An Invitation to Worship
For Meditation
Last week we learned that Jesus both redefines and then offers the good life to us. It is a gift we receive but we enter into it by practice. Psalm 95 is an invitation into satisfying, life giving relationship with the God who has made us and who has loved us completely in Jesus. He invites us into communion with him through the practice of worship. Our study this week will help us see the receiving/ practicing dual nature of this invitation.
Psalm 95 is an invitation that God initiates: “Come let us sing for joy to the Lord, let us shout aloud to the God of our salvation.” We receive by hearing his voice reminding us of the essence of who God is. We believe the truth of his Lordship as King over all, creator and redeemer and are called to remember his goodness to us. We look and see that he has nurtured and protected us as Lord over all things and particularly how he has saved us by delivering us from bondage to things we have worshipped that have not brought us abundance but rather more brokenness.
We are called to receive, see and believe how worthy God is, but the invitation also urges our response. We are to sing and shout, to give thanks and use music and song with body and soul to express our trust in him through deep, heartfelt celebration. Worship is the expression of the whole self – seeing and believing what is true about God and then with the heart entering into joyful communion with God in expressing his worth and value. True worship is seeing our union with God through the work of Jesus and then communing with him as we respond to his invitation.
The call is urgent since, as Psalm 95 describes, we are all too prone to miss the invitation and keep on worshipping something else that will not satisfy us. The invitation is for “today” (verse 7) and not one to wait in responding. God does not want us to miss out!
As you prepare for this Sunday, see this pattern of call and response that is so prevalent in the Psalms and other prophetic poetry. We use this pattern weekly in our “Call to Worship” as we begin our weekly worship hearing his call reminding us of who he is and what he has done and urging our joyful celebration as we connect deeply with him in expressing his worth. Try reading Psalm 33, 34, 96, and 97.
Psalm 95
1 Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Today, if only you would hear his voice,
8 “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested me;
they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
10 For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”