verses 1 through 11, Psalm 95, O 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 or the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his for he made it and his hands form the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for he is our God. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah as on the day at Massah and the wilderness. When your fathers put me to the test and put me to proof to the proof though they had seen my work. For 40 years I know that generation and said there are people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways. Therefore I swore my wrath. They shall not enter my rest. This is the word of the Lord. This is a psalm of praise and the first seven verses two things happen. There is an exhortation to worship followed by the reasons for worship. Look with me at verses one and two. O 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. Those two verses are an exhortation, a call, a command by God for us, his people, to worship him. And he tells us the types of worship to make a joyful noise. The phrase joyful noise means loud. It can even be translated to shout. And it is implicitly heartfelt noise. Therefore it is okay for a body of people, no matter what their tradition, whether it is Baptist, whether it is Pentecostal, whether it is Presbyterian, it is appropriate at times for shouts to be given because they are born out of the heart. Now if it is to be seen by others and for others people to think you are really worshiping, that would be wrong. But when the heart is inclined by the power of what is being preached or the power of what is being sung, or the reality of what this means, it is okay to let loose. Some people have different personalities. Some are more emotional, some are not. When Alabama won the National Championship, people were frustrated that Nick Sabin doesn't look happy. He's ready to win the next one. Maybe he is, I don't know. It doesn't matter to me, I don't really care. But in worship, some people are deeply moved, but it's not coming out as a shout. It's okay. Others are deeply moved and it comes out with a shout. Let it be. Shouts, joyful noise. These are appropriate. Therefore, when one of the pastor says, let's stop and let's re-seeing because it wasn't very loud. That's really appropriate. And the reason why is because he is deserving of praise that is not horizontal. Where we really aren't afraid of what the people around us are doing but we're overcome with the reality of who he is. And you see, that's what the psalmist does. He calls us to this place through exhortation, to sing to the Lord and make a joyful noise. But then he tells us why. Listen to verse three, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hand are all the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his free-made it and his hands form the dry land. I want to blow your mind. I really, really want to blow your mind. But I can't, not today or ever. But you need your mind to be blown. And the only one who can blow your mind is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit using his Holy Word, telling us who he is. But Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, we ought to enter this place and drive to this place or walk to this place with the expectation and prayer that God would blow our minds. You see, when we're singing how great that art and we say, I scarce can take it in. What we're saying is, yes, I have professed faith and the one who died on the cross. But if I pause for a moment, just to consider what that means, it should overwhelm me. It should overwhelm my soul, that this one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit has done that because He loves me so much. I can't blow your mind. The Holy Spirit can. And we should want Him to. You see, what happens in our minds is we become accustomed to hearing things over and over and over again. And the gospel can lose its sense of passion in us, its power. What happens is we become hard of heart, like the ones that the psalmist turns from this exhortation and reminds us, it's almost a sermon that don't be of heart. So the Lord tells us worship through exhortation, but then He tells us why. Again, in verse three, for the Lord is a great God. If you're struggling in worship to be overwhelmed by the presence of who is, here is a great prescription. Turn to Job 38. Grab the blue pew Bible right now and enter your own Bible and turn to Job 38. Job 38 is an incredible passage of Scripture that takes us into some questions that the Lord is asking Job. And as he asked Job these questions, it reveals to Job the power of who God is, this great God that we are worshiping. I'm just going to read a few from this selection of great verses. It's really recorded in 38, 39, 40, and 41 of Job. Listen. Verse one of Job 38, then the Lord answered Job out of the world when He said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I will question you and you make it known to me. That's pretty awesome. That's God speaking to Job. How would you like to hear that from God? Somebody just went, now it's the right response. I don't want to hear that. Now listen to what God says. This is to Job. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its basis sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone? When the morning stars sing together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with the doors when it burst out from the womb? When I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors and said thus far show you come and no further. And here your proud waves be stayed. Do you hear that? I mean, does that not cause your mind to go? You know, God is greater and bigger than I give him credit for. I know I say that he's a great God but I don't pause long enough to say no. He really is transcendent. He really is beyond what I thought or can even imagine. He's greater. He's greater in beauty. He's greater in power. He's greater in presence. As far as the eye can see, he's greater. As deep as the sea goes, he's greater. The greatest telescope we have and whichever ones we'll be able to create before he returns will never be able to exhaust the expanse of how far he goes. He's transcendent, passages like this. They remind us of who he is. Later in Job it goes on to say does the lightning go out from you and report back to you? This is where I've gone. That's in the Bible. May you never see a lightning storm the same again. This is the God we're singing to and does it not cause us as we enter into say? He's greater than I thought. He has saw money finds says in verse four in his hand are the depths of the earth in his hand. Read Job 38, 39, 40, 41 every day for a month and your mind will begin to be blown. So the Psalmist gives us an exhortation to worship and he follows up with the reason for it. Then in verse six he does it again. Listen, O come let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Now it's interesting here. Three Hebrew words. Three Hebrew words tell us to bend. Three Hebrew words tell us to kneel. Three Hebrew words tell us that that's an appropriate posture in worship. You know what that means that there could be Sundays when you're so overwhelmed by who God is and what it means to be in his hand that in a Sunday morning you simply kneel. We don't have kneelers, but that doesn't mean you can't kneel. You can kneel. We have them in our chapel. We as elders use them this weekend in times of prayer that we had, but feel free to kneel. But you can also kneel in your closet and you can kneel at a prayer meeting and you can kneel in your bedroom and it's an appropriate response to worship. And so three times, three different words the Psalmist tells us to bow down and kneel before the Lord our maker. It's the one posture that the epistles tell us it's gonna happen when Jesus returns. What does it say? And then every knee will what? Say it. Bow and tongue confess what? That Jesus Christ is Lord. So that's the posture that we're gonna have. And then in verse seven, the Psalmist tells us why. For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Stop for a moment. The hand of God that made all these things every person here, every person anywhere who made all the creatures in the sea, every star, with his hand. It's the same hand that knit you together in your mother's womb. It's the same hand that knit together every child. It's the same hand, the hand of a shepherd that holds in his grip, his children. Now it's interesting. The Psalmist says we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand. And thinking of that, that is what leads us to bow down. That is what leads us to kneel. It's interesting when the Psalmist is speaking of this God who created all things and who is the king above all kings. The Psalmist tells us to sing songs of joy, to shout with great joy. But when we consider being in the hand of the shepherd, the posture is kneeling. Isn't it beautiful? Very humble. The right place to be. But then the Psalmist does something very interesting. At the end of verse seven, he says this, today, if you hear his voice, the Psalmist has been exhorting the people to shout, to sing loudly. He's been exhorting the people physically to bend and to kneel. But then he says something else. And he moves from these outward expressions to the inward practice of listening. Today, if you hear his voice, and he says, do not harden your hearts, and then he speaks in verse 10 of the generation that did. You see, the temptation for people over time is to have their hearts hardened. They could be hardened by many things. One thing that can harden hearts is just the long journey towards heaven. This side of heaven, our flesh, evil, darkness, can overwhelm us to the point where at times we might even say, do I believe this is true? When we consider on sanctity of life's sunny, the numbers of babies that have been aborted, when we consider the laws in our land and how they don't protect them, it seems overwhelming. This is where worship can change the world. Because when we continue to gather together in the face of great darkness, when we continue to gather together in the midst of real pain, what worship does is it lifts our eyes up and reminds us of who he is. And as we are reminded of who he is, there is something that begins to work inside us that then compels us to go and make that known to the world. God uses amazing things to make His name known. He uses all kinds of tragedies. He uses all kinds of seasons of life, seasons of joy and seasons of despair, seasons of real happiness and seasons of real sorrow. And as a body we're going to be in and out of those all the time, this side of heaven. And for some the soul can become so dry, so wooden, and the Lord knows it. And the Psalmist knows it too. That's where the Psalms aren't full of Psalms only like this. There are Psalms of lament and dark Psalms aren't there because that's who we are on this journey. So appropriately, the Psalmist then transitions and says today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. Sunday after Sunday, we need to ask God to help us hear His voice. We hear His voice through the preached word. We hear His voice through testimonies. We hear His voice through liturgy and prayers of confession. We hear His voice through songs, but we're dependent on Him, ultimately, to help us hear. And so brothers and sisters, regularly pray that prayer, God, help me to hear. There is a Him that says this in its final line. Listen, oh, let me not forget that though the wrong seems off so strong, though the evil, though the brokenness, though the darkness that can be all around us, so it feels so strong. Let me not forget, God is the ruler yet. The battle is not done. Jesus who died, shall be satisfied and earth and heaven be one. Brothers and sisters, twice the psalmist said in his hand, if you were in Christ, you're in the hand of the one who created you and all things. If you were in Christ, you were in the hand of the shepherd. And I promise you the shepherd because his word says so, will never let you go.