Worship Is A Command - [Psalm 95]

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And so if you have your Bibles, why don't you open to Psalm 95, right in the middle of your
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Bibles in the summer, on Sunday nights, we're trying to look at the Psalms. And so we want to see this great
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Psalm, Psalm 95, a Psalm of praise, a Psalm of worship. Here is a command from God put in song form that says,
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I command you, congregation, Israelites, and then throughout church history, of course, by application, praise
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God. Praise God is a, praising God and worship is more than a verb. It's an imperative.
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And I thought to set us up this morning, this evening, could you identify with the statement by Tozer?
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To what degree could you identify with the statement by A .W. Tozer a generation ago?
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I mean it, Tozer said, when I say that I would rather worship God than do anything else.
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I mean it when I say I would rather worship God than do anything else. I wonder what degree that is true in your life here tonight.
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Well, I think God is good and gracious and he will use his word, and even tonight, Psalm 95, to spur you on to think that way, like Tozer would think.
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To say, well, I think I worship God at this level now, so God, I'd like to have my worship be more biblical, more fervent.
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God, I'd like to be a worshiper that would be a delight in your eyes. And I think Psalm 95 will teach us that.
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God wants us to worship from our heart using our mind and Psalm 95 is this very, very famous Psalm that helps us be reminded that this is not a game, that this is not something to be taken lightly.
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We just don't kind of come into God's presence flippantly as a corporate body, but we come to worship
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God with a noble undertaking. This is something that's important and I love this
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Psalm because it just stirs everything up in our hearts. And what I like to think about this Psalm, I think this
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Psalm is like a telescope. All week long, all year long, the world continues to bombard us with men and women are large and God is small.
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God's just kind of there when you need him, if you need him at all, and everything's focused on humans.
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And so I like this Psalm because it takes this telescope that's got men at the wrong end and flip the whole thing around and we get to see that God is to be exalted and humankind is to be diminished.
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God is on the throne and we are thankful participants that bring nothing to God but our praises for what he has already done and who he is.
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Psalm 95, I believe, will help us with a booklet that was called, Worship the
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Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church. What is real worship? How important is worship?
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And tonight we'll have a little refresher, The Call and Command to Worship. Now just a few more comments about Psalm 95 in an introductory fashion, this
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Psalm is a poem. You ever read poetry? When I was a kid, I hated poetry. And now
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I say to myself, I might as well get to like poetry, why? Much of the
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Bible is poetry. And so this is not just a poem, but it's also a song.
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And it was sung by the congregation of the Israelites. And Psalms in Hebrew means songs of praise.
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All the Psalms from 1 through 150 would be called by the Hebrews, Psalms of Praise.
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In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and that's where we get our word, Psalms, psalmoi means the plucking of a stringed instrument with your fingers, eventually leading up to singing sacred songs with musical accompaniment.
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We don't know who wrote this Psalm, do you notice in your text? Sometimes there's a little superscription there, there's a little notation of who might have written it, we don't know.
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Most people think because of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of this Psalm, it says
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David was the author. And this is a section of the Psalms that has a theme, and the theme is praising
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God. And if you look at Psalms 95 through 100, just even the first verse of each of the
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Psalms, you will see Psalm 95 through 100 is this set of Psalms that are charging people to worship.
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95 .1, Oh, come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, Psalm 96 verse 1, sing to the
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Lord a new song, Psalm 97 verse 1, the Lord reigns, so what's the response?
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Let the earth rejoice, chapter 98 verse 1, oh, sing to the
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Lord a new song for he has done wonderful things, Psalm 99 verse 1, the
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Lord reigns, what's the response? Let the peoples tremble, and then Psalm 100, shout joyfully to the
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Lord. This is a Psalm that is stuck in this section of Psalms that says it is good and it is right and it is pleasing to praise
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God. I don't know if you've ever heard of calls to worship, do you go to a church that has a call to worship, often,
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Ron will give a call to worship. This is the most famous call to worship, Psalm 95,
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Athanasius said before the beginning of their prayers, Christians invite and exhort one another in the words of this
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Psalm. Athanasius says, before you get ready to worship, this is good to say to each other so you know how important this praise is to our great
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God and our great King. This is a Psalm that makes us realize that worship is not something we'll do if we want to, this is a command, we cannot audit it, we cannot have this as an elective, this is real worship, this is something that has to be done to God, to bow down, to give
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Him homage because He is worthy of that. This is not going to be a
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Psalm that's going to say when you feel led, give good worship, when you have an impression to worship, do that, here is a command, it's going to be a command to worship and let's take a look at the first command to worship in Psalm 95 so that we might understand this
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Psalm better, there's going to be two major commands on how to worship and then there'll be some how's and why's and reasons we ought to worship.
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If you had to describe this Psalm in one sentence, it would be a call to worship and let's see these calls, there's actually two calls, two commands of worship, the first one is right in verse 95, oh come, let's just stop right there, that is an imperative verb, it's a verb that says you must do this, we know what imperatives are here,
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God is the object of this praise of course and here David, most likely
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David says that kind of lukewarm praise that you have, the kind of praise that sometimes you want to and some that you don't, that's not going to work here, a tepid praise is no praise at all, a praise without forcefulness and vigor and enthusiasm and verb is no praise at all, praise that is kind of come see, come saw is no praise at all and here in an invitation but with a command, you can almost think of a king and you're like okay, there's the king over there, we're walking into the room and by the way if you don't know proper etiquette before a near eastern king, he's over there and it's time to get over here to begin to ascribe to this king who has protected you, redeemed you, fed you, given you a family, he's over there, get going, you're walking in going what do
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I do before the king, worship is what he's saying to do, not because we feel good while we worship, although we do, not because we have to kind of get a fix for worship although it's good to worship, we don't worship because we want to see our friends, no, it's all towards God, come he says,
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God is worth that, Chambers said worship is giving to God the best he has given us, did you notice the text here, what it doesn't say, it doesn't say when things are going good, worship, it doesn't say when you're not in a trial, worship, it doesn't say when your responsibilities are few, worship, when the church is stable, worship, when you're financially ready, worship, this is a universal command under all circumstances, there's the king, you have to do it and I like the text here, it tells us how to do it, it gives us four ways how to do this imperative come and worship, the first way is with singing, let us sing, what does the text say, 95 -1, let us sing with joy, how do you come into the presence of the king, you'll come on with your face kind of down, dour, pouting, sad about it, no, you come with singing for joy to the
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Lord and I love this because it's gonna be good for our congregation,
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I wish I should have preached this on Sunday morning, that's alright, get the people who aren't here, who are backsliding the tape, but this says sing, let us sing for joy to the
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Lord means let us give a ringing cry, let us give a ringing cry, sing isn't enough, sing is not forceful enough in the
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Hebrew, it needs to be ratcheted up, the volume of sing and its meaning needs to be moved up to a ringing cry, of course it includes singing, but Calvin said it signifies to make a loud sound of any sort either with the voice or with instruments,
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I just keep thinking about how people sing and how involved they are, all across the world you go and it's karaoke and people are up there singing and doing their karaoke thing and I would just think it's so funny because people can't usually sing when they do karaoke and they think they can and our family thinks that's funny, when you think you can really sing and you're a superstar and you try to sing and you're really not good,
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I don't know why the Avendross find humor in that, but people sing along to American Idol, it's this big thing and here it's the king of the universe and the psalmist says with the command, you worship and you worship, not mumbling, not fumbling, not kind of you know with your head down like I told the kids, when we sing for Grandma Evie, under the
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Lord, with Grandma Evie, we're not mumbling, we're not kind of well you know, whatever happens, no, with a ringing cry,
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I still go back to 1984, the Olympics in Los Angeles and I thought you know what,
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I gotta go see Michael Jordan play basketball, it's 1984, just graduated, well he didn't graduate from North Carolina, but he's left
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North Carolina, he's gonna come to Los Angeles, so I thought how do you get tickets to Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing was on the team and other stars,
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Dan Marley, Leon Wood, William Tinsdale, I'm confusing a basketball player and William Tindale, that would not be a good thing to do, although you understand why
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I'm doing it and so I went down to the ticket booth and I said you know, I like to get one ticket and one ticket only, you only want one, yeah, they said oh, alright and they dialed it up on the computer and gave me the ticket, so I went down to go see the game and I walked down, they said oh, excellent seat sir, you know once they saw where I was gonna seat, would be seated, it was sir and they sat me down, the first seat behind Bobby Knight on the floor of the forum,
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Bobby Knight was the coach, to sit there and there's all the guys, I thought this isn't hog heaven, this is round ball heaven, there's
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Michael Jordan, there's Leon Wood, there are all these guys right there and you should have seen how I was rooting for the team,
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I can't really praise these guys that well, so I'll just do it in my heart, it wasn't that at all,
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I was giving everything into it, this is a worship service for me, matter of fact I loved it because I went home that night and it was on cable
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TV and channel 6 and other stations and they would show over, you know Michael Jordan's gonna go for a breakaway dunk and then
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I would be there right behind Bobby Knight, the coach and I would stand up in the middle of nowhere and go like that and then
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I thought, wait a second, that was bad because this was a 10 o 'clock in the morning game and I'm supposed to be at work, my boss is gonna see me, that was a wrong thing to do, if people can go ballistic and apoplectic with worship of the
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Red Sox, the Celtics, whatever cricket team you want, this is the king,
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I'm commanding you to worship, give a cry, give a shout, something loud,
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Spurgeon said, other nations sing unto their gods, let us sing unto Jehovah, we love him, we admire him, we reverence him, let us express our feelings with the choicest sounds using our noblest faculty for its noblest end, why do you think you sing, why has
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God given the gift of singing to anyone, I don't mean spiritual gift but just that we're able so we can sing primarily unto
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God with all our heart, not caring about what other people think, we don't need a reformation of worship, we need a reformation of the heart of the worshippers,
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I love this little ditty, I'll go where you want me to go dear Lord, over mountain or plain or sea, but don't ask me to sit in an up front pew, that's a little too close for me,
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Lord I'll do whatever you want me to do but if you want me to sing loudly, I'm kind of concerned about my reputation, John Wesley said, above all sing spiritually, have an eye to God in every word you sing, aim at pleasing him more than yourselves or any other creature, make your singing so that the
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Lord will approve you, I wonder how they sang in Revelation 19 1, after these things
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I heard John said, as it were a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying hallelujah, salvation and glory and honor belong to our
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God, I bet you that was just this ringing cry, giving
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God our best, well he gives another how, the main verb is come, how do you come into worship, well with singing, with this ringing sound and also number 2, let us shout joyfully,
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English translation of the first one is sing for joy, now the second one is let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation, this is loud, this is shouting, this is yelling, this is loud, make a joyful noise and I like it if you study joyful noises, there's several nuances, the first nuance is a war shout for a battle, a cry of alarm, listen to Joshua 6 .16,
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it came about at the seventh time when the priest blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, shout for the
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Lord has given you this city, you could translate this word shouting like an intense war battle, you can also translate it as the shout of a triumph, as you are victorious over your enemies,
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Judges 15 .14, when he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met
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Samson, or it could be translated the sound of a trumpet, give a blast with the horn,
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Numbers 10 .9, and when you go to war in your land against the adversary who attacks you, then you shall sound of alarm of trumpets, but here it doesn't have any of those nuances, here for those of you who are prim and proper worshippers, it means to shout in applause, shout with religious impulse, with music, this is intense, this is victorious, this is animated, this is with enthusiasm and earnestness, this person said, come let us to the
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Lord sing out with trumpet voice and choral shout, all about God, all about to this
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God who is the rock, our secure refuge, of our salvation, directed to God, this isn't just getting crazy without thinking about who
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God is, it's like the kid who after a Sunday morning church service knelt down beside his bed that night and said, dear God, we had a good time at church today, but I wish you would have been there, now there's a focus, there's the end, this is the proper object of the worship, it's far from hot,
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I mean lukewarm worship, indifferent, half -hearted, apathetic, that slogan by the way, moderation in all things, in worship this psalm destroys that slogan, this is not moderation worship, this might be the last day on earth where you worship, go for it, with zeal like Jesus had for his father's house, the zeal of thy house will consume me,
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I read this and got convicted, Eugene Ormandy dislocated his shoulder while conducting the
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Philadelphia Orchestra, Maureen Boyd in his book about that speculated that Ormandy may have been conducting
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Brahms, in the margin of one of his symphonies, Brahms wrote as loud as possible, only a few bars later, however, he wrote louder still, and then
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Progress Magazine said in 1992, I do not know what they were playing, but he was giving all of himself to it, and I have asked myself sadly, did
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I ever dislocate anything, even a necktie, worshiping
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God? Come, let us sing, let us shout, look at the third one, verse 2, this is another how, the command is come, how do we do that?
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With singing, with shouting and now with thanksgiving, look at verse 2, let us come before his presence with, well thanksgiving, you say, well pastor, your sermon is right from the text, that is the idea, the sermon is in the text,
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I just have to find it, make things up, this means to come in front of or to meet, this is, as a king would be approached by people in his kingdom, this is the approach, as a plane is approaching the runway, this is the approach, you need to approach the king with sadness, approach the king with dourness, approach the king with excuses, approach the king with you do not really know what is going on in my life, approach the king, you get the point, not that way at all, but here with what?
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Thanksgiving, you get to go before the king, if everything else is wrong, you at least should have an outburst of joy, because God has blessed you, when you think about what you deserve and what you get, the difference is what?
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Should be joy, show me a depressed person, I will show you someone who thinks, I deserve this in the world, yet the world delivers this, and the difference is depression, show me someone who is a
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Christian and says, you know what, I deserve this hell and now I am a co -heir with Christ, I have been saved by Jesus, not based on anything
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I have done, but all on his grace and he saved me throughout all eternity and the difference is joy, this is trans -tribulations, trans -everything, we are to have gratitude towards God for who he is and for what he has done, you will see that everywhere in the
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Psalms, come with thanksgiving, pay vows to the most high, it is not with bitter spirit, it is not with complaining, it is not people forcing you to do it,
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I got to go to church today, then he gives the fourth how, found in verse 2, come with singing, with shouting, with thanksgiving and shout joyfully with Psalms, the fourth way we come and worship based on Psalm 95 is to shout joyfully to him with Psalms, we are praising
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God back with his own words, Don Whitney was here talking about that, wasn't he? We are praising
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God with words that he has already given us, so we know how to praise him properly, it is okay to pray without saying
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Psalms, but here one of the things we ought to do is to raise a shout or to give a blast of worship with words that he has given us in the
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Psalms, certainly then we would be worshiping biblically, certainly then as Athanasius would say the scripture doesn't just speak to us, but the
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Psalms speak for us, they speak for us so that we might praise him with great poetic language that powerfully communicates, and I know what you are saying now, you are saying, you know, basically you want our church to turn charismatic,
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I have looked at the text, come, shout, yell, jump, joy, you know, applause all these things, next thing you know it is going to be like that church in Tennessee that just this week someone said,
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God I want an experience, he was allegedly slain by the spirit, I don't know what spirit that is, slain by the spirit, fell down, broke some bones and is now suing the pastor and his staff for 2 .4
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million dollars, you think, you know what, that is what is coming now for us, next thing you know there are going to be snakes in the service, matter of fact a pastor in the south was just arrested because he was in on some snake ring, illegal snake ring, did you read about that, you better be glad I don't take
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Mark 16 like they do, but it is interesting here, with all the enthusiasm and over the top nature of the first few, there are some helpers to make sure we don't become enthusiasts alone, and the second command in worship is found in verse 6, it is the same
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English word, sadly because it is a different Hebrew word, the first Hebrew word and this
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Hebrew word are different, this Hebrew word is Bo, the first one is Halak, this is
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Bo and it basically means a priest going into the tabernacle to conduct priestly service, he goes in to conduct priestly service or it could then mean, and this is more of a sense where the congregant goes into the building for worship, and this word basically means to engage, to plug in, as you enter a building, he is not talking about geographically go in, he is talking about as you geographically go in, you are engaging yourself, heart, soul, mind and strength in this thing called worship, engage, and it has a nuance of slowly, quietly, respectfully, these priests did not go in the tabernacle, jumping up, high -fiving, spinning around, you know, barking in the spirit, hooping and hollering, high -fiving in the spirit, they weren't doing that at all, this is more of a reverent term, so the first ways of worship were a little wilder, now there is a bowing down reverence kind of approach, you are going to the audience of one,
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God, you ought to remember the sense of majesty that God has, and as a person would go before a king, he might want to give the king all the adoration the king is due, but he does so as it were with his head bowed, with a little change of tone, and that's exactly what this is here, this is when you see the king close up, you pretty much can't talk, because you are so in awe of the king, this is when you approach the king, your natural etiquette would be just getting down on your face, and it's hard to hoop and holler and jump and high -five when you are doing a facial on your face, prostrate, how do we do this in particular, you see the verses, let's look at verse 6, this is the first how of the second come, let us worship, the first ones, let us worship, and basically this means to bow down before a monarch, to lay low in homage before someone who is above you, to get down on your face to signify
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I mean nothing, you are superior, I am inferior, and if it means dust on my face, dust on my brow, that's what
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I should do, and in fact if you don't do this at home,
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I often do it, I don't do it as often as I used to, but I have often done it, as I am getting older I just tend to fall asleep, so I don't do it as much now, but I would just lay on my stomach and pray, thinking you know what, if I have my body doing what
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I know should be done, my mind will follow what my body is doing, and that is when I pray before God, just laying down, he gives another how, number 2, let us bow down, you said well, you just said worship means to bow down, to lay down, well that's what that means here too, come let us worship and let us bow down, this means to bow down, but it has more of a bending your knee nuance to it,
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Isaiah 45 .23, every knee shall bow, that's the word here, 2
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Chronicles 7 .3, and the sons of Israel seeing the fire come down, and the glory of the
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Lord around the house bowed down, they got on their knees on the pavement with their faces to the ground and they worshiped and gave praise to the
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Lord saying, truly he is good, truly his loving kindness is everlasting, and I think
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Augustine, this is my favorite quote outside of all the scripture tonight, Augustine said in this regard, they were misled into seeking him by throwing out their chests rather than beating upon their breasts, did you get that?
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They were misled into seeking him by throwing out their chests rather than beating upon their breasts.
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So there's a getting low, and this is a kneeling, and then there's another how, verse 6, the third how on the second command to worship, to enter into the sanctuary with what kind of attitude?
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Well, found in verse 6, let us kneel before the Lord, Yahweh our maker.
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See, all three of these are similar, remember in the language of scripture, if you want to really emphasize something, you can say it three times, holy, holy, holy, you can say it three different ways, worship, kneel, bow down, all signifying the same thing.
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This reminds me of Solomon in 2 Chronicles 6 .13, Solomon had made a bronze platform five cubits long, five cubits high, wide three cubits high, and had it set in the midst of the court, and he stood on it, knelt his knees in the presence of all the assembly, and spread out his hands toward heaven.
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This is kneeling. This is the first part of the come to worship, to call to worship is, better be enthusiastic, but don't forget the second part is to have reverence.
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I think I've shared this before, but I like it because it goes with kneeling and bowing down. Neil Martin, a member of the
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British Parliament was once given a group of constituents a guided tour of the houses of Parliament. During the course of the visit, the group happened to meet
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Lord Halasham, then Lord Chancellor, wearing all the regalia of his office. Halasham recognized
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Martin among the group and cried, Neil, not daring to question or obey the command, the entire band of visitors promptly fell to their knees.
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We are to have fervency in our worship, and we are to have reverence. We ought to sing at the top of our lungs, but we ought to do so scripturally, in a controlled way.
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Let's worship and bow down. By the way, as you notice this passage, this passage destroys the notion that says,
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I worship privately, I worship on the lake, I worship on the golf course, I get up early and take a walk and look at creation, and I worship on Sunday morning by myself.
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Do you look at the text? Verse 1, us. Verse 1, us. Verse 2, us.
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Us. Verse 6, us. Us. Verse 7, we.
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This is corporate. This is when the church gathers. That's how we would apply it back then.
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It was for the Israelites. It's corporate. You say, well,
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I've got the two commands and some of the hows, now let me give you five reasons you should worship. Besides the command, well, there's a command, if you don't worship, it's sinful, but now there's five reasons, and God often does this so we would be convinced, and it's in His goodness,
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He wouldn't have to give us these, and I'm going to give you five reasons from the text, besides the commands, reasons why you should worship
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God. Number one, because the Lord is a great God, found in verse 3, so we're backing up a little bit.
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We first looked at the two commands, verse 1, verse 6, now we're backing up why worship God. Number one, because the
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Lord is a great God. Yahweh, the personal name of God, He's a great God. He's exalted above the people,
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Psalm 99 .2 says. Psalm 99 .3 says that we should praise this great and awesome
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God, because He is holy. Even back in verse 1 of our psalm,
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He's the rock of our salvation. He's great. What's the greatest thing
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God has ever done for you? Certainly this isn't in the text, but I think about Galatians 6 .14.
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Why would we ever want to praise God? Paul knew because he said, may I never boast except in the cross of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
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Unbelievable that God the Son would be placed in a spiritual executioner's position and be executed by the
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Father. I always remember John Piper when he says, if you would have seen the crucifixion, you would have pulled your hair out, screamed and thrown up at the grossness of it.
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And that's not even talking about the real judgment that the Father invisibly was putting on to Christ.
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Why do we praise God? He's a great Savior. He's a great God. Secondly, in verse 3,
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He's the King above all gods. He's preeminent. A great King above all other gods. You say, well, this means there are other gods.
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No, this is poetry that says out of all the so -called gods, there's only one and He's the only one that really exists.
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It's like 1 Corinthians 8, for even if there are so -called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet there is but one
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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom all things, by whom are all things.
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There's no other God. No other God is praiseworthy. You ought to praise God and there's only one.
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Well, number 3, what's the third reason to worship? Because God's sovereign. Look at verse 4.
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God's great. God's the only God. God's sovereign. Verse 4, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are
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His also. The depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountain, they're all under God's control.
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We were at Grandma Evie's place a while ago, as I said, and we sang, He's got the whole world, what? In His hands.
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He's got Grandma Evie in His hands, we sang. The deep places of the earth means the places that you can't search out that are too low.
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It means the interior. It means places you can't even explore. Back in the old days, princes would hold a globe and say, look at all the places of this globe that I own and can control.
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Here it's God, the depths of the earth, and the strength of the hills. I mean, you take a look at mountains and there are some pretty big mountains.
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Joey and I went on a long bike ride yesterday and I didn't think mountains were very big. We didn't even go up a very big one, but I now know why
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Mount Vernon's called Mount Vernon. It's a mountain. Can you imagine from the
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Everest to underwater, God owns it all. He's using these two extremes.
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He's the owner of the mountaintops. He's sovereign over all. He gives another reason, number four, fourth reason, found in verse five,
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God is a creator. God's a creator. For the sea has evolved.
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It was God who was involved in theistic evolution and his hands, with the help of time and chance, has formed the dry land.
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Hallelujah. For the sea is his and it was he who made it. His hands formed the dry land.
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Talk about the sea. Talk about all the horror that people would think that was in the sea and trouble, whether it's the
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Atlantic or Pacific or Mediterranean or Arctic, you can't map it out. Only God can say,
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Spurgeon says, this is mine. Every ocean he just says, this is mine. He made it.
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Sounds like in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth and created. His hands formed, look at verse five, the dry land.
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By the way, the hands forming dry land, form means to fashion. It means as a human would take some clay and make a pot,
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God takes nothing and makes the world to prove his greatness. So we look at his work and look past his work to say
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God is a wonderful God. He governs the sun and the moon and the hail and the snow and the floods.
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Then the fifth reason to worship, the Lord is a personal God. It'd be one thing if he was transcendent and above us and we had no relationship with him, but here he's a personal
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God. Verse seven, for he is, this is Israel saying and certainly applicable to those captured by Christ, atoned for by the blood of the risen lamb, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.
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God is Lord, God is creator, God is great, but he's also father, he's friend, he's brother, he's shepherd.
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I like NIV translation in this particular case, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
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As a shepherd tenderly cares for his flock, so too God, the transcendent God knows his flocks.
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Remember when Jesus said, I'm the good shepherd and I know my own and my own know me.
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He's personal, he's close, so close he would even die for his sheep. He's called the great shepherd of the sheep.
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William Cooper said, man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will. He's this great
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God, not just Israel, but to all who believe. You say, well, okay, so far so good.
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I've got the commands of worship and what about this last part?
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What's going on here with this last part? I don't think the text ends in verse 7b, do you?
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I think there's more. This kind of spoils it, I think. We were going so well until we got to this part.
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We don't have to be harsh and unloving and all that. This isn't good for church growth, by the way. With God and his goodness, he gives a warning.
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There's the command, there are the reasons, and if you thought there was a dramatic mood from be a charismatic, but be a
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Presbyterian, those are the two sections. Now it's even worse.
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The mood changes and there's a change of speaker even, and guess who speaks now?
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At the end of verse 7, it's no longer David speaking. It is, of course, God speaking through David earlier, but now there are the direct quotes from God.
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It is now God speaking, and it is an urgent thing to obey God in worship. We must obey.
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Nobody's going to obey for us, and this has huge implications, and so we see this urgency of worship, and so God says, you might start off in enthusiasm, but it's going to end by obedience.
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Today, if you would hear his voice, today's the urgent day, today's the emphatic day.
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Today's not the day to put off worship and engage in God. If you'll hear his voice today, it's urgent.
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Basically, now God's going to say, don't do what others have done before you. I'm going to give you an object lesson when it comes to worship.
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Here's the object lesson. Don't do what I'm about to tell you other people have done.
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It's common. Better people than us have fallen into this, and so he says in verses 8 and 9, it's a common danger.
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Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah, in the day of wilderness, when your fathers tested me, they tried me, though they had seen my work.
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You see those English words, as, as. This all means it can happen today. This is a warning to everyone.
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Don't be obstinate. The sea and land might obey God. You better too. At Meribah, means contending, where people of the
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Israelites rebelled against God. Don't be like the people at contending
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Meribah, and don't be like the people at Massah, testing, testing God.
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It's seeing all the miracles of God with Egypt and the Red Sea, and then they complain and grumble and basically say,
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God, we don't believe you. Show it again. Don't do that.
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Be careful. Remember 1 Corinthians 10, it says, these things happened. These things in the
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Old Testament, to them as an example. They were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
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We don't want to try God. We don't want to test him. See there in verse 9, though they had seen my work.
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They should have been worshiping, and instead they're complaining. They should have been trusting, and instead they're testing.
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Show me God. I need a new manifestation of God. Verse 10, for 40 years
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I loathed. Loathed means feel a loathing. Feel disgusted.
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God said, I was disgusted at that group of people. Maybe you want to throw up.
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That's the idea. They said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know my ways.
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You can see David, inspired by God, saying there's an enthusiasm to worship. There's reverence, but be careful you don't fall into the same pit that the
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Israelites did. Don't grieve God. You want to worship God, not grieve him.
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You don't want to err in your heart. You want to obey in your heart. You want to know God's ways. They did not, you see the text, know my ways.
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Therefore, God doesn't take too kindly to that. Verse 11, therefore, I swore in my anger, truly they shall not enter my rest.
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I took an allegiance. I had a pledge of allegiance to myself that they're not going to enter rest.
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They're not going to enter into my rest. Promised land gone for them. And he swore he's not going to break his word.
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We don't want to harden our hearts either. We don't want to say I heard the word today and I didn't respond to it.
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I've got sin, but I don't feel like confessing them. I don't want to follow God without some kind of sign and test.
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I don't feel like going to worship today. I've done what I already could. No. And as I look at the passage, how does it end?
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Does it end, you know, kind of on an upbeat thing? I mean, it just is there. When I read down through verse 11, it's at the bottom of my page.
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I want to turn the next page hoping there's another part, don't you? Where it's, you know, but he is long suffering and patient towards those.
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It's just there. Here's the song. How'd you like to just sing this? You get to the end and the kid says, you know, what's, what's the resolution, dad?
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What happened? What's going to happen to us? And it's almost so open ended because our obedience will tell us what's going to happen.
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This passage begs us to be full worshipers, true worshipers.
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The Bible says praise is becoming the upright. We want to do that. That's why we're here on Sunday night.
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I commend you. Psalm 95 verse six, come, let us worship and bow down.
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Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. When William Carey arrived in India in 1792, his predecessor,
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Christian Schwartz, had inscribed over the portal of the mission church at Tanquabar this verse.
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Kind of like a verse out there sometime. Maybe this needs to be known by BBC as well.