Hebrews

It's gonna turn to our fiber reading, Psalm 95.

Come. Let us sing for joy to the lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with Thanksgiving and extoll him with music and song. For the lord is a great god, the great king above all gods.

In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his for he made it. And his hands form the dry land. Come. Let us bow down in worship.

Let us kneel before the lord, our maker. 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, do not harden your hearts as you did at Maribah. As you did that day at Masa in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me. They tried me.

They they'd seen what I did. For 40 years, I was angry with that generation. I said, they are a people whose hearts go astray. And they have not known my ways. So I declared an oath in my anger.

They shall never enter my rest. Thank you, Rosie. And if you do have a Bible on you, it would be very helpful if you could turn back to Psalm 95. So you can see those words which Rosie just read to us. Now as was, referenced in our prayers, we have been working our way through a book in the new testament called Hebrews.

And, our pattern here at Cornerstone largely is to work through verse by verse chapter by chapter through books of the bible. But today we're doing something a little bit different. We're going to have a look at Psalm 95. And 1 of the reasons for that or rather 1 of the connections with our Hebrew series is that Psalm 95 is actually a very important book, or chapter, rather, to the author of the Hebrews. It's quoted twice in Hebrews chapter 3 twice in Hebrews chapter 4.

And so this Psalm is very important for understanding, the book of Hebrews. And so we are going to go back to it and have a proper look at it, which we didn't do when we were doing Hebrews 3 and 4 so that we can better understand, what is in Psalm 95. And so hopefully, this will be helpful for you whether you're here for the very first time or whether you've been following along in our Hebrews series because it seems to me the words of verse 7 are are important and urgent in fact for all of us. Today, If only you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Let's pray.

Heavenly father as we turn now to this Psalm and as we consider that verse particularly, we pray that as you speak to us this morning, through your living word, the Bible that you would help us please not to harden our hearts. Against your voice. But to hear what you would have us here, and we pray that you would help us to respond in the ways that we need to respond. And we pray that we would do all of those things while it is called today. And we ask it in Jesus name.

Oh, man. Now if you are, not currently a student, or if you wouldn't consider yourself to be a young adult at the moment, then I would like us to begin or I'd like you to begin by thinking back to that time of your life, when you were a student or if you were never a student when you were a young adult, and to that stage of your life when you began to get your first taste of proper independence. You know, when you were living away from mom or dad or whoever was at home, when you were out on your own with your own flat or in a flat chair, and you were getting your first taste of adult life, independent life. Well, now I don't want to speak for everyone. But at that time of life, there are many things, which can be easily put off and delayed.

Yeah? So for instance registering at a dentist or a GP surgery. That's 1 thing that students are famous for putting off, yeah, registering at a dentist, calling home. That's 1 thing that's very easily put off. You know, maybe some were very good at that, ringing mum and dad very often to let them know how you were, but many of the people I knew had not spoken to their mum and dad for weeks, if not months on end.

Okay? Easily put off. A phone call home. Sorting out your utility bills, is another thing which is easily put off and best left to others. You know, you just hope that someone in your life will begin to organize that for you, while you continue to put it off.

Essays that can be left to the last minute. You know, many, many, many things, that stage of life are easily put off. But then there are certain things that even students know really should not be put off. I'm sure you will have seen in the news. Pictures like this or maybe the maybe the power points down.

Is it temporarily? Pictures like this. Can you go on to the next 1, please, Steve? Thank you. From the weeks news.

This is, of course, many, many hundreds of students in Kent, who were joining the queue to get antibiotics, and vaccines for meningitis B and the outbreak that's occurred and has been all over the news this week. And I'm sure, you know, if you were to go down that line and to interview all those students and young people, there were many things that they had to cancel in order to be in that queue. Many other less important things they had to put off. So that they could get the medication that they needed. And we just know that instinctively, don't we?

There are certain things that can be put off, but then from time to time, there are things which are so urgent. We have to respond immediately. We have to suspend or cancel all other plans in order to do this most more important thing. And when you think about it, just in ordinary life, we make that kind of decision every day, even at a subconscious level. You know, there are all sorts of jobs that we have to do each day and each week, and we categorize them.

We have this kind of job, which is a not now job. We have this kind of job, which is a quite soon job. We have this sort of job, which is a never job, never gonna get round to that, and we file things into different boxes. This is urgent. This is important.

This is now. This is not now. And what are the things that can cause tension in relationships is that not everybody has the same filing system. So 1 person's right now is another person's not now. 1 person's do it today is another person's do it never.

And when those different filing system collide, there can be tension. So I'm told. You know, I would and it doesn't happen in our house. Of course, it's a perfect sort of relationship of bliss, equal prioritization for everything, but others tell me that it can cause tension, right, when there's different filing systems. So we all know that.

Don't we? There are these ways that we categorize jobs, but then there are certain things like urgent health care where we all know it requires immediate attention, urgent attention. The same kind of thing is true with communications that we receive. So if you imagine yourself with a handful of post, on your doorstep clutching a a, you know, a collection of posts. We make decisions quite quickly about those things that we need to respond to quickly and those things we don't.

So if you're holding in your hand yet another leaflet from community fiber, you know, about their broadband offers, you know that belongs in a certain area. Yeah. And is not going to require your immediate attention. But if you get a letter that is from his majesty's court and tribunal services, which is summoning you to the court or something like that, you know that's something that's not going to go quickly into the green bin. It requires your urgent attention.

Yeah. We just we just learn how to categorize things. Some things are important and personal, and they require our attention. Many other things are unimportant and impersonal, and they do not require our attention. We can come back to them later.

We are very used to this when it comes to life, and mail and email, we make these decisions all the time. Well, with that in mind, let me ask you then, where should responding to the words of god sit on those spectrums? Because according to verse 7 of this Psalm, today, if you would only hear his voice do not harden your hearts. According to that verse, God is speaking to us today through his living word, the Bible. It's very important this if you're new to Christian things, if you're exploring Christian things, The Bible is not just a record of what God once said, but rather it is a record of what he always says.

It is his living word. And every time it is opened, god speaks whenever god's words is read and preached, god's voice is heard. God speaks. Through his living word. Where does that sit on our spectrum of responses?

You see, I think many of us here would probably say, well, that's pretty urgent. That sits in the urgent, personal, important category, and I'm gonna I'm gonna respond to it no matter what it is. In fact, even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, I think you would still agree that if god were to speak, then that would be really important and that you would listen to it and make an effort to respond to it. And yet, if you're anything like me saying that and having that sort of conviction on the lips is not the same thing as actually doing it. Now, we're gonna revisit that particular 0.1 little bit later on.

But first, what we need to do is to see what it is that god is saying. We've looked at this claim that god speaks to us today through his word, and that's the urgent and important, but what is it exactly that he is saying to us? And so for that, we need to turn back to this Psalm and to have a think about what it is that God is saying to us. So do have Psalm 95 open in front of you, and the first thing we learn is that we can come to our creator. God says to us today that we can come to our creator.

Have a look at that with me in verse 1. Come. Let us sing for joy to the lord. Verse 2. Let us come before him with Thanksgiving.

Verse 6. Come. Let us bow down. In worship. So here it is.

What what is god saying to us this morning? He's saying come. Come to me. It's a command. You need to come.

But it's also an invitation I would love you to come. And in the original language in which it was written, that come in verse 1 actually takes a plural ending. So it's come all of you. All of you come. Come to him.

Come you personally but come us all. All come to him. What does God want us to know? He wants us to know this morning that we can come to him. The other week as a staff team, we were very much looking forward to our first Chick fil A.

Which I mentioned in a previous sermon as well. If you don't know Chick fillet, the American Chicken Place has opened up in town. And, on our staff team, there are a few people who are very, very fond of Chick fil A. And so we were all looking forward to going down as a team, but we weren't sure whether the restaurant had actually yet opened and there was some discussion and some disagreement about whether it in fact opened. And so you can imagine our excitement when 1 of the members of the church, who shall remain nameless, for this illustration, was in town that morning and text the team to tell us that it was open.

It's open. And so we canceled our meeting, or at least decided to relocate it, and we left the hub to go to Chick fil A. And so you can imagine us we were cheerfully walking into town, glad with anticipation of what we were gonna enjoy only to see a sign on the door, saying closed for training. Friends, it is not a nice feeling to be invited to come, but to be unable to come. Is it EMEA dryden?

Not a nice feeling. In come. It's open. And you get there, and it ain't open. It's closed.

Well, on a more serious level. And a much more wonderful level, that is not true of Psalm 95. God invites us to come because we really can come. And the way is open, and the door is open, and it's not closed for religious training. He says, come because you can come.

And again, if you're new to Christianity, the this claim is act at the very heart of the gospel of the good news. They're all through the Bible god invites us as his creatures to come to him and that he even was willing to send The lord Jesus Christ. He was even willing to take a human nature and come to walk upon this earth with an invitation. Come to me. Your god.

Come all who are weary. And heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come to me. I want you to come. I'm commanding you to come.

I've died on a cross to deal with your big problems so that you can come, and there's a way of forgiveness and openness come. Come. And the reason according to this Psalm that we must come is because the god of the Bible created you and he cares for you. You can see that emphasis in verse 2 to 6. Let us come before him with Thanksgiving and extoll him with music and song for, here's why we should.

The lord is the great god, the great king above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the lord who is our maker. And to the original audience, these were not just the facts of creation.

What is said here would be a source of incredible comfort to these people. In his hand are the depths and the mountain peaks. Now, what's he saying there with that contrast? He's saying that no matter what god's people experience, whether they're on the mountain peaks and it's bright and hopeful and you can see clearly into the future or whether you're down in the valleys, which is a place of darkness and uncertainty. The god of the Bible is 1 who created them all mountain peaks and valleys, and so he is with you in the more.

It's good to know, isn't it? That the god of the Bible is a god of the peaks and of the valleys. And something similar is true for the sea and the dry land. Now to this original audience, the ocean was not a holiday destination. The ocean was actually a place of chaos, and it was a place of uncertainty, and it was a place of kind of shifting fortunes.

It was changeable. You weren't sure what you were gonna get on the ocean, but the land represented stability, firmness under your feet. You knew what to expect. And so the author is saying that god is a god of the changing times and of the stable times. It's good to know, isn't it?

That god is a god of the peaks and the valleys and of the changing chaotic times and of the more stable times. Come. Come. What does God want us to know? What does he want us to know?

What does he want us to hear and to do? He wants us to come to him who is our creator who cares for us? Friends don't harden your hearts against him. Don't harden your heart today against him. Don't file that away as something irrelevant or something you can come back to The lord is your maker.

Come and bow before him. Who knows peak and valley change and stable wherever you are. In stable, stable, you can come. Don't harden your heart against him. But secondly, there's more.

We also learn in this song that we can come to him, our shepherd. You see that in verse 6 and 7. Come, let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the lord our maker for he is our God. Now that part of the Psalm is true for every single 1 of us.

Whether we take the time to acknowledge it or not, god is our maker, and he created us. But notice the Psalm then moves into a further invitation. Come know him as your maker, but also know life under him as your shepherd. For 6 and 7, he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture. The flock under his care.

Friends, don't harden your hearts against him. The god who is your maker invites you to come and live under him as your shepherd. This is a very very rich vein of teaching in the Psalms. You'll probably know it could be the most famous chapter in the entire Bible, very often read at funerals and other occasions. Psalm 23.

How does it begin? The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. In other words, when I know him as creator and shepherd, I find that everything needful has been provided. I have maybe not all that I'll ever want or desire, but all that I need I have in him.

He gives me what I need. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, and he leads me besides still waters. What a what a wonderful set of images that is. Lying down in green pastures being led beside still waters.

It's a picture of a kind of heavenly peace that is gifted to the soul that is trusted in the lord. So that as we've been praying, even if you happen to live, in the Middle East or you're a follower of Jesus in Iran, and everything about your environment is not still waters and not green pastures. For those who know Christ, even in great chaos and conflict, there is a peace that the shepherd can bring because the soul is right with the lord. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness.

Don't we all really want that at some level? We want to be guided in paths that are good for us and right for us. We don't wanna go down paths that are harmful and disastrous. We want good paths and right paths, and Jesus, our shepherd can lead us down those paths. Don't let's harden our hearts against him.

He is our maker who invites us to know him as our shepherd. Today. Today, he invites that. If you're familiar with, Jesus' teaching in the new testament, You might know these words which form just such a strong link with these psalms. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep and my sheep know me just as the father knows me, and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

And you know when you look at it, there there is simply nothing to rival this. In all the religions of the world that the god of heaven who is our maker who formed the dry land and the seas with a word the god of the Bible who has no equal in any philosophy or religion of man was so invested in our shepherding that he was even willing to come and lay his life down for us. Where is that rival? Anywhere that god has stepped down to lay his life down to take away our sins and our wrongs. So that we can come and know him.

Don't let's harden our hearts against the good shepherd who gave himself for us Psalm 95 verse 7 today. If only you would hear his voice, his voice. I mean, forget me for a minute. Forget whatever irritations I might be to you. Forget this venue.

Forget all of that. When god's word is opened, god's voice is heard. Today, it's the voice of God in the Bible that speaks to us today and says, come, know me as your maker, come, know me as your shepherd through Jesus. So that's what he says to us this morning. He says come because you can't.

To him your maker and to the 1 who longs to be your shepherd. But thirdly, and lastly, let's look at what happens if we don't. Come know your creator. Come know your shepherd. Here's what happens if we don't.

First 7 to 11. Today, if you only would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Maribba. And as you did that day at Masa in the wilderness where your ancestors tested me, they tried me though they had seen what I did. For 40 years, I was angry with that generation. I said, they are a people whose hearts go astray and they have not known my ways.

And so I declared an oath in my anger. They shall never enter my rest. It's tempting, isn't it? To finish a talk like this. At the end of verse 6.

And to cut off this much more sobering note, which comes in the second half of the Psalm. But the reason we mustn't do that is because all of god's words are god's words and actually because he loves us far far too much to not include words like this. And the way it seems to go in the Psalm is Given how good god is your maker, and given how generous his offer is. If we close our eyes and stop up our ears today, then we are inviting disaster upon ourselves. Today, if only you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

You see in the bible, the heart is very much more than just an organ. It's that part of us which makes choices. About how we're gonna live and the sorts of things we're gonna treasure and who we're gonna trust. Yeah. So if you imagine coming to a busy junction, the heart is like the intersection.

It's where the will and the loves and the beliefs and the decisions all meet. It's a junction or an intersection of all those things. And just like the physical heart, that part of us can be more or less healthy depending on how we choose to live and on how we choose to respond. To the voice of god. It will grow more or less healthy depending on what we do today with the voice of god.

In our house and if you've got young children or if you ever work with young children, we have got many, many tubs of play doh. We, you know, I was trying to count them up earlier in the week. We've got something like 50 tubs of play doh in our house. And, as you might know with Plato or if you've ever had any experience with Plato, you'll know that it can come out of the tub in a variety of different conditions. There's a sort of softness spectrum when it comes to play doh, isn't there?

So that play doh, which has been enjoyed with and put back and properly sealed, when you get it out again, you find it in a similar state. It is soft and it is impressionable. Easy to make an impression upon it because it's soft. But that plader, which has not been sealed properly, or has been left out, has become more like a rock. And less like Plato.

You know, don't you? If you've ever just held it at any point in your life, it goes brittle, and it's crusty, and it cracks, and it falls apart easily. And it is no longer nice to play with. It doesn't take impressions. It is not molded easily anymore.

It's become hard because it's been opened up to all kinds of air, which has made it crusty. And you know when it comes to the voice of God, our hearts can be very much like that. You know, if we don't hear and listen, What we will find over time is that our hearts become less impressionable. They don't take the thumbs and the fingers of god's word as easily as they used to do, and they become a little bit brittle. And cracky and harder to make an impression upon.

That happens to the human heart. And if we doubt it, we just have to look at what happened to the Israelites. I mean, their story is told for us in short form in the Psalm. It it's a it is a very sad story of a god who spent 40 years saying come. Let me shepherd you.

I'm your maker. And for 40 years, they refused the invitation and said, not today. Not today. We won't hear today. Very sad story.

God had done an incredible miracle for them. He had led them out of hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt. And he promised them a land that was to be their very own, but better than a land he promised them himself. I will be your god, and you will be my people. And this will be a shepherd flock relationship.

Where I lead you and guide you and feed you and give you everything good. But day after day on many different today's, they said, we don't want your leadership. We want to be self led men and women. And we don't want your feeding because we don't like the taste of it very much, and we prefer what we had when we were non Christians. That tasted better to us than what you're giving us.

And we don't like where you're leading us and what you're doing for us. And so they chose self leading and self feeding and independence over god. Until eventually, god says, and it's there in verse 10 for us. They are a people whose hearts go astray and they've not known my ways. It's like they've never known me.

It's like they've never known me the way they're talking. It's like they it's like they don't know who I am at all. They've never known my ways. And you know, the frightening thing about that story. Is that none of that happened to them overnight, but it happened on many single today's when they would not hear the voice of their god.

You know, I think that's a particular danger for those of us who come here regularly, isn't it? See, I wonder if we only had 1 opportunity in life to hear god speak to us. Let's just say that when we were born, we were all given a date. And on that date, we would be able to have a meeting with god, and god would speak to us. I think we would make that something of a priority.

That meeting, wouldn't we? God is going to god has given me a date when he's gonna meet with me and speak to me. We'd cancel everything else in order to be there for that. And yet, When we sit under god's words more often or every week, it's the oftenness of that experience that can make us deaf in the end. Because we stop thinking about today.

It no longer becomes important to us what we do today. And instead, we say to ourselves, well, I'm not going to do anything with that message today. And I'm not gonna pray today, and I'm not gonna confess my sin to the lord today, and I'm not gonna forgive that person. I need to forgive today. Instead, I'll do it when my life slows down a bit and when I've sorted out those other things I need to sort out and then I'll get around to doing that thing.

And so our problem is that we are supremely confident that there will be a tomorrow and on that tomorrow will be in a state of readiness. You see, it's a double false confidence, isn't it? There will be another day, and my heart will be good on that day. And I'll respond. But the question is, if we will not respond today, what makes us think we will?

Respond tomorrow because the reality is every time we put it off, we become that little bit more comfortable in a life without god. Every time we say no not today, we train ourselves in the suppression of god's voice. And with training comes ability. The more we train ourselves in saying no, the stronger we become at saying no. Why would we think that if we won't respond today, then we would respond on any other day.

And so yes, with the Israelites, it took a long time. But it happened because they would not listen on their today's until god eventually said to them in verse 11. So I declared an oath in my anger. They shall never enter my rest. What happens if we don't?

We will not enter god's kingdom, new creation, rest. That's what happens if we don't. And so what is god saying to us this morning? He is calling you to trust in him, your maker. And he is inviting you to live under his shepherding care, and he's calling us to do that today.

Whatever it is, Maybe a sin struggle that we've got that we've been putting off, and you almost hear god saying to you today, don't put that off anymore. Maybe it's a person that Really just you need to decide to forgive and to bring that to the lord, a root of bitterness, which is causing all kinds of irritation and today. We come today. Maybe it's a time of suffering. And we've been trying to self medicate with things of this world which in the end have just left us feeling drained and weary.

And today, we say no more of that medication. I want your voice to medicate me and to help me. Whatever it is today. And listen, it might be that you're here for the very first time and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian today. Today.

God speaks today. And he says, yeah, you. I made you. Just as much as anyone else I made you, and I want you to know Jesus because he laid his life down for you, and all those wrongs, they were his on the cross for you, and you can come today. But don't put it off.

Because you may not get it tomorrow. Today, you can come. You see, sometimes we make those, you know, and I don't know if this would be true in international sort of cultures as much, but certainly in a British context, we make these sort of general invitations to each other, don't we? And they tend to go something like this, you know, at church or at the school gate, or it's something like, oh, we should really, we should get coffee sometime. Or I'd be lovely to have you over.

You know, we'd be meaning to have you over. We should we should really get you around sometime. It would be lovely to to do that. And that, you know, that happens all the time, things like that. And it's nice.

And, you know, I those are genuine sentiments. I I I think and genuine desires but it only becomes an invitation when you can actually act on it. Yeah? It's very hard to act on a. We should get lunch together sometime.

But if someone says, why don't we get coffee? Tomorrow morning, how's 9 o'clock at Cafe Nero on Fife Road sound for you? Yeah? That's now an invitation because it's time stamped. It's got a time stamp and a location.

Why the Holy Spirit has come today is he puts a time stamp on it. It's a real invitation. He doesn't say, I wouldn't it be nice if we got together at some point? Wouldn't it be nice Holy Spirit to you to get lunch together in the future? He says today.

How about today? What are you doing today? And then he gives a location. Me, Jesus. Come come to me today because it's a real invitation to you.

Today. If you come today, if you will trust today, you will know Jesus as your shepherd. But if we say no today, we will either begin or we will confirm a process which will lead us to disaster. How are you going to file this communication? Like a community fiber leaflet that can be put off or some kind of summons from his majesty.

The king summons us to listen today. We'll be listening. Let's take a moment. A quiet. You can perhaps for the very first time.

Say lord, yeah, I'm coming today. I've heard something of your voice. I wanna come to you today. Just give you a minute to respond and then I'll lead us in a prayer. We thank you our speaking God that you have made yourself known to us in your word the Bible and that you speak to us through your living word.

We thank you lord Jesus that you are the great maker of the heavens and the earth and by you and through you all things were made. And we thank you that you invite us this morning to know you as the good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep and who calls us now to follow you. Please would you help us not to harden our hearts against your voice, not to delay, not to put off, not to in our pride assume that there will be a tomorrow, and that on that tomorrow we'll be much better placed to listen. How proud and foolish we can be. Help us today.

We pray in Jesus' name.