Worship God or Die

Yesterday we started looking at Psalm 95 and I took you to Hebrews to show you that this is both a Psalm of the Holy Spirit and a Psalm of David. I closed by saying, I think Stephen Cole was right when he said this is more than just an invitation…this is an ultimatum. That’s why the title today is worship God or die…that’s the idea we find in this Psalm.

The psalm can be divided into two parts…the first is found in verses one through seven and here we find the summons. It is a summons, “Oh come, let us sing to the LORD,” “Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving,” “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For He is our God,” We make worship about so many things, but most of them center around our personal preferences…in the Word, Worship is centered around the Object of worship…the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

When I read this Psalm on Sunday morning I found myself reading, and just moving on…but the Holy Spirit often gives me a gentle “Stop” nudge and I realized I was just reading to read. I had just read six things that opened with “Let us,” and I didn't do any of them. I went back and read the Psalm and hit the pause button and acted on his summons. Let’s break it down.

Notice, we are to come rejoicing. “Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” Christians are a singing people…the psalmist is calling upon us to give the King…the Savior…the acclamation He deserves. Singing is mandatory among the children of God and just in case you think, ‘well, I can’t sing,’ notice He doesn’t expect us to do what we can’t do, but we can all make a ‘joyful noise.’ We won’t all sing solos, and let me just say, we don’t all need to sing solos!, but we can all make a joyful noise and when we rejoice in the One who saved us that won’t be hard!

We come rejoicing by singing, by making a joyful noise and through thanksgiving…Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving…this is nothing more than humble gratitude for His abundant provisions. Think of what He has done…how can we not sing His praises with great thanksgiving?! We are to come rejoicing—singing, making joyful noises and thanking Him.

I often stop at places like this and sing something along the lines of Keith Green’s Oh Lord You’re Beautiful or maybe a hymn…let me repeat what I said earlier, for the Christian singing is mandatory…sing softly if you must, but you must sing!

Let me share something that happened a while back. I was sitting in my back yard, facing our bird feeders, and noticed all of the birds were gone…I looked for a hawk or my daughter’s cat, but neither were there. I could see them on the fence post, in some bushes, and in trees, but something amazing happened…I just started singing softly to the Lord and the moment I started singing everyone, I mean everyone of those birds flew to the feeder. I don't know what that means, I can’t explain it, but somehow at that moment, singing brought me into the Creator’s purpose for His creation and they knew I was ok.

You figure that out!, but let’s pick up here tomorrow.