Preached in Markham Baptist Church, February 12, 2006
 

Genuine worship involves feeling.  This is a biblical truth.  As we read through Scripture we come across person after person who express their worship of God with feeling.  Sometimes worship is expressed with joyful dancing (Exodus 15:20).  Sometimes worship is expressed with the deepest heartache and tears (1 Samuel 1:10).  Sometimes it is expressed with quiet reverence (Matthew 2:11). 

All genuine worship involves feeling.  Indeed we could go so far as to say that worship devoid of feeling is dead. 

I know emotions can be fickle - hot one day, cold the next.  I know there are days when I do not feel the love OF God or even love FOR God.  And on those days my faith needs to rest on truth, not my feelings.   I need to remember God is love and that truth remains no matter how I may feel about it.  Along with being fickle, feelings can be false.  They can be driven by self and a life guided ONLY by feeling is headed for disaster.

I know that we are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)  But it remains that if there is no feeling in our relationship with God, no feeling toward Him in our heart, no feeling expressed in our worship, the relationship is dead. 

If you wake up tomorrow morning and you cannot feel your left leg, all has gone numb, no feeling what so ever – what do you do?  You quickly get out of bed and using your good right leg, you hop over to the phone and call the doctor.  It’s a bad sign when you have no feeling in your leg! Something is wrong. 

So with our worship of God.  If there is no feeling in your worship, if everything is routinely gone through week after week after week, if your heart does not beat a little faster at the mention of God, if your palms do not become the least bit sweaty as God’s holiness is made plain, if your head is not bowed a little lower at the thought of His majesty, if you feel nothing week after week after week, then you are in need of a spiritual check up because genuine worship involves feeling.  

If worship, as we have discovered, flows out of a relationship with God, out of an experience of God, and worship is from our heart then we must be willing to express it. 

This truth is especially emphasized for us in Psalm 95.  The book of Psalms is a book of worship.  It is the hymnbook of the Bible and this Psalm especially is seen as one that was written with the worship event in mind.  The first number of verses have been used as a call to worship in the church since the fourth century.    And certainly this psalm teaches us that genuine worship involves feeling.

Let’s look at it.  Verse 1: “Come let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!”

Do you express joy in worship? It is not the only feeling that can and should be expressed but it is the first mentioned in this Psalm.  Joy.  It has been said that of all the people in the world Christians should be the most joyful people on the planet. 

It is not a requirement of being a Christian, but it is a gift, it is a consequence of being a Christian.  Isaiah said that the redeemed of the Lord will have everlasting joy (Isaiah 35:10).  Joy is promised us as Jesus Himself said that if we remain in Him like a branch to the vine we will possess His joy (John 15:11). 

And Peter wrote “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:9)

Joy is a gift from God, the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.  Do you express it?

Not only joy, but look at the next feeling in verse 2 - “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving: let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.”

Thanksgiving is another mark of a worshipping Christian.  Do you express it?

I know there are seasons in life when being joyful is difficult and being thankful sometimes comes hard when you are living under a dark cloud.  God understands that, and we can bring those feelings of remorse and lament to God also.  And to be sure, there is nothing worse than Christians who put on a false kind of joy and are not genuine. 

But at the same time, there is nothing more edifying, nothing more encouraging and helpful than to see a Christian who, while in the midst of difficulty, is genuinely joyful, thankful.  Not for the circumstances, but joyful in God.  That’s the key, isn’t it?  We are able to express joy, not because we are going through a difficult time, but because we know the one who carries us through those difficult times.

That’s the focus of the psalmist.  Look at verse 3 through 5 - “For the Lord is a great God and 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 the dray land, which his hands have formed.”

This is to be the focus.  If all the depths of the earth and the height of the earth is in His hands, than you, you must also be in His hands.  You must be in His care.

Notice the focus, our joy is not in our circumstances, but in the one who is larger than our circumstances and even holds our circumstances in His hands.

Joy and thanksgiving.  Do you express it?  You need to know it’s okay to express your feelings in worship.  Perhaps as a child you were told that you had to sit still in worship.   Maybe you got the feeling that God is a grouch, but really, the dominate note in worship is celebration and you should not be inhibited in expressing your joy in Christ and your thanksgiving to God!

I don’t know how you want to express it, only let it flow out of an experience of God and let it be directed to God.

Do you know the story of how King David danced before the Lord without any thought of himself and his position?  He was so excited about what God was doing among his people and how the symbol of God’s presence, the ark of the covenant, was being brought into the midst of the people of God.  And he danced with joy and thanksgiving!  And his wife rolled her eyes and said to him, you have brought shame to your position as king, a man of your stature and standing should not be doing such a thing! (2 Samuel 6:20). 

And David responds, O you don’t understand, compared to God - I have no stature, I have no standing.  God is the real king and I will “become even more undignified than this.”  (2 Samuel 6:21) Meaning, I will abandon all thought of self in order to bring praise to my God.  

It has been said that we go to “football games to do our shouting, to the movies to do our crying and to church to do our freezing.”  And I have got to tell you that some of you icebergs!  Legs crossed, arms crossed, face dour.  Week after week after week.  Some of you even asleep!  No feeling expressed.  

Genuine worship involves feeling and I wonder if part of our difficulty in expressing our feelings in worship is that need to be in control?  We want everything to be controlled.  But God is the great God, the great King above all the gods who deserves to be control of every aspect of our lives – even our feelings - so we need to let go of our need to control, even our feelings.

God cannot honour the one who worships Him but still wants to keep control of everything.  He will always honour the worshipper that has no cares about what others think – for my heart is welling up in praise, I cannot keep from singing, I cannot keep from dancing,  I cannot keep from raising my hands in surrender!

“But what will other people think if I express my feelings?”  We need to understand that when we come here, we have an audience of one. To be sure when we come together, we need to respect one another, but essentially when we worship we have an audience of one and it doesn’t matter what others think. 

“Well, what will God think?”  And I can tell you that He is far less concerned about demonstrative worship than we are.  Do you remember how Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people expressed their joy in song and demonstrated their thanksgiving by throwing their coats on the ground and waving branches? And the Pharisees said, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples,” (Luke 19:39) and Jesus said, I can’t, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”  We do not offend God when we express joy and thanksgiving.

But there is more in our psalm.  Verse 6 – “O, Come.”  Those two words are repeated in this psalm.  Here at verse 6 and in verse 1. O, come. That conveys to me the feeling of eagerness.  O come. We are going to meet with the living God, the great God, and the King above all gods.  Are you eager to meet with Him?

Do you express eagerness in worship by being here on time? Or, are you late week after week after week?  Do you find it a chore to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, with no feeling of desire to meet with the living God?

I know there are situations. I know there are times with kids and difficulties in getting out of the door.  But for some of you, it’s week after week after week. 

Do you realize that we have an appointment here with the living God?  We are not primarily coming to hear the band, or to hear me preach or to meet with friends. We are coming here because we have an appointment with the living God!  And for anyone lesser, like a date, or a meeting with boss, or an appointment with a friend we wouldn’t dare be late.  O, let me get out of bed on Sunday morning with a sense of eagerness that this is the day that the Lord has made and I am going to meet with the living God!  Let there be a feeling of eagerness.

And of course I am not saying that we need to drum up these feelings artificially – but if you don’t have eagerness then I would recommend that you spend time meditating on verses 3,4,5, and 7 of this text, start thinking about who God truly is and let your eagerness flow out of that revelation. 

Verse 6 and 7 - “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.” 

“Let us worship” – that means let us fall down prostrate.  Let us bow down, let us kneel before the Lord.  All these outward postures demonstrate inward feelings.  They demonstrate first reverence.

O, how we need to realize that we are not coming to worship some puny god, or some mere idol.  We are not here to meet our buddy God, our old chum.  No, we are here to meet with the King of kings and Lord of lords, the great God who is above all gods.  We are here to meet with the one who by His grace has made us His sheep and has expressed His shepherd-like care and love for us in Jesus Christ.  And we dare not come with brashness, or thinking that we deserve to be here.  We need to express quiet reverence before Him. 

I have a funeral director friend who once told me that in any funeral he could easily pick out the Catholics from the Protestants in the service.  The Catholics, he said, always come into the chapel with reverence. Protestants always come in, greeting their friends and talking all the time.

Not only reverence but also the feeling of awe.  For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.  O, how we need to express our awe at the fact that God should actually choose us, actually want to be with us and shepherd us! 

Do you know that awe is often best expressed in silence?  A.W. Tozer has said that in heaven, there will be singing.  O, the joy that will be expressed in singing in heaven.  But Tozer says, that there will be something else in heaven besides singing.  He says it will be beyond singing, and that is silence.¹ And isn’t it true?  When we come across an awesome scene, or have an experience that so overwhelms and so awes us that we cannot speak, we stand with our eyes wide and our mouths gaping open at the sight and the event and afterward we had to say, “I was speechless.” 

O that we come to worship with the feeling of awe before our mighty God. 

Not only awe and reverence, but don’t these postures also demonstrate humility? That is also a feeling that we must express in worship.  No one can come into worship boasting of their own goodness.  No one can come into the worship event thinking that they deserve what God has given them.  There is a prayer that I have always found helpful, I recite it often, when I feel that I am getting too big for my britches: “He is God and I am not… He is God and I am not.”  And I wonder if that ancient prayer grew out of verse 7 of our text?  I read it like this - “He is our God, and we? Who are we? we are but the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.” 

I love this psalm because it covers such a broad range of feelings and encourages us to express them all before God.  There is the shout of joy and there is the quiet reverence of bowing down.  If you always come to worship with a shout of joy, trying kneeling before God and worshipping with reverent quiet awe.  And if you always worship with revenant awe, try shouting with joy before the Lord!

One expression is not better than the other, both are needed and both are appropriate. 

But there is still this left to say.  Verses 8 – 11:  “O that today you would listen to his voice!  Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day that Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.  For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘they are a people whose hearts go astray and they do not regard my ways.  Therefore in my anger I swore, they shall not enter my rest.’ ”

The Psalmist is referring to an event in history of the people of God.  God had just released the people from Egypt and had sent plague after plague to convince Pharaoh to let the people go.  The people saw this.  They saw God divide the Red Sea so they could walk across safely.  They saw God destroy Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea.  They had seen the mighty work of God and what do they do?  They complained, and said, “Why are we here in this desert, God has brought us out here to die.  We have no water and no food.  God is killing us.” (see Exodus 17 and Numbers 20)

All of this displayed a lack of trust, faith, obedience.  So Moses has to strike a rock as God commands and God causes water to come out of the rock.   From then on that place was called Massah and Meribah, because the people tested God, not trusting God in His power and ability. As a result of their lack of faith, of their desire to follow their own way instead of trusting in God, the people walked in the dessert for forty years and did not have the privilege of entering into the rest of the promised land. 

So the Psalmist is saying, Worship God with feeling.  Let there be joy, thankfulness, eagerness, reverence, humility and awe, but be sure to follow those feelings with obedience.  Do not allow your hearts to go astray, have a regard for God’s ways - that is, obey the word of God. 

I said there is nothing worse than a Christian who always is expressing joy - happy, happy all the time, but you know it not genuine.  And this is the test, isn’t it?  By all means, express your feelings in worship – but are your feelings, your expressions of worship matched with obedience to God’s Word?

One Tennessee Preacher said the following, and I think it sums up this psalm perfectly. He said to his congregation, “I don’t care how high you jump, or how loud you shout, as long as when you hit the ground you walk straight.”²

My friends, genuine worship involves feeling and God honours it.  But know also that worship that is not genuine involves feeling without obedience.      

This is what keeps us from hypocrisy.  By all means express your feelings in worship.  God welcomes it. But when you hit the ground, walk straight according to His Word. 

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - February 2006

ENDNOTES:

1.   A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: Christian Publications, 1955), 146.

2.   Quoted by Leighton Ford, The Christian Persuader (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1966), 124.

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