A GREAT REMINDER
Psalms 95:1-7 NLT
1 Come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
Let us sing psalms of praise to him.
3 For the Lord is a great God,
a great King above all gods.
4 He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
and the mightiest mountains.
5 The sea belongs to him, for he made it.
His hands formed the dry land, too.
6 Come, let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before the Lord our maker,
7 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 Psalms have wonderful insight and truth. They also have great expression. I have heard on more than one occasion that when people are troubled, they go to the Psalms and stay there. The Psalms give us the highs and lows of the authors, and almost always, the Psalms end on a positive note. This is especially true regarding the Psalms of David.
We are not sure who the author is of Psalm 95, but we can gain from their perspective as this Psalm is a great reminder of the God who's we are and who we serve. This psalm starts with expressions of praise to God, who is the foundation of our salvation. And as we come before God, we should come with thanksgiving and joy. Thanksgiving and joy are expressions of our faith in the existence of God.
Because the Lord is a great God. I actually like the NKJV of this verse, which states that the Lord is the great God. And no one else even comes close. And the great king above all gods. So, there are no other kings or gods that we regard as great. No other god can come close to making the claims that our God can. So if people say there are many gods, and you have your god, and I have my god. Nope, not happening. Our God is the great God and the great king above all gods. Notice gods is with a little g because any god other than our God does not count.
Our God holds in His hands the depths of the sea and the heights of the mountains. That's hard to comprehend with our mind. Our God made the oceans and formed the dry land on His own. All this that we see did not just randomly happen. All this beauty and precision was not the result of an independent explosion that put things in order. This psalm is a great reminder that it was God who made the heavens and the earth. We cannot allow ourselves to get so caught up in what we can see and feel that we lose sight of the One who made it all. Including us.
So we worship and bow down to Him. We kneel before Him in reverence and respect, for He is our maker. He is the One who created mankind. We did not evolve from any other creature. We are made in His image with the spark of the divine in us all. That is why animals are wonderful, but they are not on the same level as man. Regardless of people trying to put man and animals on equal footing, they are not.
God is our God, and we are His people. And not only do we belong to Him but He watches over us as the people of His pasture. And the NKJ version says we are the sheep of His hand. The metaphor of us being likened to sheep is just that, a metaphor, not putting people and sheep in the same category. We are the flock that God watches over. We belong to the One who made it all and is worthy of our worship, respect and obedience.
APPLICATION
This is a good psalm to take and pray back to the Lord using it as a template to offer praise to the One who made us and watches over us. Praise to the One who made all we see and know. It's good to begin developing a practice of praise to God now; no need to wait until heaven.