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Mark Wheeler
Psalm 95
Christ the King Sunday, 11/26/2023
"Worship and Thanksgiving"
Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church
Good morning, Church Family! Today is the last Sunday of the church year!! Yup! Today is the end!
That's because next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent when we start the preparations for the coming Messiah – the birth celebration of the Son of God, God Incarnate – and we also prepare for His return!
The Church year closes, the Liturgical Calendar concludes, with the celebration of Christ as King of all kings and Lord of all lords! Today is Christ the King Sunday!
On this Christ the King Sunday, this Thanksgiving Weekend Sunday, we worship Almighty God with thanksgiving and praise.
As we join together in worship let's praise our Great and Mighty King, and prepare to serve Him with joy!
2-3 Join in as Pastor Kathy leads us in our Call to Worship – from Psalm 95:1-6
4-7 And our Prelude of Praise and Worship ––– #320 … Come, Let Us Praise the Lord –
8 Good morning Friends! Welcome to worship at Lidgerwood!! Shalom Aleichem! May the peace of Christ be with you!
Welcome, friends, from around the world, to this worshipping community!
Be filled with God's Holy Spirit presence and power, in your homes, through your phones and computers, in this building here, and in your lives. Pray with us … and hear and be transformed by God's Word.
9 This morning our Chancel Choir leads us in prayer and worship, with this beautiful anthem from Psalm 42: "As the Deer Panteth for the Water"
10 Children's Message
11 Pastor Kathy opens our Prayer time in Confession and Thanksgiving
12 Gloria Patri
13-16 Praises, thanksgivings, adorations, concerns and prays [The Lord's Prayer]
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18-20 Song of Devotion and Preparation to receive God's Word – #108 – Come, Christians, Join to Sing –
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Today's Psalm is in a series that begins with Psalm 93 and ends with the Psalm 100. Each of these is not only magnificent poetry, but also biblical instructions on what worship is and how it is to be done.
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Psalm 95 makes two appeals, two invitations, two Calls to Worship. One is in the very first line,
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! (Psalms 95:1 RSV)
The other is found in Verse 6,
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! (Psalms 95:6 RSV)
These are two invitations to two separate expressions of worship. One is an invitation to sing and the other is an invitation to prayer. In the opening lines of this psalm, we are immediately made aware that congregational worship largely consists of singing and praying.
So, we're doing some of this right! I learned last week that Ella Fitzgerald once said something like, "The only thing better than singing is more singing!"
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Now, there is special reason why worship involves singing together. Notice that the exhortation in Verse 2 is to let that singing be an expression of thanksgiving and praise:
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! (Psalms 95:2 RSV)
Thanksgiving and praise are to the main themes of our worship songs. It is possible to give thanks and praise to God individually but if we did that it would take all day for just the preliminaries. But singing is something we can do together. (If I'm singing, everyone wants others singing louder than me!)
So through the ages the believers in God both of the Old and New Testament have sung our praises and thanksgivings. This is very important. It is the reason we should be careful not to sing in a halfhearted manner. There is nothing more conducive to dullness in a service than half-hearted singing.
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! (Psalms 95:1 RSV)
As we read on we learn that the reason for thanksgiving and praise is because we are related to God in creation, i.e., we are creatures of God. He is our Maker and our Creator.
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it;
for his hands formed the dry land. (Psalms 95:3-5 RSV)
Do you see what the Psalmist is doing? He is giving the basic reasons why we give thanks and praise to God.
In the Romans 1 the Apostle Paul points out that one of the charges God brings against us is that "although we know God, we neither glorify as God, nor give thanks to him." (Romans 1:21, NIV).
We don't recognize our relationship to Him. It is a constant source of amazement that we can be so blind to the fact that we are not, as we often imagine, independent creatures making our own way through life. It is amazing how much we take for granted. We accept as perfectly natural to us all the forces that keep us alive, and then we brag about being self-made. We strut through life as if there were no one else we need recognize as the source of our strength and power.
There are two things which he calls to our attention in this relationship. One is that God is supreme over all the forces that affect our lives. "The Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods." He is certainly not suggesting that there are other gods; only that we think there are. Pagans erect idols and call them gods. Even those who deny the existence of God have gods which they worship and to which they give their allegiance and loyalty. No one is without a god. Everyone has gods. Humankind is inherently and necessarily a worshipping being. If nothing else, we worship a projection of ourself. What the Psalmist is saying is, no matter what one's idea of a god may be, the true God is above all such. God is above all the gods.
We thank God, not only because He is in charge of all the forces that sustain our lives but we praise Him because He is also behind the mystery, the adventure, the excitement, of life, the things that give it flavor and pleasure, and make it worth living. We are exhorted to worship and praise God for these things.
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But not only are we to sing together about these, but we are to pray together.
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. (Psalms 95:6-7a RSV)
What does that last sentence mean? Notice that the relationship has changed. It is now no longer God our Creator but it is God our Redeemer, our Savior. We are the sheep of his hand and the people of his pasture. He is our Shepherd-God. We have entered into a personal relationship with Him and the proper expression of it is one of awe and humility, "let us worship and bow down."
Last week Saturday we had our New Member Class, five of us together. We talked about how we might describe what the Bible is in one word or phrase. Guidebook, map, instructions, ultimate love story – the amazing love of God and how that love pursues us and wins us.
Despite all the ways we have turned away from Him, nevertheless His love keeps after us, breaks down our reserves, and wins us. There is not one of us who has not fought against God, who has not tried to resist His love's attempt to win us and to change us. As Isaiah so accurately puts it, "All we like sheep have gone astray." Ask any shepherd if that is not the way of sheep. Julian Riley, a member here a few years ago, a southern Idaho shepherd, used to say that sheep love to go astray. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way," (Isaiah 53:6, KJV). But God has pursued us, found us, and brought us back. Thus, out of a sense of our relationship to Him as Redeemer, as Savior, we kneel before the Lord our God and thank him for the amazing love he offers us:
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
This is what worship is: praise and thanksgiving to God for the personal knowledge we have of Him. He is our God; He is our Maker. We have come out of a broken relationship into a personal relationship with our God. We experience His Shepherd's care over us as the sheep of his hand, the people of his pasture. That is worship: singing and praying, genuinely praising God.
Then there is a new direction in worship, "Let us sing together, let us worship and bow down together." Then he says, "O that today you would hearken to his voice!"
This is what makes worship true worship. It is that today we would listen to His voice!
The central fact of worship is to listen to the Word of God, the voice of God.
Worship must include listening to the voice of God, hearing what God has to say, and letting God's Word correct our attitudes and our reactions. I wish it were possible for each of you to be up here on the chancel with me, to watch people during the hour of worship.
Externally it looks like most of you are all paying attention. You sit there quietly, with rapt, turned-up faces, your eyes open and staring straight ahead, apparently attracted by what the Word of God is saying. But having sat there myself I know it is not always true. Some of you are making a shopping list. Others of you are memorizing the states in alphabetical order. Some of you are planning a trip. Some are going over a conversation you had two days ago. Some are falling asleep. It would be fascinating at the end of a service to know where everybody had been! But what God wants is that whatever else we may do in a service, when His Word is speaking, listen! And not only listen, hearken! Hearken means to heed the word, to do something about it, to let it really change us. God is infinitely concerned that our coming to worship should do something to us. "O that today you would hearken to his voice!"
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Then Psalm 95 says it again using an Old Testament history lesson. From Exodus 17, shortly after God had parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites to safety, they started whining and complaining. So, Psalm 95 says:
Harden not your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers tested me,
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. (Psalm 95:8-9, RSV)
Hardening the heart is the exact opposite of hearkening to His voice. If we hearken to His voice we are not hardening our heart. If we harden our hearts we are not hearkening to His voice. The two are mutually exclusive.
This is the problem God has with us. It disturbs God that people can come to worship week after week and hear reports of answered prayer and God's Word, and still, the minute anything goes wrong we are ready to fall apart.
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In Verse 10 God gives His reaction to this. He says,
For forty years I loathed that generation. (Psalms 95:10 RSV)
What an amazing revelation of the patience of God! He does not immediately condemn them because of their unbelief. He works patiently with them for forty years. For forty years he cries "O that today you would hearken to my voice!"
That is what the word "loathe" means. It does not mean that God hated them. What it means is that He was grieved by this people that they never seemed to catch on.
For forty years I was grieved with that generation
and said, "They are a people who err in heart,
and they do not regard my ways. (Psalms 95:10 RSV, with modification)
First, their hearts were set on the wrong things. They were not looking for the really important things. This was a people that kept harking back to Egypt. They wanted to return to Egypt.
In Colossians God says to us, "Set your affection on things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, and not on things of earth," (Colossians 3:1-2, KJV). That does not mean to go around thinking of heaven all the time. The "things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God" concern the important matters of life, the things of truth, honor, and justice; the demonstration of patience, tolerance, and grace toward one another. Those are the things that Christ gives us.
This is what we need power for. We do not need power to go about moving mountains, and other spectacular demonstrations; we need power to be patient, to have joy in the midst of our trial, to endure to the end. That is what we need power for. That power comes from the right hand of God through Jesus Christ. Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. That is God's quarrel with the Israelites; they were looking at the wrong things, desiring foolish trifles instead of enduring realities. Somebody has described "keeping up with the Joneses" as "using money you don't have, to buy things you don't need, to impress people you don't like." How futile is that?! That is having our heart set on the wrong things.
Then God puts His finger on their second problem: "they do not regard my ways," meaning, they do not listen to God or understand how God works. It is important to understand how God works, for God's ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are higher than our ways as the heavens are higher than the earth. That means that God does not always behave the way we expect Him to. That is one of the aggravating things about God. He never seems to do what we want Him to do. We have a goal in mind and in prayer we outline the process to God of how He can bring it about. But, Ray Stedman, one of my Bible teacher heroes from last century, says, He is so stubborn. He will not do it our way at all. So we get upset with Him.
That is what God is saying about these people. The reason they hardened their hearts was because they would not consider that He had His ways of doing things. So, He says,
Therefore I swore in my anger
that they should not enter my rest. (Psalms 95:11 RSV)
The greatest thing about worship is to learn how to rest in God. Rest means to depend upon God's activity and not our own. The New Testament book of Hebrews defines it, "he that has entered into rest has ceased from his own works," (Hebrews 4:10). That is what rest is. It is really mental health, peace of heart, peace of mind, a sense of living out of abundance. This will come to us as we hearken to His Word. If we do not hearken to His Word we can worship for forty years and at the end of it we shall have so hardened our hearts that God may finally say, "You shall not enter into my rest," (also Hebrews 3:11, quoting Psalm 95!).
There is no other way. There is no alternative path. There is no drug we can take that will give us rest. There is no pursuit we can follow, no book we can read, no practice we can undertake, that will bring us to peace of heart. There is simply no alternative; we cannot come into rest if we will not hearken to His Word.
This is why it is so important that when we worship together we listen to the Word of God and let it change us.
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Dear Lord, God Almighty,
We shout and sing our praise and thanks to You. You not only pursue us with Your grace and mercy, You offer perfect and complete forgiveness and redemption! Keep our eyes focused and our ears tuned to You, that Your Word, written and Living, will transform us more and more into Your likeness, and that ushers us into Your eternal Sabbath rest! Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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29 Receive our tithes and offerings as symbols of our very lives and livelihood, given as response to Your life given for us! Bless it, and by it bless the world around us. In Christ's name, Amen.
Offering (4449 N Nevada St., Spokane, WA, 99207; click HERE, or text 833-976-1333, code "Lidgerwood")
30-32 Expedition Song #52 – I Sing the Mighty Power of God!
33 Benediction:
May we Grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Be filled with God's Holy Spirit. And give glory to God, today, and forever! Amen.
"May the Lord bless you and protect you; may the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you; may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace."
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Announcements
- Congregational Meeting – TODAY, receive 2024 Budget, Decide Pastors' Salaries
- All Church Clean-Up Days – Tuesday, November 28, 10-1; Saturday, December 9, 11-2
- Furnace Fundraiser
Resources:
Stedman, Ray; How to Worship; raystedman.org; 10/19/1969.
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