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 you hear his voice, ⁸ do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, ⁹ where your fathers tested and 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.”

Today as I was reading Oswald Chambers’ devotional for October nineteen I realized that his observations of the Christians of his day are also true of the society in which we live in today.  “The great enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ today is the idea of practical work that has no basis in the New Testament but comes from the systems of the world. This work insists upon endless energy and activities, but no private life with God. The emphasis is put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation . . . . For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” ( Luke 17:20-21  ). It is a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives to be seen by others, while it is the innermost, personal area that reveals the power of a person’s life.”

As I read this Psalm I picture the churches of my youth, churches that came together for a worship service.  As I reflected on these services they were services that meet the need of a young growing Christian who loved the Word of God.  As a young Christian I was interested in reading and studying God’s Word and learning more about Jesus and his message.  I would carry a small New Testament with the Psalms and Proverbs with me and would pull it out and read it whenever I had a free moment.  As a reflect upon these times I now realize how much God’s Holy Word influenced my life.  My pastor Rev. Cairnes taught me the importance of having the Word of God within you, so that you could meditate on it throughout the day.  Knowing God’s Word and letting God lead you in all your daily activities were the key to living a life worth living for Christ.  Today however, it seems that the message being preached is the purpose driven life, a system for living a productive life for God.  Yes God’s Word is important in the life, however, the focus is more on the changes that you can have on finding God’s purpose in your life; a purpose that the world can see in you.  If we are not careful we will find ourselves with a void in our life.  So busy for the purpose of God that God has no place in our daily schedule.  No time to study God’s Word.  No time to reflect upon the way He is directing our daily walk. This is the great enemy that I believe that Oswald Chambers is writing about in his devotion.  Instead of using God’s Word to defend the activities of the church and make God’s Word fit into the mold the church needs we should let the Bible speak to us on an individual basis.  Today it seems that the light in the song “This Little Light of Mine” focus more on the activities that leads on how to live a purpose driven life instead of being the light of Christ that abides in me.

As I read this Psalm I realized how the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.  In verse eleven the Psalmist writes “So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest” as a warning to us if we reject ways.  This Psalm is tied to the very first three commandments “Thy should not have any God before me.  Thou shall not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shall not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them, for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing loving-kindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.”  This same fear is what the author of Hebrews wrote about in the fourth chapter of Hebrews.  With salvation comes a change.  We turn from the lord of this world to the Lord of Creation.  Therefore keep your focus on Him.