Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

The first ‘Venite’ or ‘Come’ was in reference to the celebration of praise. Now the second ‘Venite’, ‘Come’ is a universal invitation to experience the love of the Shepherd of Israel. The word worship means to ‘stretch one’s self out full length upon the ground, the proper attitude of adoration’ 4 . To kneel or bend the knee is the next bodily position while bowing the head or upper torso is also mentioned. God begins with the most extreme form of expression and moves to the less demonstrative. Spurgeon says ‘pos- ture is not everything, yet is it something…’. A true encounter with the living God should deeply affect the worshiper. John was worshiping on the Lord’s Day: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.” (Rev. 1:17) There are special moments in the life of the believer when the only thing we can do is ‘worship’ prostrate before him.

“For he is our God, and we are the people he watches over, the sheep under his care.” (7)

Jesus declares that he is the Shepherd of those who ‘come’ to him: “I am the good shepherd.” (Jn. 10:11) The Shepherd relationship is personal and loving as they live among the sheep caring for their every need. We are under his direct, benevolent protection: “No one will snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me…” (Jn. 10:28)

II

PLACE OF REST - 7-11 Prophecy and Warning

“Oh, that you would listen to his voice today! The Lord says, ‘Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah, as they did at Massah in the wilderness. For there your ancestors tried my patience; they courted my wrath though they had seen my many miracles.” (7-9) We now come to the most quoted verse from psalms in the New Testament: “Today you must lis- ten to his voice” or “that you would listen to his voice today.” (7) We may begin with singing, shouting, thanking and bowing but the final act of worship is to hear his voice and obey him daily. Spurgeon says: ‘we cannot soften our hearts but we can harden them 5 .’ Disobedience hardens us but true heart-felt worship can affect the heart. The obedience that God is calling for ‘today’ is to obey the ‘Venite’, the invitation to come to him in faith expressed in praise and worship and to submit to his will. From verse 8 onwards this becomes a direct prophecy from the Holy Spirit as evidenced in Hebrews 3:7: “That is why the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today you must listen to his voice.’” Up until this point the psalm has been in the 3d per- son, now it is a direct 1st person message from God himself. Israel failed this test twice in the wilderness. The first failure is recorded in Exodus 17 and occurred about 2 years after the Exodus out of Egypt. They had come to a place called Rephidim where there was no water; “So once more the people grumbled and complained to Moses. ‘Give us water to drink!’ they demanded. ‘Quiet!’ Moses replied. ‘ Why are you arguing with me? And why are you testing the Lord?’” In the psalm it is called Meribah meaning ‘arguing, contention’ and Massah, ‘the place of testing.’ When- ever we accuse God of not loving us enough to meet our basic needs, we are guilty of putting him to the test. Our complaining is in direct opposition to the teaching of this psalm; sing, shout, thank ! Moses was instructed to strike the rock; a picture of the coming blows Jesus was to experience for us at Cal- vary that we may receive the waters of the Holy Spirit; “For they all drank from the miraculous rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ.” (1 Cor. 10:4) 38 years later at the place called Kadesh they again grumbled and complained about the lack of water. God was giving them a second chance to overcome their mistakes of previous years. Moses was instructed by the Lord to go and command the rock to bring forth water, but instead he became angry: “Then Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with the staff, and water gushed out…This place was known as the waters of Meribah, because it was where the people of Israel argued with the Lord…” (Num 20:11, 13) The rock is never to be struck again as Jesus experienced that once and for all at the cross. Now we are to ‘speak’, ‘sing’ and ‘shout joyfully’ to the rock of our salvation even in the driest deserts of life. We are not to ‘test’ God by grumbling about the circumstances in which we find ourselves but rather live in the dimension of the 1st half of Psalm 95. “For forty years I was angry with them, and I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me. They refuse to do what I tell them.’ So in my anger I made a vow: ‘They will never enter my place of rest.”(10, 11)

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