psalms. And they were all written over the period of just under a thousand years, a thousand year period almost, and they were all collected and put together. There's a division of five sections.
Speaker 1:We don't exactly know why it was divided into five sections. It could be that it just kind of correlates with the first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and somehow they fit together like that. It's speculation. It's a theory. It's a good theory, but really we don't know why it was divided up like that like that.
Speaker 1:This summer, I've got the privilege of speaking on three of these Psalms that correlate, and it's all about worship. Can you imagine that? A worship pastor preaching on worship and loving to teach from the Psalms. I just love it. Everybody thinks worship pastors, this is like our favorite book is the Psalms.
Speaker 1:That's just people assume that. It's like, are you a worship pastor? I bet you love the Psalms and I'm like, I love hearing that. But no, I I do love the Psalms, and I I don't think I love the Psalms because I'm a worship pastor. I believe I'm a worship pastor because of my love for the Psalms.
Speaker 1:It's a great book. It's all about singing and worship, and that's right up my alley. So today's message in Psalm 95 is going to deal with a call, the call to worship. And a few weeks later in Psalm 96, we're gonna talk about the mission of worship. And then a couple weeks after that, we'll go through Psalm 100 and we'll kinda wrap everything up, at least my part with the joy of worship.
Speaker 1:And I'll probably put in some more songs on that day, and we're gonna have a good time of joyful worship in the Lord. I'm looking forward to it. We've already read the passage, so let's just dive in. Alright? Psalm 95 divides up nicely into three different sections.
Speaker 1:The first five verses speak of a call to joyful worship. The following two verses speak of a call to reverent worship. And then the third section, the balance of the passage is going to be a call to worship with a tender heart as opposed to a hard heart. So let's look at our first point, the call to joyful worship. This is in verses one through five.
Speaker 1:This is dealing with celebration, and we all love to celebrate. Humans love to celebrate, don't we? We find any excuse to celebrate that we can. We celebrate birthdays. We celebrate what do we celebrate?
Speaker 1:Holidays. We celebrate successes and wins. We celebrate milestones, graduations, and promotions. We celebrate people, and we find excuses to celebrate pretty much anything because we just love to throw a party. We love to attend parties, don't we?
Speaker 1:And we'll party about anything and celebrate about anything. And we even have songs that are about celebrating. Celebrate good times. Come on. It's a celebration.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You exactly. Anyways, so why is it then that when we come into our worship gatherings, sometimes, maybe a lot of times, maybe all the time, I don't know. We have we come in with no intention whatsoever of celebrating. We have, as Christians, more to celebrate than anybody in the world.
Speaker 1:We have more to celebrate than any other religion in the world, But yet we come in, and we we stand, and we we look at the stage like you're pushing on a door that's supposed to be pulled open. You ever done that? You're just like, open, but pull it pull it. It's like, I I know I'm here, but I'm not entirely sure why. Not sure why I'm here.
Speaker 1:This it's just a blank look. I've seen people and I saw it this morning. Just, you know, we're singing songs about Jesus and what he's done, and we're like this. Or this. It's getting quiet in here, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I remember one guy, he doesn't go here anymore, but he sat right down here about where Migs is, maybe a little bit further back, and he never even stood up. He could, but he never did. He just sat there, and we would sing. We were singing good songs. We had a choir back then, and we'd sing songs that fired everybody up.
Speaker 1:And this was his posture. He's sitting down like this. Just looking. I'm like, is this guy ever gonna wake up? Is is this anything gonna touch his heart?
Speaker 1:And he may have been you know, it might have been touching his heart, but it's just that posture that you have that is it's like sometimes we don't wanna be here, or, you know, we don't even know what to do, or sometimes we're afraid of what others are going to think. But I've seen you at ball games. I've seen you at concerts, and I've seen you at races. Heavens to Betsy, the races. I've seen you there, and then you sing at the top of your lungs whether it's Lainie Wilson or Journey or Too Much Sylvia, whoever it is or I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's just a local band, isn't it, or something like that. But man, we sing to the top of our lungs out there faithfully and everybody's, woah, woah, and we're singing it out, and but we come in here and we just don't know why, I don't know what to sing, and I've seen you at ball games just jumping up and down when we score a touchdown, and we're like, yes, and we come in here and it's Why? We love to celebrate everything else, but when we come into church, it's just stoic sometimes. This service is much better than the first one. I will have to say, the first one, it was hard to even speak this message to them, but we did anyways.
Speaker 1:So when we come together with our brothers and our sisters in Christ into the presence of the one who gave his life to save us and who resurrected from the dead, we need to be celebrating that with all that we have. Now I do realize yes. There's the Pentecostal people. I'm gonna talk about you in a minute. I do realize that based upon church backgrounds, we have differing opinions and perspectives on proper expressions of worship.
Speaker 1:If you, like me, were raised in the first church of fundamental, legalistic, independent, hellfire and brimstone Baptist, you believe that you had better remain silent. And if you even think of lifting a hand skyward, you will be ushered out of the sanctuary. You'll sing the hymns word for word, note for note, nothing else. You will not tap a toe or even raise an eyebrow if for any reason you say amen at any point. Heads will turn and stare you down with laser like fire that burns right through you.
Speaker 1:But on the other extreme, here we go, you may have been raised in a Pentecostal setting. Anybody in here like that? See? Yeah. I knew that was gonna happen.
Speaker 1:That's where pretty much anything goes. If you do not raise a hand or dance out of control or play a tambourine, speak in tongues, fall out on the floor, or scream at unnatural levels. You will not be ushered out or shamed, but you will be promptly met by a prayer warrior who will pray over you until you receive the Holy Spirit. I it's the truth. I've it's happened to me.
Speaker 1:It's happened to me. I went to a services in Pennsylvania. I was at my buddy's church in college. First time I'd ever been in a Pentecostal church, and this was a doozy. And I mean, it was it was going it was going crazy in there, and I'm standing there like this guy.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to act. I've never seen it like that before. I'm independent Baptist, and but someone came up to me, put their hands on me, and start praying. I don't know what they were saying.
Speaker 1:They were praying in tongues, and I'm just like, okay, Lord. I I receive it. Whatever whatever this is, do it, Lord. Do it, Lord. And and nothing happened.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, do I even have the Holy Spirit? I'm not saved. I don't know what's going on here. But it was interesting. So what perspective is right?
Speaker 1:We don't know. We know the Bible is right. Amen? Scripture and the Psalms in particular give us pretty clear instruction on how we are to worship God, whether it's raising our hands, clapping, singing, shouting, laying down prostrate, kneeling, whatever it is. I said prostrate.
Speaker 1:Right? Yes, I did. So it's it's all in there. So if we just follow that, k, we will be o k. So probably the most prominent expression of worship that we all can agree on is singing.
Speaker 1:Amen? And it is the act of singing aloud that we're gonna be talking about. First of all, the Psalmist articulates for us how we are to joyfully worship. He gives us four heads of lettuce, if you will, in these first two verses. Let us sing, let us make a joyful noise, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving, and let us make a joyful noise with songs of praise.
Speaker 1:So the first part of that, let us sing. There are some Hebrew words here that have such strong meaning and clarity and emphasis beneath the surface of our English translations. The word simply translated for us sing. Here is a Hebrew word, ranan, that literally means to creak, to shout, to cry out, or call out loudly, or even shrilly. More specifically, the word involves a loud public melodic and rhythmic sound with focus on the joy that it expresses.
Speaker 1:That's all laying beneath that one little word, sing. This is what we're called to do to the Lord, the Psalmist says. He says, oh come, whether you're distant or you're near, whether that's geographical or mental or spiritual, come and let us together cry out loudly in joy and praise to God. Second, the Psalmist says, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. And the term joyful noise comes from another Hebrew word, ruah, which means to split the ears with sound.
Speaker 1:Have you ever heard the term ear splitting? That's what this is talking about. Split the ears with sound. Shout for joy. Make a joyful noise or sound an alarm.
Speaker 1:It's expressing both that act of shouting as well as the emotional intensity that's behind it as opposed to quiet and restrained praise. So sing and make a joyful noise are corresponding verbs of vocal worship. And we are to do this to the rock of our salvation. And rock, the word rock in scripture is often used as a metaphor for God and it depicts his strength and his steadfastness, his reliability, and his consistency, his faithfulness. And this is the foundation upon which our deliverance rests.
Speaker 1:This is the God, the rock who has saved us, and no one is able to change that. No one is able to snatch out of his hand those he has saved. He is the rock. So the joyful noise we're instructed we're instructed to make becomes a response of gratitude for the deliverance grounded not in ourselves and not in our circumstances, but in the powerful unchanging nature of God himself. Third, we're invited to come into God's presence together with thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:The Psalmist invites us again to come into his presence. It's clearer here where we're going. Let us come into his presence. Who is presence? Yahweh, the rock of our salvation.
Speaker 1:And just how should we come into Yahweh's presence? With thanksgiving. The Hebrew word here, todah, has a dual meaning. In one sense, it's a verbal acknowledgment of the goodness of God. It's an expression of our thanks.
Speaker 1:It's from our lips, the fruit of our lips like the author of Hebrews said. This indicates oh, I'm sorry. Let me back up. In one sense, it's a verbal acknowledgement of goodness of god, expression of thanks, but it's also tied to the to the old testament sacrificial thanksgiving offering that was presented as a part of the peace offering. So that indicates that this word we translate thanksgiving was not only an emotional verbal response, but a tangible sacrifice of praise and worship.
Speaker 1:The Psalmist is inviting the community here to come into the presence of God with a kind of thanksgiving that's to be presented as a sacrifice that glorifies God. It's verbal gratitude and material offering. They are bound as one, at least here in Israelite worship. And it's like when someone says or does something for you, and you're just like, thanks is not enough. I wanna say thank you, but I don't feel like it's enough.
Speaker 1:So you wanna at least write a card and send it to them, or give them some kind of a gift or a gift card because you just want to show your gratitude more than just lip service, and it's the same thing when we're coming into the presence of God. It's not just singing thanks, but it's also giving a sacrifice, whatever that might be. So I ask you, how can the gratitude in your heart toward God translate into costly, tangible service and sacrifice along with your verbal praise? This is what the Psalmist is calling us to. And I love what King David said when he went to the threshing floor of Aurana, and he was gonna build a sacrifice to the Lord, and Aurana said, I am going to give you everything that you need.
Speaker 1:And David said, no, I will not give to the Lord that which cost me nothing. We need to have an offering of thanks to him. Fourth, he again calls us to make a joyful noise to God, same word as the other verse, but this time specifying with songs of praise. The phrase is actually one Hebrew word, Zamir, describing songs that are accompanied by instrumental music. So the worshiper is now invited to sing loud praises along with instruments in a celebratory exuberant fashion as an act of worship.
Speaker 1:Is anybody convicted yet? Amen. Some may say, agree with this, but singing joyfully together was an old testament activity. Yes, but not so fast. The apostle Paul had something to say about the church's responsibility of singing together.
Speaker 1:In Colossians three sixteen, it says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, doing what? Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. This verse emphasizes an important aspect of singing songs of praise together. It's not just a vehicle for expressing our joyful praise, but through our songs, we also teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. And we sing out loud or as we sing out loud the deep truths of the gospel and of scripture, then the word of Christ dwells among us richly.
Speaker 1:Paul conveys the same message in Ephesians five eighteen through 20. He says, and do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but instead be filled or controlled with the spirit, addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the lord with your heart, giving thanks always for everything to god the father or giving thanks always and for everything to god the father in the name of our lord Jesus Christ. So the spirit and the word of Christ in these two passages are inseparable. Be filled with the spirit. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you.
Speaker 1:Communicates the same message. And how is this done? In Ephesians, it's done by addressing one another in our Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. In Colossians, it is done by teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom with our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Psalm ninety five one and two invite us.
Speaker 1:They call us to come into the presence of God, the rock of our salvation, and they instruct us that we should do so with celebratory shouts and loud loud, melodic, rhythmic songs of praise and offering verbal and costly sacrifices of thanksgiving. And as we do, Paul adds, the word of Christ will dwell richly among us. Amen? So the first two verses show us how we joyfully worship, and the next three verses teach us why we joyfully worship. Verses three through five.
Speaker 1:First of all, we worship him because he is a great God and a great king. Can we even mine the richness of his greatness? Can we adequately define what great actually means when we're referring to God? In this context, great God emphasizes his supreme power and his majesty, while great king puts an exclamation point on his supremacy, his authority, his dominion, his reign. So God's greatness encompasses both his divine nature and his sovereign rule.
Speaker 1:These terms convey not merely his physical vastness, which he it is he's huge, isn't he? Who can describe his how big he is? But also his supremacy and his superiority and overwhelming might. Second, we worship him because he's the king above all gods. The Psalmist acknowledges here the many gods of the nations and the people, but he boast that the God of Israel reigns over them all.
Speaker 1:Do you remember the story in first Samuel chapter five when the Ark of the Covenant was captured from Israel and taken to the town of Ashdod, and the Philistines put the Ark of the Covenant in the house of Dagon, not Dagon, but Dagon, their god. For whatever reason, they put him in there. I think it was there just trying to boast that their god was greater. So they go to bed that night. If you never heard this story, this is so cool.
Speaker 1:They go to bed that night. I wake up the next morning, and Dagon is laying face down. I he's just a big statue laying face down on the floor before the ark of the covenant of God. And they're like, well, it must have been just a coincidence. They set him back up.
Speaker 1:You know, it's their God that they're it takes care of them. They're setting him back up. So they set him up. They go to bed the next night. They wake up the next morning, and there he is laying face down again before the ark of the covenant of god.
Speaker 1:This time, his head is laying separately and his hands are laying separately. They must have bought it at Timu. But God reigns over all gods. Dagon is nothing compared to our God. Recall how Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal in first Kings chapter 18.
Speaker 1:He confronted 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. Baal was a pretty big deal, so they thought. Baal's prophets called on him from morning until noon, but there was no response. And by the time noon rolled around, Elijah starts mocking these guys. There's okay.
Speaker 1:There's 850 of them. Right? And Elijah's mocking him. He must be in the bathroom. Where is he at?
Speaker 1:He's on vacation. I would've loved to have been there to see that. That would've been great. So they start ramping up what they're doing, and they start cutting themselves and and limping around the altar all in vain. And then when it comes Elijah's turn, Elijah simply calls on God and the fire comes down from heaven and it consumes the altar and it consumes everything around the altar and it undeniably confirmed that God is greater than Baal or any other god on this planet.
Speaker 1:I think about the many false religions and gods in our world today, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, gods like Allah, and the thousands upon thousands of gods of Hindu, and and all of these other gods and philosophies that are being vainly worshiped. Our god, Yahweh, Jesus Christ is king over them all. What God do you worship today? And I guarantee the first answer that comes out of everybody's mouth is the God of the Bible, the one we're talking about, the one we came to worship right now. And I pray that that's the truth.
Speaker 1:But what in your life might you be prioritizing more so than God, that you may love or be more passionate about or spend more time with than God. If you're doing that, you're worshiping something or someone else, not the God of the Bible. We should be worshiping the father, worshiping Jesus, the son, worshiping the holy spirit, the perfect triune God, the great God and king above all gods. If you're not worshiping him, he wants you to worship him. Third, we worship him because he has created and owns and is sovereign over all that exists in verses four and five.
Speaker 1: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. The depths and the heights, the sea and the dry land, the Psalmist highlighting these extremes implies that God is sovereign over the deepest and the highest and everything in between including you and me. So the Psalmist then invites us, he calls us to acknowledge and understand the greatness of our creator, God who is sovereign over everything that exists, and he says, this is why we worship with loud and jubilant musical celebration and praise with thanksgiving that is both vocal, tangible, and costly.
Speaker 1:And now as we come to the next two verses, the Psalmist takes us from a call to joyful worship to a call or from that to a call to reverent worship. A call to reverent worship. Verses six and seven. How we reverently worship. He gives another invitation.
Speaker 1:Oh, come. Let us worship and bow down or let us bow down in worship is another way to put that. This is deeper than the vocal praise of the the first three verses. These verses speak of reverence and the submissive posture of our entire being. This Hebrew word means abowing ourselves low before the majesty of our God, a physical bowing down from the waist, just like you would see bowing before a king or a queen.
Speaker 1:And it reflects reverence, and it reflects honor. And then similarly, but not so much, he says, let us kneel before the Lord our maker. It's even more so than bowing down here. It's dropping to our knees, and it signifies total submission and surrender going all the way to the ground as low as we can go. And these physical expressions of bowing down and kneeling emphasize the theological truth that authentic worship involves our entire person, body, mind, and spirit in reverence and submission.
Speaker 1:And this kind of worship goes against our prideful flesh, doesn't it? It goes against everything that our culture promotes. We're Americans, we don't bow down to anybody. And I am it's all about me, and I'm not gonna bow down to anybody. It just goes against our flesh.
Speaker 1:We don't like it submitting and humbling, but this is what we are to do before our God. Completely submit ourselves to him. That is how we reverently worship God. But again, why? That was the how.
Speaker 1:Why should we posture ourselves in submission and reverence like this? Well, the Psalmist says because he's our God. That's pretty simple. And we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand in verse seven. So we worship him because he is our good shepherd.
Speaker 1:It's at this point, keeping in mind that the lord is our good shepherd, that the psalmist is gonna change gears here and present a warning to the community, and that warning is the call to worship with a tender heart. This is speaking about obedience. The Psalmist says, today, not tomorrow, not next week, today, if you hear God's voice, do not harden your hearts. Look back. He he just said in the previous verse, we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Speaker 1:Now he says, today if you hear his voice. Does that sound familiar? Do you see a connection? Jesus said in John 10 that he is the good shepherd and that his sheep hear his voice and know his voice. Are you a part of his flock?
Speaker 1:If so, you should hear what he's saying today. Do not harden your heart. It's been said that the greatest threat to worship is a hardened heart And this is the point of the that's that the Psalmist is making here, and he provides an example of the people of Israel wandering and complaining in the wilderness after they had just seen the great works of God in the Exodus. Now they're they're they're just thinking you can't even provide our most basic needs, and they're complaining about it. And because of their hard hearts, they wandered for forty years, and eventually, the generation died out and never got to see the promised land.
Speaker 1:God even said, I loathed that generation. He swore in his wrath that they would not enter his rest. Daniel Estes commented, as the people of Israel sang or heard the Psalm sung, they were reminded that in every generation, disobedience causes God's people to fall short of his intended blessing for them. The people of Israel hardened their hearts at Meribah and Massah. They didn't believe that God could even provide water for them after all that he had already done.
Speaker 1:And now the Psalmist is calling his own generation and those that follow to respond properly to our good shepherd by hearing and obeying his voice and trusting in him. And today, when our hearts are hard, we grumble, we disobey, and we go our own way, and in so doing, we're putting God to the test. We're putting God to the proof just like the people of Israel did in verse nine. This means to demand proof of his faithfulness beyond what he had already demonstrated. In essence saying, God, what you did before was not enough for me to trust you now.
Speaker 1:And we accuse God, you're unfair, you're mean, and we question his character, and although the works of God are evident, the hardened heart will not believe that God can even meet our most basic needs. We refuse to believe he can provide and heal and protect or set us free. That's the hard heart. In the New Testament, the author of Hebrews quotes the Psalmist warning and applies it to the church. He urges us to enter fully into the future rest that God has prepared for us in Christ rather than falling short of wholehearted commitment to him by our disobedience and lack of faithfulness.
Speaker 1:So in conclusion, this final portion of the Psalm seems to be out of place. We hear all about the joyful, joyful, joyful, and then all of sudden, hey, look at these hard hearts here and it seems what what is the Psalmist thinking here? But it really isn't out of place. The Psalm is calling us to worship joyfully and reverently. But if we have a hardened heart, if we are living disobediently and grumbling and putting God to the test, how can we worship joyfully and reverently?
Speaker 1:We must come with a tender heart. So I ask you, are you the people of his pasture? Are you the sheep of his hand? If so, today, hear his voice and do not harden your heart. If it's hardened, he's calling you to soften it today.
Speaker 1:He wants you to be obedient and worship joyfully and reverently. You may be in here, and it's been a long time since you lifted your hands in worship, sang a song in worship, surrendered your heart in worship. Today, hear his voice, our good shepherd. Maybe you don't hear his voice because you're not one of his sheep. Jesus said in John four twenty three, the hour is coming and now is here when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth for the father is seeking such people to worship him.
Speaker 1:If you're not a worshiper of god, he's seeking you out this morning. He wants you to be a worshiper. He's seeking for you. Today, not tomorrow, don't put it off. There's no promise of tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Today, if you hear his voice, put your faith in him today. Soften your heart before him today. Worship him today. Deacons are gonna be down at the front. This altar is open.
Speaker 1:Please don't put it off. Let's stand together, and we're gonna sing.