Psalm 95

Going through life with a song in your heart. Whistling while you work. Humming your way through life. Do you know anyone like this? Life just seems to rest easy on them. They are quick to smile. They laugh easily. When they’re hit with the unexpected, they seem to be able to roll with it. They don’t stumble. They don’t worry. They don’t get angry. They accept the change and move on, moving easily through life with a song in their heart.

Sometimes, when we see such a person, we’re a little jealous. We don’t react to life so easily. When we are hit with the unexpected, we go into panic mode. We circle the wagons, expect the worst. We get a little cranky. We get a little nervous. There is no song in our heart. There are just worries, fear. It’s hard to whistle while you work when your face is tight from worry. We wish we could go through life humming, singing, but we just can’t seem to find the secret.

But we must find the secret, the secret to a light life, an easy existence. We must. We see people who seem to have found the secret, so we know it’s out there. So we try whatever answer is close at hand. Our life will be light, our existence will be easy if our job is secure. If we can rise to a level in the company where there’s no jeopardy, where we can’t be fired. But we’re finding out that there is no such job. Job security does not equal life security, and there is still no song in our heart.

So we try positive attitude. If my surroundings can’t make me happy, then I’ll just make myself happy. I will keep that smile on my face, even if it hurts to do it. I will smile through the tears. I will grin through the pain. I will laugh in the face of danger. But soon, the smile starts to droop and the grin turns into a frown, and the laughter changes to sobs.

We can try so many ways to find happiness and security, to put a song in our heart. But we won’t find that lightness of spirit until we bow, until we bow in worship, until we kneel in total surrender to the God above all gods.

So, for all the people who find life heavy, for everyone who feels the worry and fear in their hearts, for anyone who knows what a tension headache feels like, verse 1:

Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;

Not, let us sing because that’s what we do in a worship service. Not, let us sing, because we have to keep up appearances and look like good, holy Christians. No, let’s sing for joy!

let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.

This singing is not done out of a sense of obligation. This shouting, this giving thanks, this extolling is spontaneous. It starts out deep in the gut and rises up the throat and bursts out of the mouth in joy and wonder and gratitude and relief.

But we come back to the question, why? Why does this happen? How do we go through life with a song on our lips? Where does this joy come from? How does the wonder and gratitude get in our gut in the first place? The answer is in verse 3:

For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods.

This is the source of our joy. This is the point when our faces begin to relax, when the smile starts to come, when the little chuckles escapes our lips, when the joy and the gratitude begins to take root. When we start to realize, when we come back to the truth, that, yes, the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.

Our joy starts to seep away, the laughter becomes forced when we forget our King, when we forget just how in control He really is. This King, our King is above all gods. This King, our King is in charge of everything, from the interaction of supply and demand, to the reaction of a nuclear device. He is in control of food supplies. He has a firm grip on weather patterns. He’s in charge of the global thermostat. He has His hand on every president, every prime minister, ever Ayatollah, every dictator, and every citizen in a democracy. They may not know it, and they may not like it, but this King has not lost control of His world for even a blink of a second.

So, we are singing for joy, we are shouting aloud, we coming before Him with thanksgiving and extolling Him with song because, verse 4:

In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

Verses 4 and 5 give a list of the scariest places for the people of that time. The depths of the earth are dark, dangerous places. You don’t know what’s lurking down there in those caves. Bats, rats, maybe bears, maybe lions. And, at the end of life, the body is lowered into the depths of the earth. The grave can be a frightening place. Same goes for mountain peaks. So many cliffs to fall off, so many slippery paths that could send you sliding to your death. Freezing to death in the snow. You don’t want to go up there. And the sea. We know how the Israelites felt about the sea. It was chaotic, stormy. It could suck you under. You go out on the sea, and you never come back. The depths, the heights, the seas, these are dangerous places.

But they all belong to the King, to your King. He made them, and He is good, so there’s really no danger in the depths, or the heights or the crazy places of life. Some places look so scary: the funeral home, the unemployment line, the empty house, the cemetery. How do we keep a song in our heart, how do we shout for joy, how do we sing a song of gratitude in those places? By recognizing and remembering that our King is the King of everything, even those place. By remembering that we can trust the goodness of our King, even in those frightening times. Even the most frightening place, even in the face of death, driving up to the funeral home, driving out to the cemetery, even that place is owned and operated by the King of kings. He hung for 6 hours on a cross, He died and stayed dead for 3 days, He rose again and came out of that tomb to defeat death, to take away the sting, even in the scariest places.

So, with a shout for joy on our lips, with a song in our hearts, verse 6:

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;

Let us bow down in worship. We don’t bow very much around here, do we? We sit. We stand. We may bow our heads in prayer, or when we receive the blessing. But verse 6 is telling us to bow down, down, down on the ground. Because, that’s where the joy is.

Down on the ground is where we find wonder. Down on the ground is where we find our gratitude. Down on the ground is where the song starts, because down on the ground is where we surrender. Bowing, kneeling is a physical way of giving up. Bowing, kneeling is an act of submission. With our bodies we are handing control of our lives over to our King.

Maybe, it’s hard for us to bow down. Maybe our knees don’t work very well. Maybe if we bow down in worship, we won’t be able to get back up again. But if our knees and backs and bodies are able, then this is how we worship. Our hearts and our bodies are linked. Our hearts direct our bodies, and our bodies inform our hearts. Bowing down, kneeling before the Lord our Maker makes our heart submit and surrender to His plan and His care. When we worship here, when we worship with our lives, our whole attitude has to be one of surrender and submission. If we’re not bowing with our bodies, then we must at least be bowing with our hearts, with our minds, with ourselves.

We have to give up. We have to stop thinking that we can control anything. We have to quit trying to make sure that everything goes right. We are not able to do the job. We can’t protect our families, our jobs, our income, our futures, ourselves. We just can’t, and it’s time to admit it. It’s time to let go. It’s time to bow down in worship and kneel in submission.

But we don’t have to be scared about giving up control. We don’t have to be afraid of letting go. At first, it feels irresponsible, terribly risky to hand over control. If we’re not looking out for ourselves, who will? But it’s safe, it’s good, it’s joyful to surrender because, verse 7:

for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care

Why wouldn’t we submit? He’s our God. Why wouldn’t we trust? We’re the people of His pasture? How could He not take care of our surrendered lives? We’re the flock under His care. Do you know the security, do you have the confidence, do you experience the safety of surrender to your God? It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Your job, your family, your community, your country, your world was made by your God, and it’s going to be okay.

Now, we have a choice. We can bow down and kneel before the Lord our Maker. We can open up the grasp we have on all the parts of our lives that we can’t control anyway, we can know the joy and gratitude of a life surrendered to the King…OR we can not. We can try to figure things out for ourselves, make our own plans, stay in control ourselves. It’s up to us, then, to figure out how to put food on the table and keep the lights turned on. It’s up to us to make we arrive at our retirement prepared for 20 or more years without an earned income. It’s our job, our responsibility to keep the church heading in the right direction. Somehow, we have to make sure our kids grow up loving Jesus, making wise and healthy decisions for their lives. All of that, everything then rests on our shoulders.

And instead of a song in our hearts, lives filled with shouts of joy, instead of giving thanks, we’re walking around carrying a ton of worry and fear about all this responsibility. We start sinking under all this weight, and so we try harder and harder to life what we were never meant to carry. We try to ignore our fears in the scary places. We try to keep our smile frozen on our faces, because that’s what Christians do. And life is empty of joy and thanksgiving and wonder and peace.

Which is why Moses, the author of Psalm 95 warns us, in verse 7:

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts

Moses is thinking back to the desert, when the people could have trusted God. But instead, the worry, the fear of being out in the desert, out of control, responsible for their own lives, the weight became too heavy, and they lost their song, they lost their joy.

Moses says, don’t go back there, verse 8:

as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert,

And here something happens, in verse 9. Moses has warned us, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts,” and suddenly, in verse 9, Moses voice becomes the voice of the Lord. God suddenly is speaking. Don’t turn away from the Lord, verse 9:

where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did.

He had cared and provided, He had protected them in the scary places, He had watched over them as the flock under His care, and they didn’t bow, they didn’t kneel, they didn’t trust, they didn’t surrender. Verse 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.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.”

But if we do hear His voice, if we don’t harden our hearts, if we surrender, if we bow down, if we let go, then we will enter His rest.

There is too much for us to figure out, and the problems are too big and complicated. The dangers are too fierce. The questions are too many. But everything, everything dangerous, everything unknown, everything was created and is controlled by our God, our God.

Bow down, surrender, quit trying so hard, trust Him. He loves you. You’re the flock under His care. Bow down, surrender, and find that joy. Let the joy take root and grow inside and come bursting out in a shout and a song, singing for joy to the Lord.