Coming to Worship

Psalm 95:1-11

We have all had worship experiences, some that we have enjoyed, and others that we have not.

What we have to keep in mind, is that worship begins with God calling us to worship.
The focus of this Psalm is that God summons us to worship.

           This is essential to the Christian life, because before God calls us to anything else,

                      he calls us to worship Him.

           Ephesians 1 suggests that the reason God has called us, redeemed us, and given us his Spirit,

                      is to worship Him.

Unfortunately we have defined worship by our consumer tastes.

           Dan W. H. Arnold and C. George Frey said it this way, in Eternity Magazine in September, 1986:

"Worship...fits right into the consumerism that so characterizes American religious life. Church-shopping has become common. A believer will compare First Presbyterian, St. John’s Lutheran, Epiphany Episcopal, Brookwood Methodist, and Bethany Baptist for the ’best buy.’ The church plant, programs, and personnel are carefully scrutinized, but the bottom line is, ’How did it feel?’ Worship must be sensational. ’Start with an earthquake and work up from that,’ advised one professor of homiletics. ’Be sure you have the four prerequisites of a successful church,’ urged another; ’upbeat music, adequate parking, a warm welcome, and a dynamite sermon.’ The slogan is ’Try it, you’ll like it.’"

We need, instead, to see what true worship is, as Mark Horst wrote in The Christian Century in November 11, 1987:

"I am dismayed by the popular phrase ’worship experience’ to describe the church’s corporate worship. Worship has the capacity to transform us, because it focuses our hearts and minds on God. However, the phrase ’worship experience’ suggests that worship is important because it induces feelings. In this context, worship is focused more on the worshiper than on the One worshiped.... We need to ask ourselves what a true worship experience is, so that if we had one, we could recognize it."

Psalm 95 helps us see what is contained in a true worship experience.

           In its three movements, it gives us three summons to worship,

                      which show us three moods in which we are to come to worship.

I. WE COME IN JOY – Vss. 1-5.
One man observed this after attending church the first time as a Christian:
                                                       
"I was 53 years old when I found out there was a God. The shock and wonder of that discovery has never worn off in the more than 20 years since. But I’ve had another shock in my life, almost as great as the first. In fact, it happened the very next Sunday. It was meeting my first ’church-goers.’
"I’d never been to church in my life, and I remember how eagerly I awaited that first Sunday. I’d just had a glimpse of God Almighty – me, an alcoholic, a drug addict, rich, lonely, and miserable – and already I was beginning to know what it really was. And now, on Sunday, I was going to meet people who had known him for years! What ecstatic people, these long-time Christians would embarrass me with their love and enthusiasm.

"Well, Sunday came, and I went to church, and of course you know what I found; bowed heads, long faces, and funeral whispers. Far from alarming me with the warmth of their welcome, nobody spoke to me at all.

"At first, I was sure this was just one isolated experience. But, as time went on, and I attended other churches in various parts of the country, I made a bewildering discovery. These long-faced listless people were present in every congregation. How could they come into God’s presence Sunday after Sunday without breathing in the joy that danced in the very air?"

We have something exciting to shout about, a reason to worship with joy;

verse 1 summons us to come to worship with singing and shouting.

David had this spirit when he danced before the Lord as the ark was brought to Jerusalem – 2 Samuel 6.

We want to be more reserved than that, so our church services often have no life.

                      Perhaps we are just too uncomfortable with free expressions of joy.

Martin Luther said, "Next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the heart."

We should sing with joy before the Lord, because God is great.

           How do you view God when you come to worship?

J. Daniel Baumann, in an article on worship, said, "When I was a child, I was given to occasional restlessness during church services. I was admonished to ’sit still, you’re in church,’ Somehow I got the wrong message. My folks never intended it--but I was getting the impression that God was a grouch; I wasn’t convinced I could even enjoy him. I’ve changed my mind, or better yet, the Bible is changing my mind.

We need to change our minds as well.

           God wants us to come before Him joyfully!

           God wants us to be excited in our worship of Him!

                      Therefore we ought to sing.

II. WE COME IN REVERENCE – Vs. 6.

That is, we come to adore God.

You may have sung Chuck Girard’s song:
"Sometimes alleluia,
Sometimes praise the Lord.
Sometimes gently singing
Our hearts in one accord..."

Worship takes on various moods, and here we are to come to God with reverence and adoration – verse 6.

           This idea is far removed from the practice of most people, even many churches today.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Gollum is the name of the Satan-figure.

           He is a creature who likes riddles.

He might ask a riddle like this: Why is it that in some high churches people kneel before the Lord, and that in some low churches people stand with their arms extended to God, but that in many of our churches we do neither--we merely sit? Gollum would say, "Answer that one, my precious."

           You may say, "Oh, we stand."

                      But do we stand to adore God, or merely to readjust our position?

           You may say, "We kneel."

                      But when was the last time you kneeled before God?

We need to take this matter of kneeling more seriously, and practice it as a means of coming before God in reverence.

Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the Jewish people would prostrate themselves before God in orthodox synagogues.

Philippians 2:10 clearly indicates, that at the return of Christ, every knee will bow before the risen Christ.

Kneeling is a fitting indication of humility, vulnerability, and dependence before God.

The posture by itself, though, is not the important thing, for it must come with an attitude of reverence and adoration of God.

           Why? Because God cares for us.

Now the Psalmist moves from seeing God as our Creator, to seeing him as our Redeemer – verse 7.

           Here we come before Him reverently, because of His grace.

           The picture here is one of a shepherd with his sheep.

Isaiah 53:6 reminds us that like sheep, we have all gone astray and turned to our own way.

           But God has pursued us, found us, and brought us back.

This is why we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, to remember how God has pursued us and found us in the cross.

But it is more than the Lord’s Supper; it is a spirit of reverence that should permeate our hearts in worship and cause us to fall down adoringly before our God.

The following drama was originally reported by Peter Michelmore, in the October 1987 Reader’s Digest:

Normally the flight from Nassau to Miami took Walter Wyatt, Jr., only sixty-five minutes. But on December 5, 1986, he attempted it after thieves had looted the navigational equipment in his Beechcraft. With only a compass and a hand-held radio, Walter flew into skies blackened by storm clouds.
When his compass began to gyrate, Walter concluded he was headed in the wrong direction. He flew his plane below the clouds, hoping to spot something, but soon he knew he was lost. He put out a mayday call, which brought a Coast Guard Falcon search plane to lead him to an emergency landing strip only six miles away.

Suddenly Wyatt’s right engine coughed its last and died. The fuel tank had run dry. Around 8 p.m. Wyatt could do little more than glide the plane into the water. Wyatt survived the crash, but his plane disappeared quickly, leaving him bobbing on the water in a leaky life vest.

With blood on his forehead, Wyatt floated on his back. Suddenly he felt a hard bump against his body. A shark had found him. Wyatt kicked the intruder and wondered if he would survive the night. He managed to stay afloat for the next ten hours.

In the morning, Wyatt saw no airplanes, but in the water a dorsal fin was headed for him. Twisting, he felt the hide of a shark brush against him. In a moment, two more bull sharks sliced through the water toward him. Again he kicked the sharks, and they veered away, but he was nearing exhaustion.

Then he heard the hum of a distant aircraft. When it was within a half mile, he waved his orange vest. The pilot dropped a smoke canister and radioed the cutter Cape York, which was twelve minutes away: "Get moving, cutter! There’s a shark targeting this guy!"

As the Cape York pulled alongside Wyatt, a Jacob’s ladder was dropped over the side. Wyatt climbed wearily out of the water and onto the ship, where he fell to his knees and kissed the deck.

 

He’d been saved.

           He didn’t need encouragement or better techniques.

                      Nothing less than outside intervention, could have rescued him from sure death.

           How much we are like Walter Wyatt!

                      We have been saved, therefore we are to come before God in reverence & adoration.

III. WE COME IN FAITH – Vss. 7-11.

We are to come in faith, faith that is an expression of our obedience to God.

In A Slow and Certain Light, Elizabeth Elliot tells of two adventurers who stopped by to see her.

           They were all loaded with equipment for the rain forest east of the Andes.

                      They sought no advice, just a few phrases to converse with the Indians.

She writes, "Sometimes we come to God as the two adventurers came to me – confident and, we think, well-informed and well-equipped. But has it occurred to us that with all our accumulation of stuff, something is missing?"

She suggests that we often ask God for too little.

"We know what we need – a yes or no answer, please, to a simple question. Or perhaps a road sign. Something quick and easy to point the way. What we really ought to have is the Guide himself. Maps, road signs, a few useful phrases are good things, but infinitely better is someone who has been there before and knows the way."

Unlike these men, God desires that we seek Him, His will, His guidance in our life.

           He calls for us to not only listen to the Word of God, but to obey it.

           I see this need when preaching.

                      People look as if they are paying attention,

                                 as if they are hearing the Word of God so they can obey it.

                      But having sat there myself, I know it is not always true.

                                 They are thinking of a variety of things.

The Psalmist reinforces his point with an illustration from Israel’s experience in the wilderness, when being delivered from Egypt, that reminds us to not harden our hearts.

           Just shortly after being delivered from Egypt, as recorded in Exodus 17,

                      they found themselves without water and complained against God.

           They weren’t trusting in God.

They didn’t believe God would safely guide them through the dessert to the promised land.

Israel was not the only ones who had this kind of experience.

           This happened with the disciples, after Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.

           That evening as they fought a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples became frightened,

                      and Jesus said to them, "O you of little faith. Why do you doubt?"

We are not much different.

           So Colossians 3:2 (NIV) calls for us to Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
God did not condemn Israel for asking for help, but for failing to trust Him,

                      for not believing in Him, for not having faith in Him.

We have heard God’s Word, we have seen God at work in our lives and the lives of others.

           And God seeks our obedience to Him in our daily lives.

                      An obedience that is expressed in our worship of Him.

           Our worship needs to be an expression of our faith in God.

                      A faith that is daily demonstrated by our obedience to God.

CONCLUSION

Make worship central to your life.

           It is the essence of why God has called us to be his people.

Governor Al Smith of New York illustrated how we should see God:

Governor Alfred Smith was invited to make a speech at a convention dinner.

He discovered when he arrived at the convention banquet hall that the predominately out-of-state audience had a "super sillious, condescending, semi-enibriated interest in him" (I quoted that because you would never think of those words coming out of my mouth). They thought that Alfred Smith was a kind of fun joke, and his insight into what they must have been thinking was verified when the toastmaster gave the governor a "flippant, jocous introduction climaxed by the phrase, ’And now, boys, I give you a great guy, Al Smith.’"

Governor Smith was the last guy in the world to insist on idle ceremony, or on empty formality, but on this occasion, the author says, he sensed an affront to his office and his heritage, and he made his point briefly and tersely. He said, "Gentlemen, when I was a little boy on the east side, my father took me to see a great civic parade. I held his hand tightly as battalion after battalion of marching infantry came by. And then suddenly my father stiffened. I almost felt a tingling pride thrilling his being. Swiftly he said, ’Son, take off your hat. The governor of New York is passing by.’ I took off my hat.
Gentlemen, the governor of New York bids you good night." And he walked out the door.

Do we sometimes treat God like that?

           Do we come to worship and basically ignore Him?

           Do we come to worship and focus our attention on everything but Him?

           Do we come to worship and really give little, if any real thought to why we are here?

                      Does God want to walk out of our presence?

           Isn’t it time for us to made worship central in our life!

           Isn’t it time that we come to worship joyfully, reverently and faithfully!

                      With our worship of God, the central focus of why we are here.

Sing - I Sing Praise

I sing praises to Your name, O Lord

Praises to Your name, O Lord

For Your name is great

And greatly to be praised

I give glory to Your name, O Lord

Glory to Your name, O Lord

For Your name is great

And greatly to be praised