(remember, this a rough draft…ya just gotta listen :)
1 Come, let’s shout joyfully to the Lord,
shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let’s enter his presence with thanksgiving;
let’s shout triumphantly to him in song.
3 For the Lord is a great God,
a great King above all gods.
4 The depths of the earth are in his hand,
and the mountain peaks are his.
5 The sea is his; he made it.
His hands formed the dry land. (Ps 95:1-5, CSB)
Welcome to ForTheHope’s Sunday Reflection, and today we’re going to reflect a bit on God’s character based on Psalm 95. Psalms are good for that.
What you just heard at the the top of the program may, in fact, sound familiar. It’s one of a group of psalms that were actually for congregational singing waaaay back when, and it’s been used in more than one contemporary worship songs.
To me, one of the marks of a great worship song, though, is that it really says something, too. It may tap into something emotional, and rightly so, but this is different than emotionalism – use of contemporary music to create emotion that’s detached from a message.
Interestingly, this psalm was used for just that reason – a really strong message – by the writer of what we call the book of Hebrews. He used it as the backbone of an argument spanning nearly two chapters.
Remember that Hebrews is written to encourage endurance to scattered Christians, probably Jewish Christians, being beat up culturally, and it gathers
“all its leading ideas around two great themes, revelation and redemption, the word of God and the work of Christ. Both these major aspects of Christian preaching are skilfully interwoven in the author’s presentation of his message. The word of God certainly dominates the opening and closing chapters (1–6 and 11–13), whilst the work of Christ is given priority of place in the four chapters (7–10) which comprise the highly important central section of the letter.[1]”
Why would he do that? Because God is a God who speaks and saves. He has revealed himself in two books – the book of nature, and the book of Scripture. And what happens when we encounter him
Just the last couple weeks on the program we’ve seen both John and Ezekiel and those gathered around God’s throne go Whoah! Holy Holy Holy. Isaiah did the same thing.
The writer to the Hebrews spends the first part of the book saying ‘this person of Jesus, he’s bigger than angels and Moses and the prophets and the Torah, and then he makes the case for the preeminence of Jesus’s work using this psalm. Let me read it to you again, and this time I’ll share the second half…the part the writer to the Hebrews also used that most contemporary songs don't.
1 Come, let’s shout joyfully to the Lord,
shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let’s enter his presence with thanksgiving;
let’s shout triumphantly to him in song.
3 For the Lord is a great God,
a great King above all gods.
4 The depths of the earth are in his hand,
and the mountain peaks are his.
5 The sea is his; he made it.
His hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let’s worship and bow down;
let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
the sheep under his care.,Today, if you hear his voice:
8 Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah in the wilderness
9 where your ancestors tested me;
they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
10 For forty years I was disgusted with that generation;
I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray;
they do not know my ways.”
11 So I swore in my anger,
“They will not enter my rest.” [2]
Worship…and warning. And a warning for what? How does this touch down for us? What should we also be doing besides worship?
Psalm 95 reveals two foundational truths to us about God: He is the great God, and he is our God. The psalm also calls for two appropriate responses to this revelation: worship and submission.[3]
Why is this so important?
If I was going to get all theological on you, it’s because of what theologians call the three offices of Jesus – prophet, priest, and king. Prophets reveal God, speak for God, communicate to people God’s truths. Priests were the mediators from people to God…offering sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin. Kings, of course, are the ones who get to call the shots.
So if you read the first 14 verses of Hebrews, how does the author set up his argument for the rest of the book? “He presents them first of all with an exposition of Christ as prophet (1:1–2), priest (1:3b) and king (1:8–14).”[4] What used to be separate offices are all unified in the ultimate and final king.
So what does Psalm 95 demonstrate? Worship and warning. If you reeeeeally see God, you’ll be amazed, you won’t be able to help yourself breaking into song and adoration and the giving of honor and thanks. But what about that other part?
Jesus isn’t your buddy, your guru, some nice moral teacher talking about how to be nice to be people. He’s God, and God’s final word to humanity – prophet. He’s the ultimate sacrificial Lamb, fully God and fully human, who is the only possible solution for how humans can deal with sin against an infinitely good God, our great high priest.
He’s also king. As we’ll hear at the end of Revelation, one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he, and he alone, is Lord. He’s the king of the universe, and the question on the table is whether or not he’s king of our lives.
So we get the worship part. Would you permit me to paraphrase the warning part?
6 Come, let’s worship and bow down;
let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker. Voluntarily
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
the sheep under his care.In fact, even Jesus called us sheep. Because we’re slave to sin or slave to him. We don’t like that word “submit,” but that’s exactly what we do when we call him Lord and Savior. We acknowledge him as both revelation and redemption, king, prophet, and priest.
Today, if you hear his voice, hear this:
8 Do not harden your hearts as the Israelites did at Meribah,
in the wilderness they tested and tried me;
though they had seen what I did.
10 For forty years I was disgusted with that generation;
I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray;
they do not know my ways.”And here’s the thing. My Son Jesus is the whole enchilada, worthy of worship, and he comes with a warning label… “I you’d rather to listen to a culture that hates the idea of submission because they’d rather try to be Lord of their own lives, you will not enter my rest.” [5]
Worship and warning. And that’s Psalm 95.
I love you.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
[1] Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 17.
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ps 95:1–11.
[3] Mark D. Futato, “The Book of Psalms,” in Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol 7: The Book of Psalms, The Book of Proverbs (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2009), 306.
[4] Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 14.
[5] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ps 95:1–11.