Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 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.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.” Psalm 95 ESV
A Psalm of the Provocation.
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord - This is the invitation, and singing is a talent in some for sure, but this is not a call to entertainment, it is a call to return to the Lord that which belongs to Him with what He made. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and so this is also not vain repetition, not disconnected from the mind. Those, who worship Him, must do it in Spirit and in truth. We know this because it is not in drudgery, but rather in the next verses we find it is in joy with thanksgiving. No one can have this or do this for me, let me sing with my heart, my mind and my voice. I have so much to be thankful for, whether at the President's table, at work, at home, sick or healthy, in prison and in death. Praise the Lord.
- We should shout as exultingly as those do who triumph in war, and as solemnly as those whose utterance is a psalm. It is not always easy to unite enthusiasm with reverence, and it is a frequent fault to destroy one of these qualities while straining after the other. The perfection of singing is that which unites joy with gravity, exultation with humility, fervency with sobriety. - C. H. Spurgeon
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods - People are easily impressed especially those that are not sound in their doctrine, who have not come to know the Creator of all things. He is not bound by borders, nations or the whims of man. If men see a man with God given talent, a great speaker, or anyone who tickles their ears, that man will to them be a god. There are beings above men, angels, those that exalted themselves fell from heaven and those that are elect angels refused to be worshiped. God is above all things, worship Him, for He alone is worthy.
Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker - Now it is an invitation, while you are still alive and can hear, but one day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. It is a proud and deluded mind that thinks it will stand before the One Who made His feet, no, every knee will bow.
Today, if you hear His voice - "I will someday", you say.
Do not harden your hearts - You say wrong and right, yet when confronted about your sin you close your ears. I have outright lied of a thing I held but did not want to admit, because I knew it was wrong, but I feared men rather than God. I have justified in myself things that I saw as wrong in others. You have sat under good preaching, you have come to a knowledge of God's being, but you have no fear of His holiness, that the Lamb was already slain, and the Lion is the One Who is coming next. Wake up!
…9 Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from Your presence; take not Your Holy Spirit from me.… Psalm 51: 9-11
- They put the Lord to needless tests, demanding new miracles, fresh interpositions, and renewed tokens of his presence. Do not we also peevishly require frequent signs of the Lord's love other than those which every hour supplies? Are we not prone to demand specialities, with the alternative secretly offered in our hearts, that if they do not come at our bidding we will disbelieve? True, the Lord is very condescending, and frequently grants us marvellous evidences of his power, but we ought not to require them. Steady faith is due to one who is so constantly kind. After so many proofs of his love, we are ungrateful to wish to prove him again, unless it be in those ways of his own appointing, in which he has said, "Prove me now." If we were for ever testing the love of our wife or husband, and remained unconvinced after years of faithfulness, we should wear out the utmost human patience. - C. H. Spurgeon
Meribah and Massah -
For forty years I loathed that generation -
- To such base treatment was the tender Shepherd of Israel exposed, not for a day or a month, but for forty years at a stretch, and that not by here and there an unbeliever, but by a whole nation, in which only two men were found so thoroughly believing as to be exempted from the doom which at last was pronounced upon all the rest. Which shall we most wonder at, the cruel insolence of man, or the tender patience of the Lord? Which shall leave the deepest impression on our minds, the sin or the punishment? unbelief, or the barring of the gates of Jehovah's rest against the unbelievers? And said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Their heart was obstinately and constantly at fault; it was not their head which erred, but their very heart was perverse: love, which appealed to their affections, could not convert them. The heart is the main spring of the man, and if it be not in order, the entire nature is thrown out of gear. If sin were only skin deep, it might be a slight matter; but since it has defiled the soul, the case is bad indeed. - C. H. Spurgeon
