Over 40 people came together yesterday morning for Valley Worship at St Swithun’s in Martyr Worthy, on a crisp morning but with the church full of warmth, literally and spiritually.   The service concentrated across its talk, music and prayers on the theme of God’s invitation to us to come to him and on our worship of him in response, using Psalm 95 as its basis.   The service was led by James Greig and Georgie Walker, Tim Clapp and John Barber all contributed to it.   Olivia Cox was interviewed as part of the service’s ‘Everyday Lives’ series and spoke movingly about her Christian journey and God’s strength in times of loss and grief.

In parallel with the service, a lively session of ‘The Ark’ was held in the Martyr Worthy Village Hall, which was led by Verity Greig, who reported afterwards that ‘We had a great time at the Ark exploring the ways we can worship God using Psalm 95.  The children really enjoyed each other’s company whilst making beautiful creations with inspiration from the Bible.’   Notably the session was so popular with the children that they did not want it to end and chose to keep it going rather than to rejoin the congregation in the church at the end of the service.

As noted, the text on which the talk (given by John Barber) was based was Psalm 95:

1  Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2  Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.

3  For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
4  In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5  The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.

6  Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
7  for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.

Today, if only you would hear his voice,
8  “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
9  where your ancestors tested me;
they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
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.’
11  So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

 The recording of the talk can be accessed by this link and the text can be found below:

As we continue our series on our worship of God, we are focusing today on Psalm 95.

This Psalm is in two distinct parts.  In the first, from verses 1 to 7, we are invited to come to God in worship and given reasons why we should do so.  In the second, from verses 8 to 11, we hear the voice of God instructing us not to harden our hearts towards him.

Let’s start by thinking about the word ‘come’ and the sense of invitation it conveys.   Can you think of a time when you received an invitation to come to meet someone, or to come to an event, and when accepting that invitation had a big impact on your life?

I can remember just such a time.  In February 1984 I was transferred to Sydney, Australia as the junior member of a three man team opening a new office for my firm there.    As my first week of work wound down, knowing absolutely no one other than my colleagues, I looked ahead that Friday morning to the prospect of an empty and lonely weekend a very long way from home.  During the day I went to a meeting with a client and, to my surprise, as it finished the younger member of their team asked me what I was up to that evening.  When I replied that I had no plans, he said – in a wonderfully friendly Australian way – that I must come to his place to meet his wife and to have supper with some friends who were joining them.   So, within four days of landing 9,900 miles from home, that evening set the basis for my social life in Sydney over the next two years and a couple of life-long friendships were established.

Such was the impact of an invitation from a business acquaintance.  How much more life changing might be an invitation to come to God himself?

Let’s look at the first seven verses – the invitation to come to God occurs three times.   We are invited to come to him singing joyfully, to come into his presence with thanksgiving and to come and bow down and kneel before him as our Maker.    When we respond to this invitation by bringing our worship to God, we are encouraged to be joyful – and even noisy – in doing so.

To pause for a moment on this concept, I think the meaning of ‘joyful noise’ applies to lots of different types of singing and music.   In an informal service like this one, we find more contemporary music works well.  Yet notably, this very Psalm is the basis for ‘Venite,’ the opening, invitational canticle or prayer at Matins, the traditional form of morning worship.  So whatever form of music appeals to us as we worship – including hymns beautifully curated by Simon at Evensong or the songs chosen for this morning — we are all invited to come to God just as we are, wholeheartedly and even passionately.

But why are we encouraged to come to him and to do so joyfully?   What are the reasons for doing so?

The first part of this Psalm expresses clearly what God has done for us and why we are to worship him in response.

First, he is our saviour, or as verse 1 puts it ‘the rock of our salvation.’   When this Psalm was written, the defining experience of the people of Israel was their Exodus from oppression in Egypt, their safe passage over the Red Sea and escape from pursuing armies, ultimately to the Promised Land.    Their leader Moses often referred to God as their Rock – enduring, strong, a solid foundation and unchanging.   Now we have all the more reason to respond joyfully and thankfully to God as our Saviour, as we have the full picture.    His son Jesus, through his death on the Cross, has provided the means for us to have safe passage from the burden and judgment of sin, over to the Promised Land of a life in his presence that will never end, with death having no ultimate hold over us.

Second, God is sovereign, as verses 3, 4 and 5 attest.   He is ‘a great God,’ in whose hands everything from ‘the depths of the earth’ to ‘the heights of the mountains’ is held.   Everything that has been made was formed ‘by his hands,’ encompassing all the Earth, across both the sea and dry land.   He is both the creator and sustainer of all that we know and the provider of all that we need.

Third, remarkably this majestic God is also our shepherd.   As verse 7 states, ‘we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand’ – he cares for us, feeds us, draws close to us, guides us and protects us; we can hear his voice and follow him.   And, again with the perspective of the full picture, we now know – which the Psalmist did not – that astonishingly this good shepherd was prepared to lay down his life for his sheep, not abandoning his flock when the wolf came, but rather going to the extreme step of sacrificing his own life to save them.

Can it be a surprise that we are encouraged to come, worship, bow down and kneel before such a great, generous God?    And to sing praise to him in thanksgiving for all he has done?

And yet, at times, we have to admit it is hard to keep our eyes steadily on what God has done for us and to worship and praise him in response.    We can all harden our hearts to him but, as the second part of this Psalm states powerfully, that is exactly what God does not want us to do.  This instruction is driven home by a marked shift in voice and tone from the first part.

Verses 8 and 9 talk about a time when the Israelites hardened their hearts, at places called Meribah and Massah in the wilderness, where the people found no water, became very thirsty and worried that their livestock would not survive.  Despite having experienced God’s deliverance from Egypt and his miraculous provision of manna and quail every day, they didn’t seek help from God to solve the problem.  Instead they furiously turned on Moses, almost to the point of stoning him, and became rebellious and argumentative, grumbling intensely about being overlooked by God.

Just as was the case then, it is true that life doesn’t always work out as we want it to.   We face obstacles and circumstances beyond our control that can frustrate us; we can become angry when we feel unfairly treated or overlooked; we may be disappointed by other people and how they treat us; in this fallen world there is much suffering that leads to pain and grief.  Also, even when we do come to him in prayer, sometimes God seems to say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to our requests or even to be entirely silent.

How do we react when any of these happen?   Do we become furious, rebellious and argumentative too?  Or do we perhaps become callous towards God, coldly turning away from him?

However valid we think the reasons for our discontent are, and however intense our emotions may be as a result, in truth we have to take these warnings about the consequences of hard-heartedness seriously, remembering that God really is for us and not against us.

So can we pause now just to reflect on our relationship with God, knowing that he loves integrity and longs for us to be entirely open with him – we needn’t fear telling him the whole truth and admitting our doubts and frustrations:

• Do we feel he has let us down in the past or hasn’t cared when one of life’s challenges has come our way?
• Or maybe have we preferred to stay independent and self-sufficient, or to trust him only so far, needing to cover at least some of the bases in our own strength?
• Or have some of us here constructed a wall around our hearts to protect ourselves from damage, having been hit hard emotionally or spiritually in the past?

Having brought whatever the answers to these questions are into the light, where do we now go with what has been raised in our minds and hearts?   How do we move from hard- to soft-heartedness?

I’d suggest we go back to the reasons the first part of this Psalm gives for responding to God’s call to come to him, particularly two of them.

First, let’s remember that the God who calls us is our saviour, who – through his son Jesus – paid the ultimate price by sacrificing himself to save us.   Whatever our failings or anxieties, the creator of the universe did not remain distant.  Rather, he considered us so valuable and so significant that he was prepared to find a way for us to remain connected to him and in relationship with him forever, despite our sins and shortcomings.

Lately I have taken to reminding myself of this truth in a simple way.   As many of you know we have three Spaniels and, as they need a lot of exercise, I am out with them for 45 minutes or so every morning.    Our walk often traverses Texas Field and I have found that, when heading across it in the direction of this church, there is now a fine view to the right of the War Memorial at the top of this lane.   Not so long ago it was obscured by a large Ash tree on the side of the lane, but it became diseased and dangerous and had to be cut down.   As the now clearly visible Memorial is in the shape of a cross, at the beginning of the day — when I can orient myself towards God for the rest of it — I am reminded of Jesus on the cross and of his willingness to die for me.   I find it’s difficult to be hard-hearted towards God when I think of how extraordinary that life-giving act was, for the benefit of all who place their trust in him.

The second reason we should come to God and not harden our hearts against him is that he identifies himself as our shepherd, who wants us to be part of his flock and to look after and protect us.  Again the very same all powerful God who flung the stars into space and created life from nothing is prepared to draw close to us, to speak to us and to lead us.   We can freely choose whether to respond to his voice or not in joining the flock but, once we do, there is great freedom in knowing that a good shepherd is leading us and providing good pasture for us.   We don’t need to wall ourselves off or to be self-sufficient at all costs; we can rely on him to defend us and to fight our battles.

This saviour and shepherd also offers us rest for our souls, a promise forfeited by the defiant, hard-hearted Israelites in the desert, as we heard earlier in the last line of our Psalm.   At the end of Chapter 11 of Matthew’s Gospel, this invitation from Jesus is recorded — ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.   Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

Before Tim returns to lead us in worship, let’s spend a few moments contemplating how we would each like to respond to God’s invitation to come to him today, allowing him by his presence with us to soften our hearts and to show us the way to him.

Perhaps we could each just close our eyes and try to imagine our saviour and shepherd Jesus standing right here with us now, with his arms open to us and with his voice saying ‘Come! Come to me!’   In your mind’s eye imagine his eyes looking at you and just contemplate what they might be communicating to you; please listen also for what his voice might be saying to you.

Amen.