Psalm 95
We love good news.
You have been accepted at the university you applied to!
You have won a sailing yacht!.
Here is a pony for your birthday!
You have been promoted!
I can get you the money you need to pay your bills!
Psalm 95 begins with good news.
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
What is not to like in this? It is a wonderful expression of praise of a great God.
But good news often has consequences.
You have been accepted at university – but now, at least in the US, you have the privilege of paying $30,000 to $40,000 per year for four years.
You have won a sailing yacht – but now the yearly fees to maintain it will be more than your annual salary.
Here is a pony for your birthday – but now you will have to go every day to the barn to feed and water the pony and to shovel the manure out of the stall.
You have been promoted – but now you will have to travel 3/4 of the time.
I can get you the money you need – but you will have to pay 15% interest per month or I will break your knees.
Good news often has consequences we do not like.
Psalm 95 begins wonderfully but then comes the second half, which could be summarized as: So donât screw up or you will pay with your life. Psalm 95 is good news followed by a stern warning.
Just so you know where I am going, let me walk with you through Psalm 95 to help you understand what the psalmist was trying to say in the two parts of this psalm. And then we will move into a critical theological understanding of the nature of God and some implications of that.
From the early years of the church, Psalm 95 has been used as a call to worship and a guide to worship of God. It begins with an exhortation for us to celebrate the greatness of God.
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
God is the rock of our salvation. From the psalmistâs perspective, God saved Israel from the army of Pharaoh. God saved Israel and brought it into the promised land of Canaan. God saved Israel over and over again from enemies.
With our New Testament perspective, we expand this to a far greater understanding of salvation and celebrate the truth that Jesus is the rock of salvation
on which we stand
All other ground is sinking sand.
Israel came out of an Egyptian culture that had hundreds of gods and moved into a Canaanite culture where each nation had multiple gods. In the midst of these polytheistic cultures the psalmist proclaimed:
For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In a world of many gods, Israel proclaimed that the LORD is the great God and stands above all other created gods. When the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant and brought it into their temple to Dagon, their chief god, the LORD demonstrated his supremacy by having the statue of Dagon fall down prostrate before the ark of the covenant.
Psalm 95 tells us how to celebrate this good news.
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
So sing with me:
There is no rock
There is no god like our God
No other name
Worthy of all our praise
The rock of salvation that cannot be moved
Heâs proven Himself to be faithful and true
There is no rock
There is no God like ours
Rock of ages, Jesus is the rock
Rock of ages, Jesus is the rock
Rock of ages, Jesus is the rock
There is no rock
There is no God like ours
We worship God with thankful hearts by singing songs that proclaim his greatness. I hope this song will stay in your mind this week, reminding you of Jesus, the rock of your salvation.
The psalmist continues by telling us who the great God is that we worship. Our great God is the creator of all we see.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
As Psalm 95 instructs us in worship, there is just one response to the greatness of our God who is our creator and our salvation.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
The standard word for worship in the Bible means to prostrate oneself, to bow down, to lower one self and this is how the psalm instructs us to come before God. We may stand with hands in the air, but our hearts and minds need to be prostrate before him.
This is the amazing, good news. We do not serve one of the gods in the pantheon of gods. We do not worship even the chief of all gods. We worship the only god, the one true God who existed before creation and who created all we see. We worship the one true, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God.
And what is even more amazing is that this great God has chosen us to be the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
I am his and he is mine
His banner over me is love
This is the good news of Psalm 95 but like much of the good news we receive, there are consequences and Psalm 95 goes on to say – as I paraphrase it:
So donât screw up or you will pay with your life.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
9 where your fathers tested and tried me,
though they had seen what I did.
To what incident in the history of Israel is the psalmist referring?
In Exodus 17 the whole Israelite community was traveling through the wilderness after having been so spectacularly delivered from the army of Pharaoh at the Red Sea.
But now they were without water and thirsty and like most of us, asked of God, âWhat have you done for us lately?â Did they remember that God had delivered them and have faith that he would provide for them what they needed, including water? No, they were no better than we are at having faith that God will take care of us when we step from one difficult situation into another.
So they quarreled with Moses and said, âGive us water to drink.â
Moses replied, âWhy do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?â
3 But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, âWhy did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?â
4 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, âWhat am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.â
5 The Lord answered Moses, âWalk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.â So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, âIs the Lord among us or not?â
Massah and Meribah mean testing and quarreling. They had seen the power of God worked for them and still did not trust him. They quarreled and put God to the test and so God pronounced his judgement on them.
For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, âThey are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways.â
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
âThey shall never enter my rest.â
All the adults (except Joshua and Caleb) who had been delivered by the power of Godâs hand from the Egyptians died wandering in the wilderness. They never entered into the promised land.
This is the hard judgment that follows the good news that begins Psalm 95.
God is a great god, like no other. He pre-existed creation. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving and he chooses us to be his sheep. That is great news!
But that great news has a consequence. Because of who God is and because of what God has done, we better not screw up. This psalm should make you sit up and pay attention. How much are we like the Israelites in the wilderness? After all God has done for us, do we continue not to trust him when we step into a new, difficult situation?
Good news often carries with it difficult consequences. Psalm 95 is a wonderful psalm of praise but it is also a stern warning of a terrible danger.
The popular theology of the church is affected by our desire for good news. More people believe there is a heaven than believe there is a hell. This should not surprise us, we like good news.
A belief in universalism, the doctrine that says we will all eventually, somehow be saved, is a popular belief in Christian churches because we do not like bad news. Except for a few very evil and nasty people, we do not like the idea of anyone going to an eternal hell. We especially do not like the idea of people we know and love going to hell because they do not follow Jesus.
So our tendency is to make God into a comfortable, predictable, gentle, old man who takes us all in. But the fact that God had to intervene in history in such a costly way, sacrificing his own son to die for us, indicates that God has certain standards. Why would God sacrifice so greatly unless it was absolutely necessary?
Godâs justice has to be satisfied. But many people want God to say, in the end, âHey, itâs OK. No oneâs perfect. Come on in. I was just kidding about all that needing to be perfect stuff. What you did was not really that bad.â
In the US kids play a game called âhide and seekâ. In this game one person closes his or her eyes and counts to 100 while everyone else hides somewhere. Then the one who closed his or her eyes has to find the ones who are hiding. Finally when the seeker gives up because some of the ones hiding cannot be found, he or she calls out, âAlly, ally in free!â and everyone comes home. There are many who want God at the end to call out, âAlly, ally in free!â and everyone will come streaming into heaven.
This is not how God is.
There are many Christians who love the New Testament with its stories of Jesus who loves us. Pictures of Jesus as a shepherd carrying a lost sheep in his arms make us feel comfortable and loved. These same Christians are dismayed at portrayals in the Old Testament of God telling Joshua to kill all the men, women and children in a village.
But you cannot separate so cleanly the God of the Old Testament who instructed Joshua to kill all the living creatures in a village and the God of the New Testament who sent Jesus to love us and to redeem us.
The God of the Old Testament expresses great love and care:
I will never leave you or forsake you. (Joshua 1:5)
For the Lord your God is a merciful God; (Deuteronomy 4:31)
And the God of the New Testament describes the return of Jesus as riding a white horse:
Revelation 19
With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. âHe will rule them with an iron scepter.â He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
king of kings and lord of lords.
There is one God. The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God. God is a god of love and God is a god of justice.
This is the critical theological understanding of this sermon. God is a god of love and a god of justice.
Love and justice are both parts of Godâs character and you cannot peel off layers of God you do not like. If you want Godâs love, his justice will come along with it.
Some scholars have thought that Psalm 95 was written by two different people because the first and second half of the psalm are so different. But the two parts of psalm 95 express the one truth about God who is a god of love and a god of justice.
This understanding runs through the psalms and through all of Scripture.
Psalm 33:5
The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
Psalm 89:14
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;
love and faithfulness go before you.
Psalm 101:1
I will sing of your love and justice;
to you, O Lord, I will sing praise.
We know about Godâs love from our Sunday School lessons but as we grow in age and faith, we need to learn that God is also a god of justice.
Unless we understand that God is a god of justice, salvation makes no sense. From what do we need to be saved if God is only a god of love?
It is important that we understand the reality of our situation.
In Romans 5 Paul writes that because of our sin we are enemies of God and deserve his wrath.
When I was a youth pastor in a Methodist church in West Virginia in 1980, I preached a sermon about our sin and our consequent need for Jesus. Afterwards one of the leading women in the church came up to me and said, âIf I though that when God looks at me, he sees me as a sinner, I would go out and kill myself.â
We donât like thinking about a God of wrath and we especially donât like thinking that we are the object of Godâs wrath, but we cannot escape it. Because of our sin, we are enemies of God and we deserve his wrath.
God is not angry like a parent who has had a bad day. Godâs anger is not selfish or irrational. Godâs anger is not a desire for revenge.
But God is a god of love and a god of justice. You cannot take away love without taking away God and you cannot take away justice without taking away God. Because justice is part of Godâs character, Godâs wrath is a holy hostility to evil.
This is not something about which God has a choice. God cannot choose to be who he is not. He cannot not love. He cannot not be just and he cannot overlook evil. And so Godâs wrath is expressed as a holy reaction to the evil in this world, to the evil that is in our hearts.
Jonathan Edwards was the great theologian and preacher of the Great Awakening in the US in the 1730s and 40s. His most famous sermon was titled: Sinners in the hands of an angry God.
In this sermon he used the image of a sinner hanging over the fires of hell and suspended only by a thin thread.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.
This is our situation. It is a terrible situation to be in. Who can rescue us from our fate?
When Paul discussed in Romans 7 his struggle with sin in his life, he wrote:
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in Godâs law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
And his answer is:
25 Thanks be to Godâthrough Jesus Christ our Lord!
God could not say âAlly, ally in freeâ without denying his character, so he sacrificed himself by sending Jesus to die for us.
Only Jesus can save us from our eternal fate. Buddha is not sitting at the right hand of God to intercede for us. Mohammed did not die for us. Our reasoning powers will not take us beyond the grave. Our good behavior will not help us. Our good deeds will not take us to heaven. Our good intentions only help us feel better about the guilt we feel for our sin.
Only Jesus can save us. Only Jesus can save us so it is of upmost importance that we be in a submissive relationship with him.
Let me finish with some implications of this.
First, donât be presumptuous.
If you can remember when you went to high school or whatever in your country they called the years before university, after four years you knew the system. You knew where everything was, you knew what teachers to avoid and what teachers could be reasoned with. You knew the system and walked the halls with confidence, unlike the first year students who timidly made their way down the hall.
If you have been a Christian for some years, you may also feel that you have worked out the system. You know where to find verses in the Bible, you know how to pray in groups, you know at least the basic theology, you know how to live the Christian faith.
But it does not matter if you have made a decision to follow Jesus this week or twenty years ago, you are still a sinner hanging by a thread over the fires of hell. You sin continues to condemn you and your need for Jesus is just as intense today as it was whenever it was you first turned to him.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholics know that they are only one drink away from being a drunk. Even if they have been sober for twenty years, they know they are only one drink away from being a drunk.
Christians are never less in need of the hand of Jesus reaching down to save them than on the worst day of their life.
Some Christians begin to think that they are better than others, more respectable than others. They may acknowledge that they are sinners, but these are little, tiny sins, not like the big sins of others.
But we are all sinners deserving the wrath of God and in desperate need of the saving hand of Jesus to pull us to safety.
One of the many paradoxes in Christian life is that we are to boldly approach the throne of God while at the same time we are to know how desperately we need to cling to Jesus to save ourselves from disaster.
The writer of Hebrews wrote (Hebrews 4:16)
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
But notice that the reason we can approach with confidence lies in the two verses before this:
since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we areâyet was without sin.
We can approach the throne of grace with confidence but we need to be hanging on to Jesus for dear life.
Have you ever seen a movie where the heros of the movie are rescued at the last instant by holding on to a rope dangling from a helicopter? As the helicopter pulls them to safety, they rise in the air, clinging on to the rope that is their only hope. If they let go of the rope, it is a long way down to destruction. They hold on to the rope for dear life.
Jesus is the rope that is pulling you to safety. Hang on to Jesus for dear life.
Never, ever slip into complacency in your Christian life. Never, ever become lackadaisical. Never, ever take for granted that you are heading for the kingdom of heaven.
As soon as you begin taking your salvation for granted, you are in danger of slipping into a cultural expression of Christianity and falling away from Jesus and into eternal disaster.
Cling to the rope that is saving you for dear life. Hang on to Jesus for dear life.
One last point. As you hang on to Jesus, know that he is also hanging on to you. In a benediction I often use in the church Paul wrote: (I Thessalonians 5:23-24)
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
It is like a double hand clasp. Jesus is holding on to you but you also need to hang on to him.
As his child, Jesus will bring you into his kingdom. He is holding on to you but hold on to him for dear life.
