“Come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come to him with thanksgiving. Let us sing psalms of praise to him. For the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods. He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains. The sea belongs to him, for he made it. His hands formed the dry land, too. Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today! The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah, as they did at Massah in the wilderness. For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience, even though they saw everything I did. For forty years I was angry with them, and I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me. They refuse to do what I tell them.’ So in my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest.’””
Psalms 95:1-11 NLT
The call to worship and bow down is more than a call to worship. It is more than a simple call to remember. The call to praise God is an imperative command. Yes, it is steeped in the idea of rich and detailed remembrance, but it is more than that. Entangled in the command to praise God is also the command to repent and turn from our wickedness. These are not two different ideas but instead a progression of the same idea. Praise begets repentance and repentance begets praise. The presence of these two elements is an easy way to confirm the existence of a truly worshipful experience. Any worship experience which doesn’t elicit discipline in the life of a believer alongside their worship is missing a key element that makes it pleasing to God. Moreover, missing this key element makes that type of worship damaging toward men. This point is exactly what the Psalm refers to as it warns against the attitudes the Israelites had at Meribah and Massah. These were places of great temptation for Israel as they tested God and put themselves at enmity with him while claiming to worship him. Satan tempts Jesus in this same way. But our worship must be repentant as much as it is praise filled.
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