If you saw the movie Remember the Titans, you know that it is based on the true story of a strongly divided high school football team during their first season as a racially integrated unit. The newly appointed African-American football coach, played by Denzel Washington, works hard at uniting his team so they do not see each other as black or white but as brothers. The team is having a perfect season and the town is celebrating the victory that secures the team a spot in the state championship game. As they are celebrating, one of the team leaders and best players, Gerry Bertier, is in a car wreck that paralyzes him so he cannot play in the championship game. In a moment of extreme elation and seeming invincibility, the team is reminded of the fragileness of their lives.

In a similar way, the invitation to worship God in Psalm 95 moves from festive celebration to bowing in reverence before the Lord. A wide gamut of emotions is expressed in the psalm, culminating in God’s people waiting to hear and respond to God’s word. As you read the Psalm this week in preparation for this morning’s service, the movement of the psalm might have puzzled you just like it puzzled me when I began studying it. I thought, “How can this psalm go from saying ‘Oh come, let us sing to the Lord’ to ‘Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.’” Despite initial appearances, the psalm has a strong unity, and it is a beautiful picture of worship before God.

Psalm 95 can be broken into two main units; the first is verses 1-7c and the second is 7d-11. Within the first main section, two times the psalmist invites us to worship, in verses 1-2 and verse 6. Then, after each call to worship God, the psalm puts forth reasons or bases to explain why we should worship. In the second half of the psalm, the last clause in verse 7 to the end of the psalm, the psalmist warns us, in divine first person voice, not to harden our hearts against God, but to follow Him in obedience or be marked as those of the wilderness generation who tested the Lord and endured His wrath by not being able to enter His rest.

One of my hopes this morning as we look into the text is to invite you to praise God for his great actions and attributes. I want us to so vividly and powerfully and deeply see God with our heads and feel Him in our hearts that we can not help but burst into praise of our God by declaring ‘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!” Then, not only will we praise God in celebration, but we will bow our hearts to Him and obey His voice.

We must joyfully worship God, celebrating his creation and sovereignty over the universe (1-5)

The psalm begins in verses 1-2 calling God’s people to a joyous processional into the presence of God. He bids us to enter into worship with joy and thanksgiving, not a tempered solemnity void of all emotion.

Why does the psalmist bid us to “come and sing to the Lord, to make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation”? Doesn’t he know the world is riddled with the disheartening, depressing consequences and realities of sin? How can he say, “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving, let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” when sin ravages the world?

I think the Psalmist can utter those wonderfully positive words because he knows that hope is not lost. He knows a God exists who will one day renew His creation, permanently destroying the effects of sin. The Psalmist has tasted, treasured, enjoyed, and delighted in God so as affections and love for God well-up in his heart, they burst forth in an overflow of praise that calls onto others to taste and treasure God as well. C.S. Lewis says it well in a famous quote, “We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

The psalmist buttresses his call to worship and praise in verses 1-2 and 6 with reasons to praise God because, as John Stott states, “Not until we grasp who the Lord is, are we inwardly moved to worship him.” (from Psalms, Boice, 777). By rooting each call to worship God with declarations of his great actions and attributes, our hearts and head begin to see God for who He really is, and when that happens, they automatically and naturally begin to overflow in praise. Therefore, one application from this text would be to strive to grasp who the Lord really is, which comes through knowing and loving His Word, so that we are inwardly moved to treasure and prize God.

In verse 3, the psalmist declares, “The Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” The language of “King” underscores God’s absolute control or sovereignty over the universe. God is the “great king” whose dominion is limitless. The nations surrounding Israel had their deities whose sovereignty depended upon the sphere of their rule. They believed in false deities who ruled the “depths of the earth” or “the heights of the mountains” or “the sea” or “the dry land”. But, we can take hope and rejoice for our God is the “great King” who rules over the entire world. The mountains or the sea do not limit his reign for He created every speck of dirt and drop of water. To paraphrase Abraham Kuyper, there is not one single square inch of creation upon which God looks and does not cry out, “Mine!”

If that makes you cringe, and your rugged, Western individualist spirit is repulsed and nauseated by the idea of a King who has dominion and authority over your life and the entire creation because you say, “No one has control of me, I do what I want, when I want, and how I want to do it.” I would tell you, first, that is just not true; then second, that He is the type of King you would want to be ruled by and would gladly submit to, if you only saw Him as He truly is. He is good and gracious, kind and loving, a provider and protector for His people. The reason you are not dead at this moment is because the King—the ruler of all creation—allows you to live. Not only does He allow you to live, He provides you ample opportunity to return from your sinful rebellion of His kingship and joyfully submit to Him—the type of king you’d want to be ruled by.

After declaring God’s kingship, verses 4-5 explain why God is a great God and why He is a King above all gods by cataloging the extent of God’s dominion. The text reads, “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.” To help those truths chain themselves to our hearts, listen to a few more verses teaching God’s control of creation.

Verses teaching God’s control of the creation:

a. “In his hands are the depths of the earth”

i. Psalm 135:6: “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.”

ii. Psalm 139:7-8: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!”

b. “The heights of the mountains are his also”

i. Psalm 97:5 : “The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.”

c. “The sea is his, for he made it”

i. Job 38: 8, 10-11: “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb…and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said ‘Thus far you shall come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

ii. Jeremiah 5:22: “Do you not fear me? declares the Lord; Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail; though they roar, they cannot pass over it.”

d. “His hands formed the dry land”

i. Psalm 89:11: “The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.”

ii. Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…”

Might we pray and seek to see God as the great God and great King above all gods so that we can come into His presence with joy.

We must bow before the Lord, acknowledging Him as Maker and Shepherd (6-7c)

Contrasting the joyful exuberance and entrance into worship is a more sober, humble call to worship characterized by prostration before God. Here the movement of the psalm shifts from festive entrance into God’s presence to bowing in submission to await his royal declaration from the throne.

Growing up in my church and youth group in Florida, I always heard that the idea of worship came from the old English word “worthship,” so worshipping God meant ascribing worth to Him. That was correct, but they were describing the etymology of the English word worship, not the Hebrew word. The most common Hebrew word for worship meant prostrating yourself or bowing before God. In that position you rightly symbolize the greatness and honor due to the King whom you worship. So not only do we rightly worship God by entering his presence in joy for his greatness, but we also worship God by rightly recognizing our insignificance and humbling ourselves before Him.

After calling the listeners to bow down and kneel before the Lord their Maker, the psalmist employs an agricultural image of sheep being shepherded. Why the sheep image? This image depicts our entire dependence upon God. Listen to a couple of other verses using the sheep/shepherd imagery.

Old Testament references of God being the shepherd:

a. Psalm 23:1: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

b. Psalm 79:13: “But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.”

c. Psalm 80:1: Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock!...”

d. Isaiah 40:10-11: Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”

The pasture/sheep language in 7a-c exclaims God’s covenant relationship to His people. As their “Lord” and “Maker”, he is their shepherd and they are the flock under his care. This image is much more than an agriculture image; it is an image of the Lord as leader, provider, and protector. We not only worship God as the creator of the caves, mountains, seas, and dry lands, but as the one who cares for us who are His people. Might we rest in the fact that God is for us and committed to our God as we are His people. Allow that truth to comfort your weary or tired soul.

In the New Testament, when Jesus declares in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd” he wasn’t just painting a cushy, feel-good image of himself. The Jews who heard Jesus’ words would have immediately called to mind the prevalence of Old Testament imagery of God as the shepherd of his people. They would have thought of places like Psalm 23, Psalm 95:7, and Isaiah 40:10-11. Thus, when Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd” he was saying “I am God.” He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, in order that they may live.

We must not harden our hearts to God’s voice but respond in obedience to His Words (7d-11)

After bidding us to prostrate ourselves before the Lord in worship, the psalmist exhorts us not to harden our hearts to God’s voice.

Such a grave warning might seem unusual or even disconnected in a psalm of such joyous exclamations, but I think this warning fits well with the psalmists call to worship. God issued this warning to make sure we do not harden our hearts, quarrel with him, or test him. Contrary to such unbelief and rebelliousness, true worship involves hearing the Word of God (7d), obeying the Word of God by not hardening our hearts (8), and praising God for it (1-2).

Lest we think only the beginning of this psalm is applicable to us because we are 21st-century, modern Christians who do not wander in the wilderness while fleeing from Egypt and a tyrannical Pharaoh, the book of Hebrews prevents us from confining the thrust of this warning passage to Israel. When the psalmist writes “Today,” it is this very moment; the “you” is none other than yourself. College student, single person, young married couple, middle-aged adult, and older man and woman, God is speaking to you today, just as He was speaking to the Israelites thousands of years ago. You are just as likely to harden your hearts and refuse to obey His voice, and God’s wrath has not waned for those who disobey Him. If you harden your hearts, He will be disgusted with you and He will swear in His wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” Furthermore, the “rest” is not the Promised Land or Canaan, but salvation.

To correctly understand the divine voice and not harden our hearts, we must know what happened at Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17:1-7). In sum, the Israelites had fled from Egypt, were moving through the wilderness, and camped at Rephidim, which is near what we now call the Red Sea. At Rephidim, there was no water for the people to drink, so the Israelites grumbled against Moses and tested the Lord by not trusting Him to provide for their needs. Moses then called to God and God instructed Moses to strike the rock at Horeb and water flowed from the rock for the people to drink. Moses then named the place Massah, which means “testing”, and Meribah, which means “quarrelling,” because the people of Israel quarreled and tested the Lord by saying “Is the Lord among us or not?”

The events that took place at Massah and Meribah symbolized a whole generation of unfaithful Israelites. They witnessed and experienced the plagues of frogs and locust and the death of the firstborn in Egypt. They passed through the Red Sea with massive walls of water to their right and to their left, then saw the Sea swallow the Egyptians so that their drowned bodies dotted the shore as the water lapped over them. Then they tasted bitter water that the Lord made sweet and filled their stomachs with quail and manna sent from God. Despite all these miracles and mighty works, the people did not trust the Lord to provide for their needs. Grumbling and complaining, they outright challenged the Lord’s right to take them away from Egypt. These people hardened their hearts to God’s voice and tested Him.

Therefore, because of their hardened hearts and testing of God, the Lord swore in His wrath that they would not enter His rest. But, what does “rest” mean and why is it important?

In the day of the wilderness wanderers in the book of Exodus, the “rest” meant settling in God’s land and enjoying the peace and prosperity of that place. The rest literally meant entering into the Promised Land as the goal and conclusion of their wanderings from Egypt. In stark contrast to the barren wilderness, this land was to be flowing with milk and honey. It was to be a place of joy and comfort while enjoying the presence and blessing of God.

Hebrews 4:1-13, however, argues that the rest means more than just inheriting the land of Israel. The rest carries a meaning much deeper than just the literal rest understood by the wilderness generation, for the very person who wrote this psalm and the congregation who would sing it were living in the Promised Land, but the psalmist still warns them not to harden their hearts because if they do, they won’t enter God’s rest.

So, what is the other meaning of “rest”? It means sharing in God’s final Sabbath rest, which is entering into heaven. The rest is the rest that we will know in the last day as we experience perfect fellowship with God. The rest is being saved from our sins and enjoying communion with God. The rest is having our sins forgiven and knowing Christ’s righteousness.

The psalmist warns us that if we rebel from God and harden our hearts to Him, we will not enter His salvation and all that awaits us is His wrath. We must submit to the lordship of the King and heed his voice, or our rebellious hearts will block our fellowship with God.

We need to know this rest because in the Garden of Eden, God created or generated the world and humans so that they were in perfect fellowship and harmony with Him. In the Garden, God established His kingdom. Then, however, Adam and Eve chose to sin and the degeneration of all things happened. The earth was cursed, the woman was cursed with pain in childbearing, the man was cursed with hardship and toil in his work, and death came to all things. What God generated to exist in perfect harmony with Himself and experience joy-filled life, degenerated to despising God, abusing the creation, living in misery, and ultimately dying.

Yet, since the fall, God has been progressively regenerating his people so His kingdom would be reestablished without the possibility of sin ever reentering it. The new kingdom will be inaugurated in three separate stages. The first stage began with Jesus’ first coming, and the final stage begins when Christ returns and death is permanently destroyed. In all of that, God is seeking to redeem and regenerate His people and His creation.

God will establish a rest from the war against sin and Satan and death. God will regenerate and redeem his people and creation to once again enter into pure unity with Him. In that day, pancreatic cancer will never claim another life. Tsunami’s destroying villages in Indonesia will cease. Tornado’s in West TN that splinter trailers will never form. No husband will ever again backhand his wife after drinking too many Budweiser’s. No one will shake their fist at God and spit at his name by disobeying his commands. God has already begun to establish this kingdom through the work of Jesus Christ and He will continue to establish it until all sin and the effects of sin, including death, are destroyed.

Isaiah paints a beautiful image of what experiencing God’s rest in His renewed kingdom will be like, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6, 9)

Therefore, today, as you are hearing his voice, two choices exist: you can either obey or disobey. Will you harden your heart or will you soften it? Neutrality is not an option. Passivity is not possible. Will you obey the God who gives you life or will you shake your puny fist in his face in blatant rebellion?

Two categories of people are in this room this morning, those who believe in Christ as Savior and those who do not, and I think this warning applies to both groups.

To those who are in Christ, your perseverance is dependent upon your obedience to God’s Word because if you do not persevere to the end you will not be saved. If you call yourself a believer in Christ but consistently harden your heart to God’s voice, you are evidencing that you are not a believer. Therefore, I plead with you from this psalm and the book of Hebrews, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away form the living God…For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end…Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who 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.” (Hebrews 3:7b-8a, 12, 14, 4:14-16)

But, you say, “Ryan, I know I should want to obey. I know I should enter God’s presence with thanksgiving. I know I should be enthralled and stunned by his position as Creator and Sustainer of the universe. I know my heart should willingly kneel before the Lord, our Maker. But, if I was to be honest with you, I don’t even want that right now. That is the furthest thing from my heart. All I want to do is to watch T.V., or surf the internet, or piddle around in my yard.” If that is you, summon whatever smidgen of desire for God that is in your heart and then pray the great new covenant promise found in Deuteronomy 30:6. Pray, “Lord, circumcise my heart” and if you don’t like that image, pray, “Lord, change my heart so that I will love the Lord my God will all my heart and with all my soul, so that I may live.” God will hear your prayer and will break through the calluses of your heart to renew and revive His relationship with you.

If you are not a believer today, we long for you respond to Jesus Christ by turning from your sins and trusting in Him. One way we demonstrate that we have trusted in Christ is to partake of communion, so if you are not in that place today, we ask you to refrain from partaking. If you do not believe in Christ, God created you to live for His glory in relationship with Him; but all of us in this room, including you, have rebelled against God. This rebellion or sin has separated you from God so that you cannot be in a relationship with Him and God’s wrath hangs over you so that, as the text says, You shall not enter His rest. Yet, in His love, God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life in obedience to God, to provide you with eternal life by taking your sins upon himself and then enduring God’s wrath for those sins. Jesus died on the cross but three days later rose from the dead to demonstrate that he had conquered sin and that same saving power is now available to you if you would turn from your sin and trust in Christ as Savior. Do not wait any longer. Today is the day not to harden your heart; today God offers you this invitation. Trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

AN INVITATION AND A WARNING