Introduction: I remember hearing a story, probable apocryphal, about a young girl, who lived on a farm, being given a horse, her own horse, on her birthday! On seeing the animal, before hastening to her parents to thank them, she threw her arms around the horse’s neck and said, ‘You’re a magnificent horse, you’re a Christian horse, I’m sure God’s happy, you’ve got such a long face!’ I don’t know what the horse thought but her Minister would have, no doubt, sought to remind her that ‘joy’ is part of the Fruit of the Spirit!
1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! –a) many, who haven’t good singing voices are thankful that it says, ‘joyful noise’! b) The concept that God and particularly Jesus is the rock of our salvation are not the words we’d use unless we had grown up in Sunday School. Instead of ‘Rock’, nowadays people more think in terms of bunkers. For David and Israeli soldiers getting behind a rock for protection was so much better than being caught in open land! If we are God’s people we have no reason to be ‘long-faced’!
3 For the LORD is a great God,
and a great King above all gods. – It is tragic to think that God is powerless and insignificant! I don’t encourage people to be centred on death, but it is the gate through which we all pass and then we see God face-to-face. Then we realize that He is not small or insignificant! So many in practice treat Him as insignificant!
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land. – Even if you limit your thinking to the world geographically God is Great but ‘Look up!’ to the Universe and look out to the Unseen World if you want to see His limits! And He is even beyond that!
6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! – this is the central verse of Psalm 95 and is meant to be the central portion of every person’s life! – even in the middle of the hardest point of the most stressful day of your life!
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice, – The Psalmist here talks about hearing HIS voice. From hereafter in this Psalm the ‘HIS’ is replaced by ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’. Thus I’ve printed it in red because it is God speaking, and when God speaks it is certainly time to listen!
8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Philippians 4: 1&4 -Philippians 4:1-5 (ESV) 1 Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord….. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
Prayer: You are truly worthy, My Rock, to be worshipped in sincerity and with Joy! I gladly bow my knee to You.