(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom.
I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 95 today.
It's a Psalm that's all about worship.
In fact, it gives us some directions for worship.
You know, as much as we go to worship services,
we spend very little time thinking about how to worship.
I think people spend a lot more time thinking about
how to work at their computer
than how to worship their creator.
And as much as we might need to improve job skills,
there is no skill more worth developing
than the skill of worship, than the heart of worship.
And this is a Psalm that talks about
the how-tos of worship, the heart of worship.
For worship to stay restful and revitalizing,
and I want it to be that way for all of us,
there's two things that have to happen.
You have to get the big picture right,
and you have to do the little things right.
You may have learned that it takes both.
If your perspective is off, if the big picture is off,
it doesn't matter how hard you work at the little things,
it's an empty exercise of worship.
But if you get the little things right,
and you don't have the big picture right,
you're just doing a lot of rote things
that don't make a difference in your heart or life.
So we're gonna talk throughout this
about how to get the big picture right
and how to do some of the little things right.
Here's what Psalm 95 talks to us about
as it talks to us about how to worship.
First, it gives us some training in how to start.
How do you start?
Verse two, let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
So the big idea here is you start your worship
like you start your meals by offering thanks.
Let us come, it says.
That Hebrew word there has this sense of anticipation,
like I'm rushing into his presence to give thanks.
Worship has a starting line.
And if you're ever gonna get out of the blocks of worship,
if you're thinking of it like a race,
you gotta begin with an attitude of thanksgiving.
Let me take that picture of a race a little further.
If you're in a real race and you're in the starting blocks
and the gun goes off,
but you're caught grumbling about the details,
my shoes hurt, the track doesn't look right,
I don't see my friends in the stands,
my shorts are the wrong color,
you're not even gonna hear the starting gun.
You're not even gonna get into the race.
Now, the truth is, you and I, when we start worship,
there are some things wrong in our lives,
but if I'm gonna worship the God of the universe,
I've gotta start in the right way.
And it starts with this attitude of gratitude.
If I want to bring the truth of God's greatness
in the midst of the good and the bad of my life,
I've gotta start worship with thanksgiving.
When you put thanks at the top of the list,
it puts everything else in the right order.
So that's the big idea.
Start by offering thanks.
The little things are, you might tell someone else
something you're thankful for,
even as you're walking into worship
or on the way to worship or texting somebody
in the morning before you go to worship.
Letting somebody else know
improves their life and yours as well.
The little thing is, throughout the week,
I want to encourage you to reduce your GPH
and increase your TPH.
Reduce your gripes per hour
and increase your thanks per hour.
Get ready to be thankful in worship
by being thankful throughout the week.
So how do you start?
Start with thanksgiving.
Second, this Psalm talks to us about how to sing.
How do I sing?
In verse one, come let us sing for joy to the Lord.
Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation.
Let us, in verse two again,
let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
Every once in a while, I talk to someone
who really doesn't want any music in their worship.
And I see other people who may not admit it to me,
but I see that they tend to show up
just when the message starts every week.
And I don't think it's that they're late every week.
I think some of us think, well, that's the real worship.
God's word, opening God's word, learning from God's word.
But the truth is, God's word tells us to worship.
Here we're told to sing to God.
In the New Testament and the book of Ephesians,
we're told to speak to one another
with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
So if I want to study God's word,
the study of God's word tells me to sing.
I found that usually people who don't want to sing,
they want to worship that's more for the head
and not for the heart.
Music has the power to break through some things
into my heart.
So let me give you a big idea about this.
Talk a few minutes about it.
The big idea is that three things should mark our singing.
If you want singing to break through to your heart,
let these three things mark your singing.
Singing needs to be alive, allowed, and aloft.
Alive, you need to sing with joy.
Sing with a joyful heart.
Now I know some of us aren't the greatest singers
in the world, but you can still sing with joy.
I tried to sing a song one time in church
in the little church I first pastored.
People came up to me afterwards and said,
"We're so glad you're our preacher."
They knew I should not be singing for everybody else,
but I could still sing for my own heart.
You can sing with joy and that leaks out into your voice.
Sing with joy.
Let it be alive.
Let it be aloud.
You sing with enthusiasm.
I do not know how some people can sing,
"How great is our God," without ever opening their mouths,
but they can.
It's like we're practicing to be ventriloquists.
Look, he's worshiping and I barely saw his mouth move.
I gotta tell you, the loudest I think I've ever heard
a group sing was in a building where the lights went out
halfway through the worship service.
I was in the middle of a message
and I finished it by memory,
the parts that God had wanted me to memorize.
And then I said, "Let's sing Amazing Grace."
And when they sang,
it almost blew me out the back walls of the church.
They sang louder than the universe sung.
Listen, too many times we notice ourselves
too much in worship.
We think about what other people are thinking about us.
It's okay to let other people see you worship.
Sing with enthusiasm.
It might change their lives as well as yours.
And then aloft, you sing to God.
You're not performing.
You and I are expressing our hearts together
to the God who loves us.
So some little things about this way that we sing.
I encourage you to smile while you sing.
I look at church many times
and there's not enough people smiling.
And we're singing with joy to the God who made us.
I encourage you, a little thing you can do
is close your eyes.
If somehow you get focused on the things
and distracted by the things around you, close your eyes.
If we open our eyes and close our mouths,
why don't we close our eyes and open our mouths more?
Close your eyes as you sing to God.
And three, personalize the words as you sing.
Don't just sing the words,
but think about what those words meant to your life
this last week.
What those words are meaning to your life in this moment.
What those words can mean to your life in the next week.
This is a psalm that talks to us about how to start,
how to sing, and then number three,
it talks to us about how to feel.
Verse six says, "Come, let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before the Lord who made us."
How should you feel when you worship?
Should you get like goosebumps on goosebumps?
Should you feel like you're floating on air?
Well, the big idea here is you feel,
you sense the truth that he is God.
The more I sense that he is God, the more I worship.
You bow down before him.
You kneel before him.
I can't tell you the exact emotions that go with that
because it's different for all of us
and it's different at different times for all of us.
But it's expressed in these words, bow down and kneel.
Now you might physically bow down, you might not.
This is about the attitude of the heart.
This is about a sense of awe and humility.
He is God.
Everything I see, he made it.
Every thought I think, he knows it.
Every person I meet, he loves them.
Every move I make, he is there.
He is God.
He is my maker.
And the more I can truly be myself before the God
who truly is, the more I'm able to worship.
And to truly be myself before God, I have to kneel.
I have to bow down because he's my creator.
I have to kneel and bow down.
He's the one who made me.
So some little things that you can do with this
is you can do some warmup exercises.
You can think about who God is on the way to church.
You might listen to certain songs that get your heart ready
or pray certain prayers.
I'll never forget being in China
and going to a church service
and seeing hundreds and hundreds of people outside
in the cold, it was freezing,
before an hour and a half before the church service.
And I said, what are they doing?
Are they the choir?
No, they're the congregation.
They just come to get ready, to exercise,
to do some warmup exercises
so that when they go into worship, their heart is ready.
Get your heart ready before you get to worship.
Do some warmup exercises.
I also encourage you to talk to God
throughout the worship services.
That's one way to kneel and bow down before him.
Talk to him.
Talk to him about the song you just sang.
Talk about what you just heard in the message.
Talk about the fact that your mind might be wandering.
Anything and everything, you can talk to him about it.
And then number three, a little thing you can do
that's a great thing is you focus your thoughts
on God's greatness.
Our thoughts create the way that we worship.
So what do you think about as you worship?
It's so easy for our thoughts to drift.
Focus your thoughts on God's greatness.
Verses three to five, for the Lord our God is great,
the King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his for he made it
and his hands form the dry land.
There's one final thing that this song talks to us about
as it gives directions for worship.
Final thing is how to listen.
Verses seven to nine, for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts
as you did at Mirabah, as you did that day at Massa
in the desert where your fathers tested and tried me
though they had seen what I did.
The big idea here is have a soft heart
before God and worship.
So just for a moment, let me tell you a story.
It's a story from the history of Israel,
but it's also a story about us.
It happened at this place called Mirabah.
The people of Israel had been set free
during the Passover, God had taken them through
on dry ground through the Red Sea.
He had shown his miracles to them again and again,
but they had run out of water.
They didn't have enough.
And in that moment, they started to grumble.
Their heart started to harden.
What do you do when you run out?
Too many times our heart starts to harden.
Worship means that you run to God when you've run out
of passion or resources or energy or love or grace.
When you've run out, I highly recommend running
to the one who runs it all,
but instead they hardened their hearts.
They ran away from him.
They got stuck looking at the little rock
that was in their way instead of standing
on the rock of ages who was the one they could trust.
What would happen if next week you came to God and said,
God, instead of getting caught up in the grumbling
and what didn't go right this week,
I'm gonna listen to you today.
And whatever you tell me to do, I'm gonna do my best
by your strength and power to do that this next week.
Now, some little things you can do to help and strengthen
that is you can take notes as you worship,
write it down 'cause then you'll remember it.
Some little things that you can do to do that
is you can put significant verses or truths on cards
and put it somewhere where you'll see it through the week.
Some little things you can do that is you can make
a to-do list based on the message that you just heard.
Just write down the one thing I'm gonna do
and again, put it somewhere where you can see it
or tell somebody else about it.
You and I, we were made to worship.
God made you to worship him.
So let's worship him right now in prayer.
Our Father, we come to you and we worship you
as the great God and we pray that these worship services
that we go to so many times through our lives,
that we'd listen to what the Psalm has to say to us
so that our hearts would get more out of worship.
Help us to enter in with thanksgiving.
Help us to sing with joy.
Help us to feel the humility of standing before our maker
and help us to listen with a soft heart, ready to obey you.
We ask that you would strengthen our hearts to do this
in Jesus' name, amen.
(upbeat music)