Behold His Glory

Before we get to Psalm 95, which is where we’ll camp out today, I invite you to turn to Exodus 19. I want to start our time in God’s Word today with a question for us. Do we actually realize the wonder and the weight of what we’re doing right now? For this hour or so that we’re gathered together, do we realize the wonder and the weight of what we’re doing? I think it’s possible to come in here on a Sunday morning and kind of go through the motions without actually realizing what’s happening here.

That’s why we’re starting in Exodus 19, because I want us to see that what happens here in this service goes back a long way—back to the beginning of the Bible. God’s people were slaves in Egypt and He delivered them out of slavery for a reason. Do you remember what the reason was? God told Moses to go to Pharaoh in Egypt and to tell him, “Let My people go so that they might worship Me. Let My people go so they might gather together and give Me glory.” And that’s exactly what happened. God delivered His people out of slavery in Egypt, He guided them to Mt. Sinai and there they gathered to worship Him. We’ll pick up with Exodus 19:16. Try to picture this scene. Try to hear the sounds.

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. 20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.

Is that not an awesome scene? Have you ever seen a trembling mountain? It’s wrapped in smoke. The Lord is speaking in loud thunder, as the people gathered together to worship Him and to hear Him speak. Right after this God gives His people the Ten Commandments and the rest of His law. What’s happening here would become a pattern throughout the rest of the Old Testament. There would not always be this kind of scene at Mt. Sinai, but throughout the Old Testament God’s people would regularly gather together to worship Him and hear His Word. And in a sense this is what it meant to be a part of the people of God—to have this privilege of standing in the great assembly before God.

You may remember a few months ago we were in Nehemiah 8, where we saw the people of God gathering together. It says they stood for hours, worshiping, listening to God’s Word with their hands raised, crying out, “Amen! Amen!” People were bowing down with their faces to the ground. God’s people gathered together to behold His glory and to hear His words. So it’s interesting when we get to the pages of the New Testament that the word for “church” in the original Greek is ekklesia,  which literally means an assembly or gathering. So what is the church? It’s the assembly or gathering of God’s people.

Turn with me now to the New Testament, to Hebrews 12. You’ve got to see this. The author of Hebrews is encouraging Christians who were neglecting to assemble together. In Hebrews 10:25 he says, “Don’t give up meeting together,” and then in chapter 12 he tells them why this assembling is so important. He contrasts what they’re doing with what happened in Exodus 19. Look at Hebrews 12:18-21. The author of Hebrews is talking here to New Testament Christians, which by implication includes those of us who have placed our faith in Christ.

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”

 

Now here’s the contrast:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

 

Do you realize what we just read? The author of Hebrews just told us, as a New Testament church, “When you gather together, you’re not coming to an earthly mountain like they came to in the Old Testament. No, you’re coming to something greater than a trembling mountain wrapped in smoke and thunder and lightning. You’re coming to something greater. You’re joining with a heavenly assembly filled with throngs of angels and heavenly hosts and the saints from throughout the ages. And together you’re gathering to give glory to God and to hear Him speak—not through thunder, but through His Word.

So I see this in the Bible, and I think we have a tendency, if we’re not careful, to miss this. We have a tendency to come into a gathering like this casually. This is just what we do on Sundays. And it doesn’t even cross our mind how awesome, mind-boggling, breathtaking and distinct what we’re doing right now is compared to anything else we’ll do all week long. We are joining in what God’s people have done ever since Mt. Sinai. We’re gathering together right now to behold the glory of God. We’re joined together with angels in heaven, with saints throughout the ages, to sing God’s praise, to stand in awe of Him and to listen to God speak. This is huge.

This is why John Stott said, “True worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.” But I think we’re tempted to miss this—and I want to make sure we don’t miss the wonder and weight of what we’re doing, or the wonder and weight of the One we’re worshiping.

A.W. Tozer said:

In my opinion, the great single need of the moment is that light-hearted, superficial religionists be struck down with a vision of God high and lifted up, with His train filling the temple. The holy art of worship seems to have passed away like the shekinah glory from the tabernacle. As a result, we are left to our own devices and forced to make up the lack of spontaneous worship by bringing in countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of the church people.

 

This is exactly what we’ve done all across the church in our culture and in our day. I want to propose that it’s not necessary for us to bring in “countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of the church.” I want to propose that the glory of God is more than sufficient to hold the attention of the church. So over the coming weeks we’re going to spend time in the Word, just gazing together on the glory of God. This past week I sat down with a diverse group of pastors from our different campuses and together we asked God where He wanted us to go in the Word. He clearly showed us what Tozer said, particularly in light of the transition our church. Our greatest need is not to focus on a certain leader or a certain issue—but rather we must fix our eyes and hearts on Him in all of His glory.

This isn’t just the greatest need in the church. The greatest need in our lives is to know God. I mean, to really know Him. Real life is found in knowing God. The last thing we want to do is go through the motions and miss the wonder and weight of knowing and worshiping God. Pray that God would give us a great sense of expectancy when we come into a gathering like this where we’re meeting with God. Our pastoral team is convinced that we desperately need to rediscover the wonder and weight of worship before God. I know of no better psalm that expresses that than Psalm 95, so please turn there with me.

In the coming weeks, our plan is to look at a different psalm and at a different attribute of God each week—including some attributes that we don’t often talk about. This may be why many times we have a low view of God. Today I want to set the stage for this journey by reflecting on the reality that we need to rediscover the wonder and the weight of worship. For centuries, even back to the Old Testament, God’s people have used this psalm as a call to worship. In the first half (95:1-7), we see the wonder of worship depicted, and the last half depicts the weight and seriousness of worship. When these are put together, Psalm 95 teaches us how we can rediscover the wonder and weight of worship in two ways. First, we need to remember Who we’re worshiping, and second, we need to realize how we should worship.

Psalm 95 tells us we need to remember Who we’re worshiping.

If we’re going to rediscover the wonder and the weight of worshipping God, then we need to remember Who we are worshiping, because we’re tempted to forget this. This isn’t intentional, I don’t think—it just happens. Think about times of prayer in worship. Can we just be honest with each other? How easy is it for me or someone else to stand up here and say, “Let’s pray,” and immediately we close our eyes and bow our heads—but then before we know it, in a matter of seconds, our minds wander in all kinds of different directions? Am I the only one who does this? I don’t think I’m the only one. It happens so easily and so unintentionally. Within seconds we can be thinking about all sorts of other things—details in our day, things we need to do, all kinds of ramdom thoughts.

So our worship can become this sort of perfunctory prayer exercise in this room, while all of heaven may be shouting, “Do you realize Who you’re talking to? Do you realize the wonder and weight of what you’re doing? You’re talking to God—thousands of you at one time—talking to God and He’s listening to you. Sure, He’s upholding Mars at the same time, in addition to trillions of stars that He knows by name. He’s sustaining every organ of  7.2 billion people on the planet. But you have God’s attention in this place. So don’t let your mind wander.”

See how easy it is for us to lose sight of the wonder and weight of what we’re going. But Psalm 95 lifts our eyes to the wonder of the One we worship. Look at these verses and notice all the different descriptions of God in this psalm:

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!

For the Lord 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.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down;

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.

1. Psalm 95 tells us that God is the self-existent Lord over all.

We’ve gathered together in this hour to worship the self-existent Lord over all. Verse one: “O come, let us sing to the Lord.” You’ll notice in your Bible that Lord is in all-caps—and it’s that way for a reason. Every time you see Lord this way, that refers to the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh. That was how God revealed Himself to Moses back in Exodus 3. It means the “I AM,” which is a reference to how God exists. He has always existed, He exists now and He will always exist.

It’s the classic children’s question. When my four-year-old comes to me and asks, “Who made God?” there’s only one answer. “Buddy, no one made God. He’s always been and He will always be.” God is unlike us—unlike anyone or anything else in the world. Everyone and everything in the world—including the world itself—came into being. But not Yahweh. Not the Lord. We’ve gathered together before the self-existent Lord over all.

2. Psalm 95 tells us that God is the supreme King above all.

Verse three: “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” He’s the King Who reigns over all the kings in the world. He rules them.

3. Psalm 95 tells us that God is the Creator of the universe.

Verses four and five: “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, I love that imagery. The world is hand-shaped and hand-held by God. The God we are worshiping right now is holding the world in His hands. His hands formed everything around us.

4. Psalm 95 tells us that God is the Owner of the universe.

It all belongs to Him. The mountains belong to Him. The seas belong to Him. He owns it all. You don’t own land. I don’t own land. God alone owns land. We think we own possessions and property, but ultimately God alone owns possessions and property. We’ve gathered together to worship the Owner of the universe.

5. Psalm 95 tells us that God is our Maker.

It gets more personal down in verse six: “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” The psalmist is awed—not just by how God made everything in the universe, but by how God has made him. He’s the Maker Who forms and sustains us. Think about it right now. We’re assembled here before the God Who formed our hands and our feet and our arms and legs. We’re worshiping the God Who is causing our lungs to breathe right now. The only reason your heart is beating at this moment is because the God we’re worshiping is causing it to beat. And were He to stop, so would you. He’s our Maker—the One Who forms and sustains us.

6. Psalm 95 tells us that God is our Shepherd Who loves and leads us.

Verse seven: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” This self-existent Lord over all, this supreme King above all, Creator and Owner of the universe—He is our Shepherd. We’re His sheep. This God is protecting us and providing for us. He cares for us. Which all leads to the question: how is that possible? We are sinners who’ve rebelled against this God. We’ve run away from Him in all of His holiness. How can we be sheep in His pasture?

Then that question leads us back to verse one in this psalm: “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” God is the Rock Who saves and delivers us. Remember, this is the picture from Exodus. God saved His people from slavery so they could worship Him in freedom. That is exactly what has happened. To be sure, we who are gathered in this room were never slaves in Egypt—but this place is full of men and women who were slaves to sin, separated from God, destined to pay the penalty for our sin which is eternal death. But God in His mercy made a way for us to be saved from our sin.

This is the real beauty of Psalm 95. If you’re not a Christian, I invite you to listen particularly closely now, because the same God of Psalm 95 is not distant from us. This God has come to us in the Person of Jesus. In the New Testament we’re introduced to Jesus as God in the flesh. John 8:58 says Jesus is the “I AM.” He is the self-existent Lord over all. John later writes in Revelation 19:16 that Jesus is the supreme King above all. On His robe is written, “King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Colossians 1:16 says Jesus is the Creator. He is the Owner of the universe; all things were created through Him and for Him. The next verse says He is the Maker Who forms and sustains us, and “in him all things hold together.” John 10:11 tells us Jesus is the Good Shepherd Who has laid down His life for us as His sheep. Indeed, Jesus is the Rock of our salvation. He died on the cross for our sin and has risen from the grave in victory over sin so you and I can have the privilege of knowing and worshiping God as sheep in His pasture. Do you see the weight and wonder, how Psalm 95 and all the Bible is shouting, “Remember Who you’re worshiping”?

Coming here on Sunday mornings can feel so routine—but remember, we’re gathering before God—the self-existent Lord  over all, the supreme King above all, the Creator and Owner of the universe, the Maker Who is sustaining your heart, the Shepherd Who loves and leads your life, the only Rock Who can save you from your sins. So come let us sing.

 

We need to realize how we should worship.

This psalm not only reminds us Who we’re worshiping, it also causes us to realize how we should worship. How should we respond to this God? Look at the list in this psalm.

1. We sing to God. Verse one: “Come let us sing to the Lord.” As a side note, notice the emphasis on “us.” Six times in the first six verses this psalm says, “Let us…” Let us sing. Let us make a joyful noise. Let us come into His presence. Let us make a joyful noise. Let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

According to the Bible, worship is clearly not a spectator sport, but a participant’s activity. Particularly in a setting like this—where I and the musicians are on stage and you’re in a seat out there,  almost like in a theater—and it’s easy for you to  think you’re a spectator and it’s easy for  those of us up here to think we’re performing in some way. But that misses the whole point of worship. There are no spectators in worship.

The closest thing to a spectator might be non-Christians who are here, because there’s a sense in which you’re observing Christians in worship. But every follower of Christ in this gathering is a participant in this. I am definitively not a performer for you and you are not an audience for me. God is the audience here. We’re all participants. We come together and we all sing. While this might seem unique to an outsider who’s not familiar with church or a worship gathering. “What is this?  A bunch of adults having a singalong?” And the answer is yes! And there’s a reason we sing, because we can’t help but sing praises to this God.

2. We shout to God. Now, unfortunately the ESV says in verse one says, “Let us make a joyful noise to the Lord.” But most translations say, “Let us shout joyfully to the Lord,” which is more the thrust of the original Hebrew in Psalm 95. One Hebrew scholar says the phrase, “Let us sing,” is way too tame for this text. This psalm is talking about making a lot of noise in worship. We see this in other psalms. I was reading Psalm 66 the other day and it says, “Shout for joy to God, all the earth.” Psalm 47 says, “Shout to God with loud songs of joy!” The picture of shouting in the Old Testament is like a triumphant war cry that strengthens an army and brings fear to the enemy. Shouting like this needs to be a part of our worship. When we gather together for worship, it is altogether right biblically to shout to God.

People inevitably ask, “Don’t people get carried away with that in churches?” And without question, there are abuses of this and many other biblical actions in worship. That causes us to ask, “What does shouting in the psalms look like practically in the church today?” I think about times when we’re singing, and the band gets going, and our voices are raised in worship. Today we were singing, “Savior, King, Jesus our King.” And there came a point for me when I found myself transitioning from singing to yelling—to the detriment of those around me. But there is a kind of shouting that is right and good. It’s good to loudly give God praise. Sometimes even during a song—maybe between verses—it’s altogether right to shout out a praise to God. “Yes, God! You are all these things we’re singing.” When we sing, “Holy, holy, holy,” just shout out, “Yes, God, You are holy! There’s no one like You.”

I think that’s what Scripture is calling us to do. “We stand in awe of You!” Not just while singing, but even in the preaching of the Word, as God’s glory is being revealed in the Word, I want to encourage you to shout. An “Amen” here or there is a healthy thing. I’m not just looking for that response for myself. If I happen to say something you think is true, or something that your heart resonates with, then shout out an “Amen” or “Praise the Lord” or “That’s right.” And when somebody does that, don’t everybody look at that person and think, “Dude, calm down.” Or don’t think, “Be careful, Bro. If you encourage that guy up there too much, he will never stop.” Don’t worry about that. This isn’t about me, or about you, or about drawing attention to anybody else. It’s about God. We’re shouting to God in worship.

3. We bow down before God. We kneel before Him. Did you know that the Hebrew word for worship literally means to prostrate oneself before God? It’s a picture we see all over Scripture. The way the seats are set up here makes it difficult, but if at any point in singing or praying or hearing the Word you feel compelled to bow down or kneel before God, I would encourage you to do so. I’ve read stories of spiritual awakenings in the past, it was common for people in their sensitivity to the Spirit, in the middle of singing or the middle of a sermon to come down front or go to the sides of the room and kneel before God in worship.

I would even say that if we are actually worshiping, surely we’ll be compelled to do this at some point. If we really realize Who we’re worshiping in this room, then there will inevitably be times when individuals, under conviction or just in awe—maybe many of us at the same time—will fall on our faces before God in reverence and awe. That is a right response in worship. I hope this is something you do alone with God. I hope you’re often physically on your face before Him. And if we do that alone, may none of us be so prideful that we wouldn’t do the same in the assembly before Him.

4. We thank God for all He does and praise Him for Who He is. Verse two: “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” Both praise and thanksgiving are involved in worship. We exalt God for His attributes and we thank Him for His actions throughout history, around the world and in our lives.
5. We listen to God. Many people stop at verse seven when reading this Psalm. But if we do that, we actually miss the whole point. The psalmist continues by saying that worship is more than singing and shouting and speaking to God; it also involves God speaking to us, like thunder from heaven. That makes what we’re doing here today even more mind-blowing. True worship means we listen humbly to God. Verse seven says, “Today, if you hear his voice…” Worship involves hearing the voice of God.

That’s why what we’re doing right now in studying God’s Word is such a large portion of our worship gathering. We worship God by opening up His Word and listening to Him. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible with you to worship. If you don’t have one, we would love to help you get one. This Book is the Word of God. Think about it. The self-existent Lord over all, the supreme King above all, the Creator and Owner of the universe speaks to us! We’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re worshiping and yet we’re not diving into His Word, expecting to hear from Him. We listen to Him humbly when we worship.

6. We obey God immediately. This is the warning Psalm 95 addresses—and it is weighty. Listen to this, beginning at the end of verse seven:

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, “They are a 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.”

 

That’s how this call-to-worship psalm ends—with a warning of God’s wrath on those who claim to worship God while they ignore the Word of God. It’s what happened at Meribah and Massah, back in Exodus and Numbers, when God’s people complained and quarreled before Him. Ultimately they disobeyed Him by not trusting Him, by not following Him into the Promised Land. And an entire generation of God’s people were left to wander in the wilderness until they died.

Their sin is summed up in the phrase, “They hardened their hearts.” If we had time, we’d go to Hebrews 3-5 in the New Testament, where the Bible urges Christians centuries later—based on Psalm 95—“Don’t harden your hearts toward God and His Word. Have a soft heart that hears God’s Word humbly and obeys it immediately.” This is huge when it comes to our worship. We can come into a gathering like this. We can sing and shout. We can even bow down or kneel. But when it comes to God’s Word, if either we don’t hear it or we harden our hearts to it and go on living however we want, we will totally miss the point of worship.

This is why I mention not just the wonder of worship, but also the weight of worship. What we’re doing right now is extremely serious. We’re opening up the Word of God to hear what God is saying, knowing we will be accountable before God for how we respond to what He has said. This week and every single week, we will be found to be mocking God if we sing some songs, bow our heads for some prayers and then walk out of this place ignoring God’s Word. That, Psalm 95 says, is a recipe for wrath. This is what Jesus Himself warned against in Matthew 15:8-9:  “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;  in vain do they worship me.” May it not be said of us that we worshiped God in vain.

This is so serious. What Jesus is talking about in Matthew 15 is a sin that’s unique to services such as ours, where we can supposedly gather for worship on the outside, while our hearts are hard toward God on the inside. I think of the number of people, particularly in our culture—who grow up in the church and even continue in the church, week after week after week—who go through the motions but sit there with hearts far from God. I think about kids who attend worship with hard hearts, sometimes for years, just to appease their parents. I think about husbands who attend worship to appease their wives, or vice versa.

I just want to urge you, based on the Word of God, to not do this. I want to urge you not to be cold toward God in worship. Some of you are there. Some of you have been there for years, maybe even all your life. I want to urge you—let today be the last day you worship God in vain. I urge every one of us, let’s not hear this Word this week, or any week, and then ignore it the next week. That is an eternally dangerous habit to get into.

6. We rest in God completely. In worship we humbly listen to God, we obey Him immediately, and then we rest in Him completely. That’s the picture here. In the Old Testament, God’s rest was the Promised Land—this abundant land flowing with milk and honey that He promised to bring them to—but an entire generation missed it because they disobeyed God’s Word. They played around in worship and they missed it.

When you turn the pages into the New Testament—Hebrews 3-5 in particular—this rest in the Old Testament becomes symbolic for the rest that’s found in following Christ in the New Testament.  Abundant life in Christ now and for all eternity. So hearing and obeying the Word of God is the path to life, to abundant rest in God, to being forgiven of all your sins before Him and to being able to experience all that God knows is best for your life. He’s given us His Word and He says, “I want you to experience this.” He’s our Maker, our Shepherd, our Rock and our Savior, Who’s designed this for us. When we realize what’s going on and truly worship, it brings glory to God—and it’s really good for us.

In the middle of a world of turmoil and pain and sin and suffering and death, worship is the way to rest in God, to life in God. This is what we do in worship. We come before God. We sing. We shout. We bow and kneel. We give thanks and offer praise. We listen to Him speak to us. We obey what He says, and as we do, we rest in Him.

7. We rejoice in God wholeheartedly. Then the whole tone of Psalm 95 tells us that to worship God truly is to rejoice in Him wholeheartedly. It says this in almost every verse.  This is how it all comes together. Don’t miss the logic of heaven in this text: “Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” Why? Because the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods. He is our God; we are His people. Rejoice in God.  Why? Because He is supreme. And when you exalt His supremacy, you will experience His satisfaction.

Ladies and gentlemen, do you want to experience satisfaction in your life? I’m talking about the satisfaction that no possession, no size of house or car, no position might bring you. I’m talking about a joy that’s deeper, higher, greater than anything your money can buy. I’m talking about joy that supersedes your circumstances. I’m talking about a joy that nothing in this life can take away from you. I’m talking about a joy that endures through sorrow and suffering. If you want that kind of joy in your life, then worship God. I mean really worship God. You don’t get that kind of joy playing games on a Sunday. You get that kind of joy by meeting with God, worshiping God, singing and shouting His praise, bowing and kneeling before Him in awe and wonder, hearing His Word to you and obeying His Word—and letting that lead you to rest and rejoicing in Him forever.

May God help us to rediscover the wonder and the weight of worship in our day. So I think it would be appropriate for us to sing and shout in response to this Word. So here’s what I want invite us to do. In just a minute, we’ll stand and sing and shout, and if the Lord so leads, to kneel and to bow. I want us to pause and realize what we’re doing and Who we’re about to sing to: the self-existent Lord over all, the supreme King above all, the One Who is the Creator and Owner of the universe, the One Who makes us, the One Who’s causing our hearts to beat right now, the One Who’s giving breath to us to sing. He’s our Shepherd. He loves us.  He is the Rock of our salvation. He’s the One Who saves and delivers us.

If you’re not a Christian today, I want to invite you to go from a spectator to a participant. I invite you to worship this God with us. Let today be the day when you trust in Jesus to save you from your sins, where you experience life in God, where you say, “I want to worship You. You’re Lord of my life.” We invite you to say that with us.

I’m going to pray for us, and as I pray, don’t let your mind wander. Let’s think about what we’re about to do.

O God, we pray that as we sing and worship for the next few minutes, that You would be honored with our lips and with our hearts. Lord, we pray for a rediscovery of the weight and the wonder of what we’re doing right now. I pray that You would be glorified right now in our worship.

How can we apply this passage to our lives?

Question 1

How would you describe the corporate worship you grew up in? Weighty? Reverent? Light-hearted?

Question 2

What are some signs that God’s greatness is taking a backseat to other emphases in corporate worship?

Question 3

How should Psalm 95 guard us from treating God lightly in worship?

Question 4

How would you describe a proper response to God in corporate worship?

Question 5

Psalm 95 talks about the urgency of entering God’s rest. What does it mean to enter God’s rest today,  and how do we enter? (see Hebrews 3–4)

Exodus 19:16 – 20

“On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud  trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet  God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and  Moses went up.”

Hebrews 12:18 – 24

“For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of  a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could  not endure the order that was given, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned. ‘ Indeed, so terrifying was  the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the  heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled  in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a  new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

We desperately need to rediscover the wonder and weight of worship before God.

1. We need to remember who we’re worshiping.

He is the self-existent Lord over all.

He is the supreme King above all.

He is the Creator of the universe.

Psalm 95:4 – 5

“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.”

He is the Owner of the universe.

Psalm 95:6

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD (Yahweh), our Maker!” He is the Maker who forms and sustains us.

He is the Shepherd who loves and leads us.

Psalm 95:7

“He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand!”

He is the Rock who saves and delivers us.

Revelation 19:16

Colossian 1:16

Colossians 1:17

John 10:11

2. We need to realize how we worship.

We sing to Him.

Psalm 95:1

“Come, let us sing to the Lord . . .”

Psalm 95:1 – 2

“Let us sing . . . let us make a joyful noise . . . let us come into his presence . . . let us make a joyful noise . . .”

Psalm 95:6

“Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.”

We shout to Him.

We bow down before Him.

We kneel before Him.

We thank Him for all He does.

We praise Him for who He is.

Psalm 95:2

“Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving . . . let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” We listen to Him humbly.

We obey Him immediately.

Psalm 95:8 – 11

“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 ‘They are a 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.’”

We rest in Him completely.

We rejoice in Him wholeheartedly.