Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.8MB)
Shabbat Shalom. In one of the most famous songs of all time, Led Zeppelin sang about the most important set of choices. “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run There’s still time to change the road you’re on…” It’s a beautiful line in a very theologically flawed song. But Led Zeppelin, unknowingly probably, were singing a bit of biblical truth. God’s Word declares there are indeed two paths we can go down and there is still time for us to change the road we are on.
In the most famous sermon ever given, Messiah Yeshua, the Son of God, declares this truth to us in Matthew 7:13-14:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Ultimately there are two ways to live our lives, two paths we can go by, and two gates available for us to enter. Our Messiah makes it clear that one gate leads to life and the other to death. It is clear from God’s Word that when we put our faith in Messiah Yeshua, we are saved from our sins and washed clean by the sacrifice He has provided for us. We can begin to live our lives the way the Lord has commanded us to and ultimately experience eternal life forever with Him. We then begin to walk down the harder path that leads to life, life everlasting with the Lord forever.
But if we choose to ignore God, to ignore His Messiah, and to walk down any other path we are ultimately going down the easy path that leads to death and eternal consequences. Two paths, but very different destinations.
This idea of our lives being a path we walk down, is a favorite image of mine in Scripture. To know God is to walk with Him. It is to have Him light our path and lead us down His road. If we are truly His disciples then we will walk down a path that may be difficult, but ultimately leads us to eternal rest with Him. We may stray from this path due to our sins, but the Lord will lovingly shepherd us forward. He accomplishes this through His discipline that leads us to true repentance as we are renewed through His Holy Spirit.
But the world we walk through is covered in the darkness of sin. There is a deep darkness that covers all people in this world, Jewish and Gentile. In this dark world there are many lies, but perhaps the biggest lie of this world is a lie about our choices. Many believe that regardless of who or what we put our faith in, we will all enter that narrow gate. It is a lie that tells us that all religions can “Coexist”, they all are equally valid paths to God and to the Truths of life. It doesn’t matter if we acknowledge the Lord, or put our faith in Him, or listen to His Messiah, we all have a place in Olam Haba, the World-To-Come.
One of my favorite psalms, Psalm 95, stands in contrast to this pervasive lie. In Psalm 95 we will see both paths displayed for us and the seriousness of knowing which one we are on. Throughout time, Psalm 95 calls each of us to kneel today before our Creator, end our rebellion, and enter His presence with a joy this world can never rob us of.
Let’s begin by first reading through Psalm 95:
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for 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, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Now let us begin to walk down the paths of Psalm 95 and see where they lead. We begin with an invitation to praise the Lord out loud.
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
The Psalmist is beckoning us to join him in praise. He is declaring a call to worship like we are doing here this morning. We are all invited to join in and sing to the Lord, whose personal name is used in this verse. But what sort of song should we be singing to Him?
The second half of the verse parallels the first half and tells us more. We are to make a joyful noise to the Lord! I personally find this very encouraging because my singing can be a joyful noise but not very professional!
Adonai is described as the rock of our salvation, a title used throughout the Tanakh. Like a mountain, the Lord is unchanging. He is the unchanging source of peace, stability, joy, and has saved us in every generation. If we are saved it is good to be joyful and to express that joy. If we are joined to the Lord through Messiah Yeshua this should be a great source of joy in our lives and lead us to expressing that joy in a powerful way.
Our invitation to worship the Lord continues in the next verse.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
This verse parallels our opening verse and again we get more specific. We are called to have joy in The Lord’s presence and give thanks for what He has done for us. We are invited to sing songs of praise with great joy. This is one important way we connect as a community, gathering together to share our joy in the Lord. But why is the Lord deserving of this praise? We find the answer as we continue reading.
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
Rabbi Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, “For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Messiah Yeshua, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.“
Those who are truly His disciples live out this Truth. Notice that it is just the Lord who is above all, not the Lord and Vishnu, or the Lord and the Earth, or the Lord and us. This is a truth that does not change, the Lord is king forever and ever. The power of our great King is beautifully described in the next two verses.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Notice that the Lord is not only the creator of all things but the true owner of it all. The Earth does not belong to anyone but Him. From the heights to the depths, the sea and the land itself are all under His control. The laws of this universe have been established by the Lord. Whether we look to the stars above or the oceans below we can see clearly His intelligent design. He is worthy of praise for creating us and the universe we live in.
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.
Our psalm moves to another form of worship, bowing down in reverence. The Lord is higher than we are and so we bow down to show our respect. Some bow before kings or those who are powerful and rich, but we are called to bow down before the one true King.
The Lord is not just the supreme king, but He is also OUR king. If we have joined ourselves to Him, chosen to follow His commandments, then we belong to Him in a very special way. He is our great Shepard, guiding, protecting, and caring for us, He also disciplines us when we go astray. It is clear in these verses there are those who are His sheep and those who are not. A shepherd cares for those who are a part of his pasture, but those who are outside his flock are not protected like those within.
This is the path of those who have truly made the Lord their God. Not just in a casual or careless way, but with the totality of our being. We may stray from the path that the Lord is having us walk down but ultimately, we will reach the goal of living forever with Him. We will be able to experience eternal rest in the place He has made for us.
But what about those who would treat the Lord in a casual way? What about those who walk a different path? The psalm turns literally in a single verse to caution everyone who will listen to consider not just the salvation of the Lord, but His wrath as well.
Today, if you would hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
In mid-verse our psalm changes and we move from a joyful praise to a very serious warning against walking down the wide path of life. We are reminded of our people’s rebellion at Meribah and Massah. Places that were named Quarrelling and Testing respectively. At these places and at other times we quarreled with and unfairly tested the Lord. Repeatedly, our people questioned the plans and goodness of God. We claimed He was leading us badly and grumbled that we would have been better off as slaves back in Egypt.
Despite all the wonderous miracles our people saw, the plagues in Egypt, the Lord’s presence descending on Mount Sinai, and being fed literally from heaven, it was not enough. They were the same as human beings today, hard to please, fickle, and never satisfied.
We are warned against hardening our hearts like our people did back in the wilderness, but what does it mean to harden our hearts? There can be many causes that lead us to hard hearts, such as pride or suffering, but the way it manifests is mostly the same. It is forgetting the Lord, not believing in Him, and then going our own way like I just described. The Pharaoh of Egypt hardened his heart and refused to let our people go despite the power of God being manifested around him. In the wilderness our people forgot the way the Lord had saved us and began to worship other gods, no longer believing in the Lord’s promises and His promised rest.
Today many people also have hardened hearts. In our society around us we see people believing in so many different lies or just in themselves. They have as Romans 1 tells us, “…exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” We serve money, power, sex, and ourselves and ignore our heavenly Creator.
We say in our hearts that there is no God and that even if there is, we have a place in heaven waiting for us. We justify our selfishness, rationalize our envy, and defend our endless self-indulgences. We walk down an easy path of our own creation, a path that clearly leads to death. We see this path’s end at the end of our psalm. Psalm 95 concludes with a reminder of how things ended for the generation in the wilderness.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Psalm 95 started with the Lord being the rock of our salvation. We end though with the Lord in His righteous anger allowing that generation to die in the wilderness, never experiencing the rest and joy of the Promised Land of Israel. They reached the end of the path they walked down, and it was not a good ending. They walked away from the Lord and His ways towards destruction.
This may seem like a strange way to end a psalm of praise. We do not end on a hopefully triumphant note, but instead with the tension of forfeiting the promises of the Lord. This ending serves as a caution that as we worship the Lord outwardly, our hearts must be towards Him inwardly. The generation that died in the wilderness joined Moses in song after crossing the Red Sea. They sang songs of praise to the Lord and entered a covenant with Adonai in reverence and awe. Yet we see that they perished down their chosen path.
So, what is the message of Psalm 95 for us today? “Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” The letter written to the Messianic Jews, Hebrews, beautifully gives us the application of this psalm in Hebrews 3 and 4. We read in Hebrews 3:12-14 (NIV):
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Messiah, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.”
Each of us needs to be on guard for the deceitfulness of sin. But not in a way that we begin to obsess or become anxious. We need to honestly gaze deeply into the mirror of God’s Word and examine whether our hearts are tender or have been hardened by sin. We are to encourage one another in joyful praise as well as honest discernment. We share with one another the full Word of God, not just the parts that we want to hear. This is unfortunately something ignored in much of Messiah’s community today. Many in ministry compromise on the truth of God, exchanging it for an incomplete Bible and a swiss-cheese Gospel.
It is not how we start this life, but how we finish it that defines us. If we are still alive there is still an opportunity for us to walk with the Lord. There is still time to change the road we are on. But we do not know how many days the Lord has given to us. We only have this moment for sure, we only have today. The idea that we always have more time is a lie. It is a lie we can tell ourselves and it is a lie that this world tells us as well.
So today Psalm 95 has a message for those who follow the Lord and those who currently do not. If today you know in your heart that you are not on the right path, then make it this day to come before the Lord. Today is the day to repent and become part of His flock through the Good Shepard Messiah Yeshua. To give up on the lies of this world and exchange them for the Truth found only in the Lord. The Lord is the only one who can circumcise our hearts, to make them tender and open to Him. The Lord’s path may be harder to walk, but the reward is so much better. There is a promise of true eternal rest and a joy that passes all understanding waiting at the end of the Lord’s road.
If we are followers of Messiah, Psalm 95 is a reminder to take seriously our walk with Him. To examine ourselves and make sure we are on the right path. If we have strayed, we need to come before the Lord and let Him untangle the sins of our lives. He will help us continue to walk with Him well. But we can only do so through God’s Word and hopefully with the support and help of those within our community. In these divisive times we should also remember we are part of one community and one flock. We need to try and maintain our relationships with one another even when we disagree.
Finally, as we end our time this morning, we need to remember God’s Truth stands against the lies and philosophies of the world around us. We need to remember that either we are part of God’s flock or we are not. Either we will enter His rest, or we will forfeit it. There are no backdoors into heaven, there is only one narrow gate the Lord has prepared for us. We must reject the deceptive lies of this world and the easy paths we can be so tempted to walk down.
Today, each of us have a choice. We can choose to follow the Lord, or we can choose to follow something or someone else. The end of each path is known to us. Let us make sure to choose wisely.
May the Lord enable us to walk with Him well. Through the summer and winters of life may we experience the peace of our Good Shepard. Today if we hear His voice may we not harden our hearts and instead follow the call of our wonderful Messiah.