Psalm 95
In 1958, the Green Bay Packers suffered the worst of a number of losing seasons finishing with only 2 wins in 12 games – the worst season in its history. They hired a new coach, a 45-year-old man named Vince Lombardi. The 1959 Packers were an immediate improvement, finishing at 7–5. In his second year, Lombardi led the Packers to the 1960 NFL championship game but lost. Lombardi never lost another post-season game. Although, the Packers became a group of seasoned veterans over the years, Lombardi started every training camp with the very same opening line, "Men, this is a football." He believed that the only way to succeed was to make sure that the fundamentals were clear, understood and then executed. Coaches who prepared to play Lombardi's Packers would always say, "We know exactly what they are going to do but they do it so well, we cannot stop them."
I think this has application to us at LAC as we begin our fall 2010 together. So, I want to start with... "This is the church!" The church is God's people -- someday to be made up of individuals from every people group, language group and nationality -- called together to bring glory to his name and to further his mission in the world. We enter into this family only by God's grace and specifically through faith in Jesus and in Jesus alone. Or, as a group of the students I taught in England recently put it, "The church is a people God has called together for himself to show all creation who he is."
Lake Avenue church is a local gathering of God's family placed here to declare to this world the presence, the reality, and the greatness of God and to further His mission. Putting this together:
#1: The church is the community that displays God's glory to the world through our worship, our service and our lives together. As Paul declared in Ephesians 1:6 and 3:21, the glory of God is seen primarily in two places: in Jesus Christ and in the church. As I have said often, a basketball player's greatest qualities are seen in the sports arena. A singer's attributes are on display in the concert hall. And God's attributes are to be displayed to the world when his church gathers and lives as the church should live. In us, this world should see the renewing power, the grace, the justice, the peace, and the love of God. A visitor should be able to watch us for a while and then say, "Look at those people of every age and background and skin color loving one another and serving one another. God must be in that place. Otherwise, this would never happen in our divided world!"
#2: The church is also the community in which our individual lives are to grow to so that we might reflect God's glory individually in the world. We were made in the image of God but sin has affected every part of us so that our lives are not what they should be when we live without knowing God. But our pasts can be forgiven through the grace of God and we can begin a process of being remade to become what God created us to be. God has promised that all who believe in Jesus will someday be made new – will be conformed to the image of Christ. The main place for God to do his work in us is in the household of faith we call the church. As Paul said in Ephesians 4:13, in the church we live and serve together until we all "become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."
"But, but, but..." you may say, "I know a lot of people who have been in church a long time and they don't seem to be very much like Jesus!" My first response is that the church may not be functioning as it should. We may need some sermons on, "This is the church." Or, maybe, they are not connected to the life of the church in ways that enable them to draw upon all that God intends them to get through his family.
So, the question I want to address over the next few weeks is, "How should we be connected to the church so that our lives will become what God would have them become – so that we can glorify God?" And I want to point you to three essential connections: 1) gathered worship, 2) life in community, and 3) service to and with one another. Today, I want to start with where it always has started for God's people, i.e., if we will glorify God as a church or as individuals, we must worship together.
And the text that has guided God's people about worship around the world and throughout the ages is Psalm 95. As Professor Samir Massouh of Trinity International University said to me, "Whenever and wherever you meet a gathering of God's people, this is the text that has guided their worship together. Whether it was God's people in Old Testament Israel, or the people of the Reformation in Europe, or the people my homeland in Lebanon, or the growing churches in Africa or Asia (or a gathering of God's people in Southern California), the lessons of the text should be directing the worship together." The first word of Psalm 95 is "come" so it has been called "the Great Venite" (Latin) because it is God's call to his people to come together to worship him. In it, we see the most basic lessons about 1) what gathered worship is, 2) why it is essential and 3) how we go about it.
#1: What It Is: Come, let us song for joy... shout aloud... thank and extol him... bow down in worship... Today, hear his voice...
When I was in seminary, one assignment we all had was writing a personal definition of "worship." Here was what I wrote (adapted somewhat over the years):
Worship is the proper response of the whole of our lives to our Triune God. When we worship, we ascribe all honor, praise, and worth to God precisely because he is worthy. True worship results in God being at the center both of our adoration and our action; both in our personal lives and in our corporate gatherings.
Notice that this involves two related parts. First, worship engages the whole of our lives – mind, emotion, and will. That is what Psalm 95 makes very clear to us. There are three parts to the Psalm. Vv. 1-1-5, the first "come", calls upon us to sing for joy to God, to shout aloud, to be thankful and to extol him with music. It's clear that genuine worship will not abandon our emotion. We probably need more shouting and joyful singing than we usually express in our services.
But, vv. 6-7 show us that shouting and singing alone is not the whole of worship. That second "come" calls us to bow down before God and kneel before our Maker. This is a call to investigate our lives, the sins of our past, to self-centeredness of our ways and to give them all to him. True worship always calls us to give our will to God. When we worship, we say, "Lord, I want to do this – but your way and not mine."
And vv. 8-11 call us to listen to the voice of God – to hear his Word. We must hear God teaching us about himself and about how he would have us live. We need to hear his instruction, his correction and his encouragement. We must remember who he is and what he has done and how he has told us to live. Otherwise, we won't know how to live.
Genuine worship engages the emotions, the will and the mind. It is important that all parts of us respond to God. If we just teach and teach and teach so that our minds know theology but our hearts are not touched – we'll have big heads but no hearts. If our hearts are not touched so that we weep because he loves us and is ready to enable us to start again – we shout because of his greatness, etc. then what we call gathered worship will be intellectual but cold.
And if we have feelings flowing all over the place – some weeping and others shouting and others dancing all over the sanctuary – but don't know God or hear how he says we should live, then our gathering will look no different from any cult or fanatic group.
And even if we have good teaching and a lot of emotion in our services but leave with lives as grumpy and anxious and harsh as they were when we came into the service, we haven't worshiped. We must surrender afresh to God and make a commitment that today will be different than yesterday to his glory and through his power. True worship brings all three together – mind, emotion and will – and integrates them so our lives can truly change. We will know how to live because our minds have heard God. We will have the emotion that motivates us to change. And we will have made a commitment to surrender to God. When that happens, we have worshiped!
The second part of what worship is involves worshiping God alone. Our word "worship" comes out of the old English words "worth-shape." It speaks about what is worth so much to us that it actually shapes our lives because we long to please it or serve it. Notice this little but powerful preposition in vv. 3 & 7: for. In vv. 1-2, we sing and shout and thank – our emotions are touched – for the LORD is the great God, the great king, and the maker of all that is. Do you know how beautiful this place is that we live in? These foothills and the ocean and...? Does it still thrill you? God made it! Our response should be like Will Farrell in the movie Elf. His character worked in a department store where everything was being decorated and made festive for Santa Claus. Then, the boss said, "Tomorrow, Santa Claus is coming." Will Farrell, who grew up with Santa among the elves shouts out exuberantly, "Santa's coming? I know him!!" That's what should happen when we look at what God has made and who he is. It should be almost impossible to hold our emotions in.
The call to come and surrender our wills to God in v. 6 is followed by the second for in v. 7: for God is our God and we are the people of his pasture; the flock under his care. Can you fathom it? The God who is over all Gods and made everything cares for us. We are his people. We should say, "Thank you Lord. How would you have me live?
Worship begins with a call to consider the excellencies of God. He alone is the one worthy of shaping our lives around. What is worth so much to you that it shapes your life? That's what you "worth-shape." Everyone has something that shapes us – career, personal honor, a certain way of life.
Have I told you the story about my classmate in college whom I'll call Mike? He was a good guy but had never learned to practice good hygiene. He never showered. Rarely shaved. Always wore the same clothes. He was a mess. The guys on our dorm floor all pitched in and sent him an anonymous care package of soap, shampoo, deodorant, etc. and sent it to him by mail. Then, we waited anxiously. A few evenings later, when a group of us had gotten together on the floor lounge, Mike came in and said, "Hey guys, look what someone sent me. But I don't use this stuff." Joyously, he began passing it out as gifts to us.
We thought he would never change but then, one day later in the semester, we were all in the student center, when Mike came in to join us. We hardly recognized him. He was cleaned up, shaved, and even had new clothes on. He looked good! We couldn't believe it. How did this happen? Then, she walked in. Mike had fallen in love with Amy. And Amy loved Mike too but she had told him there was no way she would be seen with him until he changed his ways. So we learned that day that love can produce what threats and guilt and shame never can. Mike's love for Amy shaped his life.
And if a love for a human being can do that for us, then how much more our love for God. When he shapes our whole lives, then we know we are worshiping. That's what worship is. So, gathered worship is a call to the whole church family to engage all that we are in ascribing worth, honor and praise to God. And it's something that every church family should do regularly. Why?
#2: Why gathered worship is essential
There are surely many, many things that should be said about this – but this week, I am going to begin to address just one thorny and persistent question for churchgoers; i.e., why is it that some people can be involved in a church but not have their lives shaped by God? We see the consistent teaching of the New Testament indicating that our connection to God's family should lead to each of us becoming what God would have us be. This question of why we don't always see this happening very quickly is so persistent that it threatens to undermine everything the Bible teaches. We sometimes think, "Well, this Christian faith doesn't really work, does it, because... well, look at all the mean-spirited and failing people in church." What do I say to that? I will tell you that a thorough answer to that question would probably call for many sermons – not just one small part of one. But, let me say that one part of the answer is grasping the role that gathered worship is supposed to play in our lives.
We know that what we believe should change our lives. We know that the fruit of God's Spirit's work in our lives is to turn us into people filled with love, joy, peace, hope, kindness, patience, humility, courage... But what we have learned with our minds must be bridged into our lives. How does that move happen – from head to life? The Bible indicates that it is God's work to change us and it is his promise to do so but that, at the same time, God has given us a responsibility. As Philippians 2:12-13 teaches, growth in Christlikeness is God's work but we must make every effort to bring God's work to completion. I know this is hard to put together – but the Bible does this again and again. We are not machines but human beings made in God's image with real responsibilities to pursue holiness.
And, the specific vehicle we are to employ in pursuing godliness is what our brothers and sisters around the world and throughout history call spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines engage our entire beings – mind, emotion and will – and lead to an integration of what we believe and how we live. Spiritual disciplines include personal prayer, Bible reading, stewardship, solitude (spending time with God alone), and a number of other disciplines. And the first spiritual discipline – the one that sets the foundation for all the others – is gathered worship with God's people. We need to come together regularly with all God's people, turn other "priorities" into "secondaries", and have our whole lives respond to God together with other believers. As Psalm 95 commands us, we are to come – and it's plural – come with the whole family. As Hebrews 10 commands us, "We are not to forsake meeting together with the family." If we forsake doing this, we will not grow – we will not have our whole lives shaped by God.
Dr. D.A. Carson talked about this in For the Love of God, Vol. 2, p. 25.
One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.
People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
Regular gathered worship with God's people is the first of those disciples that moves us from drift toward godliness. That's one reason why you need to be here weekly to worship with God's people.
#3: How We Worship Together
Psalm 95 does not give us instruction about issues such as worship style or worship length or worship location (because the Bible seems to see those as, at most, of secondary importance), but it does address the most important questions. What do we learn about how we should worship whether we lived in the 1st century or the 21st – whether in Rome or Pasadena? Gathered worship:
*Instruction 1: Should be consistent with our daily lives of worship – As Charlie Dates told us in a sermon last December, this Psalm was sung as God's people went toward the place of worship. In other words, they were worshiping before the service started. Charlie encouraged us to practice our worship as soon as we get up – even as we're driving or walking to church. Gathered worship is not supposed to be a weekly act of trying to rev up some emotion or commitment to God that we never otherwise have. It's not, "I'll live for myself all week and then give an hour to God on Sunday." No, we are to live for God all week – and then meet with God together so we might be trained and motivated to live for God all week. I'm talking about a way of life filled with integrity – a way of life in which we are always seeking to honor God. When we do this, our times together will be alive and vibrant.
*Instruction 2: Should happen rhythmically – Psalm 95 was written to people who were called to worship together each week. It was – and, in my view, still is – an essential part of the one day each week that is to be dedicated to God. Each week, we are to come together. We will not grow in glorifying God individually or corporately if we do not all make a commitment to come in this rhythm. This spiritual discipline is not an optional extra according to Scripture. It's more important to your life than sleep, than your kids' sporting events, and than any other programs in the life of the church. Come... come... each week, come (and perhaps even sit in the same place) and ascribe to the Lord all worth.
*Instruction 3: Should always include three elements: 1) praise that engages our emotions, 2) surrender to God, and 3) instruction in God's Word – Our times can surely include many other things but those three should never be missing. I see our giving as a part of the second of those. It is a practical way to say that all I am and have really is his! Do you see how Psalm 95's threefold call has guided the worship of God's people for centuries? Wherever you go in the world and attend a church committed to Scripture, you will find God's people 1) praising the Lord, 2) confessing and praying and offering and submitting to God, and 3) listening to our Father's Word. Every week we need to call together our emotions, our wills and our minds in our worship of God.
*Instruction 4: Must happen corporately – In case you haven't already noticed, this entire Psalm in plural. It is always, "Let us come" and not "let me come". And, because we are a people chosen by God and not just the people I have chosen to be with, ultimately our worship is richest when it includes as many people from "every tribe, language, people and nation" as might be in the community where our own particular local gathering has been called together. "Why?" you might ask. "I'd rather just be in a service with people who like the same kind of music I do!" But, in this church family, we come to meet God – to fellowship together with God – and by God's grace to become like the God we have come here to meet.
Do you remember the quote I showed you this past summer from C.S. Lewis' Four Loves? Among Lewis' close group of friends, one (Charles Williams) had died. Lewis thought that this would give him more of his other friends, especially Tolkien. But, he said, just the opposite happened:
If, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but "A's part in C," while C loses not only A but "A's part in B." In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charlesian joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.
CS Lewis, The Four Loves
If this is true of a finite human being, how much more true it is of God. We will not know God well unless we regularly worship God with people different from ourselves. We will see only one little and limited perspective. God gives us one another so we might know him better. And he tells us to come together to worship him. And so, just as the Bible does, I call each of you to come – come and sing together for joy to the Lord. Come – bow down and kneel before God. Come – and hear God's voice so we might hearken to it. Some say the end of Psalm 95 is a "downer". It's a strong warning about people who did not hear God's Word and fall down before him in adoration. This God who cares for us and wants us to experience his rest declares to us that if we do not come together to worship him, we will not know his rest.
So, let us listen to his voice. Let us listen and worship together each week until someday we do it before the throne of God with our eternal family. When we gather, we will be singing, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor