Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day two thousand seven hundred forty-three of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.
The title of today’s Wisdom-Trek is: The King, The Shepherd, and The Warning – A Trek Through Psalm 95:1-11
Today, we are lacing up our boots to climb a new peak in the Psalter: Psalm Ninety-five. We will cover the entire psalm, verses one through eleven, in the New Living Translation.
In our previous trek through Psalm Ninety-four, we stood in the courtroom of the cosmos. We saw God as the Judge of the Earth and the God of Vengeance, dismantling the "throne of destruction" and promising to wipe out the wicked who oppress the innocent. It was a psalm of justice, a cry for the legal intervention of Heaven.
Psalm Ninety-five shifts the scene dramatically. We move from the courtroom to the Throne Room, and then to the Wilderness. This psalm serves as the grand entrance hymn to the collection of Royal Psalms that celebrate Yahweh's Kingship. It is a psalm of invitation—an invitation to shout, to bow, and, crucially, to listen.
It is structured in two distinct movements: a jubilant call to worship the Supreme King, and a somber, prophetic warning from that same King. It teaches us that true worship is not just about loud songs; it is about a soft heart.
So, let us heed the call and approach the Rock of our Salvation.
The first segment is: The Call to Cosmic Worship: The King Above All Gods
Psalm Ninety-five: verses one through five
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.
The psalmist begins with an imperative, a command to the congregation that bursts with energy: "Come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation."
We saw in Psalm Ninety-four that God is our "fortress" and "mighty rock" of refuge against the wicked. Now, in response to that protection, the only appropriate reaction is volume. The phrase "shout joyfully" (rûa‘) is the same word used for a war cry or the blast of a trumpet hailing a monarch. We are not mumbling prayers in a corner; we are hailing the Victor.
We approach His presence with "thanksgiving" (tôdâ), bringing an offering of gratitude before we even ask for a thing.
But why is this enthusiasm required? Verse three gives us the theological bedrock of the entire psalm: "For the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods."
Here, we must put on our Ancient Israelite worldview lenses. When the modern reader sees "gods" (lowercase 'g'), we often think of stone idols or imaginary characters from mythology. But for the psalmist, and for the ancient world, the elohim (gods) were real, created spiritual beings. They were the members of the heavenly host, the Divine Council.
However, the nations surrounding Israel worshipped these lesser spiritual beings as supreme. They worshipped Baal, Asherah, Chemosh, and others. The psalmist is making a polemical declaration of Yahweh’s absolute supremacy. He is not just "a" god; He is the Great King over the entire spiritual realm. He is the CEO of the cosmos; the unmatched Creator who presides over every other spiritual power. No other entity in the spiritual world rivals Him.
This supremacy is proven by His ownership of the extremes of creation: "He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains."
In ancient cosmology, the "depths of the earth" were mysterious, dangerous places, often associated with the realm of the dead or the foundations of the world that only a deity could access. The "mightiest mountains" (or peaks) were traditionally the dwelling places of the gods (like Mount Zaphon or Olympus).
By claiming that Yahweh holds both in His hands, the psalmist is effectively saying, "From the lowest dungeon to the highest palace of the divine beings, Yahweh owns it all." He is the landlord of reality.
"The sea belongs to him, for he made it. His hands formed the dry land."
We remember from Psalm Ninety-three that the "Sea" represented chaos and rebellion. Here, the psalmist reminds us that the Sea is not a rival deity; it is merely God's property. He made it. He owns the wet and the dry, the chaos and the order.
This first section establishes the Vertical Axis of worship: we look up to the King who towers over all creation and all spiritual powers.
The second segment is: The Call to Submission: The Shepherd and the Sheep
Psalm Ninety-five: verses six through seven
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.
Now, the tone shifts. The loud shouting of the war camp turns into the hushed reverence of the throne room. "Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker."
The body language changes from standing and shouting to kneeling and bowing. This is the physical posture of submission. It is an acknowledgment that while He is the "King above all gods," He is also "our maker." This implies intimacy. He fashioned us. We belong to Him by right of creation.
The relationship deepens in verse seven: "for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care."
The Cosmic King is also the Tender Shepherd. In the ancient world, kings were often referred to as "shepherds" of their people, but Yahweh takes this metaphor to a level of personal covenant care. We are the sheep of His hand.
This transitions the psalm from the Vertical Axis (God's power) to the Relational Axis (God's care). It sets us up for the shock of the second half of the psalm. Because He is our Shepherd, and because we are His sheep, the most important thing we can do is listen to His voice.
The third segment is: The Warning: The Danger of a Hard Heart
Psalm Ninety-five: verses seven through eleven
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 me, though they had seen 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.'"
Suddenly, the singing stops. The voice of the psalmist fades, and the Voice of God breaks through the worship service.
"If only you would listen to his voice today!"
This creates a tension. Worship is not just about expressing our feelings to God; it is about positioning ourselves to hear from God. And what God has to say is a warning: Do not repeat the past.
God reaches back into Israel's history to two infamous locations: Meribah (Quarreling) and Massah (Testing). These events are recorded in Exodus Seventeen and Numbers Twenty. In these places, the Israelites, despite having seen the Red Sea part and the manna fall, accused God of trying to kill them with thirst. They put God on trial.
God says: "For there your ancestors tested and tried me, though they had seen everything I did."
This is the tragedy of a hard heart. A hard heart is not an atheistic heart; the Israelites knew God existed. They saw the miracles! A hard...
