Sermon Text: Psalm 95
Date: November 23, 2025
Event: Christ the King (Last Sunday of the Church Year), Year C

Psalm 95 (EHV)

Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD.
Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us.
2Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving.
With music we will shout to him.
3For the LORD is the great God
and the great King above all gods.
4He holds the unexplored places of the earth in his hand,
and the peaks of the mountains belong to him.
5The sea belongs to him, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him.
Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker,
7for he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture
and the flock in his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8do not harden your hearts as they did at Meribah,
as they did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
9where your fathers challenged me
and tested me though they had seen what I had done.
10For forty years I was disgusted with that generation,
and I said, “They are a people who have hearts that stray.
They do not acknowledge my ways.”
11So I swore in my anger,
“They shall never enter my resting place.”

Listen Up! Our King Gives Rest!

Politicians on the campaign trail make a whole lot of promises. They assure voters that if they are elected (or reelected), things will be different—better—for those who vote for them. But those things don’t always happen the way they were promised. Perhaps there are political or logistical roadblocks to doing what they promised to do once in office. Maybe if you’re very cynical, you consider that they never intended to keep those campaign trail promises, and only said what they thought would get them votes.

The reality is that even the best-intentioned promises usually have an asterisk next to them. The parent who promised the trip to get ice cream in the evening cannot foresee the car troubles that will arise later that day. A rainstorm may upend the promise of a day at the amusement park.

This morning, our focus is on the Psalm of the Day, Psalm 95. The words of Psalm 95 are probably familiar to us; they are the basis for the liturgical song the Venite, or “Oh Come Let us Sing to the Lord,” that we sing at the end of most months when we follow the Morning Prayer (Matins) order of worship. The words of Psalm 95 don’t so much make promises as to what God will do, but give reasons for why we should listen to him, while also pointing ahead to the final rest that our King promises.

The first verse of Psalm 95 is the verse from which all the others flow. Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us. Why would we sing joyfully to God? There are many reasons, but the fact that he is the one who saves us reigns supreme. He is the one who forgives our sins. He is the one who assures us of eternal life with him. The reasons for praising God that follow this verse, while important in their own right, would be meaningless without this first truth. For truly, God’s might and wisdom would mean nothing good for us if he weren’t also merciful and forgiving.

What is our response to God’s forgiveness? We sing songs of praise! That doesn’t mean that you need to be a great musician or show your appreciation to God. Instead, this music is the overflow of a thankful heart—gratitude and appreciation to the God who loves us and cares for us. Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving. With music we will shout to him.

And why? For the LORD is the great God and the great King above all gods. Here’s our focus for Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year. We praise God because he is above anyone and everyone. Obviously, there are no other gods except him, but he reigns supreme over anything that would attempt to steal that divine spotlight, be it the false gods of other religions or the materialistic things in our lives that often try to steal that number-one priority spot from God.

His dominion over all is shown clearly in the way he holds the whole of creation in his care: He holds the unexplored places of the earth in his hand, and the peaks of the mountains belong to him. The sea belongs to him, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Places that no person has ever gone are still in God’s care. The areas that are the most difficult for people to get to—the highest mountain peaks and the depths of the oceans—are still in his care.

This majesty and power, paired with his eternal love for us, lead the psalm writer to only one conclusion: Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him. Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the flock in his hand. For all of his goodness to us, the only response that makes any sense and the only response that is right is worship and praise.

But, does that always describe our lives? Are we always willing to submit our lives to the God who made us and made the earth? Do we always trust his promises to work good for us no matter what is going on around us? Do we always give him that number one place in our lives, or are we often giving that spot to other people or things?

The psalm writer, in a psalm that is for the most part very positive and upbeat, does give us a warning along these lines, transitioning to a direct quote from God himself: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did at Meribah, as they did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your fathers challenged me and tested me though they had seen what I had done. The two events referenced here are bookends of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness. They didn’t seem to have enough water to support the group, so many of the Israelites began complaining against Moses and, by extension, against God.

Both times God miraculously brought water out from a rock, but the issue was that they ignored what they knew about God and assumed he was going to let them die of thirst in the wilderness. Rather than bringing requests to their loving King, they just grumbled and complained as if God was their enemy, ready to let them die rather than provide for their basic, physical needs.

Despite that, God’s love shines through as he provides for those needs. But God decreed that those who had sinned against him in this way “shall never enter my resting place.” When it comes to the nation wandering in the wilderness, that was the Promised Land. God was so serious about this that it even applied to Moses himself at Meribah, where he didn’t follow God’s directions and even started taking some of the credit for the miracle himself. Those who rebelled against God in these ways would never enter the Promised Land.

But there is a greater resting place in the balance when it comes to our relationship with our King. The eternal resting place of heaven stands waiting for us. Through Jesus’ decidedly unregal death, eternal life has been given to us as a free gift, like the Promised Land was offered to Old Testament Israel. But there is a warning for us here as well, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did…”

Not wanting to listen to God is not an uncommon trait among people—among us—but God warns us in this psalm that such a course of action has eternally dire results. Wandering away from our King means we wander away from his love and forgiveness. If we are not with our King, we are wandering alone and will need to deal with our sin on our own, something that is impossible for us to do. So, wandering away from our King or rebelling against him means that we cut ourselves off from Jesus’ forgiveness and instead face the consequences ourselves. In this case, the consequence is eternal death in hell. For if we wander away from the King, we will never enter his resting place.

But thanks be to God that he is not as quick to give up on us as we are to give up on him! In fact, he stands ready and willing to forgive, and love, and restore. The almighty God who created the whole universe loves you with that almighty power, forgives you with that unending grace, and restores you to being members of his family yet again. Perhaps the words of the doxology in 2 Timothy chapter 2 ring in our minds as we think about this: Indeed, if we have died with him, we will also live with him; If we endure, we will also reign with him; If we deny him, he will also deny us; If we are faithless, he remains faithful, because he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:12-13).

No matter what you’ve done, no matter how faithful or faithless you’ve been to your King, he stands wanting to give you his rest. He gives it to us by faith in Jesus, who gave his life in exchange for ours. He gives it to us, though we are unworthy and rebellious. Let us come to our King in sorrow and repentance, trusting his love. In the peace of forgiveness, let us praise the Lord! Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria