Why We Sing (Psalm 95)

I’ll be honest with you—there is a part of every church service that, all my life, has made me moderately uncomfortable. And that is the part of the service in which we sing.

It’s sort of a strange thing to do, isn’t it? Plenty of us enjoy singing, and many of us do it when we’re alone, but I’ve tried to think of other situations in ordinary life in which people sing when they’re assembled in a group, and there aren’t many. People sing “Happy Birthday” at a birthday party. People sing “We Are the Champions” or that “Oooooohh-oooohhh” chant at football games. People sing the national anthem on national holidays (or at football games). People sing along with their favorite songs at concerts or clubs.

I’m sure there are other situations in which people do this, but none of them quite resemble what we do when we gather together to worship. When we come to church, we stand, usually all facing the same direction, and we sing together. And unless you’re going to a church that is—let’s face it—more of a concert than a church, the songs we sing aren’t party songs like “We Are the Champions”—we’re not singing these songs because they’re catchy. Often the songs are slow, and old, and not particularly easy.

And the songs are always about the same thing. They’re about God, and who he is, and what he has done.

But we have other ways of talking about God, and who he is, and what he has done. We have the Bible, which we read. We have prayer, in which we speak to God by repeating what the Bible has said. We have study and discussion, in which we try to get to the bottom of what the Bible means.

The songs come in, it would seem, from two places: from the long tradition of God’s people singing about him for millennia, and from the Psalms, which is the original songbook of God’s people.

But that still doesn’t answer the question I asked myself when I was a kid: WHY do we sing? Why do we stand together and sing several songs whenever we gather?

There are a lot of answers to that question, but this psalm in particular gives us two very good ones. The first answer is quite easy to see, but the second is a little trickier. So we’re going to have one point on the first answer, and two on the second.

Why do we sing? First answer:

Reason 1: We Sing to Awaken Our Affection for God (v. 1-7).

In v. 1-7, we see essentially the same thing twice. The first is a call to worship (specifically in song), and the second is the grounds for our worship. And in the call for us to sing praises to God, the psalmist gives us particular characteristics of worship that should be there.

V. 1:

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!

So the first thing we see here is that when we sing, we ought to sing with joy. Make a joyful noise, he says, to the rock of our salvation. Make a joyful noise with songs of praise.

Next he says that we should be thankful. “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving,” he says in v. 2.

And he thirdly, the psalmist says our worship should be characterized by humility. V. 6:

6       Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
      let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!

Why should our songs be characterized by joy, by thanksgiving, by humility? The simple answer is that those emotions are the proper response to who God is.

The psalmist goes back and forth between invitations to worship in a certain way—with joy, with thanksgiving, with humility—and the reasons why God deserves that kind of worship. He says, first of all, in v. 1, that God is “the rock of our salvation”. All of our hopes for a life of meaning, a life in which we are fulfilling the reason why we were created, an eternal life of peace and happiness and fulfillment—all of these hopes are resting on him, and he will make good on our hopes. He is the rock of our salvation, a solid foundation for our hope.

Then we see (v. 3):

3       For the LORD is a great God,
      and a great King above all gods.
4       In his hand are the depths of the earth;
      the heights of the mountains are his also.
            5       The sea is his, for he made it,
      and his hands formed the dry land.

Our great God, who is King above all authorities on earth, is the Creator and sustainer of the earth itself. From the deepest ocean trench to the highest mountain, the seas and the land are all his and all come from him. And what he created, he sustains.

Think about how many intricate things have to go right in order for us to take a breath every second. If you’re breathing in right now, if your heart is beating, it is because God is sustaining your life. And that is true of every thing on this earth; if God decides to let the earth tilt on its axis by a single degree, all life is over. All of existence is in his hand. If we’re here, we have reason for joy; we have reason to be thankful; we have reason to be humble, because we’re here—we exist. This is something everyone can say.

But the psalmist goes even further than that. Look at v. 7:

7       For he is our God,
      and we are the people of his pasture,
      and the sheep of his hand.

This is something that not everyone can say. Everyone can find reason for gratitude in God’s care for the earth he created, but not everyone can say that God is my God, and I am one of his people. He is not just the God over all the earth; he is our God, and we are his people. The psalmist calls us “the sheep of his hand”. God cares for us, the way a shepherd cares for his sheep, and far beyond.

It’s not for nothing that this description of God carried over to Jesus when he came. Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep (John 10.11). He lived the obedient life we should have lived; he took our disobedience on himself; he was punished for our sin; and he gave us his perfect life in exchange. This Shepherd’s care for his sheep goes far beyond the care of an ordinary shepherd; he takes the place of his sheep, letting the danger come to him instead of to them.

If you here have placed your faith in Christ for your salvation, then you are his people; this God is your God, and he will continue to care for you the way he already has cared for you in Christ.

We sing to express things, and to feel things, we don’t ordinarily get to express. I grew up watching Old Hollywood musicals. They’re silly, sure—but there is something satisfying about watching Gene Kelly fall in love with Debbie Reynolds, then walk outside in the rain and feel so overwhelmed with happiness at finding her that he just starts singing and dancing in the rain. Or seeing Oliver Twist mourning the absence of his mother and letting out his grief in song, in the basement of a funeral home. They let themselves do that in these musicals (and it helps that an orchestra is always with them, playing the background music). There’s a part of us that sort of wishes life works that way, that we could do the same thing—that we could express grief or joy or gratitude or humility in this emotionally-charged way.

Well, when we come together to worship, that’s essentially what we’re doing: we’re letting the reality of our situation drive us to the response that we can’t have when we’re just out walking in the streets. We think about who he is and what he has done, we lift our eyes to him…and we can sing. We’re not alone, so we don’t have to feel weird about it. And we have musicians playing along with us (like we never do in our day-to-day lives), so we won’t get lost.

We sing because he is that good; we sing because we need to feel that he is that good.

But that’s not the only reason why. But before we get to that second reason, we need to look at the next four verses, because they can be a bit disorienting.

Warning: Do Not Harden Your Hearts (v. 7b-11)

At the end of v. 7, there is a fairly dramatic change in tone. Up until now, it has been nothing but calls to worship God, and reasons why we should do so. But at the end of v. 7, there is a command, accompanied by a warning.

v. 7b:

Today, if you hear his voice,
            8       DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, as at Meribah,
      as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
            9       when your fathers put me to the test
      and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
            10       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.”
            11       Therefore I swore in my wrath,
      “They shall not enter my rest.”

So this part of the psalm references something that happened to the people of Israel earlier in their history, in Exodus 17. In this passage, God has just rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt; he has miraculously brought them through the Red Sea, and led them into the wilderness. At this point, he has already provided miraculous food for them, and provided water. But now they’ve moved on to a new part of the wilderness; God is still providing food, but there is no water for the people to drink.

It’s surprising how quickly desperation can take hold: even though they’ve seen God’s provision for them, and recently, the mere idea that they might go without water is enough to make them wonder whether his provision will continue. So they quarrel with Moses, saying, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So God tells Moses to take his staff and go to a certain rock. Moses does what God tells him to do: he strikes the rock, and water begins to come out of it.

Moses named the place “Massah and Meribah,” because Massah, translated, means “testing,” and Meribah means “quarreling”.

So why did the people “harden their hearts” against God? Simply put, because they were thirsty (physically), and they lost sight of God’s promises of provision because of their need. That’s all. Though they had seen his work (v. 9), they doubted.

And the consequences, according to the psalm, were dire: that generation of Hebrews didn’t enter the rest of the Promised Land.

But here’s what’s interesting. This consequence, of being unable to enter the Promised Land, didn’t happen because the people doubted God at Massah and Meribah. God doesn’t say, “Because you grumbled about water, you won’t enter the Promised Land.” He doesn’t say it here, and he doesn’t say it much later in Numbers 20, when the exact same thing happens again.

But if you read the rest of the book Exodus, and Leviticus, and Numbers, and Deuteronomy—which every Israelite at the time this psalm was written would have known well—you see that the hardening of the people’s hearts at Meribah and Massah in Exodus 17 wasn’t an isolated event. This was the beginning of a pattern that continued.

We get a little closer to the root of this pattern if we look at Hebrews 3, where this psalm is extensively quoted.

Let’s just read Hebrews 3.12-19:

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,
                  “Today, if you hear his voice,
                  do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” [There’s Psalm 95.7-8.]
16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Why were they unable to enter their rest? It wasn’t because they doubted one time when they were thirsty. It’s because they came to have evil, unbelieving hearts that led them to fall away from the living God. They didn’t enter their rest because of unbelief.

So that is the warning of the second half of this psalm—don’t fall into unbelief like the Hebrews did in the wilderness. God has provided rest for his people in Christ; he 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. He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

So don’t be like the Hebrews. Don’t be so focused on the difficulty in front of you that your hearts become hardened to the God who has provided everything for you in Christ. Do not let yourself have an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

Reason 2: We Sing to Protect Ourselves Against Unbelief.

So here’s the question we need to ask. What do the first half of Psalm 95 and the second half of Psalm 95 have to do with each other? Why do v. 1-7 come before this warning in v. 8-11?

And here, I think, is the answer. Remember that the psalms are songs, meant to be sung by God’s people when they are gathered together to worship. Several things happen during these assemblies—God’s people will pray; they will hear the Word of God preached; they will encourage one another; and yes, they will sing. That means that if the priests (for the Israelites) and the pastors (for the Christian church today) do their jobs, then God’s people will be constantly reminded of who he is. They will be constantly reminded of what he has done. They will be constantly be reminded of the glory he deserves.

And there will always be a right way and a wrong way to respond to what we hear.

Both the right way and the wrong way are present in this psalm. We see the wrong way described in the second half—it is unbelief. And it’s scary, how easily unbelief can creep in, without our even being aware of it. How easy is it for us to listen to a sermon, or listen to Scripture being read aloud, and barely register the words, and feel nothing? How easy is it to hear the Bible itself—the Word of God—read aloud, and in the back of our minds have a voice that says, “Yeah, I don’t know.” We’d never say it out loud, but it happens all the time.

So here is why the two halves of this psalm fit together so perfectly. I said earlier that there are two reasons why we sing. The first is that we sing because God deserves it; that’s what we saw in the first half of the psalm. The second reason why we sing is because singing together in gathered worship to God is a weapon against unbelief. That’s what we see in the second half, and that is why this warning is given.

So here’s the question: how do we protect ourselves from unbelief? How do we protect ourselves from hardness of heart?

We sing the way he told us to in v. 1-7. If you’ve got the story of Israel in the back of your minds when you read the beginning of this psalm, you see that the psalmist is reminding us of everything the Israelites forgot: that God is a great God, that he is sovereign over all creation, and that he cares for his people, as a shepherd cares for his sheep.

So there is a way to sing that feeds our faith, that feeds our affections for God, that protects us from unbelief and hardness of heart.

I thought long and hard about how to describe this way we are called to sing, but in community group this week one of our members put it perfectly: he said that this psalm is an invitation to worship actively. Most of us, when we worship, are very passive. We let the words come up on the screen, and we sing along when the people leading worship show us when to sing.

But that’s a far cry from the way the psalmist calls us to sing. He says, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord”—he doesn’t just say, “Make noise.” He says, “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving”—he doesn’t just say, “Come into his presence.” He says, “Let us worship and bow down”—he doesn’t just say, “Get on your knees.”

He’s inviting us to make a choice: to expose ourselves to the revelation of who God is, and to remind ourselves, actively, that God should make us joyful; that we should be thankful; that we should be awed and humbled by his power.

God wants us to worship in a way that makes us feel something. A video went sort of viral a few months ago; it showed John Piper reading a prayer that was written by ChatGPT. It was a beautiful prayer, in which the gospel was elaborately laid out. After reading the prayer, he asked the crowd, “Is this worship?” And then he answered with a resounding “NO.” Why? Because computers can formulate words better than we can, but they don’t feel anything. A computer can make noise, but it can’t be joyful. It can’t be thankful. It can’t be humble.

That is the exclusive domain of creatures who were made in the image of God and who are moved to love and affection when we remind ourselves in song of who God is and why he has been so good to us.

So think about this (and I’ll close): when you sing, how do you sing? I’m not talking about how loud you are, or whether you raise your hands, or whether or not you clap; those things will vary greatly from person to person. I’m talking about what you feel when you sing. When you sing to God, do you think about what you’re singing? When you sing to God, are you aware that you’re singing to God? When a song calls you to be joyful, are you reminding yourself of why you should be joyful? Are you allowing yourself to be reminded by the song, and by your brothers and sisters around you, why you should be thankful? Why you should be humble?

We sing because we need what our corporate worship provides. We need more fuel for our souls than “Happy Birthday” or “We Are the Champions” provide. We sing together because singing together gives us the opportunity to feed right affections for God in ourselves—joy, and thankfulness, and humility, and many others. And we sing because when we expose ourselves to the truth of who God is, we strengthen our faith; we protect ourselves against unbelieving hearts that will, eventually, lead us away from him.

So let us sing actively. Let us sing consciously. Let us sing with feeling. He deserves it, and we need it.