Introduction:
What is God like, and how should we respond?
Two big questions.
These are two very big questions for fifteen minutes on a
Sunday evening.
Theologians, philosophers, thinkers, and I’m sure all of
us have spent time asking these two questions.
So
before we begin to look at the psalm in more detail, let us pray:
Heavenly Father...
The psalms were written by people who spent their lives trying to answer these questions as best they could. Through them, and through their words, God offers us answers to the big questions like “what is God like, and how should we respond”. This psalm is no different, it answers the first question: “what is God like” by telling us ‘God is our sovereign Creator and he is our shepherd’. The second question: How should we respond? The psalm says ‘We should worship and listen to his voice’. And what does his voice tell us? It tells us not to harden our hearts and rebel against him, because if we do – we will not enter his rest.
The psalms were written by people who spent their lives trying to answer these questions as best they could. Through them, and through their words, God offers us answers to the big questions like “what is God like, and how should we respond”. This psalm is no different, it answers the first question: “what is God like” by telling us ‘God is our sovereign Creator and he is our shepherd’. The second question: How should we respond? The psalm says ‘We should worship and listen to his voice’. And what does his voice tell us? It tells us not to harden our hearts and rebel against him, because if we do – we will not enter his rest.
God is Creator and shepherd; we should worship and
listen; God tells us not to harden our hearts.
So, by way of an overview: you may have noticed that Psalm
95, is a psalm of two halves.
The first half (verses 1-7) is an exhortation, or an
encouraging command to, worship. In this first section, God is the sovereign
creator who has saved a people for himself. Although this refers back to the
saving of the people of Israel from Egypt, it is no less true for us who have
been saved from sin by the cross. It says also He is a shepherd to his flock,
again, we understand that to mean he shepherds those who seek him by faith, the
church.
The second half (verses 7-11) is God’s warning to us not
to harden our hearts, not to make demands of him just because we are,
outwardly, a part of the people of God.
Let’s take a few minutes to look at the detail.
First
point (verses 1-7) – Praise and Worship
The psalm takes us on something of a ‘spiritual journey’,
not unlike our service this evening. And it does so, beginning in verse one and
two where the psalmist encourages us in our singing.
I’m pleased to say that I think you have all taken his
command to heart, because I think we’ve all excelled in singing for joy to the
LORD this evening. But, we aren’t gathered as a ‘singing club’, are we?
Likewise, the psalmist doesn’t just tell us we should worship the LORD in song
and thanksgiving, he tells us why we should. And, it is quite straight forward looking
at verses 3-5:
“for the LORD is
the Great God, the great King above all gods”.
Now, are there other gods? Many people in the ancient
world when this psalm was written simply accepted that there were. They knew
that other nations worshipped multitudes – perhaps they were “real”? The
psalmist doesn’t entertain the discussion. even if there were other gods, the LORD
is the King over all. He is the great God. And so, it is not hard for us to see
our modern gods in the same light – perhaps the most popular of these, money,
or success, or anything that distracts us from a life of discipleship – a life
following Jesus - we have made into a
god. We have worshipped it. We have committed idolatry. But, when we compare
our little gods, money, success, anything, to the Great God the LORD we see
that our gods are no gods at all. We should worship as a response when we recognise
who God is, and what he is like.
The psalmist takes us on further – we have sung and given
thanks (verses 1-2), we have been confronted with the greatness of God and our
duty to respond to him in praise (verses 3-5) – now the psalmist calls us deeper
into worship. We are to bow ourselves down, to kneel before him, but not out of
fear. Rather, we are to do so as we recognise his care for us. Verse 7 tells us
that we the Church (the Israel of God) are the flock under his care. God is
frequently thought of as shepherd in the Bible – Perhaps most famously in Psalm
23 The Lord is my Shepherd, but also when Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd
in the gospels. God cares for us, and this is cause to praise, but also cause
to listen to his voice. Jesus says not only that he is the Good Shepherd, but
also that his sheep know his voice.
And so, finally in this first half of the psalm, the
psalmist culminates in a plea for those who hear the psalm to listen to the
voice, or the message of God. This is in the end of verse 7: “O that today you
would listen to his voice!”.
Second
Point (verses 7-11)– God’s Voice, God’s Warning
We have been called to hear the voice of God. And that is
the purpose of a sermon or a Bible study, to hear God speak from the pages of
scripture. And just in case we were in any doubt as to the content of God’s
message, the second half of this psalm from verse 8, is a summary of what God
has to say to us. It can be thought of
as a summary of the witness of the Old Testament. “Do not harden your hearts as
at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness”.
To be honest with you, I had to look these two places up! How often is it that we fail to understand the Bible fully because we simply haven’t spent enough time exploring the stories, looking at the people, the events, the places, and seeing how God has worked through all of them. To get to the bottom of this we need to find Exodus 17:7 – jot it down if you are taking notes, it is worth a look later – a biblical concordance would have sent you there, or a good commentary on the text.
To be honest with you, I had to look these two places up! How often is it that we fail to understand the Bible fully because we simply haven’t spent enough time exploring the stories, looking at the people, the events, the places, and seeing how God has worked through all of them. To get to the bottom of this we need to find Exodus 17:7 – jot it down if you are taking notes, it is worth a look later – a biblical concordance would have sent you there, or a good commentary on the text.
Reading from the start of the chapter, we hear of a
quarrel that broke out among the Israelites and Moses. The people of God had
recently been freed from slavery in Egypt by mighty miracles, and led away to
safety, but they still demanded more. They demanded water by miraculous sign.
They doubted God, and tested him. Even those they were visibly within the
people of God, their hearts had not learned to trust God as their rock. And so,
the place was called Massah which means testing, and Meribah which means
contention. They had Moses strike a rock to produce water, which they thought
would save them from thirst. But they were foolish and stubborn because the
Lord is the rock of our salvation. We heard that in verse one, and as the
ancient Israelites needed to be reminded, so do we. It is no different now, for
the people of God, the Church. We might be visibly “in”, but we have failed to
grow in trust and faith, because we have not yet learned to see who God is, and
we have not yet listened to his voice.
Conclusion
Do we put God to the test? Are our hearts so hardened
that we do not believe he rewards those who seek him by, as Hebrews 11:6 tells
us in no uncertain terms. We must learn to trust the providence of God, his
forward planning. We can trust him because we can know what he is like. We saw
that in the first half of the psalm. He is the great God, who makes a people
for himself to shepherd. In the Old
Testament he did this by at the exodus; in the New Testament we see him
completing this work on the cross.
He shepherds his people, and speaks to them by his word. And when he speaks to his people, he warns them. He warns them so that they might return to him. He warns them not to harden their hearts, and refuse to obey because in so doing they miss out on entering into his rest.
He shepherds his people, and speaks to them by his word. And when he speaks to his people, he warns them. He warns them so that they might return to him. He warns them not to harden their hearts, and refuse to obey because in so doing they miss out on entering into his rest.
This is serious stuff, but we must not forget: The voice
of God that calls to us from this psalm this is cause to rejoice. God wants us
to turn to him in joy and worship, with humble hearts, so that we may enter
into his rest. So come Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation - Amen
