Alright, brethren, Psalm 95.
Psalm begins in verse 1 with, O come, let us sing unto the
Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation. Down in verse 6, he says, O come,
let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord,
our Maker. The subject is true worship.
True worship is in the heart. True worship is bowing down in
the heart to God, to our Lord, and singing with joy, praising
Him, thanking Him, worshiping Him. And I want to worship Him. I pray the Lord will help us
tonight to worship Him and continue to worship Him. Now this psalm
is such a good follow-up to the last psalm. I think the Lord
put these psalms together on purpose because it just goes
hand-in-glove with the last psalm. We saw in that last psalm the
writer's heart was troubled. He was very troubled. He spoke
for a multitude of thoughts within me. He was seeing what we see. He was seeing enemy nation around
him. He was seeing wicked rulers and
wicked men and they were afflicting the Lord's people. And he had
a multitude of thoughts in himself about this. The enemy was boasting
and they were boasting and saying the Lord didn't regard them.
The Lord didn't see them and their affliction of the Lord's
people. And also boasting that because
they were triumphing over the Lord's people, the Lord was having
no regard to His people, that He didn't really see them and
have any regard to them. And that troubled the rider,
that troubled him, he was anxious, he was impatient that the Lord
was not moving for His people, not helping His people against
the enemy. But then the Lord settled his
heart. The Lord settled his heart. The Lord gave him rest in the
midst of the days of adversity. The Lord returned his judgment,
returned his discernment to righteousness, to Christ his righteousness,
and settled his heart. And he said in Psalm 94.19, In
the multitude of my thoughts within me, thy comforts delight
my soul. By faith he saw the wicked go
against the innocent blood, Christ the innocent. He saw the wicked
go against Christ the righteous. But seeing Christ crucified by
faith, seeing Christ's day, he said, the Lord is my defense
and my God is the rock of my refuge. There he was, all the
multitude of these thoughts within him, questioning was God going
to come and help and all of these thoughts. And God settled him. And he ended up committing it
all to God, bowing to the Lord and saying, the Lord is my defense
and my God is the rock of my refuge. And so it's just fitting. that this psalm opens with these
words. O come, let us sing unto the
Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence
with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God,
a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places
of the earth, and the height of the hills is His also. The
sea is His, He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. O
come, let us worship and bow down." That's really what worship
is, what it means. Let us 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. He was brought
to truly worship. Through worships by the Spirit
of God, settling our heart on Christ, putting joy and delight
in our heart by beholding our Redeemer, bringing us to be thankful
to Him, bringing us to commit all into His hand, trust Him,
believe Him, praise Him. This is what truly praises Him,
to believe Him and trust Him. and to believe His Word, believe
what He's promised, and trust Him, and worship Him, and sing
praise to Him from a heart of thanksgiving. Now, first of all,
true worship is a heart of joy and thanksgiving. It is joyful,
it's thankful. He says there, oh come let us
sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence
with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. The Lord's gospel is a gospel
of joy. God says to his people, come
and eat that which is good and let thy soul delight itself in
fatness. That's our gospel and true worship. When he truly sets you on Christ
in the heart, we sing, but we could come in here and sing and
just sing. but when you truly sing unto
the Lord from the heart, with joy in your heart, to the Lord
and what He's done for you. That's what He does by setting
our heart on Him, to make a joyful noise from the heart, to thank
God from the heart. The gospel is joyful. It's just
full of joy. There's nothing in it but joy
for His people. It's called the good news, the
gospel. Glad tidings of good things.
And God, when He produces a new heart and regeneration, He keeps
renewing that heart. When we're like the psalmist
was and we have this multitude of thoughts within us, He renews
your heart. He settles your heart on Christ
so that we really do worship Him with joy and with thanksgiving. We come before His presence.
We come before Him. And the heart's been turned to
Him. The heart beholds Him. There's a true union and a true
communion there with Him. And there's true worship. There's
true worship. He has to give that. And it's joyful and it's
full of thanksgiving. You know, in Isaiah 40, God tells
His messenger to speak the good news to the heart of His people. Worship is in the heart. True
worship is heart matter. He said, Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem
and cry unto her. That word means speak to her
heart. Speak to her heart. speak to
her heart and cry to her that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned, for she's received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins. And when God speaks to our heart,
when He settles our heart by making us seek Christ and setting
our affections single on Christ, single on Him, that's how lowliness
of mind is given to be given the mind of Christ. That's how
we truly come before Him with a joyful heart, giving thanks
to Him and worshiping Him. It's unto the Lord. It's in the
heart. That's true worship. Now look
here, secondly, what are these comforts where God comforts us?
How does He delight our soul? What is it that makes us truly
worship Him and truly be thankful to Him and praise Him? He's beholding
Christ in all that He is to us. Truly beholding Him in all that
He is to us. He's beholding Christ as the
rock of our salvation. He said, come, let us sing unto
the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation. Christ is the rock of our salvation. He is the rock of our salvation.
He said at the end of the other psalm, the Lord is my defense. And my God is the rock of my
refuge. You remember in Isaiah 28, the
Lord said, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone. I lay in Zion for a foundation,
a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make
haste." Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is the rock of salvation
laid by God. God the Father laid this foundation
in His eternal purpose and His decree from the foundation of
the world. In fact, the world was founded on Christ, our foundation. That's why He made everything.
Christ Jesus came forth and laid this foundation by His doing,
by His being perfectly faithful to God and laying down His life
for His people. He laid the foundation. And when
the Spirit of God quickens us, He makes Christ to be our rock
of salvation. He makes His child Believe on
the Lord and lay all on this foundation. Trust all upon this
foundation and commit all to this rock and be firmly planted
on this rock of salvation. He does it by teaching us that
He is the tried stone. He is the proven stone. The Lord
Jesus Christ came forth and His people were in this rock. We
were in the rock. We were in Christ our rock. Just
like Moses was put in the cleft of the rock, we were in Christ
the rock when He came forth. stormed the judgment of God. He laid it to the line. He laid
righteousness to the plummet against our Lord Jesus as when
he suffered on the cross as the substitute of his people. He
was proven, He was tried, He was proven to be faithful and
just and righteous. He never wavered. He was perfectly
faithful to God and He perfectly satisfied God. Perfectly gave
the law everything it demanded of His people and satisfied and
honored and magnified God and His holy law and His righteousness.
He's the tried stone. He's the proven stone. This is
what He teaches us in our heart. And He's the precious cornerstone.
He's precious to God and He's precious to those He quickens
and gives faith to trust Him. He's the precious cornerstone.
The whole house is held together by this precious cornerstone.
And He brings you to truly, truly believe Him and truly commit
it all to Him and truly trust no other foundation but the Lord
Jesus. Lay it all up on Him and trust
Him. To obey His voice, to believe
Him and to rest in Christ knowing He is the sure foundation. Our
righteousness, our justification, our acceptance with God, the
rock who upholds the whole house and upholds each of us individually
is Christ Jesus the Lord. We are living stones built upon
this one foundation. so that it's an immovable structure.
It cannot be moved. The wrath of God's justice has
been satisfied toward His people, and if we're found in Christ,
in the rock, we shall not be moved. Shall not be moved. We sing this song sometimes.
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. This is that one foundation.
Christ the solid rock. On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.
What happens when there's darkness and you can't see His lovely
face? I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy
gale, all these little storms that come, They can't wash us
away. Why? You're built on the rock.
When every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the wellman flood.
When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and
stay. And when he shall come with trumpet
sound. Oh, may I then in Him be found, in Christ the Rock,
dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before
the throne. But for all that will not obey
His voice, all that will not enter the rock of our refuge
by faith, hell shall sweep away the refuge of lies. The storm,
the water shall overflow the hiding place. Any man trusting
in his own works, trusting in his own goodness, trusting in
anything he's doing, he's not obeying the Lord, he's not trusting
the Lord, and he'll find the bed's too short, the covers are
too narrow to cover himself with. But he that believeth on Christ
shall not make haste. Even in these little storms,
even in these little storms of life, he shall not be greatly
moved. Why? He's planted, he's firmly
established on Christ the Rock and he won't be confounded. Why
not? But don't we get like the psalmist
here, don't we get in the multitude of our thoughts and his face
is veiled? How are we brought to worship
him? How are we brought to bow down at our heart and trust him
and give thanks to him and praise him and commit it all to him?
How are we brought to do this? He keeps doing what He did for
the psalmist right here. He keeps settling our hearts
and showing us Christ Jesus. He settles us on Him and He delights
our soul and He reminds us, the Lord is my defense. My God is
the rock of my refuge. That's how you're brought to
work, when you see him. What happened every time somebody
saw him in the scripture, when they saw him with a true heart
of faith, they bowed down. They fell down and worshipped
him. That's what happens through this
gospel. It gives you a heart to see him,
you bow down and worship him. True heart worship is by the
Spirit of God turning us from the multitude of our thoughts
and making us behold our Savior. He's not only the rock of our
refuge and our salvation, He's also our God and our sovereign
King ruling everything. He says here, verse 3, here's
why. He says, For the Lord is a great
God and a great King above all gods. The Lord is a great God
and a great King above all gods. When He says above all gods,
it doesn't mean that there are any other gods. It doesn't mean
that there are any other gods. It means our Savior is the great
God and He's the King. No idol gods or no gods at all. But I'll tell you something else
it means. Our Lord referred to little gods as rulers and the
wise and the prudent of this earth. what the psalmist saw
in the psalm before, it was when Israel was being chastened of
the Lord, and He was correcting His people within Israel, and
they saw all these rulers and nations, and doing what they
appeared to be triumphing in, and all by the work of their
hands, and it was troubling the believers in Israel. But He's
telling us here, He's the great King over all the little gods
of this earth, the rulers of this earth. Let me show you Jeremiah
10. He's the great God, and there's
no idols that are true gods, and He's the great King and Ruler
over all men in this world and wise and prudent of this world. He said in verse 5, He's speaking
of the of the idols, and he said, they are upright as the palm
tree, but they speak not. They must need to be born. You
have to carry them, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them,
they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good. For as much as there is none
like unto Thee, O Lord, Thou art great. Thy name is great
and might. Who would not fear Thee, O King
of nations? For to Thee doth it appertain.
He's saying to Thee, that's a fitting title, O King of the nations. Now he's talking about little
men in this earth that are rulers. He said, for as much as among
all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there
is none like unto thee, but they are all together brutish and
foolish, that's all the wicked rulers of this earth, and the
stock, all their idols, is just a doctrine of vanities. You know,
I've read about this place It's up near what they consider the
headwaters of the Mississippi River. And I'm sure there's more
than one place like this. But this guy, I used to tell
people, he lived on the Mississippi River. And what it was was there
was just a little bitty, I mean, a tiny little, not even what
you'd call a stream or a creek, but just a little rivulet of
water that went by his backyard. When you followed it, it went
to, a little bigger stream and that stream went to a little
bigger stream and it went to the Mississippi River. Now I'm
sure there was a lot of others like that but at this little
place where this started you could stand across it and you
could reach down and turn it however you wanted to turn it,
whichever way you wanted to turn it, just turn it with your hand
because it was just that small little bitty stream of water.
Now you follow that on and you get down to the Gulf of Mexico
and if you've ever been to New Orleans, you know the Mississippi
River is huge. Tons of water flowing out of
that. Well, you can't turn it down
there. Now the world is trying to turn
the Mississippi River at the Gulf. all wicked rulers, people
trying to make everything, make this a heaven on earth and false
religion. They are trying to turn the Mississippi
River down at the Gulf. God goes back up there to the
fountain. He goes back to the beginning.
He goes to the heart and deals with the fountain. He deals with
the fountain. We go through the week and we
hear the rulers and we hear ungodly men that don't know the Lord,
and you hear it on social media, you hear it in the news, you
hear everybody's talking, nobody's listening. Everybody thinks the
other person's wrong, and everybody thinks they know the solution
and how to fix it. We won't admit this, the world
won't admit this, but in what everybody's saying, without wanting
to admit it, they're saying, we've broken everything. But
they keep saying each one knows the better way to fix it. The
other one doesn't know. We know how to fix it. We know
how to do this. And you and I hear this. Just like the psalmist
and the psalmist before. And you get filled with a multitude
of thoughts within you throughout the week. And the Lord brings
you here to hear the gospel preached. And He goes right to the fountain.
And He settles our heart on Christ to remember He is not only our
rock, our salvation, He is our great God. And He is the King
who is ruling everybody in this earth. And He is doing it for
His people. And that settles your heart.
And where He has done that, you can let the potsherds strive
with the potsherds. They are not going to fix it.
But you have peace, and you worship Him, and you joy in Him, and
you give thanks to Him, and you bow down to Him, and you know
it's in His hand. It's in His hand. That's what
worship's all about. It's about having the heart set
on the Lord so that you just commit it all to Him. Even when
you see there's nothing you can do, you just commit it to Him.
Go with me over to... Well, let's read there again.
There's nothing better than to commit it to Him in faith because,
verse 4, look at this, "...in His hand are the deep places
of the earth, and the height of the hills is in His hand also. The sea is His, He made it, and
His hands formed the dry land." You see what he is saying? He
is sovereign. He is not only our Savior who sovereignly saves
His people, He is our sovereign God and great King who is ruling
everything taking place in this earth for His people. If He just
settles every heart to truly believe Him and worship Him and
trust Him, And He does that in each of His
people? There's peace because we're all worshipping Him. We're
all looking to Him. We're all trusting Him. And that's
what He does in His people. He didn't do this in the heart
of the Pharisees. And what did they do? They did what the world
does. They blamed others. They blamed
Christ. And they blamed His disciples.
It was somebody else's fault. But when He does this in our
heart personally, That settles you, and you know, the Lord's
my defense. He's the rock of my salvation.
He's the great God and the great King ruling everything. Go to
Isaiah 40. This is a lengthy passage, but
I want to read it because it's just exactly what our Psalms
teach us. Look here in Isaiah 40 and verse
9. After He said, Comfort ye My
people, tell them their warfare is accomplished, tell them I
have accomplished their salvation, I have rewarded them double for
all their sin. He says this too, verse 9, O Zion, thou that bringest
good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain. O Jerusalem,
that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. Lift
it up and be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Judah,
Behold your God. Behold, the Lord God will come
with strong hand, and His arms shall rule for Him. Behold, His
reward is with Him, and His work before Him. And He is our Shepherd. He shall feed His flock like
a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with
His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead
those that are with young. Who has measured the waters in
the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended
the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in
scales, and the hills in a balance?" Our Psalm said the height of
the hills is His, the depths of the earth are His, the seas
are His. He made it, He made it all, He is ruling all of it.
Look what he said. Who is it that did this? Who
held the waters in the hollow of his hand, meted out heaven
with a span, weighed the mountains and scales and the hills in a
balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord? Being his
counselor has taught him. With whom took he counsel? And
who instructed him and taught him in the path of judgment,
and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, that counted as
a small dust of the balance. Behold, he taketh up the house
as a very little thing. Lebanon is not sufficient to
burn, nor the beast thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations
before him are as nothing that counted to him less than nothing
in vanity. To whom then will you liken God?
What likeness will you compare unto Him? The workman melts a
graven image, the goldsmith spreads it over with gold, casts silver
chains, and he that supports that he has no oblation, he chooses
a tree that will not rot, he seeketh unto him a cunning workman
to prepare a graven image that shall not be moved. Have you
not known? Have you not heard? Hath it not
been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from
the foundations of the earth? The one that he's talking about
is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants
thereof are as grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens
as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. He
brings the princes to nothing. He makes the judges of the earth
as vanity. They shall not be planted, they
shall not be sown, and their stalks shall not take root in
the earth. He shall also blow upon it, and they'll wither.
The whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then
will you liken me, or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One? Lift
up your eyes on him, behold who hath created these things, that
bringeth out their hosts by number. He calleth them all by names,
by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power,
not one faileth." Now here he speaks to his people. This is
where the psalmist was in the beginning. This is where we so
often get, this is why we need God to help us to give us worship
in the heart. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and
speakest thou Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my
judgment is passed over from God? That's what the psalmist
taught in Psalm 94. The Lord's not seeing, He's not
hearing, He's not helping His people. Hast thou not known,
hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the
Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?
There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power
to the faint, to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even the youth shall faint and
be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait
upon the Lord shall renew strength. They shall mount up with wings
as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not faint. This is what he tells his preacher
to preach. Tell the people to behold your
God. And as the word goes forth, the
Spirit of God blesses it to our heart. And here's where he brings
us. Psalm 95 and verse 6. O come, let us worship and bow
down. Let us come and bow down. Let's worship in the heart. Let's kneel before the Lord,
our Maker, for He's our God. And we're the people of His pasture.
We're the sheep of His hand. The Lord's people hear that.
Our Maker is our God. He's our Shepherd. He's our rock. We're the people of His pasture.
We're the sheep of His hand. That's how He gave the psalmist
rest in the days of his adversity. He brought him to see Christ.
He brought his heart down. He settled him. Everything proceeds
out of the heart. And He makes your heart turn
to the Lord, and be settled on the Lord, and trust the Lord,
and be bowed down to the Lord. The Lord will not cast off His
people, neither forsake His inheritance, and that makes you joyful and
thankful and committed to Him. That's what worship involves.
The cares of your lips and giving Him the praise and the honor,
sanctifying Him as the Lord who's ruling and reigning, who's worth
salvation and will not lose His people. and not giving it to other men
and not giving that power by fearing what men are doing in
this world. But worship must be in the heart.
It must be in faith. We must believe Him. We must
commit it to Him. We must bow down to Him. We must
trust Him. And so He gives this Exhortation
in verse 7, he says, today if you will hear His voice, Christ's
voice, today if you will hear Christ's voice, harden not your
heart. This is what we are talking about,
the heart. As in the day of provocation, the day of temptation in the
wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, proved me, the Lord
said, so my work. Forty years I was grieved with
this generation. I said, it's the people that
do err in their heart. And they've not known my ways.
They've not known I'm the God. I'm the rock of salvation. I'm
the king. I'm the God who rules all. And
to whom I swear my wrath, they should not enter into my rest.
The Spirit in Hebrew says they enter not in because of unbelief.
Caleb cried to Him. He cried to Him. He said, they
went in and God let them go in and look at the land. And it
was exactly like God said it would be. Everything we're seeing
in this earth is exactly like God said it would be. Exactly. And Caleb said, Believe God.
He shall deliver us. It's His promise. Believe Him.
And they said, Nope. We won't believe Him. And then
when God told them, Okay, you can't go in. They said, Oh yeah,
we'll go in now. He said, You can't. You're going
to die. Neither place where they believe in God and they wandered
in that wilderness for 40 years. Today. Today. It don't matter
about yesterday. Today. Today. If you'll hear His voice. Today. Believe on Him. Trust
Him. Bow down and worship Him. Harden
not the heart. Bow down to Him in the heart. Commit all your care to Him from
the heart. Worship Him from the heart. Rejoice
in Him from the heart. Praise Him from the heart. Give
all the thanks and glory to Him from the heart. But the Spirit
of God, He will not take no for an answer from His people. We wouldn't leave Him, would
we? He won't take no. For an answer from His people,
He's going to bring His people to believe Him and settle you
on Christ. And then in the multitude of
our thoughts within us, His delights will comfort our soul. Listen
to this from Psalm 145.3. Great is the Lord, and greatly
to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall praise Thy works to another. They are going
to praise Thy works to another. They are going to preach Your
works, Lord. And they are going to declare Thy mighty acts. He
said in verse 7, They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great
goodness and shall sing of Thy righteousness. The Lord, here
is His great goodness, here is His works, here is His mighty
acts. This is His great goodness and His righteousness. The Lord
is gracious. He is gracious. full of compassion,
slow to anger, and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all, and
His tender mercies are over all His works. This is what Jeremiah
was talking about when he said, this I recall to my mind. He settles my mind. He gives
me the mind of Christ. He keeps my mind settled on him. This is how you're going to be
planted on the rock. This is how you're going to be
built on the rock. This is how you're going to be settled on
the rock so that you can't be washed away. The little storms
wash many people off the rock. What will you do when the flood
of wrath comes? He keeps his people in Christ
the Rock, settled in Christ the Rock by this work that keeps
him going in the heart. When in every other way we would
have fled, we would have fell away, but he keeps you settled
on Christ the Rock by his grace and his compassion and his mighty
goodness. And so Jeremiah said, this I
recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. It's of the Lord's
mercies that we're not consumed. Because His compassions fail
not. Aren't you thankful for that? Aren't you? Don't that
delight your soul? Don't it bring joy to you? Some
in religion look like they could eat oats out of one of them old
well buckets. Some old well buckets that are
real long, about this big around. Long in the face. No joy. This delights the soul of God's
people. They're new every morning. Great
is thy faithfulness. The Lord's my portion, says my
soul. Therefore will I hope in him.
The Lord's good to them that wait for him, to the soul that
seeketh him. It's good that a man should both
hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. All brethren,
worship, true heart worship. It's of God. It's of the Spirit
of God. It's in the new heart. It's setting
our thoughts, our hearts, our mind on Christ alone. Our affection. Single affection
on the singular object Christ above. To know He's the rock
of our salvation. To know He is our great God.
He is our great King. He created us. He created everything. He's ruling everything. He's
not only sovereign and in the ruling of this world and all
things in it, He's sovereign in our salvation. And He's going
to keep, we're His people, we're the sheep of His hand, He said.
And that brings your heart to be settled, that delights your
soul, that His comforts delight my soul and bring me to say,
let's worship Him, let's rejoice, let's sing praise to Him. Verse
6. O 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. Amen.