Call to Worship
Psalm 95:1-3
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
Psalm 95 is a hymn of praise to God and contains no superscription giving details about its authorship or the circumstances in which it was written.
The main call is to worship God by singing (1, 2b), coming into His presence (2a), and bowing down (6). There is a twofold ground for worship in the psalm focusing on God’s exalted greatness (3-6) and His salvation for His people (1, 7).
It might surprise you to know that about half of this hymn of praise is taken up with a warning (7b-11). The psalmist goes back to the rebellious wilderness generation and uses them as a negative example to warn his current audience of the dangers of hardening their heart and ignoring God’s word – which would be an effective denial of God’s greatness and work of salvation!
For us, then, as we hear this call to worship each Lord’s day in May, let us remember that we come to worship the Holy One who is simultaneously God most high and the rock of our salvation.
Benediction
2 Corinthians 13:14
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
This is perhaps the most well-known New Testament benediction, but it comes from one of the most overlooked of Paul’s epistles. Short as it is, it is profound and deserves to be used and memorized by our church.
Notice, first and foremost, the trinitarian structure of the blessing, invoking all three members of the holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. Paul also identifies one particular blessing with each of them which unfolds the beauty of our salvation.1 The logic is this: Grace is purchased by Christ in His work of redemption which was motivated by the love of the Father and the Holy Spirit brings those redeemed into fellowship with God. It is a blessing and, as all good blessings are, it is a short summary of the gospel!
- We should not understand the connection of each blessing with a member of the Godhead in an exclusive way, as if love were somehow particular to the Father and absent from the Son and Spirit, etc. ↩︎
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