Let us bow, let us bow, and then let us bow

As we make our way through Psalm 95 we are letting David teach us to worship. We come rejoicing and we come remembering, but we also come reverently. He is God you know! Verse 6 says, “O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!”

The psalmist does something amazing here—the three words he uses: worship, bow, and kneel, basically say the same thing. The word worship means to prostrate oneself…the idea is to kneel before God and to bow oneself and to touch the floor with your forehead. We are to worship before Him, we are to bow before Him, we are to kneel before Him…there is a real sense in which verse 7 says this, “Oh come, let us bow, and let us bow, and let us bow before the LORD, our Maker!” We are to bow before Him!

This speaks of humility before the greatness of Sovereignty. We enter into the presence of the One who made us and so often we are so casual…He is our Father, He is our Savior, He is our Shepherd, but He is our God...He is the God! Let us never forget that He is holy, holy, holy and let’s worship Him accordingly!

But there is something else…if we are to worship reverently, we must bow, but we must also come before Him and hear Him. The end of verse 7 says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” To come before God and to worship Him is to listen to Him. To worship is to listen…the spoken Word, the taught Word, the prayed Word, the sung Word…that is worship. You can’t separate worship from the Word…fact is you don’t have worship without the Word.

The heart of worship is nothing less than the bending of our wills to God’s will and it is a renewal of our pilgrimage toward Him and His celestial city. That’s worship…nothing else will suffice!

Ponder this! Are you are person who worships? I’ve found that we all tend to worship differently…some have more passion than others, some have more freedom than others, but Psalm 95 leaves none of us out…these are the things we must do if we are to worship.

A few years ago we were in the midst of worship and I felt the Lord prompt me to get on my face…I wrestled with that…Lord what will people think…and to be honest I justified it, that couldn’t be God…that would bring far too much attention on myself…and we sang on, but I knew I had disobeyed Him. I don’t remember much about the next song, but I spent it entirely in repenting before God. The next week I felt Him say, will you listen to me now? I dropped to my knees and then to my face and simply obeyed Him. We won’t always be on our faces…especially in public worship, but I wonder if it wouldn’t do us all some good!

I was at a gas station pumping gas and I looked over and a Muslim man was by the wall next to a propane gas storage container and he was on his face in prayer. I watched him until the gas tank was full, and then I parked my car close to where he was. I waited until he was finished and then as he got up I went by and his hand. I said, “Brother, you don’t know me. I’m a pastor of a Baptist church and there probably isn’t a lot we would agree on theologically, but I’d give anything for a church full of people with the tenacity to do that!

I’ve seen Muslim men pray in the Exit Rows of our airplane, I’ve seen African truck drivers on the side of the road, where no one else would know the difference, in prayer. Why is bowing so hard for us?