Title: Let us come to worship – part 2
Date: February 8, 2009
Text: Psalm 95:1-11
Introduction
- Deeply immersed in meditation during a church service, Italian poet Dante Alighieri failed to kneel at the appropriate moment.
- His enemies hurried to the bishop and demanded that Dante be punished for his sacrilege.
- Dante defended himself by saying, "If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing."
- Last week we started talking about worship
- We discussed the greatness of God and we also talked about his closeness
- God is here with each one of us that has accepted him into our life
- Today we are going to look at Psalm 95 which leads us into a further discussion about worship
An invitation to worship
- Psa 95:1-5 “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, and a great King above all gods.
- In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.
- The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land”.
- It is an invitation, a privilege, to be allowed into the presence of Almighty God
- This is not a take it or leave it kind of thing
- God is the creator of all things
- He is the one who created the sun which gives us warmth and light
- Did you know that the Sun is by far the largest object in our solar system. It contains 98% of the solar system's total mass.
- It would take 109 Earths to stretch across the Sun, and it would take over one million Earths to "fill up" the Sun if it were hollow
- God created this sun. But this sun is not alone
- Astronomers estimate that there are over 100 billion galaxies or clusters of stars in the universe
- On average, each galaxy has around 100 billion stars
- This means that our sun which is a relatively small star, is only one of 10 thousand billion, billion stars
- That is a 10 with 21 zeros after it
- This one person or being we worship, to whom we sing praise songs, made all of this!
- This demands some respect!!!
- But this person also wants to spend time with us, help us, lead us in ways that are beneficial to us! That is awesome!
Ways to worship
- Psa 95:6-7a “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.”
- There are many ways in which we can worship
- We can worship in silence, just like Dante Alighieri. We can be so absorbed by the closeness and love of God, that we are silent before him
- We can also show emotion in our worship
- Dance
- David was so enthusiastic at the ark being brought to Jerusalem that he danced before the Lord with all his might – have you ever seen people dance the highland fling!
- 2Samuel 6:14 And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod
- Kneel
- Psa 95:6-7a “O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
- We can lift our hands to God
- Psalms 28:2 Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.
- Psalms 134:2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD.
- Lifting our hands to God is an expression of our desire for closeness with him at particular times in worship
- My own experience with raising hands – was afraid people would see me
- But was really denying God, not doing what I recognized I needed to learn to do, because of fear of people
- My worship is something I want to do with all my heart
- We will cheer at the top of my lungs when someone puts a little leather ball on the ground in a football game
- How much more do I want to be enthusiastic in my worship of this great God who has come so close to us
- Ultimately it does not matter if we raise our hands, kneel or dance
- What counts is what is happening inside
The source of worship
- Psa 95:7b “To day if ye will hear his voice,
- Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
- When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
- Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:
- Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.”
- It seem strange that these verses are tacked on to a psalm about worship
- But they are not just tacked on, they mean something
- David is here drawing attention to the rest of our life when we leave this chapel
- The whole of my life should be an expression of the relationship I have with God
- And it is
- When I am close to God, the things I do on a day to day basis will be close to the way God would conduct himself
- And when I am far away from God, that will be evident in my actions, because I will not be as open to being led by the Holy Spirit
- This is why David refers to the ways in which the ancient Israelites messed up – he is encouraging us to not be like that but let our whole life be an expression of worship to the one who made us
- Everything we do can express our worship to God
- Because we are in close relationship with God every moment of the day
- He is here, inside us – can’t get any closer than that
Sing “All the Earth”
- We will now sing a praise song. First of I I would like you to sit and listen to the tune
- Then we will all get up and have an opportunity to worship God from the depths of our being
Prayer
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