Invitation to Worship (Psalm 95, Part 3)

Respond: Worship with Wholehearted Obedience (Verses 7c-11)

⁷Today, 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,

      ⁹where 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.’”

Our worship includes both jubilation and wholehearted obedience to God. May God’s lordship over the entire world give us the context to hear His word of instruction. If we do not keep our eyes focused on God through Christ we will waver in our belief. Let us examine our hearts and set our minds on things above, not on things on the earth. When we heed God’s Word we will enter God’s eternal rest.

Loving God, we respond to Your vision; we worship You with wholehearted obedience. Keep our hearts from going astray. Help us to regard Your ways. Lord, we want to enter Your rest.

When we worship may we rejoice and revere and respond to God’s Word.

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

John Newton (1725-1807)