Thank you very much, Fiona and Van, for leading our worship so helpfully this morning.
Two weeks ago, my wife Bridget and I were up on the Isle of Lewis
visiting our daughter-in-law Kirstein's parents.
And while we were there, we went along with them to Locke's Free Church.
If you went to a free church in Edinburgh,
you might well find that the music wasn't very different from what we have here.
But up in Lewis, they still sing the Psalms exclusively with a presenter.
And as I was thinking about this psalm we're looking at this morning,
I thought it was a good reminder to me that the psalms were intended to be sung as originally written.
Nothing wrong with reading the verses or studying them.
We're going to be doing that later on.
But originally, they were written to be sung.
So for our scripture reading this morning, I thought we'd do something a little bit different.
We're going to listen to someone singing Psalm 95.
The words will come up on the screen as well.
The words are very faithful to the text.
If you want to follow them along, one or two verses repeated,
but very faithful to the text.
So it will tell us what Psalm 95 is about.
And be a good reminder to us that we're looking at Israel's songbook
at the way in which the people then used to praise God.
So let's watch this now.
And whether sung or spoken, that is God's word.
And we pray that you'll bless it to us as we think about it this morning.
While we were up in Lewis, we also went into Stornoway and spent a day there.
And while we were walking around the streets, we came across a converted shop
that had been changed into a church.
It was called the New Wine Church.
Now, I don't know much about the New Wine Church,
but I would guess that their worship, their style of worship,
is very different from the free church.
And in the window, they had guitars.
But again, a quote from the Psalms,
I will sing a new song to the Lord on the ten-stringed lyre.
And again, that was a reminder to me of the Psalms,
of the variety that we have in them.
There are times in the Psalms when we want to come exuberantly
and with lively music as we sing praise to God and rejoice in him.
And there are times also when we want, as would be normal in the free church,
to be more reverent and reflective in our worship.
And different people respond to different kinds of worship.
But good for all of us to have that variety.
And when we're in the Psalms, very often we find that even in one Psalm,
there is that variety of worship.
I don't know if you noticed, it went through Psalm 95.
It is a classic example of it.
It starts off as a really Psalm of praise, of excitement to God,
or encouraging people to sing and to shout to him and to worship God.
And then in the middle of verse 7, suddenly it changes completely.
And it changes into a warning not to harden our hearts,
not to lose the rest that God has promised to us.
And you might wonder, well, why does the Psalm change so dramatically halfway through?
Why does it start off with such joy in the Lord and then end with such a strong warning?
Well, let me paint a little picture of what I think might be the background to this Psalm.
The Israelites, during the course of the year, they had many festivals.
Now, their festivals weren't great extravaganzas of music and of drama and dance and so on,
like we'll be having in Edinburgh over the next month.
Rather, the festivals were celebrations of what God had done for his people
and coming to give him thanks and to offer sacrifices to him for them.
And it might have been the festival here was the Feast of Tabernacles.
Feast of Tabernacles was kind of a harvest Thanksgiving period,
but also a time of remembering that God led the Israelites for 40 years through the wilderness
and that he took them safe into the promised land.
Indeed, in the Feast of Tabernacles, the people sometimes lived in little tents or booths
as a reminder to themselves of what it had been like in the wilderness.
So let's imagine it's the Feast of Tabernacles,
and we've got the pilgrims who are coming to the feast.
And they're really excited about it.
This is one of the highlights of their year.
And as they're walking through the streets, they're saying to people,
come on, let's worship God together.
Let's sing and shout for joy to the Lord and remember what a great God he is.
And that is, I think, the first half of the psalm.
Then they arrive at the temple and the priest is standing there.
And he says, come in, but remember you're coming to worship the God who's our maker
and who is our shepherd.
And he's not just someone that we want to sing and shout praise to.
Our God, our great God, is someone we need to bow down before
and to recognize his greatness.
And let's make sure as we come before God that we don't come with hard hearts,
with wrong attitudes, that even though on the surface we appear to be praising God,
actually inside, we're wrong.
As your ancestors, speaking to Jews, as your ancestors going through the wilderness,
they hardened their hearts for all God's goodness to them.
They lost out on the blessing that God had planned for them because they didn't obey him.
I think that might be an explanation of the two halves of the psalm.
In the one half, you've got the call to worship and to praise God together.
And then in the second half, you have the call to come reverently before God
and to examine your hearts and then to worship him.
So I'll just give a brief outline of what I think the two halves are made up of
and then we'll go through them in a little bit more detail.
So the first half is about acclaiming God's greatness.
I'll divide that in two.
The first two verses are about irrepressible praise.
They're the ones that talk about shouting and singing and so on.
And then verses three to five talk to us about God's incomparable power,
that he is the God who is in control of everything on our earth.
And the second half of the psalm, I've said, is about accepting God's grace.
And then in verses six and seven, there's the call to sincere worship.
And that's followed then by the solemn warning that I talked about.
So we're going to go through the psalm under these headings
and just see what God has to say to us through it.
So first, irrepressible praise.
So let's read more conventionally this time what the psalm says here.
It says,
Psalm 95 is one of a string of psalms through the Psalm 90s, which we're looking at the moment,
where there is a great command to come and to praise God.
There are psalms that celebrate God as our king, as the one who is in control of everything,
as the one who deserves our praise.
And many of them do talk about praising God with singing, with musical instruments, with real joy.
Not holding back, not coming half-heartedly in worship, but rather as we come to God,
really letting go and letting him understand and know how much we appreciate him,
and letting everyone else, too, know about the greatness of our God.
If this was, as I was imagining, people walking through the streets of Jerusalem singing,
they were letting everyone else know how great God is.
And it's good, isn't it, when we can come together, and in that sense, we can let go.
We can come with real joy.
Some of the songs we've been singing this morning, which tell us about God's goodness,
and rejoice in all that he is, and all that he has done for us.
And we should come with hearts that are full of thankfulness and full of joy,
because we have such a great God.
He's called, in this verse, the rock of our salvation.
Now, when we think of God as the rock, we probably would immediately think of the rock
as being something solid and something you can build on,
like the story of the two builders Jesus told in the New Testament.
The one who built on the rock, their house was secure.
The one on the sand, it wasn't.
Psalms also talk about being hidden in the rock.
So the rock talks about security.
But I think particularly in the context of this psalm,
there's a second significance to the rock,
because as we'll see a bit later on,
one of the events that the psalmist is looking back to
is when Moses struck the rock with his rod,
and there was water came from it.
And that water was vitally needed by the Israelites,
who were really in danger of dying if they didn't get water.
And it speaks of God's salvation,
of him being able to save us from the worst things in life.
Looking forward, it looks to the salvation that we have through Jesus.
So we're looking to the one who is our rock.
We're praising him.
We're excited about him.
And we want to give him all the glory.
Good if we can come with that attitude.
I know people going through difficult times might be difficult to do that.
But if we're able to come and to praise God
and to sing our worship to him with real joy.
And why do we do that?
Well, says the psalmist, it's because of his incomparable power.
So verses 3 to 5.
For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.
In his hands 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.
So in this part of the psalm, the psalmist is particularly concentrating on God as the all-powerful one.
The one who is the creator, and the one who keeps things moving everywhere on the earth.
He is, says the psalmist, the great God.
And he says he's the great King above all gods.
Now the psalmist is not thinking that the other gods that people around about the Israelites would worship
were in any sense real, in that they existed.
But they were real in the sense that people worshipped them and thought that they existed.
And the psalmist is saying, our God is incomparable with these false gods that other nations worship.
And it's possible as he goes through the list in verses 4 and 5,
he's thinking particularly about some of the gods, with small g, of the nations round about Israel.
So there was the god Baal or Baal.
Now the thing about Baal was he was a god where everything had to be seen and visible.
Remember when Elijah was up against the prophets of Baal in the book of 1 Kings,
that it was on the mountaintop, on Mount Carmel,
that they had this big sacrifice to see which God could answer with fire.
And that was very much taking Baal on on his own territory.
He was the god of the mountaintop.
So when the psalmist says the mountain peaks belonged to him,
may have been thinking about that false god of the nations round about Israel.
The god where things had to be seen.
And the idea was that you went up to the top of the mountain,
and you acted something out, and Baal would see it, and he would bless you.
Whether it was sacrifices you were making, or there were sexual orges,
and all sorts of things, you were supposed to give messages to Baal.
The idea was he saw them, and when he saw them, things happened.
And we don't worship gods like that in that sense in our day.
But for many people, it's perhaps not that different.
It's wanting to be seen, and to be visible,
and to look at the material things round about us.
Because all these sacrifices to Baal and so on,
they were really just to win his favor,
so that he would bless the people, so they would have good crops,
and that the nation would be prosperous.
And certainly, we think of it in that kind of sense.
A lot of people today, their big aim is that they,
that people round about should be prosperous.
The markets, getting the markets right,
getting more money for myself, getting a better job, and so on.
And that maybe is the modern equivalent of the worship of Baal.
And the psalmist says to us,
much more important than that is that we worship,
that we praise God, that we get our priorities right.
Second God was called Molech.
Now, Molech was almost the opposite of Baal.
Rather than being the god of everything being seen,
he was the god of everything that was hidden.
So it was all the kind of a coat stuff,
and things that were hidden away that weren't on the surface.
It was kind of almost a secret society type stuff.
The Molech dwelt in the underworld,
and he could have a very malevolent force on people.
And again, don't have a direct equivalent perhaps today,
but there's an awful lot of stuff today that's done in secret
that people don't want others to find out about.
I'm sure you've noticed over the last few months
the amount of things that have come out that have been secret,
the sexual improprieties of lots of celebrities in the past,
and some shocking abuse that's been revealed.
Or the kind of secret mining of data and using it in ways that it was never intended to be used,
the Facebook thing and so on.
Lots of these things that are kind of hidden away in secret,
that aren't meant to be revealed,
and yet which are very much against the way that people should be behaving.
And perhaps that again is a lesson for us,
that we need to be very careful that we are open,
that we are transparent,
that we've not got lots of things that are hidden away,
that our life is open before God,
and that our worship for him is true and is sincere.
One more example,
the god of the sea was called Timat.
And he was a god who was characterized by great strength and force.
The force of the sea as their waves crash against the land
or against the boat, if you're out in it.
And Timat represented the importance of power and of influence.
And again, in our day, many people,
the thing that they really want,
the thing that's important to them,
is to have power and to have influence
and to be seen to be important.
And again, we need to say,
let's bow down, let's worship our great God.
Beside him, we're insignificant.
Any power we have,
any power that gods of our day,
not that we imagine they're gods in the sense they did in the past,
but actually in reality, very much similar.
Nothing that they have can compare to our God.
And because he is so great,
because he is so wonderful,
then we should praise him
and we should be letting other people know how good our God is.
And particularly in the way the psalmist never could,
to talk about how God sent his son into the world
to be our saviour,
how God came as one of us
and lived our life
and died our death on the cross at Calvary.
And much of our singing this morning has been praising
God and the Lord Jesus for that great sacrifice.
So we need to be praising God.
We need to be coming before him with joyful hearts.
As I said, there's then a bit of a change in the psalm.
And instead of looking at the importance of praising God
with great joy and with singing and with shouting,
the psalmist now says,
actually, when you come to God,
another appropriate way to come
is with an attitude of worship
and to bow down before him
and just be awestruck by how great our God is
and then to go away and to obey him.
And that's what the second half of the psalm is about.
I've imagined it's the priest saying that to the people.
Might have been, might not.
But it certainly is trying to get home to us.
It's not all about being on the mountaintop
and singing and being excited all the time.
We need to come to our God with reverence
and with respect and with real awe
and to recognize that everything we are comes from him
and that we owe him our allegiance.
So verse six, he says,
come, let us bow down in worship.
Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker,
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Now you notice the psalmist has moved here
from the general to the specific.
So in the early verses,
he's talking generally about God,
the God of creation,
the God of the mountaintops
and of the sea and so on.
Now he's talking about our God.
The God who is not just the all-powerful one,
but the God who cares for you and who cares for me.
And he says, as we come to God and reflect on that,
the right way to come is bowing down
and symbolically in thought at least,
kneeling before the Lord.
He is our maker.
He is our God.
And he is our shepherd.
We're talking earlier to the children,
but Psalm 23,
there are a way looking at it just now.
And there's a bit of an echo of that in verse seven here.
We are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Shepherd's job is to look after the sheep.
The sheep's job is to follow the shepherd
shepherd and to trust him and to do as he tells them.
Now in the olden days in the land of Israel,
at the time the psalmist was writing,
you wouldn't have a shepherd going out with a sheep dog
and using the dog to round them up.
Rather, the shepherd would do it all with his voice.
He would call his sheep,
his sheep would know his voice,
and his sheep would respond.
That's the picture the Lord Jesus picks up on
in John chapter 10,
when he talks about himself as the good shepherd.
And so the psalmist now says,
we have this God who's great,
who's the master of the universe,
who's in charge of everything.
He's also our God,
and he cares for us,
and he loves us.
But our responsibility then
is to bow down and to worship
and to obey him.
The psalmist says,
I know that very often people come before God
or come into church or temple or whatever in those days,
and that's not the way they are.
And he says,
remember what happened in the wilderness.
So let's read the remaining verses of the chapter
that are called A Solemn Warning.
And this is God speaking here.
Today, if you would only hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts,
as you did at Meribah,
as you did at that day at Massah in the wilderness.
Where your ancestors tested me,
they tried me,
though they had seen what I did.
For 40 years,
I was angry with that generation.
I said,
there are 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.
The Sabbath is looking back,
particularly at two instances
that happened to the Israelites
as they went through the wilderness.
Remember,
the Israelites,
under Moses,
eventually got free from Pharaoh
and the Egyptians
after the 10 plagues.
And then there were 40 years
wandering around the wilderness
before they got to the promised land
where they would eventually settle.
Didn't need to be 40 years.
There were 40 years
because they were so disobedient
and so mistrusting of God.
And there were two instances in particular,
one near the start
of when they set out,
and one a bit further on
that the psalmist talks about here.
First one after the start,
the Israelites have come out of Egypt.
They've got stuck in front of the Red Sea
with the Egyptians charging up behind them,
and God miraculously passed the Red Sea
and the Israelites were able to get over
and the Egyptians are all drowned in it.
And there were then three incidents
where the Israelites felt
they had a great need of God.
First was they came to some water
and discovered the water was undrinkable.
The water was very bitter.
And God, through Moses,
made that water drinkable,
made it sweet.
They then went on a bit
and they were grumbling
because they were really hungry.
They were saying,
why have you brought us, Moses,
out of Egypt
just to die here
in this wilderness?
And God graciously provided for them
manna that they would get every day
or six days a week
and the seventh day
there'd be enough
on the sixth day to do
throughout their time in the wilderness.
He also provided that time quail.
So God provided what they needed.
They went on a bit
and they got thirsty.
Now you think at this point,
the Israelites would realize,
well, God can look after us.
He got us out of Egypt.
He got us across the Red Sea.
He made that water drinkable.
He's given us food to eat.
But no,
they grumble against Moses.
Moses worried
they're going to actually kill him
that they're so angry with him
because they haven't believed
in what God is doing for them.
And that's what the reference here
to Mereba and Massa is.
It's the same place
and there are two names for it
given in the passage
in Exodus chapter 17.
And Moses,
it was so exasperated
with Israel at that point,
quite rightly,
and God too is exasperated
because they've hardened their hearts,
they've seen his goodness,
and rather than seeing
the lack of water
as being God testing them
and an example for them
to show the faith they had in God,
rather they made it a test of God.
Well, if he's the real God,
can he do something for us?
They ignored the good
that God had done for them
and they tried to get him to do more.
That's incident number one,
as I say,
near the start of the wanderings.
Incident number two
in the second part of it
is in some ways
the culmination
of a great period
of unbelief by the Israelites.
Again and again,
the Israelites experienced
God's grace
and they throw it back in his face
and they still won't believe.
So Moses sent some spies out
to spy out the land of Canaan
where they were going to settle.
And the spies came back
and they said,
it's a wonderful land.
It's flowing with milk and honey.
It's everything
we could possibly want.
But they said,
the people there
are really strong.
There are giants among them.
They're much bigger than us.
There's no way
we can go in
and conquer that land.
And of the 12 spies
that went,
10 of them gave that message.
Two of them,
Joshua and Caleb,
came back and said,
yes, with God's help,
we can do it.
But the 10
who were unbelieving,
they won over the people
and the people
were terrified
of going forward.
They didn't believe
the God
who had led them out of Egypt,
who had done so much for them,
was able to take them
into the promised land.
They didn't really understand God
because their hearts
were hard.
And the consequence of that
was out of the Adai
to left Egypt,
only two,
Joshua and Caleb,
made it into the land
at the end,
which is referenced there
to entering my rest.
Only two of those
who left Egypt
as adults
went into Canaan
at the end
because everyone else
refused to believe God.
So this is about
hard hearts.
Hard hearts
and not believing God,
not taking up his word
and not believing
that he can continue
to be with us
as he has been
in the past.
Now these are
very important verses.
The verses are sometimes
missed when
this psalm is used
as a call to worship
as it is in some traditions,
but they're verses
that are picked up
in the book of Hebrews
and for two chapters
the writer to the Hebrews
comments on the significance
of these psalms
to us today,
of these verses
to us today.
So it's not just
about the Israelites
back in the wilderness,
back under Moses.
It's not just
about the immediate
audience
that the writer
is addressing this to
and the Israelites
as they sing the psalm.
It is very relevant
for us today
as Christians.
And the message is
we must not
harden
our hearts.
It is so easy
for us to be
led astray
by the things
of this world
and for our hearts
to become hard
before God.
Now what does a hard
heart mean
in this context?
Well I suppose
the first thing
it means
is that we forget
all that God
has done
for us.
That was the
great sin
of the Israelites
wasn't it?
They'd seen everything
that God had done
and they didn't
pay any attention
to it.
All they could see
was the problems
and the difficulties
they were facing
then.
They forgot
what God
had done
for them.
And we need
to be very careful
if we know God
if we have put
our trust
in the Lord Jesus
that we don't
forget
all that he has
done
for us.
Because if we do
forget what he's
done for us
then as we look
forward
we won't be able
to exercise
the faith in him
that we need to.
We have a God
who loved us
so much
that he sent
his son
into the world
to die for us
on the cross
and to forgive us
for all the wrong
that we've done
and to bring us
into a relationship
with him
where we can come
before him
and we can call him
our father.
And we need to look
back and say
God has been good
to me.
We also need to look
back over our lives
and to see
times when
we have needed
God
and he has been
there
and he has helped us.
Now I can't
say what these times
have been for you
but there have been
times where
I'm sure all of us
who know the Lord Jesus
when we have
struggled
and God has been there
and he has
helped us
as he helped
the Israelites
as they went
through the desert.
And we need to
remember
what God
has done
for us
and that needs
to be the thing
which gives us
faith
to know that
the God
who has been
with us
in the past
will also be
with us
in the future
whatever we may
face
in this life.
Hard hearts
forget
all that
God
has done
for them.
Second thing
I suggest
that would be
characteristic
of hard hearts
is not
believing
what God
has promised
to us.
So God
had promised
to the Israelites
he'd lead them
out of Egypt
and he would
take them
to the land
that had been
promised many
centuries before
to Abraham.
And the people
knew God's word
and yet they
clearly didn't
believe it.
They spent
an awful lot of
time going
through the wilderness
saying I wish
we could go
back to Egypt.
We'd be much
better off in Egypt
than we are now.
It was rubbish.
They were slaves
in Egypt.
They were under
oppressors.
They were in a
terrible situation
and yet they
couldn't understand
that they needed
to follow God's
plan and they
needed to believe
God's word
to them.
Important for us
too that as we
come to look
at life and look
at his problems
that we do it
believing that
God's word
is absolutely
true and it
can be the
thing that
gives us the
strength to
keep going
as we trust
in him.
If we in any
way start to
doubt God's
word then our
faith is failing,
our hearts
are becoming
hard.
Then the third
thing I think
that characterizes
hard hearts
is very much
a focus on
myself
rather than
looking
outward.
So the Israelites
were totally
focused on them
and on their
situation and
their worries
and their
anxieties and
they weren't
really interested
in anyone else
or in what God
was doing for
them.
Very easy for us
too to have
hard hearts and
to become very
self-centered.
Not focusing on
God and on
his greatness and
not focusing either
on others and
seeing their needs
and thinking well
how can I help to
meet that need.
If we just come
along on a
Sunday morning
looking for
something for
ourselves and
not really
concerned about
anyone else,
if we have no
interest in other
Christians during
the week we just
want to get what's
best for us,
then that is a
sign perhaps that
our hearts are
becoming hard.
So hard hearts,
you forget what
God's done,
you don't trust
God's word,
and you only care
about yourself.
That's where the
Israelites were,
and the
psalmist and
the writer to
the Hebrews says
there's a real
danger that that
is where we
get to as well.
And yet we
shouldn't.
We need to
remember that the
God who didn't
spare his own
son but gave
him up for us
all, he will
also freely with
him give us
all things.
In other words,
we remember what
God has done in
giving his son and
we recognize that
he will give us
all things.
We need to
recognize, as
the writer of the
Hebrews does,
the word of God
is living and
active and
sharp and
any two-edged
sword.
And when we
hear the word of
God, we need to
let him speak to
us and to
change our life,
to change our
hearts, to bring
us closer to
Jesus.
And we need to
remember that if
we are going to
reflect the love
that Jesus had,
then we need to
be outward
thinking, we need
to be concerned
about others, not
to have hard
hearts and to
be self-centered.
And why is this
important?
Well, says the
psalmist, it's so
that you can
enter God's
rest.
His race in
this desert never
got to enter
God's rest, in
that case, the
promised land.
Writer of the
Hebrews says,
picking up this
psalm, be careful
that you don't
miss out on
God's rest as
well.
And I think there
are two aspects
to God's rest.
One of it is
the kind of
present day, that
as we experience
God's rest, it is
a peace, it's an
awareness of God's
presence, it is
not being too
taken up with
events that we
can't see, that
God is there and
God will help us
through it.
So it is being
able to rest in
God and know
he has done for
us.
And then there's
the forward-looking
aspect, that
those who know
and who love the
Lord Jesus, there
is an ultimate
rest for them when
work is over,
when this life
is behind us
and we go to
be with the
Lord Jesus and
to be with him
forever.
And that in a
sense is what
is symbolized in
Israel, it's
going to the
promised land, it
is us if we
know and trust the
Lord Jesus entering
into his rest at
the end of our
lives.
The psalmist says
make sure that you
get that rest.
And one other
thing he says,
today.
And the writer
of Hebrews again
picks it up, he
says today, if
you would only
hear his voice.
Forty years the
Israelites wandered
through the
wilderness.
Forty years they
had opportunities to
believe God and to
obey him and to
have the assurance of
his rest.
Again and again as
they failed him, God
was willing to
overlook that and to
continue to bless
them despite the
fact that they
didn't trust him.
but in the end
it was too late
for them and
they didn't get
into the
promised land.
And this I think
is designed to
bring a sense of
real urgency to
us.
Getting myself
right with God
whether that's
trusting the Lord
Jesus for the
first time or
coming back to
him and
confessing the
hardness has
come into my
heart.
That is something
that can't keep
getting put off.
It will
ultimately be
too late.
Today is the
day of salvation.
Today is the
time when we
need to get
ourselves right
before God.
So as I said
a psalm of two
halves.
One half which
is joyful and
celebratory and
another half which
is really quite
solemn and is
designed to make
us think and
examine ourselves
before God.
And let's all of
us today, let's
rejoice in what
God has done for
us but let's
also examine
our hearts.
Heart disease is
one of the
biggest killers
in our country
and in the
world today.
And most heart
disease is
caused largely
by lifestyle,
by what we
eat, by not
getting enough
exercise and
so on.
And perhaps that
is one thing that
I can leave with
you as a practical
thing to think
about as we
take this psalm
away.
how can I
have a healthy
heart before
God?
Well it's partly
about taking in
the right things,
it is about
reading God's
word and
meditating on it.
And can I
challenge everyone
this week to
spend time before
God reading and
meditating on
his word.
And it's also
about what I
do.
It's about the
exercise we like
when we're talking
about our
physical hearts.
And this week,
let's go out
with hearts
that are soft
and that are
willing to
serve God
and to serve
others and to
show other
people the love
of the Lord
Jesus for us.
Let's not be
those with
hard hearts,
let's be those
who go and
who listen and
who obey and
who then can
rejoice in our
great God and
in all that he
has done for
us.
Let's pray
together.
Our Father,
we thank you
for your word,
we thank you
for the joy
that is in
the psalm
and yet the
solemnity.
And we pray
that you will
give us that
joy as we
think about
all that you
have done
for us.
But we pray
also that you
will soften
our hearts,
that you will
remove indifference
from us,
that you will
make us wholly
committed to
you,
that we will
listen to your
word and that
we will believe
it and that
we will obey
it.
For some,
that might be
for the first
time believing
that Jesus
came and
died for
their sins
and putting
their trust
in him.
And for some
of us it
might be a
returning to
you, a
softening of
our hearts as
we recognise
how far we've
gone from
you and how
much we need
to change to
get back to
the rest and
the joy that
you promised
to us.
Help us to
examine ourselves
today and to
respond appropriately,
that we may
have a joy in
the Lord,
that we may
have a real
rest in him.
We give you
thanks and we
commit ourselves
to you.
In the name
of the Lord
Jesus.
Amen.