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1:24Likewise, Christ-likeness doesn't happen by accident. It comes Out of a godly routine. The problem with many of us and why there are many, why we see many un-Christ-likeness in the church is because many people do not have a godly routine and therefore they are not on a godly trajectory. Well, this morning we come to a very rich psalm. Psalm 95. It tells us how we can live joyfully and live expectantly and avoid catastrophe. And all that, living joyfully, living expectantly, and avoiding catastrophe, all comes out by the means of a godly routine. So if you want to change your spiritual trajectory, you need to change your spiritual routine.

2:30And Psalm 95 provides us that routine. A very simple routine. How to grow in your Christ-likeness. It will teach you how to experience life to its fullness. A very simple, simple routine. I'm not breaking from Hebrews. Actually, I'm taking a week to go deeper into our. Understanding of Hebrews because Hebrews chapter 3 and chapter 4 all come out and are centered on the thoughts in Psalm 95. I'm convinced that Paul loved Psalm 95. I think if we were in a lot of those synagogues, we would hear him preaching a lot from Psalm 95. Let's just read the text. Psalm 95, verse 1. Oh, come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for it was he who made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 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. Today, if you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Masa, in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me. They tried me, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, They are a people. People who err in their heart, and they do not know my ways. Therefore, I swore in my anger, truly they shall not enter into my rest.

4:46Who wrote this psalm? We don't know until you really get to Hebrews chapter 4, 7. We read it. David wrote it. It's clearly an exhortation and warning to the Jewish people. There is a call to assemble in verses 1 and 2. There's an emphasis upon dwelling with and worshiping God in verse 6. And because of that, it has led some to believe that this was associated with the Feast of Booths. You remember one night we had a little Feast of Booths time celebration.

5:21Feast of Booths was an annual gathering where people had to go up to Jerusalem. They had to live in tents. And they had to remember the lessons that were learned in the wilderness. That's what the Feast of Booths was all about. It was the first tailgate party. It was the one that I think would have been one of the most joyful of the feasts that required pilgrimage up to Jerusalem. But they were called to celebrate, go up, worship, and remember the lessons learned in the wilderness.

6:00And so, as we look at this, I want to set before you a practical guide for daily living so that you will joyfully and expectantly walk with your Maker. And by the way, this guide is really not a suggestion, it's a summons. Language is far more strong in this language. All humanity is summoned. Life summons us to this routine. I was just recently summoned for jury duty. It wasn't an option. I have to be there next week. I am summoned, and I must appear. So, likewise, life is a summons to three things. A summons to three things. We can find these in the Psalm 95 as we walk through. It's a summons.

6:59Three things. First, life is a summons to come before the God who will help you. To come before the God who will help you. And this is good to start in the morning. I know people have different schedules and routines, and I'm not talking about when you do the bulk of your Bible study or that kind of thing, but to start, this is the very place you should start the first thing when your eyes awake. First thing on your mind should be come before the God who will help you. Be coming before the God who will help you. Look at verse 1. Oh, come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Literally saying, Y'all come, y'all be coming, you all be traveling. That's it. Y'all be moving, traveling towards Yahweh. That's the idea. It's about soul movement to God and into His presence. That's what coming before God is about. About coming to Him and into His presence. So if you think about the summons to come before God, two things have to happen. First of all, you need to come to Him with joy in your hearts. You need to come to Him with joy in your heart.

8:27Oh, come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us be singing to Yahweh. Let us be shouting to the rock of our salvation. As a result of joy, let us be singing. As a result of our joy, let us be shouting. This is how you are to wake up and approach God. I know a lot of us don't. Joy isn't the first thing on your mind when you wake up in the morning, is it?

8:58Let us sing. Let us be rejoicing exceedingly. Let us be blasting praise and thanks with our voice. That's not really where we start. But that is the summons. The summons here is very strong. Come, put yourself in a state of joy. Isn't that wonderful? God expects joy. He wants us to come before His presence with joy. And to do that, you must put yourself in a state of joy. Cause joy to be in your step. Even if it says, step in your mind as you go toward Christ.

9:40So, where do we? If we wake up, we're groggy, and a lot of people aren't, they don't think about that first things. You got to wake up first. That's not what it's talking about here. How does joy, how do we honor this? Well, it tells us: joy comes out of remembering who you are traveling to visit. Joy comes out of who you're about to meet. And notice to who. Let us sing for joy. Let us be shouting for joy to the rock of our salvation. Think about that, Matter. The rock, the source, the foundation of our well-being. That's what it's about. Salvation is about being delivered.

10:30From that which harms, delivered to that which is good. Let us sing joyfully to the rock of our salvation, regardless of what happened yesterday. You can start every morning right here, joyfully. Not because of our past failures or our past successes. That's not the basis of our joy. Our joy is because we have a relationship with the rock of our salvation. That is who we're going to see, the one who has authored and knows us and knows what well-being is like. I love Lamentations 3:21. Every morning is new. He says this, and Lamentations 3:21, this I recall to my mind. I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope. The Lord's loving kindness indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail. They are new. Every morning, great is your faithfulness. Come to the rock of your salvation. He is the God who is disposed to our well-being. He's very much in tune.

11:47I remember the excitement, maybe some of you do, traveling to my grandparents' house on special occasions. You remember as a child, childhood memories? Let's go see grandma. Let's go see grandpa. I remember our whole. Car would be filled with my siblings, and we would be excited to go to our grandparents' house because we knew we would soon meet with somebody who was kind, someone who was generous, those who loved us and they were excited to see us.

12:20See, we don't have any pilgrimages like this in our country, like to go up to some high, like they did in Jerusalem. But we do experience somewhat of a holiday pilgrimage, don't we? We're going to go see grandma, we're going to go see grandpa. In fact, I think an old poem, an old New England poem that was turned into a song, captured this childhood joy. It was a poem that was originally written for Thanksgiving Day. You may have heard this. Over the river and through the woods. Anybody ever heard that?

12:58Okay, good. To whose house? It's not grandma's house. Grandfather got thrown under the bus. Let me read to you the original version, okay? Or at least some, there's originally 12 stanzas. I'll just read you a few of them. Over the river and through the wood to grandfather's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. If you don't Believe me, there is a picture of grandfather's house. This is the house. It's in Massachusetts. And it says right there, Grandfather's house.

13:43Over the river and through the wood, to grandfather's house away. We would not stop for doll or top, for it is Thanksgiving Day. Over the river and through the wood, oh, how the wind does blow. It stings the toes and bites the nose as over the ground we go. See, there was a day when you didn't have cars, you really had sleighs, you had snow, and you had horses pulling it. Over the river and through the wood, and straight through the barnyard gate, we seem to go extremely slow. It's so hard to wait. You can see that childhood joy of the author. Over the river and through the wood, when grandmother saw us come, now she comes into scene, she will say, Oh dear, the children are here. Bring a pie for everyone. Sounds like my house.

14:42Over the river and through the wood, to have a first-rate play, hear the bells ring, ting-a-ling-ding, hooray for Thanksgiving day. That's how it, somewhere along the road, grandfather got thrown under the bus. And it was grandmother, but that's how it was. The The idea, start your day by remembering who you are going to go see. You are going to go see the rock of your salvation, the one who is very interested in your well-being. Don't delay, don't wait, go to him, remember who you are going to see, and let that well up joy. See, the problem is we don't go to God first thing in the morning with joy in our hearts because we really haven't considered who he is. We quickly forget that.

15:37A way has been made for us to travel to him, to go to him, and it's very costly. The blood of Christ. So you can come to him, the rock of our salvation, the rock of your well-being. Life summons you to come to the God who will help you. But it's not just enough to come to him, you must come into his presence. How do we come into his presence? I'm glad you asked. Look at verse 2. You come into his presence with thanksgiving on your lips. You need to come to him with joy in your hearts. But verse 2 says you need to come into his presence with thanksgiving on your lips. Look at verse 2. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms. Every day is to be a day of thanksgiving. Hooray, it's thanksgiving every day. What are we to bring to him? Look, it says, let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. What is thanksgiving? Confessions of gratitude. Articulated expressions of gratitude.

16:56What can we bring to him? I mean, he owns everything. He doesn't need anything from us. What is the one thing we can bring to him? What is the one thing that uniquely we can bring to him that he wants from us? You know what that is? Thanksgiving. To say thank you for that, Heavenly Father. Thank you. Name specific instances. That's how you come into his presence, thanking him. Thank you, Lord, for you fill in the blank.

17:31Psalmist goes on to give reasons why such intense joy should characterize our lives. Look at, and this is certainly true of that, this is what should have been on the minds of that generation that came out of Egypt. Instead of grumbling and complaining, praise and thanksgiving for the rock that had delivered them and for the shepherd that was leading them. It's a lesson. We all need to learn. How can they be thankful? Well, he goes on to give several reasons in verse 5, 3 through 5. Look at this. For the Lord is a great God and great king above all gods. He's supreme over all the spiritual realms. He's no ordinary God, no ordinary king. He far surpasses them all. And boy, the Exodus generation sure visibly witnessed all of that.

18:30Verse 4, in whose hands are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for it was he who made it, and his hands formed the dry land. He is supreme in the spiritual realm. He is supreme over the physical realm. All the things, the depths of the earth, from the highest peak to the very core, it's all his. It's in his power. He formed the sea and dry land. He is supreme over all the elements of the physical realm. You look, if you had been dialed into this psalm, you would have recognized Christ when he showed up. Because what did he demonstrate? He demonstrated superiority over all the spiritual realm. He demonstrated superiority over the physical realm.

19:29Yahweh. Is the highest and best one to be invited to spend the day with. Each day is such a summons. You are invited to come before the God who will help you. Life is a summons to routinely come before the rock of your salvation. So do not start your day by checking your email, by checking your messages. That's where a lot of our minds are checking the news. Boy, that ain't a routine that's going to cheer you up.

20:11But that's where many of us do, isn't it? Life is a summons to come before the God who will help you. And life is a summons to abide with the God who made you. To abide with the God who made you. Look at verse 6. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. You are to start your day morning by morning by coming before the Lord. You are to continue your day by abiding with him, staying with him, going out with him, remaining with him. Come.

20:52Again, there's the command, come. Y'all be coming. Y'all be entering in. That's the. That's the nuance of this verb. You're not just coming to, you're coming in, cohabitating with, that's the idea, dwelling with, as if to be under the same roof. This is what it means to abide. You know, suppose a friend invites you over for dinner. First, you must travel to their house. Then you must come to the door, and then you must enter into the house if you're going to share a meal with them.

21:28That's what life is. It summons you not only to come before the Lord, but to abide with the Lord. What does this look like? What does abiding with the Lord look like? Well, it's three verbs here, sum it up. The first sums it all up: worship him. Let us worship and bow down, and let us kneel. But the command is: put yourself in a state of worship. Not only as you come to him are you to put yourself in a state of joy, but you are to also put yourself in a state of worship.

22:09Put yourself in a state of worship. Now, three verbs in a row is really interesting here. You could actually translate it like this: Let us bow down, bow down, bow down. That wouldn't be too far off the mark. Each word. Carries this idea of bowing and worship. Each one has a nuance that contributes to this greater picture of what abiding with the Lord looks like and what worship really involves to the Lord our Maker. Come, let us worship. That's the first one. Let us worship. The idea of worship is let us assume a heart posture of bowing before Him, a heart posture of respecting, a heart posture of paying homage, giving tribute. That's the idea of honoring. Let us worship. Let's put our hearts in a posture of paying homage to Him. Second verb, let us bow down. Bow down literally means bend the knee. Let us be bending the knee.

23:27If you come into His presence, be bending your knee. If you're going to abide with Him, be bending your knee. That's what life is going to be. Walking with God is going to be about bending your knee. Metaphorically, it means yielding to Him in everything that we encounter during the day. So let us worship. Let us bend the knee. And then the third bow down is let us kneel. And it's the same exact word as the previous one. Let us bow down. Down, let us bow down. Actually, the translator said there is a nuance. Let us kneel.

24:07The nuance here is to stay bowed. Let us be bowing down during the course of our day, and let us stay bowed down during the course of our day. That's what worship is about. That's what paying homage to Him is. Bowing down. That's why the first commandment is like, you shall not bow down to any other God. That's the idea of worship. Worship is who you bow down, who you yield your heart's allegiance to. Let us bow down. And this is a problem with why there's so much alleged hypocrisy in the church, because many of us will come before the Lord, but then, and we'll bow, at least in our quiet times, but then when we leave, we stand back up and we go about, we don't go through the day bow down.

25:00That's why we see hypocrisy in our own hearts. It's easy to want to get up because life is going to throw things at you every day. It's going to set things before you every day that will tempt you to either not bow or if you have bowed, to get up off being bowed. Let us be honoring him and his ways above everything else we encounter. And God deserves this because he made us. This is what our Creator deserves.

25:32Yield to him in everything you encounter during that day. Come and yield. Instead of contending with God, put yourself in a state of worshiping the Lord by bending your knee and keeping it bent throughout the day. This is what you're summoned to. And then he gives some reasons. Look at, we are to abide while rejoicing and marveling at the relationship. Look at verse 7. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. He, marvel at this, he is our God, and marvel at this. We are the people of his pasture. That should frightfully humble you in light of what's just been said. We are his people. To dwell with God, we must embrace this order. He is our God, and we are his people, and marvel at this. We are not to assume that we are God, and he is a subject of our pasture, but he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture. And our posture needs to reflect this, or you will not abide with him. You must abide with him as God. He isn't anything else. And you must abide as his creation because you aren't anything else.

27:00Look at his pasture. We are the people of his pasture. Now, there's a thought. What's a pasture? It's a place for grazing. It's a meadow. It's the choicest place of the land. Remember, everything is in his hand. The highest mountain, the lowest depths of the earth, the sea, everything in it. And then there's this pasture. A pasture is where livestock graze. It's the peaceful place. It's the place to grow. Lots of grass, lots of favorable terrain. So we can marvel at the relationship. He is our God. We are his people. We can rejoice in how he relates to us.

27:41Not only is he the rock of our salvation, but he is the shepherd of our souls. And in his hands, look at verses 4 and 5, it talks about he brought forth the earth, everything in it. And we are not a species of the extreme, harsh places of the mountaintops. Nor are we creatures of the bottom of the sea, but we are the people of his pasture, the choice part. It's like everything in the earth exists for the pasture to exist.

28:17I would love to get technical with you here. I mean, I'm an engineer. I love the hydrologic cycle. Guess what? The rain we saw yesterday, the depth, deep part of the earth, how to play in all of that. You just get the rain on. Us, the soil, the chemistry, the biology that's in the earth. It's incredible that all that exists so that there can be a pasture, so that there can be sheep, so that they can eat it. You see all this. It is worth marveling over, and it is worth rejoicing over. That's why joy should characterize our relationship with our Creator.

28:53Look at verse 7. Today, if you would hear his voice, today, if you would hear his voice. And it's not an if, it's a win. So you can abide in joyful expectation of his guidance. Abide with the God who made you. He is the creator. He is the rock of your salvation. He is the shepherd who leads you and guides you. So guess what? You can expect to hear his voice throughout the day. Start your day in the morning with him. Come before him with joyful thanksgiving. Abide with God throughout the day by bending the knee and keeping it bent and be expecting to hear from him because he is guiding you.

29:42He is taking care of you and his attention is upon his people and he wants to lead you and he interacts with you for your good. No matter what comes in the day, don't be tempted to get up off your knees. Step out of an abiding relationship with God. That's where you get in trouble. Be sure that God is going to be present with you today. He is going to lead you. He's going to protect you. He's going to satisfy your needs. He's going to advance your well-being and he's going to promote your growth. Therefore, comply with him.

30:28Expect him to guide you today. You see, we must meet him. That's what abide means. We must meet him so that we can remain with him. We must come to him so that we can go out with him. We must come before him so that we can abide with him. Life is a summons to a simple routine. Come before the God who will help you, abide with the God who made you, and avoid having a heart, an erring heart within you. Avoid having an erring heart within you. And these last few verses of the Psalms, Psalm 95, is a call to learn from the failure of the Exodus generation.

31:23Why did they not enter into the promised land? Why did they not? Did they not get there? It's a page in human history that you need to learn from. They didn't get there because they had an erring heart. That's what he's going to call it in verse 10: an erring heart. An erring heart is one that turns away from God. And there are four realities of an erring heart that turns away from God. Four realities. I just want to point them out to you. Look at verse 8. Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Masah in the wilderness. An erring heart, look at that, is a heart that's being hardened. Do not harden your hearts.

32:21Do not stiffen your neck. Do not be contentious with God. And kids, if you're contentious with your parents, let me tell you something. You're contentious with God. It gives you a window into your soul. How do you relate to your parents? Do you honor them? Do not be on a trajectory of growing obstinacy, but be on a trajectory of complying with God's wishes for your life. That's what a good routine looks like. Good trajectory. An erring heart, number one, is a heart that's being hardened. Second, an erring heart is constantly putting God on trial. An erring heart is constantly putting God on trial. Look at verse 9. When your fathers tested me, they tried me, though they had seen my work.

33:30They tried me by testing. This generation that came out of Egypt put God on trial by examining his integrity or his ability and even his motive. In Exodus 17, verse 3, people say, Why now have you brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and to kill our children and our livestock with thirst? Oh, that's what God, that's what you're all about. And so he named the place Masa and Meribach because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? How many times do you face that same temptation during the day? Is the Lord with me or not?

34:27That's what an erring heart is. Constantly putting God to the test. God, I want to try you because you're not measuring up to my standards. You see, Israel grumbled in the wilderness because they had a cynical view of God. They distrusted him because they were walking by sight, not by faith. And so they over and over demanded God to prove himself instead of remembering the ways he had already proved himself. He had already demonstrated he was God above all gods and that the elements were in his power.

35:08But they suppressed that truth. Is that you? Are you constantly needing God to prove himself to you over and over? If that's the case, you have an erring heart and you need to repent of it very quickly. So an erring heart is a heart that's being hardened. An erring heart is constantly putting God on trial, and an erring heart goes from bad to worse. Verse 10, for 40 years I loathed that generation and said they are a people who err in their heart and they do not know my ways.

35:52See, because they are constantly on this trajectory of going astray, that's what erring is about, going astray, they are. On a trajectory of greater ignorance. If you're on a trajectory of moving away from God, you're on a trajectory of greater ignorance and not knowing His ways. You see, an erring heart doesn't get better with age, it gets worse and hardened, and that's why you're to repent of it quickly. Or the thing about an erring heart is an erring heart will never dwell with God.

36:33Verse 11, therefore I swore in my anger, truly they shall not enter into my rest. They shall not enter. It's the same verb that's up in verse 6 that says, Come, enter, abide. There's that life summons to enter, but then there's this people that won't enter in and won't dwell with God, and they're the ones who err in heart. The ones who are erring in heart are the ones who sit in judgment upon God instead of coming underneath him.

37:17Look at what they miss. They miss his rest. Those who test God and judge him are not going to abide with him. They will never enter his rest. Resting place. That was, God had a resting place for that generation, that Exodus generation, and it was the land of Canaan. And God could get them there really quickly, and he could get them in really quickly, and he could settle them very quickly. But they had error in their hearts that constantly moved them away from God, even to the point of wanting to go back to Egypt. And this is that banner illustration, epic illustration that keeps coming up over and over again through Israel's history, something they would call to memory every time they went up and celebrated the feast of booths. This is what the writer of Hebrews and the preacher of Hebrews was saying over and over again.

38:16The same catastrophic heart. They shall not enter. A rest is a place of rest, a condition of rest. It's a place where animals or people could go in and be securely taken care of, a place where they could dwell securely and fruitfully. But instead of going into the land and enjoying God's rest and all that that provided, that generation became a monument of what happens to people who go astray and why. They didn't fare any better than Pharaoh or his army that was buried at the sea. In fact, in some ways they were worse off because they had seen God's displays so much more vividly and even with their own eyes.

39:19Well, you have been summoned to come before the God who will help you. You have been summoned to abide with the God who made you and to avoid having an erring heart within you. This is the summons that life has extended and demanded of you. And from this, we can develop kind of a guide for daily living. We just kind of think just about what does this look like in my Monday and Tuesday. Well, come before the Lord morning by morning. I know you have very different routines, but let the first thought of your first waking moments be heavenward, rejoicing, rock of your salvation, shepherd of your soul, come before him morning by morning. Abide with God throughout the day by worshiping him with bended heart and keeping it bent.

40:30Go through the day abiding with God as he leads and guides, and you encounter situations. Bend the knee, be bending the knee, be staying, keeping it bent. And then avoid thoughts that put God on trial. Because inevitably, those temptations are going to be: get up off your feet, take matters into your own hand. Avoid thoughts that put God on trial. Life is a call to repent of your erring heart and to live joyfully and expectantly with the God who made you because He is the rock of your salvation, He is the shepherd of your soul, and He is committed to your well-being far more than any other. And so you can trust Him. Trust Him today.

41:30Heavenly Father, we bow our hearts before you. We come before You, Father, with singing and celebration. Father, may these truths be more deeply impressed upon us, Father, that we could actually come before your presence. Thank you, Father, for what a privilege that you are interested in the collective whole of us, all of us, Father, each and every one of us. We thank you that you have summoned us to come before you, not just this day, but every morning. We thank you that you have summoned us to abide with you throughout the day by giving us the awesome privilege of worshiping you and bowing before you and staying bowed before you because it is good, it is proper, it is fruitful, it is because you know what is best and good, and that is why we are to bow and yield. And forgive us, Father, over and over of the times when we have hardened our heart, that we have persisted, or that we have sat in judgment upon you. Forgive us, Father.

42:40We want to be done with that. Help our unbelief, strengthen our faith, awaken the dead here among us, and sanctify your saints. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.