this morning comes from 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 hands 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. 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. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as it meriba, as on the day of Massa and the wilderness. When your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work, for 40 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, the word of the Lord. Sing, kneel, listen. These are three acts of worship that bring us into the presence of the true and the living God. This was in the time of the psalm and remains now, how we get behind the temple of God, curtain into the holy of holies, the very presence of God. Those of us who listen to this psalm today must overcome cultural curtains. Take music, for example. Today, music is often a playlist. Background music for life played through our earbuds, blocking out the noise of neighbors and neighborhoods or a concert experience where the pros are center stage and the focus of the event. And now we are being asked to join others to sing and performance anxiety sets in if only in our hearts. Then there is the curtain of information. We are washed over every day with information data and commercials. We train ourselves to filter and question almost everything. We have defaults, automatic choices and responses. We may not be aware of these in our daily lives. So to be asked to listen with our heart when we have been trained a question is hard. And our psalm, God's judgment is clear. But change is hard. Who of us would admit to a hard heart when listening to God's word? Now let's review the background from Exodus chapter 17. This is psalm psalm 95 has both what I think of as a prequel background information. Then it becomes background information for the passage in Hebrews. And I want us to look at those two, the kind of what I'm calling the prequel in the sequel before we center in on Psalm 95. Because certainly these are the large shadows and particularly the Exodus 17 passage is something that Psalm 95 through Hebrews drives home to the Christian heart. Now in Exodus 17 you had this time in Israel's history when they had experienced the Exodus. It's seen the plagues, they'd seen the Passover. They'd experienced being led by that pillar of cloud and that pillar of fire. They had crossed the red sea on dry land and seen their enemies drowned and destroyed. They'd already experienced God provide them water of taking bitter water and turning it into sweet water that they could drink. God had provided them mana. And here they are again, quarreling and testing with God. Challenging God's goodness and His plan and His presence.
And when you look at the passage that I've put up there for you to see, you see the lengths to which God went in dealing with His complaining people. The whole eye will stand before you there on the rock at Horab and you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. Do you catch what the narrative is telling us that God stood there and took those blows so the people could have their water? That image of God standing before the rock and taking the blows was in Paul's mind in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 when he talks about that spiritual rock, that rock that gave them spiritual water and who was that rock, Paul says, that rock was Jesus Christ, but yet the question really wasn't about water. The question before us today and always is, is God among us or not? Now, we think about entering into God's rest and what the writer of Hebrews wants us to think about. And I was just so struck with this passage, this passage that some of you know my story that when I was a young pastor, the first book I preached through, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, was the book of Hebrews. So I've had this love affair of Hebrews for almost 40 years in terms of preaching and it's hard for me just to use it as a reference and not divide this up into two, possibly three separate sermons. But where else in Scripture do we have an author taking another passage of Scripture and using two of the verses and repeating those verses three times to make a point?
To me, this is a place that we have to stop and say this is such a dramatic event that happened in Exodus 17 that the writer in the Psalms tells us and then now the writer of Hebrews brings it home to Christians. The issue of today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, that challenge. To people who have experienced God's presence, experienced God's grace, that they can harden their hearts. That scares me because I know that sometimes I harden my heart because I want my way, I want my plan, not God's. I'm looking for the way I think God should provide for me and not waiting for him to bring me the man, to bring me the water. But in an age where people are anxious and alienated, where people are angry, where people feel alone, and I see three times when he says they will not enter my rest. Why do we have a generation? I mean, he's talking about a generational judgment. See, we are so used to thinking about us ourselves individually that we forget some of those words in the scripture because we don't want to hear them. These were people that we know from Moses' writings were forgiven and as we would say they went to heaven, but they didn't enter the rest. Christian, are you at rest? Do you hear the word of God? And do you hear the word of God because you are in the presence of God? Not just because it's information you find useful but because of who it comes from. Now, I'm going to turn to a passage in book of Hebrews because lots of times we hear verses but we don't understand and remember the context. How many of us have heard this verse about scripture? For the word of God is a living and active, it's sharper than any two-edged sword piercing to the division of the soul and the spirit of the joints and the marrows, the discernment of the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. Do you realize that is after his discussion of Psalm 95 that that's the whole context, that's the fear is that we would go back and not believe that God was with us, that we would harden our hearts in spite of all the grace that the word of God should come into our hearts, that place of change, discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. That's part of what we're about today. Now, let's go to the text in Psalm 95. This passage was so important that in the synagogue liturgy of service that every Sabbath evening, in other words, beginning the Sabbath because remember the Sabbath started the evening, they go evening and morning like Genesis 6, not morning to evening like the Latin calendar and what we do. But that phrase, today if you hear the word of God do not harden your hearts would start their service. And when Christians began their morning prayers in Latin Christianity, early Christianity, they copied their Jewish cousins and every day they would read that today if you hear the word of God do not harden your heart. But as we listen to this passage, as we look at it, there are what I think of as three let us and it's not let us as in salad, but let us. Sometimes it is simple for us to just run over those simple little two letter words and not realize that the Psalmist is collecting us in, bringing us together because corporate worship should bring us together into the presence of God. Look at verses one, two and six. O, calm, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Remember that rock is Jesus Christ. And verse two, let us come into his presence with Thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. Do you see how we are being collected, we are being commanded to come into his praise, into his presence, that we are to make a joyful noise to him, that our joy is in him, not in our situation, not in our prospects. Verse six, we'll get to this later on, but I wanna read it because it says let us. O, calm, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. I thank the choir for there bringing that to our attention and our call to worship, but notice the invitation. Three times, come. We are to come away for the life of the world. We are to come away from our situations and come together in the presence of God. That's what unites us. That's what brings us together. It's being in the presence of God as we leave our fields and our workbenchions and all the things we can do, our computer screens, our entertainment screens, all of that to come together as people into the very presence of God. Because remember the question from exodus 17, is the Lord among us? When you come to worship, when you come to sing and pray, and listen and take the Lord's supper, is that on your mind, is the Lord among us? Or are you coming as a consumer and saying, what's the going to do for me? Do you see how Christian worship turns it around? It makes it about God and His presence? That's what we need to be concerned about. That's what we need to be thinking about. Is it I am in the very presence of God? And that is a scary thought. Think about the burning bush. What Moses have to do. Take off your sandals. This is holy ground. We think about the tent of meeting that Moses would go into and all the people would stand at their tents, and they would see the cloud come down. God's presence come down. And we think about when they built that tabernacle that movable worship feast, that place where God would be in chapter 40 of Exodus. The glory of God came down. The glory of God came down into that tabernacle, those skins and that wood and the gold and the silver and all the craftsmanship. But it was the glory of God that made it what it was. And as we heard this morning from, that holy, holy, holy Isaiah reminds us is what it's like to be in God's presence. And John in the book of Revelation, and let me just read you his experience. John chapter, Revelation chapter one, verse 10, he reminds us that I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. And then down in verse 17, when I saw him, I fell at his feet, though dead. But he laid his hand on me saying, fear not. I am the first in the last. We come into his holy presence, and like John, we would fall down dead, unless he lays out his hands on us and says, fear not. Why do we not fear? Because he is the Lamb of God who was taken away our sin. He is our great high priest who was torn open the up, the curtain so that we can come into his presence, but in coming into his presence. We are humbled in worship, both in heart and body. Let's go back to Psalm 95, look at verse six. O calm, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Physical acts of humility are something in our individual culture and all the things that we are. Sometimes are hard. Historically, Protestants gave up kneeling because they thought it was too Catholic, not that it was biblical. And we, I believe, have given up much, not just in kneeling, but in bowing. But look why they do it. Look at the names of God in this Psalm because it tells us who he is. It is a confessional Psalm in verses three and seven. In verse one, he is the rock of our salvation. And if you want to see that exploded, go read Psalm 18. It's a whole Psalm based upon that theme of God being our rock. In 3A, we know that the Lord is a great God. And the second part of that, he is a king. He is in verse six, our maker. We'll talk about that later. He is our God and we are the people of his pasture. We heard that song, the sheep of his hand. When Jesus tells us the story about the good shepherd, when he says, I am the good shepherd, what are the sign of the sheep? They hear his voice. It's a rift, it's a play off of this Psalm that they are not only saying, I'm a sheep, but I'm a sheep whose shepherd's voice I hear, that's who defines me, that's what I follow. So we have humility before God. In heart and body as we kneel and bow down. I was struck with the choral call to worship because I will give you a spoiler alert. I am going to ask you to kneel at the end of this service as able, because I realize some people are not able to do that. But I want to disrupt the chairs, I want to disrupt our worship, I want us to experience kneeling before God. Now, coming to my last slide, yes, that's it. Oh, it's not, I'm sorry, it's not my last slide. My mind is going too fast, I'm sorry. Let us sing to the Lord. Some of us who have grown up in the church singing to the Lord, we know the songs by heart. For some people are new, it's hard, for some men, it's hard to sing, it's hard to join together and it talks about joyful Thanksgiving of giving our songs and joy and thankfulness. In a, we live in a world where so often it's about performance. We had this whole viral debate about whether Beyonce really sang the national anthem or whether it was lip-sinking. I think the challenge for Christians is, are you singing from your hearts or are you lip-sinking? Do we just do it out of road, out of memory, out of form or are we in the presence of God? Do we think in our minds that I come here and I sing to God, not to my neighbor, I want to join with my neighbor, but I'm not singing for my neighbor, I am singing for God. I'm singing in God's presence because I believe the corporate worship is the fullest expression of worship. Look at what he says in verse four. In his hands 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 form the dry land. I think that one of the reasons modern Christians, modern people don't have an on worship for God is because they have lost, they don't believe, they doubt that God is the creator. They may give lip service to that, but it does not drive them and strike them the way the Psalmist has it. Because he goes and he looks out and he says, man, look whose presence we're coming into, he made all of this. And so singing together, not as a tribe of priests, not as special people, but anyone who wants to come and sing together can come into the presence of God, can tear away the curtain and be there with a holy of holies to express his worship and praise and thanksgiving. Corporate worship is only boring to people who don't get it that it's about God, not about them. When you look at the Bible, where are we headed folks? We're headed towards the biggest choir festival the galaxy has ever seen. We're gonna be with people we can't even count the number, worshiping together. I'm not gonna get some little cubby hole to go off to or mountain cave to hide in and just have my own personal devotions, no. I'm gonna be with all kinds of people, from people from different languages, different races that we come together. I guess the transition to, this is my last slide, I've got it written down, I forgot I did that, so I would remind myself. The transition is, one of the frustrating things pastors here is I'm not being fed. Well folks, listen to this song. Because it can be scary to say that. Because when you say I'm not being fed, you're making it about you and not about God. And I would challenge whether you might have a hard heart. Because you're not hearing God, you're not making yourself available to God because you're saying it has to be about me, no, it's not. So to free us from a hard heart, we listen to God's word every day as an active worship. You cannot read or hear the word of God without being in the presence of God and saying that it's an active worship that you are humbling yourselves, you're abounding yourself down before God. This section, and when you look at this in terms of literature, when you look at this in terms of how it is written, you have this wonderful invitation, come on in worship, come on in worship. And then it's like you come to almost a full stop because what happens? The voice, the person who's speaking changes. In the book of Hebrews, it says, the Holy Spirit says when it comes to this part of the passage and then it says David says, but that today part, that urgency, that is the urgency in this passage today, not last week, not a memory or tomorrow, but today do you hear his voice? The writer knows the Holy Spirit knows as a pastor, I know, our tendency is a hard and our hard because we don't want to hear it because we don't want to change. Change is scary. Being in the presence of God is scary. Today if you hear his voice. See, one of the things we don't realize is sometimes when we read something like that, we forget and we don't even hear that simple little word here. See, most of us read the word of God, we don't hear it, we don't hear it in red. We don't hear it out loud and we don't associate it with being in the presence of God coming to that place that the right of Hebrews is gonna get us that the word of God is living in active like a two-edged sword, discerning our hearts and our thoughts and all of that, because it recognizes in verse 10, that their hearts have been let astray. You know, I go back to the Exodus 17 passage to Mass and Maribeth. Those places of quarreling and testing. Do you quarrel with God saying, hey, wait a minute, you didn't get my message. You don't understand where I wanna go. Do you quarrel with God? Do you test God to say, if you love me, you're gonna do this or if you know what's best for me, this is what you're gonna do. Do you test God? Sometimes I think we do that without even thinking about it because we are so used to wanting to be in control of our own lives, of wanting to be in control of our own provision and destiny and all those things. We worship at the God of security sometimes. You have to provide my security this way, God, because that's the only way I can see it, rather than seeing water in a rock. And the fact that three times the writer of Hebrews speaks about not entering his rest. When we lose that sense of God's presence in our lives, that is when the alienation, the aloneness sets in, the anxiety and the anger can overtake us. We can have that sense of abandonment. How do we lead our own hearts astray and harden them by quarreling and testing God, by not trusting Him and having faith? The Catechism reminds us when we think about what faith is, it is receiving and resting. I think about that old hymn. Jesus, I am resting in the joy of what thou art. I am finding out the greatness of thy loving.
I began the sermon with sing, kneel, and listen. These are three acts of worship that bring us into the presence of the true and living God. Corporate worship coming into the presence of the true and living God, the holy one, is something that the writer of Hebrews encourages with when he writes, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, since we have a great high priest over the house of God. We're invited. We're commanded to enter, to encourage each other to come into the presence of the holy God, the Lord, to come and sing together, to offer joyful sacrifice and thanksgiving, not as theme music for our life. We're to come together before Him. We are to work at thinking about being in His presence in our worship services and not just being spectators. Neil, in a few moments, I am going to invite you to Neil if you are able to humble yourselves, to bow down in worship. We are always humbled when we come into the presence of our king and our maker. Our Redeemer. To sent His Son, to be the Lamb of God and our high priest. This will be part of our preparation to come to partake and to celebrate the Lord's supper. Listen, do not harden our hearts. Listen to the text. Do not quarrel, test or question His presence, provision and providence. That the Word of God, be that too, edged sword in our hearts and not to think that we have arrived and His others who need to listen. Worshiping together in the presence of our Holy God, living in His rest because we trust Him and His Word, not like Adam and Eve, we want to be holy like Him. So in the words of Jesus, we obey because we love Him. In the words of John, we loved because we have been loved first by the one who opened the curtain for us to enter into holy places. And now, if you are able, please Neil with me. Great God almighty, our Father in heaven. We Neil, not in an act of conformity, but an act of humility. We beaten that bow before our king and our maker, before our Redeemer. We pray that our hearts might be humble as we come to the table of the Lord Jesus as we come to remember you, the rock, that place that has been with God's people. From Exodus 17 on through Hebrews into our lives, into this service.
We pray God that in our worship, we would want to come together with your people to be present with you. We pray that we would not have hard hearts. That we would not quarrel with you, we would not test you, but we would trust you and believe in you, and know that you are here. Father, we are trained from birth to be spectators. We pray that today we might be participants in the very presence of God, that we might touch and taste that which He has given to us, so that we might know that our sins are forgiven. That indeed we have crossed over and found our rest in Jesus Christ. Now we ask that you would prepare our hearts as we come to the table of the Lord. We pray this Jesus in your most holy name, Amen.