The Ninety-fifth Psalm is our meditation, but we will first read another passage to which it refers—a story from Exodus 17.
And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, by their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and encamped in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink. Wherefore the people strove with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why strive ye with me? Wherefore do ye tempt the Lord? And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore hast thou brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They are almost ready to stone me.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Pass on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thy hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not? Exodus 17:1–7. The word Massah means chiding or strife. Meribah means tempting or proving.
Now we will read Psalm 95. Oh come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker: for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
Today, oh that ye would hear his voice! Harden not your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with that generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: wherefore I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my rest.
Here we have a picture. It is good to know the background of a psalm. There are times when we say, “Oh, let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise and come before His presence with thanksgiving.” This sounds great, but what are the circumstances under which we are to do this?
Have you ever noticed that the times circumstances really get to you are when you are going through some provings or testings? But these are the best times in the world to sing. These are the best times in the world to give thanks and make a joyful noise. The children of Israel became thirsty early in their wanderings in the wilderness, and they began to murmur against Moses and were ready to stone him.
Inherent within each individual is a duality which must be recognized. The disciples recognized it. In Mark 9:24 a man told Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” Do you like that prayer? Do you pray it? When he said, “Help it,” he did not mean, “Help it along”; he meant, “Smite it down! Deal with it. Let it be washed away.”
“Lord, I believe,” is an affirmation, but it is not a blind one. You recognize also that other things are there. All you have to do is give yourself a little encouragement one way or the other, and you can be the biggest whiner in the world or the greatest rejoicer. It is largely up to you. Both these attitudes are in you. So don’t harden your heart. Today hear His voice!
“Oh, I don’t feel like it today.”
It is not whether you feel like it that matters. People who do things when they feel like it rarely get anything done, because they never quite feel like it. Once you do it, the feeling follows. When you take action, then you will find something rising within you. Who knows the reservoirs of courage, of energy, of strength, which are there? Be a quick starter when it comes to praise. Be a quick starter in worshiping and rejoicing. It is already in you. You do not have to wait for it until tomorrow or the next day.
Sing. Don’t give voice to unbelief. You can cry or you can rejoice. Both attitudes are in your spirit. It is up to you. You can pamper yourself until you are so filled with self-pity that you are loathsome to yourself, to God and everyone else around you, or you can rejoice and praise God with all of your heart, saying, “Today is the day. The Lord says that all I have to do is not harden my heart, but open my heart to God and trust the Lord for the blessing He has for me. I believe Him for today.”
God wants us always to come into the presence of the Lord—even with many conflicts within us. There is no day we do not have warring thoughts: unbelief, wavering, doubt, questioning, or just plain old miserable feelings. Other thoughts coexist with them. There is a coexistence of the flesh and the spirit, and the two war against each other. They can wipe us out, as the Scripture says, so that we cannot do the things that we would because these two natures are contrary to one another (Galatians 5:17).
We must decide who we are. We could make many true statements about ourselves: we are the children of Adam, born with his nature; in our flesh dwells no good thing. Dwell on these, if you want to, but I would rather think about this—I reckon it dead, and I reckon myself alive unto God. I will to make valid the work of the cross within my life. All that Jesus is and all that He stands for, all that He has committed and imparted to us, everything that His representative, substitutionary work means, will be real to me.
You can fall flat on your face and then rejoice: “Wasn’t that funny? A son of God fell on his face today.” Get up and rejoice in the Lord, and proclaim you are more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ. Come and sing before the Lord, and praise Him.
You will get exactly what you believe for because you have the power within you—Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly all that we ask or think, according to the power that works with us … Ephesians 3:20. How much is going on in you? Don’t dissipate all your energies on a civil war. Don’t fortify the flesh until you have to fight it all day. Forget it. Say, “Praise God, He is leading me,” and ignore the thirst. Ignore the things that would stir you into rebellion. Ignore the Amalekites coming over the hill. Believe God the victory is given to you. This is your great fight.
It is the same thing when you come to the Communion Table. “O Lord, please deal with all these things. Let me look a little deeper.” That is a good idea, but God’s people should be really cockeyed—while they are looking within, they ought to have another eye cocked on God. You should always have one eye slanted off in the heavens looking unto the Author and Finisher of your faith, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds (Hebrews 12:2, 3).
It takes faith to keep your eyes on the Lord during those moments of greatest introspection. God knows your heart though, so always approach every revelation of need with faith. There can be deep repentance and grieving before God, but repentance not involving faith which believes and embraces the Lord in His righteousness is ineffective, and will lead only to a guilt complex that makes your situation worse.
Lord, help us to come to Thy communion, to Thy body and Thy blood in fresh partaking in a worthy manner. God’s cockeyed Christians are looking unto You, Lord. We are aware of our need, but believing that You are bringing many sons to glory. We believe, Lord, that we are among that mighty host that You are bringing forth. We believe it in the name of Jesus. Amen.
One of the greatest problems in churches today is that they have built a doctrinal system and interpretation of the Scriptures which puts every word either back in a past age or ahead in the future. Thus people console themselves for not having much reality with God. They talk about the sweet by-and-by. Who wants that?
If there is one thing the Lord ever revealed from the beginning of the Word of God, Jesus doing the same thing when He came, is that He is a God of the present. Moses said, “Who will I say sent me to Egypt? We must have a name for You.” God replied, “Yahweh: I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:13–14). It is hard to interpret, but it means, “I am the right now God.” Talk about Him as the Ancient of Days, and He is that. Talk about Him as the Coming King; He is that, too. But He is the God who delights in manifesting Himself eternally in the present. Right now is the time He wants to be your God.
He does not want to be the God that you reverence only in your doctrines and your creeds. The fundamentalist thinks, “Oh what a wonderful day of miracles,” and would duel to the death for his belief that the Bible is inspired and every word of it true. But that same fundamentalist will cringe and run if you say, “Let’s have a little supernatural miracle right now.”
“Oh, it’s past. The day of miracles is past.”
What hypocrisy! What hypocrisy to say that you believe the Word of God, and yet you believe for nothing right now. Its revelation shows the willingness of God in His unchangeable purpose to bless man and to help him. Unless you believe in something right now, you believe in nothing. How can you believe for the future when you cannot even believe for the present? When your vision is limited like that, you cannot really see what is coming.
Can you believe for something today? Every day ought to be a day of appropriation. Every day you ought to ask, “What can I lay hold upon from the Lord today?”
One little key would help us more than anything else. Do you believe what the Scriptures say, that He is present with us eternally (Matthew 28:20)? He is right with us, a very present help (Psalm 46:1). Where two or three are gathered together, is He not in their midst (Matthew 18:20)? When we know this, yet we do not sense His presence, it cannot be His fault. We must practice His presence and develop an awareness of Him. He is here with us now. Let’s let the Lord bless us now, because He is here to bless. Let us rejoice in Him and love Him.