O come, let us sing unto the Lord.
The grandest of creature services
I. It is the most righteous. Adoration rendered to--
1. The greatest Being.
(1) Great in Himself (Psalms 95:3).
(2) Great in His possessions (Psalms 95:4).
2. The kindest Being.
(1) He made us. Possessing reason, imagination, conscience, freedom, etc.
(2) He supports us--provides for our necessities, watches over us, guides us through intricacies, and guards us from perils.
(3) He delivers us. “The rock of our salvation.” The strong ground of our confidence, the foundation on which our safety rests. Who will say then that this service is not the most righteous,--to adore most the most adorable, to thank most the supremely kind?
II. It is the most delightful. “Joyful noise.” Worship is the only service that ensures happiness.
1. It accords with the highest dictates of conscience.
2. It gratifies our highest love.
3. It engages our highest powers.
III. It is the most urgent (Psalms 95:7-8).
1. The neglect of this service is the hardening of the heart.
2. The hardening of the heart leads to procrastination.
3. This procrastination involves most calamitous results.
(1) It provokes the Almighty (Psalms 95:8).
(2) It leads to ruin (Psalms 95:11). (Homilist.)
The Venite
I. A call to praise (Psalms 95:1-2; Psalms 95:6). Our call to praise and thanksgiving leads on, as we should expect such an one as David to teach us, to prayer. We praise for evidences of His nature, and such praise must lead us to pray that His attributes may find their exercise towards us; that He will deal with us as His perfect nature has dealt with other generations and other people. We offer thanks for the past, and every past mercy is ground of prayer for future mercies; every received mercy is a ground of hope upon which we build our prayers for new mercies.
II. The causes which demand our praise.
1. He is not only the Author of oar salvation, but He has made it strong, firm, immovable, resting upon Him, the Rock of Ages (Psalms 95:1-2).
2. We praise God for permitting us to observe His greatness; for the power to know Him in His works. It is not until we begin to examine the details of Creation--plants, birds, insects--to use the telescope upon the heavens, or the microscope upon invisible objects--that every single work, in itself a wonder, helps us to look up awestruck to the One Mind which made and which sustains all.
3. His individual care for each of us (Psalms 95:7).
III. A caution against the loss of the accepted time (Psalms 95:7-10). Alas! we have daily teaching like the men in the wilderness, that the chastened may only harden themselves against the hand of love which chastens! And poverty and sickness, by which God seeks to draw His children to Him, and to purify them for Himself, are made the very grounds for neglecting and disobeying Him!
IV. Rejection could not finally pass unpunished. There was a sentence upon those despisers (Psalms 95:11). God’s truth requires that His promises should be as sure to His opposers as to His followers and friends; and the sentence will follow. They could not enter into God’s offered rest, as Paul explains to the Romans, on account of unbelief. (D. Laing, M.A.)
The genesis of praise
This has been called the Invitatory Psalm. The Temple at Jerusalem had been restored. Its doors were again open for worship. And the psalmist sought to allure the people to a worship long neglected in the time of their exile. From the earliest times this psalm has filled a somewhat similar place in the services of the Western Church. It is the first note of praise in the order for morning prayer.
I. The spontaneity of song. Jehovah did not say: “Sing unto Me,” but men said one to another: “O come, let us sing unto the Lord!” Men sang because they could not help but sing. There are some things so natural to men that no Divine command is needed. Song is one of these. It grows naturally out of the emotions of a godly heart. The deepest feelings of the race have always found their fullest expression in poetry, and poetry reaches its highest utterance when wedded to music, on whose wings it soars to heaven.
II. The religious inspiration of song. Love is the great kindler of song, and takes on its noblest, purest forms as it goes out to God. And hence it will be found that in proportion to the strength of love in any religion is the place and power of its song. To the lovelessness of most of the pagan and heathen religions is due the poverty and even absence of song in their worship. To all intents and purposes the Hebrew and its successor, the Christian, faith are the only ones in which song prevails. And it will be found, if you look into the history, that as their conception of God grew in depth and tenderness, the more lovable He was seen to be, so their song grew in volume and worth. The theology of each age is reflected in its hymnody.
III. The religious occasion of song. The psalm before us probably sprang out of joy at the reopened temple at Jerusalem, that the feet of Israel could once more stand within the gates of Zion. Every lofty hymn has a sacred history. And thus the experience of elect souls is made to help other souls to higher levels of thought and feeling. They are like climbers who have reached the mountain summit, and beckon those in the valley to share with them the grand outlook to which their eye has reached. It is for us to respond to their call, so that as we sing we may be drawn upwards from the mists of earth to those. Goethe once advised, “as a means of making life less commonplace, that we should every day, at least, hear or read a good poem.” Better still would it be if we allowed no day to pass without joining in a hymn of praise. Marvellous has been the influence of song in the furtherance of religion in the days that are past. The Arians were among the first to discover its power. They organized singing processions to propagate their doctrine. Then the orthodox party followed their example. When Ambrose, the good Bishop of Milan, was ordered to give up one of his churches for Arian worship, he refused, and his devoted followers surrounded his house day and night to protect him from the troops of the Emperor. He arranged for his defenders hymns for every hour of the day and night. It was a charge against Luther that he was singing the whole German people into the Reformation doctrine. The Lollards gained their name from their custom of “lulling”--that is, singing softly. The Methodist Revival owed quite as much to the hymns of Charles Wesley as to the preaching of her saintly brother. The Oxford Movement owed its success not only to the “Tracts for the Times” and the sermons of Newman, but to “The Christian Year” of Keble. Where would the Moody and Sankey movement have been but for the “Sacred Songs and Solos”? The Salvation Army could not carry on its work without its rough but inspiring music. And my own conviction is that holy song will be one means of bringing to the Church a deeper unity. Through it the heart is permitted to speak, and by means of the heart, rather than the intellect, Christian people are drawn closer together. Theology has too often proved a dividing influence. Song usually tends to unity. (W. G. Horder.)
Psalmody
I. The practice of singing. Old Testament saints, as well as New, seem never weary of celebrating the praises of their Lord and Saviour; because He was made an offering for their sins, dead, risen, and ascended to His throne. And this is still the sweetest subject in the Church of Christ; for happy are they who have the Lord for their God--yea, thrice happy they who have “the kingdom of God” set up within them, which “is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
II. The object of singing psalms. The object of singing is, we see distinctly, the praise of Jesus. It is very important for you to notice that; for as the joy of the believer arises from his conscious standing in Jesus, so this joy is expressed in celebrating the praises of the glorious person and redeeming work of Jesus--for “God would have all men to honour the Son even as they honour the Father.” Singing is the outward expression of inward joy; and this is no doubt why the Holy Ghost has enjoined it on believers. It shows their sense of the infinite love of God in Christ Jesus. But at the same time that believers find joy in singing the praises of Jesus, as they are set forth in the Book of Psalms, they may also as they sing learn lessons for the practice of daily life. They have an interest not only in all Jesus was, but also in what Jesus is. Do they see that His trust in God was unshaken? They trust Him to make theirs steadfast also. Again: was His walk “holy, and harmless, and undefiled,” so that He could say in truth, “I have set the Lord alway before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved”? Then they depend upon Him for strength to tread in His steps. Were His tempers perfectly holy, so that He could say, “Thou hast proved Mine heart; Thou hast visited Me in the night; Thou hast tried Me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that My mouth shall not transgress”?--when, I say, they sing of this, they admire His example, and through His Spirit they strive daily to “put off the old man” and to “put on the new.” Again: was He carried through the greatest sufferings in perfect resignation, so that He could say, “Not My will, but Thine, O Lord, be done”? Then may they look up to Him in every trial for His promised support. Have the “everlasting gates” been opened, and “the King of glory” gone in? It is promised to them that they shall “see the King in His beauty”--yea, that they shall partake of that very glory.
III. The spirit in which we are to sing. Two things are necessary--that a man should sing spiritually, and that he should sing intelligently--that he should know what he has to thank God for, otherwise he cannot do it intelligently. Have we not mercies to thank God for? Why not, then, join the Church of Christ in thanking Him for them? The believer should live as he sings; his life should be in harmony with his principles. (J. W. Reeve, M.A.)
Praise the outcome of Divine influence
The whole of Glasgow is supplied with water from Loch Katrine. It is brought through the intervening country, and is distributed in pipes along every street, and from the palaces above Kelvin Grove to the wretched flats in the Saltmarket it tells, to those who have ears to hear, sweet stories of lofty peaks, wooded slopes, cataracts, and sparkling rivulets in its Highland home. Embosomed in the Mountains of Eternity, and reflecting in its placid sweep the magnificent devices of uncreated wisdom, we see the vast unfathomable ocean of Divine love. From that ocean a bountiful outflow of holy influence has come down into the human mind, and been divided into little rills known as “psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs.” Not to the rich only do they ripple, but also to the poor; labour forgets its weariness while taking in or giving out their sacred words, and the widow mingles their sweetness with her scanty food, and even the little child sends forth a triumph caught from their melody.
Inciting one another to praise God
You know how the birds stir up each other to sing. One bird in a cage will excite its fellow, who looks at him and seems to say, “You shall not outstrip me: I will sing with you,” till all the little minstrels quiver with an ecstasy of song, and form a choir of emulating songsters. Hark how the early morning of the spring is rendered musical by the full orchestra of birds. One songster begins the tune, and the rest hasten to swell the music. Let us be like the blessed birds. Bless the Lord till you set the fashion, and others bless Him with you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Rock of our salvation.--
Christ the Rock of our salvation
The shipwrecked mariner, hoping for safety on the sea-girt rock; the hunted fugitive, flying for a refuge to the cliff on the plain; the fainting traveller, throwing himself down in the shade of rock in the desert; the steep and precipitous hill, with its encircling stream, forming the site of a mighty fortress: each of these pictures tells us of weakness finding comfort and aid, each sets forth the value of the redeeming work, and the mighty mission of Christ our Lord. For the very idea of a rock is that of stability and strength, that which cannot be moved, that on which we may rest secure. “For us and our salvation” Christ died, says the noble language of our Creed. He is the great example of self-sacrifice, and of the One who devoted Himself to death and suffering for the benefit of “the many.” But how shall we apply to our own selves the benefit of Christ’s work? How shall we find a refuge in the Rock of our salvation.? By a humble and faithful realization of what He has done for us. (J. W. Hardman, LL.D.)