Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 95:1-7 | Date: April 27, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

All right, we continue our expositions from the Psalms. Today we come to Psalm 95. I’ll begin with verse one.

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 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. Therefore, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, each time we come to open this book, we recognize the privilege of it—that we’ve come now to hear from our God. We pray that the Spirit of God would minister to us to help us to see it. We ask that as a result of this study of this particular psalm today, you will enlarge our vision of who our great God is, and with that, give us a new sense of the privilege and the joyous wonder that it is to be able to enter your presence freely, accepted through the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen.

Well, you may remember Psalms 93 through 99 are a collection of Psalms with the common theme: the Lord is king. That expression, “the Lord is king” or “the Lord reigns,” occurs in several of these Psalms, but that theme at least appears in all of them. We don’t have that exact expression, “the Lord reigns,” but we do have something very similar in verse three: “the Lord is a great God, a great king above all gods.” It shares this theme of this grouping of Psalms here, extolling the Lord as the eternal king who reigns over all.

Now we don’t have a superscript in this psalm, at least in our English version. That’s because in the Hebrew text there’s no superscription here either, but in the Septuagint—that is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament—it does have a superscript and it says, “Psalm of David.” And we have that confirmed for us in Hebrews chapter 4, where the writer there cites Psalm 95 and attributes it to David as well. So here we have a Psalm of David.

By way of overview here, verses 1 to 7, we have what is obviously a praise hymn. You’ll remember that the praise psalms very often, not always, but very often follow a similar pattern. That is, there’ll be a call to praise and then a cause for praise or a reason, an explanation, why praise. Here we have that, and in fact it occurs twice.

Verses 1 and 2, we have the call to praise: “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord.” So here’s the king, the worship leader of ancient Israel, calling the people to come and praise the Lord with him. The call to praise is in verses 1 and 2. And then we have in verses three through five, the cause for praise. And like usual in these Psalms, or like very often in these Psalms, we have the explanation beginning with that little conjunction “for.” Come, sing to the Lord. Why? Verse three: “For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.” And that’s verses three through five.

And then verse six, we have again a call to praise: “Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker.” And then in verse seven, we have the cause for praise, or the reason for praise: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” So there you have a broad overview of what this part of the psalm is about.

Now you might have noticed as we were reading through it, that at the very end of verse 7, and then through the rest of the psalm, it has a very different feel to it. Suddenly we’re not in a praise psalm, but we’re in some kind of a didactic psalm, giving exhortation. It’s like a sermon that he’s giving to the people, exhorting them to faithfulness. And so you’ll notice here the voice actually changes as well. In verses 1 through 6, God is spoken of in the third person. It’s a “he.” You speak of the Lord as “he” and “him.” “Let us sing to the Lord. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving” and so on.

But now notice how it changes. Verse 7 at the very end of the verse: “Today if you will hear his voice.” And now God begins speaking: “Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation,” and so on. So here in these last verses we have God himself speaking. So we have here in essence, two different Psalms. They were written together to be together and we’ll see more of that next time. But today we will look at verses one through seven. This praise hymn, hymn of praise.

A Call To Praise

All right, we’ll follow David’s own outline of the song. First of all, we have a call to praise. Verses one and two: “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.”

Now here the king, the worship leader, the whole congregation is summoning the people of Israel to come and praise the Lord. Let us come together and praise. So picture him standing outside of the temple there and calling the men and women to come and join him in worship. Verse two, “come.” Come into his presence. It implies a call to the temple. So it pictures people standing at the foot of Mount Zion, or beginning to gather around the temple on top of Mount Zion, and he’s gathering them together to come. Verse six, we have it again: “Come, enter, enter into his presence.”

But you’ll notice that he doesn’t call them to come as a matter of mere routine. He emphasizes here the manner of approach. We’ll spend some time here, look at this. “Come let us sing to the Lord.” Now this term that is translated “sing” here, it’s translated simply “sing” only here in the Psalter. Let me give you an overview of some of the… the idea of the word that’s used here has more of the shout of a victory cry. So the standard Hebrew lexicon defines it as giving a ringing cry or crying out, shouting for joy. And so nine times in the Psalter, this same word translated here “sing” is translated “sing for joy.” Ten times in the Psalter, the same word is translated “shout for joy.” Two times in the Psalter it’s translated “sing aloud.” And then other times it’s translated “give joyful praise” or “rejoice.” So you see the idea of the word is that of a loud, enthusiastic, joyful shout of praise.

And then we have that in the last part of verse one as well: “Make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” Again, the idea here is that of raising a shout. In fact, this word is used sometimes to refer to the blast of a horn. One lexicon translates this as shout, raise a shout, crying out. So when you see these words in verse one, “come let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation,” think cheering at a stadium. That’s the atmosphere of the terms that he uses here. It’s a victory song of some kind.

And then verse two: “come into his presence with thanksgiving.” I’ve mentioned to you before, there’s no word in the Hebrew Old Testament for giving thanks. We have it translated that way. It’s certainly the atmosphere of this word, but the word itself simply means to acknowledge or to confess. And so the idea is coming before the Lord, acknowledging or confessing the things that he has done for us. And so thanksgiving is certainly in the atmosphere of it, but it’s a particular kind of thanksgiving, itemizing the things that God has done for us with gratitude, of course. And that’s the reason for verse one: singing for joy, shouting for joy, because of the things God has done for us.

So verse two: “come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him.” That’s the same word used at the end of verse one as well. “Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.” So it’s not just cheering, not just shouting, but it’s a joyful song of some kind with musical instruments. In other words, then, this is not a lament song. This is a psalm of praise. The king is leading his people in corporate praise, enthusiastic praise, and he encourages them: sing in a way that is worthy of God with a joyful noise, with an exuberant shout, with an overflowing of heart and a heart engaged in worship in a way that is worthy of God.

In my background, Independent Baptist Fundamentalism, it was not uncommon to hear, not just in our church, but in all those churches and at conferences as well, it was not uncommon to hear the song leader before the chorus, or maybe between stanzas, exhort the congregation, “Sing it out now!” And there have been times I’ve wondered about that. Just trying to crank up my emotion, or what are you doing? And I’ve had to think twice about that now, having studied the Psalms. It’s exactly what David is doing here. He’s exhorting the people to sing in a way that is worthy of God.

One old commentator in the last century, H.C. Leupold, a Lutheran commentator, on one of the earlier Psalms, he makes a comment when he was writing his commentary on it. He comments, “Tepid praise defeats its own purpose. Half-hearted praise is unworthy of God.” I was mentioning that to Kim last evening, talking over some of this with her, and I mentioned the Lutheran commentator, Leupold, who made that observation. She’s pretty good for a Lutheran. Pretty good for any reform types too, I gotta say. This is what the psalmist here is doing. He’s calling us to come and give God praise, and to give a praise that is worthy of Him, with hearts fully engaged, and emotions and affections caught up in it.

So, verses one and two is a call to praise. Come with your heart fully engaged, with your tongue tuned to praise. Why? What’s the reason, what’s the cause for this enthusiastic praise? Verses three to five explain. “For, make a joyful noise, songs of praise.” Why? “For the Lord is a great God.” Because of his exalted status, he’s a transcendent God. He’s not like us. Give him praise for the great God that he is. And notice how he expands on that: “For the Lord is a great God, a great King.”

Now I suspect that when we—and I’m not just pointing my finger at you—when we read that word “King” in reference to God in the Old Testament, we tend to read it through American eyes. Ever since the earliest days of America, we don’t want a king. There’s an old slogan, Revolutionary War era: “We have no sovereign here.” We don’t want a king. What we want is a president. A president that we can elect, or that we can dismiss. And a president that is held in check by the balances of power and so on. And if we don’t like him, we can throw him out. We can impeach him. He’s a president. He presides. He leads as long as we let him.

In the ancient world, a king was a sovereign. His will was the law of the land. Now, of course, on a human level, that has limitations. He could be overthrown, there could be a coup, or whatever. But a king, his will was the law of the land. And all of that here, with respect to God, is all of that, but in the ultimate sense, he is a great king. He’s answerable to no one. He is a God who is never interfered with, can never be successfully opposed. He’s a God who is never pressured. He can’t be cajoled. A God who never feels an emergency. A God who’s never tense, never nervous. A God who never calls for a vote. He never asks for any counsel. He very freely works out the counsel of his own will, and that’s all he ever does.

He’s the all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful God that works out his own will always. He’s the great king, and he says he’s the great king above all gods. That is, he’s the ruler over all rulers in the created realm. He rules over all supposed deities, over all of the angelic realms, over all human kings; over all of it God rules and works all things according to the counsel of his own will. You might be nervous and you might worry about the current upheaval that we are witnessing in our culture. I can assure you God is not nervous. He is the God who rules over all. He is a great king above all gods.

Well, this is the psalmist’s cause for praise. Come to the Lord. Come sing to the Lord, verse one. Verse three, “for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.” The whole thrust of this is to say, given who God is and given his greatness overall, it is only appropriate that we approach him with enthusiastic praise. Well, that’s the psalmist’s call for praise in verses one to three.

Now, verse four, he enlarges on the same theme and here he speaks of God’s greatness with respect to the entire created order. “In his hands,” verse four, “in his hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are his also.” Here we have some poetic imagery in a way. But what he’s telling us is the very cosmos—the world itself, the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains—are like a little trinket in God’s hands. To us, the depths of the earth are mysterious. Maybe even frightening. The heights of the mountains, well, they’re awesome and they’re majestic. Staggering. To God, the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are like a little thing that he made in his hand. It’s kind of like Isaiah chapter 40: the nations of the world are nothing; they’re like the dust of the balance before him.

And notice the possessive pronoun in verse four. At the end of the verse, “the heights of the mountains are his.” They belong to him. Verse five, “the sea is his also.” It belongs to him. It’s the word of ownership. The mountains, the created order, the seas, all of it, it’s his. Nations may claim their ownership over some little corner of the ocean, call it Gulf of America. The entire ocean is his. The entire created order belongs to God on water or ground. He answers that in verse five. How do we say that it is his? Well, to answer, because he’s creator. Verse five: “the sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry ground.” Because he made it all, it’s his. He’s the creator, and therefore the owner of all of it.

And in fact, there’s some emphasis on this in the original Hebrew here; the word “he” or “his,” kind of redundant, but it’s to throw emphasis on it. He made it. It’s his, is the idea there. There’s this great divide. There’s God on the one side, and there’s everything else on the other side. And all this “everything else” on the other side is what God made. And all of this on the other side belongs to him, because he’s the maker of all of it. It all belongs to him. The seas, the mountains, the weather systems, all of it belongs to him. He made it. It’s all his.

And he rules it all according to his own will. To say that it is his is another expression of divine sovereignty. Just like the word king. To say that it’s his. He made it. He’s king over this realm. He’s the maker of those mountains, those seas. The weather systems and all. It all belongs to him because he made it. He rules over it all. He is not subject to it. It is subject to him. And he rules over it all. And so David here is contemplating the staggering, immeasurable transcendence of God in all of his greatness. And he’s moved by it. He’s taken by it and his heart is swelling. And he’s moved to praise. Because God’s greatness dwarfs all else that is called great.

Now there is something more specific going on here. If we go back to verse one, you’ll see it: “Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” God is the rock of our salvation. Now that of course is looking back for Israel, looking back to the Abrahamic covenant, it’s looking back to the Exodus, it’s looking back to Mount Sinai where God had made them his, his peculiar nation. Look back to the promises God has made for them. This God, in other words, who transcends everything, the God who made all that is and rules over the entire world as the great king who can’t be opposed, this God has made us His in a peculiar way. And surely then, he says, this calls for songs of praise, for loud, exuberant, enthusiastic praise.

I understand human weakness. And I don’t mean to be harsh here at all. I understand human weakness. I understand we’re limited, finite beings. We’re made of dust. And I understand there are distractions when we come to church—parents with little children and all of that. But surely it says something about both our physical weakness and our spiritual lethargy if we can stand behind a hymnal and rehearse great truths about God’s greatness and his grace and sing half-heartedly. Without our emotions and affections being moved by it as a matter of routine… I often hear from visitors who come to RBC, they comment about the good singing at RBC. Don’t lose that. Don’t lose that. Psalms like this ought to serve as an exhortation. Half-hearted praise is unworthy of praise.

Let Us Worship And Bow Down

Well, that’s verses 1 to 5. Verses 1 to 5, then, David encourages the people of God to exuberant, joyful praise. Now we come to verse 6. We have another call to praise: “Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker.”

“Come.” Here he’s making reference to the temple itself on top of Mount Zion. It pictures the worshippers at the foot of the hill or up there gathering around the temple and the king is bringing them in to join in and incorporate praise to the Lord. But verse 6 tells us something more. And actually, there’s a turn in the thought here. Something further about the manner of our approach.

In verses 1 to 5, he exhorts us to come with joy, cheering and singing enthusiastically. But now notice verse 6: entering the presence of the Lord calls for more than just enthusiastic praise. Worship. “Come let us worship, bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker.” Actually there’s a redundancy here of some kind. He’s piling up the words. We have three different expressions here: “Let us worship,” “bow down,” and “kneel.”

Now this word worship translated here, actually the word means bow down. It’s used in the context of worship, and so we translate it that way, but the word means bow down before a superior. This word pictures hands, forehead, knees, toes, all to the ground in absolute submission in worship, acknowledging the greatness of God. It’s a posture of worship. Well, that’s the first term, worship, which means bow down. And then we have another term, bow down. That’s just the physical act of kneeling or bending over and bowing. And then we have another term, kneel. Get on your knees before this God.

This is interesting because you’ve heard me as we’ve worked through the Psalms, you’ve heard me make the point that one of the traits of poetry—not just in Hebrew, but in English poetry, and I suppose everywhere as well—one of the traits is brevity. That’s why one of the marks of poetry is the white space on the page. Poetry, you say things briefly. There’s a terseness about it. You say a lot in a few words. That’s why when you read poetry, it’s not like reading prose or narrative where you just run to the point. You’ve got to stop and reflect on it because it’s compressed and it’s compact. That’s typical of poetry.

But here we have the opposite. Instead of brevity, there’s a redundancy of terminology. Bow down, bow down, kneel. What he’s emphasizing for us is: come before the Lord with total, unreserved reverence before God. You’re entering the presence of our creator, who is Lord over all, and the only appropriate posture is that of worshipful submission before him. And so the mood changes. Verses one to five, he calls us to sing with joyful praise to a God of such greatness. Verse six, he calls us to bow down in awe before him. Prostrate yourself, down on your knees, face to the floor. Recognize the God to whom you are singing.

Now one of the benefits, one of the great benefits of the gospel—the book of Hebrews emphasizes this at length—one of the great benefits of the gospel is assurance of acceptance. Sin is removed. With sin removed, we’re justified. With us justified, we are reconciled to God. And not just reconciled and made friends or actually adopted, made part of the family. And so we have this assurance of access before God. And so Hebrews chapter 4 tells us, let us come boldly before the throne of grace. Hebrews chapter 9, let us come with full assurance of heart.

And so we come boldly before God through Jesus and what he has done for us, but never flippantly and never presumptuously, but always keenly aware of God’s majesty and our creatureliness. He’s our Father, but He’s our Father in heaven, exalted above all. And so we come boldly through Christ and therefore joyfully, but always with reverence, showing him the honor that he deserves.

So verse six, come bending low in reverence before this God. Verse seven, he gives us the cause for praise or the reason for praise. Why do we sing? Why do we bow? Verse seven: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.” And here David makes explicit what he only introduced back in verse one. In verse one he tells us that God is the rock of our salvation, but here he tells us more. Sing because, verses three to five, because God is great, he’s creator, he’s ruler over all, but now verse seven, sing and worship and bow down because of God’s grace.

God made the world, yes, but he also made us. And he not only made us, he made us his. Of all the people of the world, he made us his. And there is cause for worship. The privileged, unique status of the people of God, that this God who rules over all has made us his. “We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.” The shepherd imagery: God leads and provides for his people. In reference to Israel’s history, again, the Abrahamic covenant, calling his people out from Abraham alone, bringing them out of Egypt in the Exodus, making them his as a nation, Mount Sinai. All of the victories that he’s given them over their enemies, this is God shepherding over his people and providing for them.

And so David says here, we owe God much praise. Not only because he’s the creator, but because he made us, and more than that, he made us his. The Lord of history, the Lord of all that is, has entered into this sinful world and made us. Of all the people in the world, he made us his people.

New Testament Perspective

Well, there’s the praise psalm, verses one to seven. As we often do, let’s look back through it and ask the question, how do we read this as Christians? Standing on this side of redemptive history, the light of the gospel revealed in Christ, how do we look back at this psalm? How do we read it with New Testament glasses?

Well, in terms of verse seven, “we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.” That imagery is picked up in the New Testament. God, our shepherd, is the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, who has come to be the shepherd of his people. And as the shepherd of his people, he’s given his life, John chapter 10, given his life to save his sheep and to make them his. He keeps us, he protects us, and he provides for us forever.

Verses 1 to 7, we have this repeated emphasis: praise to God for his greatness and for his grace. That is the stuff of praise throughout the entire Bible all the way to the end of the book. Praise to God for his greatness and his grace. Those are the two themes. Praise to God for his greatness and for his grace. We come to the book of Revelation, at the end of the Bible we find the same thing. Remember those wonderful chapters, Revelation 4 and 5. Chapter 4, we have God and his greatness and the exalted on the throne, the great sea before him and all of the rulers, all of the angelic realm bowing before him, before this uncrossable sea, emphasizing the distance between them and God. And they all cry out, “Holy, holy, holy.”

And then chapter five, Revelation. All the world awaits. What will God do with this world? What will he do with history? He has a plan. He’s got a scroll in his hand, his last will and testament for this world and for history. His plans for purpose for salvation and judgment. What will he do? And the lamb, the lion who becomes the lamb, stands up, takes the scroll from the sovereign’s hand. The rest of the book of Revelation is the outworking of that. But all of heaven breaks out into praise: “Worthy are you to take the scroll.” Why? “For by your blood you have redeemed us to God out of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue.”

The heart and soul of praise throughout the Bible is God’s greatness and his goodness, God’s greatness and his grace. This side of history, we read that in terms of God’s greatness and his grace to us in Jesus. And so, when we read in verses one and two, “come.” Come into his presence. We’re not to think in terms of geographical distance. We don’t need to walk up a mountain to go to a holy place. That was Jesus’ point in John chapter four with the woman at the well. It’s not this mountain versus that mountain. That’s not the point. Time is coming when they who worship him will worship him in spirit and in truth.

God, through Christ, has created a new order. And now we come before him, not crossing some physical distance. The distance between us and God is not measured in terms of so much space. The distance between us and God is a difference of being and a distance of morals. God is so other than us, in another category altogether, so exalted and transcended above us all. And God is the very measure of moral purity. And so the distance required when God calls us to come into his presence, the distance that we have to travel is not one of how many feet, how many yards, how many miles do you travel, of what mountain. The distance is one of being and one of morals.

And when we read this, “come into his presence, come with joy,” we ought to ask ourselves the question, how in the world? How can we do that? Well, in fact, the whole Old Testament sacrificial system, the tabernacle structure, was intended to stress this very point of our distance between… the distance between us and God. Hebrews 9 and 10 works this out very plainly. All of that was declaring that the way in was not yet. And everything about that structure of worship in the Old Testament declared, “Stay back, you have no right to enter.” That was the purpose of it all, the writer of Hebrews tells us.

You can’t just go barging into the temple. That’s just the priests, the Levites. And even they can’t go beyond the curtain. That’s just the high priest. And that’s only once a year. And that’s only certain after certain preparations have been made. The whole system screams, “Stay back. You have no right of access.” The way to God’s presence was not yet open. That’s Hebrews chapter nine. The whole purpose of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament was to answer the question, how is it then that a holy God can dwell in the presence of a sinful people? How can that happen?

And so you’ve got this sacrificial system. It has to be a sacrifice that’s offered. It has to be a perfect sacrifice that’s offered. And the sin is put on him, and after the sin is transferred to him, then he is slaughtered. And all of this is… no bull and no lamb could ever take away the sin of people. All of this is just establishing the structures for which we can understand the work of Jesus. That through him and through his sacrifice, the way is open.

And so when we read, “come, come into his presence,” we have to think, well, on the one hand, you’ve got God, who is God, transcendent above all. God, who is the very essence and definition of moral purity. And on the other hand, you’ve got creatures, rebellious creatures, who are sinful. How in the world can they come into his presence and be accepted? To answer that question on this end of redemptive history, our minds run immediately to the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, the way has been opened. God Himself, God the Son, has come into history and become for us all that that temple signified. He’s redeemed us by His own sacrifice to bring us into the presence of God.

And now then, the stunning reality is we go into God’s presence in prayer and in praise. The stunning reality is through Jesus Christ, we are welcome. So yes, we come with bowed low, face, knees, toes, hands all to the ground, absolute submission before him. But we come, and we come boldly. And we come with assurance of acceptance. And when we think on it long, hearts begin to swell. And it’s not long before we feel like, I need to sing. And I need to sing loudly. What a privileged people we are. The Lord God has made us his. We’re the sheep of his pasture. He’s blessed us in Jesus Christ. This is summed up in the Apostle John’s word in 1 John 3. What kind of love is this that has been shown to us that we should be called the children of God? Accepted and welcomed into his presence where we can worship freely.