PSALMS SERIES: WEEK 09 - PSALM 95 - WHOLE-HEARTED OR HARD-HEARTED?

This morning will be different from other Sundays - and that’s okay. It’s good to be jarred from the routine from time to time in order to catch something that you might have become numb to.<br/><br/>And it’s good that we are messing with the order of WORSHIP - because really what I believe would be good for us to wake up to is our attitude towards worship; but not ONLY what is thought of by people when the term WORSHIP comes up in conversation.<br/><br/>Whenever a church begins to talk about worship, church people tend to go immediately in their minds to MUSIC, right? Or maybe you think worship as the sermon or the prayer time - or in some churches, even the liturgy, the rituals. But as you read through Scripture, you’ll find that in God’s economy, there is something deeper than the mere rituals we participate in each week. There’s a HEART, so to speak, an ATTITUDE that God calls His people into throughout their entire lives.<br/><br/>And that’s why I love the Psalm we are studying today: Psalm 95, because this Psalm has helped many people move from thinking about worship in terms of the external - what we DO in our religious life - to the internal - who we ARE as worshipers.<br/><br/>Now, if you're here this morning and, and you're not a Christian, as you the topic of worship, you probably think, great - but that’s not for me. I’m not a church person, and I’m definitely NOT a worshiper. HOWEVER, I would beg to differ; because the reality is worship is a human thing. It’s not just a religious thing. If you are a human being, you worship. It’s the way our minds, our hearts, our souls work - how (we would say here in church) we were created.<br/><br/>Now, you may not CALL it worship - but all of us give ourselves to SOMETHING. All of us chase after something; moved by something we place high value on: a sport, a hobby, a job, a Netflix series. Things that have WORTH - THIS is what it means to worship, to assign worth to something. So, even people who aren’t religious, the problem isn’t a lack of worship - the problem is MISPLACED worship.<br/><br/>What I hope happens today as you give me about half an hour is that you would through our study of Psalm 95 begin to see who GOD truly is and why He invites YOU into a relationship where you come to worship Him in a way that is higher than anything else you count as significant.<br/><br/>And, if you are here this morning and you ARE a believer, I hope that you would gain a firmer foundation wherever you DO enter into worship, whether it’s here on Sunday, or in your everyday life; I hope you’d see worship as the essential thing God designed it to be as He invites you to COME.