We read the word together, as is our privilege twice a week, morning and evening. Hebrews chapter 3 and Psalm 95, and let's stand together. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. For this one has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who built the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward. But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm to the end, therefore, As the Holy Spirit says today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. And the day of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tested and tested me, tried me and saw my works 40 years. Therefore, I was angry with that generation, and I said they always go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways. So I swore my wrath. They shall not enter my rest. Beware, brethren. lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. While it is said today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Psalm 95. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms. For the Lord is the great God and the great king above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills 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. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. As in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me, they tried me though they saw my work. For 40 years, I was grieved with that generation. and said, it is a people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know my ways. So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of God endures forever. Turning the word of God to Psalm Psalm 95. This is a psalm that we, in years past, have studied before. You might recognize that. But we return to it tonight for not only a reason of reminder, but perhaps a fresh look at it and with fresh applications from it for our present moment here at Covenant. Psalm 95 reminds us of a truth that a lot of people who profess Christianity don't want to think about. That there is a very real danger of not making it to heaven. And It reminds us of a not uncommon teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, that among those who won't make it to heaven will be those who were firmly convinced that they would. And more than just being firmly convinced, I'm not talking about the man on the street interview, because if you ask people if they're going to heaven, what does basically everybody thinks they're going, they would maybe exclude a few people in history like Adolf Hitler and a few other tyrants. But after that, I'm sure I'm going there, but that's not the people I'm talking about. And that's really not, those aren't the people that Psalm 95 is addressed to. More painfully, it's addressed to those who are regular worshipers who Apparently have responded to this call. Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us worship and bow down, kneel before the Lord, our maker. It is addressed to those who are familiar with. The worship and the ways of God. Those who who know a lot. About the Christian faith. but even with all that knowledge, are in grave danger of ending up in hell. Sometimes Reformed preachers can overlook this particular spiritual reality, thinking it to be either very rare and not worth mentioning, or some would even argue, and I just heard a little while ago of a Presbyterian pastor who argued that he He could not preach warnings to his congregation because they had all professed faith in Jesus Christ. And therefore there was no need for warnings, or any sort of sober self-examination, or any kind of preaching that might feel uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, preaching was only, in his view, supposed to encourage Now, at the end of the day, even Psalm 95, Lord willing, will encourage us. But the idea is that preaching was only just to basically like a pat on the back and make sure that everybody who leaves is convinced they're okay. All's right with the world, heaven's next. That preaching is not to have any note of warning or self-examination. Now, there's something about this warning Concerning self-examination, that's really important. We can go off the rails into a kind of preaching or view of the Christian life where our view of the sufficiency and glory and finished work of Jesus, Jesus in my place, is lost under an endless pile of self-examination and what we could call morbid introspection, where the glory and the freedom and the liberty and the power of the gospel just disappears. This is called hyper-Calvinism. It's a problem. It's a big problem. The other extreme, I would be very wrong, bad preaching. The other extreme is no attention given in the preaching of the word to the profound reality that there is something in the scriptures again and again called hypocrisy. And that hypocrisy by definition is something that people with great spiritual privileges do. You don't find hypocrites amongst the heathen. Because the heathen aren't hypocrites. They're not two-faced. They're not putting on a mask. They're just denying God. I've also been a Christian and a pastor long enough to know that all of us here are capable of serious sins. The most holy saints among us. We are capable of great evil. And we need warnings. We need the word to dig into our heart like a sharp two-edged sword. Sins, all of our sins, they demand a sober reflection and a careful biblical response of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Psalm 95, we'll dig into our hearts to the Lord willing in these ways. My hope, My prayer is that the only comfort you will be left with when you leave here is the only comfort for life and death, Jesus Christ, and that you would be holding to Him more closely than you ever have. But between here and there, some difficult things. So the psalm opens up, really we're going to look at two things. The psalm opens up with a picture of our remarkable privileges. The privileges that we have as a worshiping body, the covenant people of God. And we're going to review, first of all, your covenant privileges. I'm looking at a lot of children here, and I'm also looking at a good number of our covenant youth. You who aren't children anymore, You're growing up, and you can hear what I say. You know the words. I hope you're watching and listening, because I can see you. I always have to remind the youth of this. I can see all of you. I can see where you're looking. I want you to be listening tonight. I want you to be listening very carefully, because God has given you remarkable privileges in the covenant of grace. Life in Christ's Church, it's verses 1 through 7, focused here on worship, but there's a principle that goes beyond worship, all of covenant life. Context here, again, is the kingship psalms, the psalms of the enthroned, glorious Messiah, reigning, powerful, worthy of worship. Almost every psalm has a statement something like this, O come, let us sing to the Lord, or sing to the Lord a new psalm. The Lord reigns. Let the earth rejoice. The Lord reigns. Let the peoples tremble. Sing to the Lord a new song. Make a joyful shout to the Lord. All you lands." There's this never-ending series of commands. It's just packed with these commands that the people of God are out worshiping people. The flow of the Psalms, this section of the Psalter, comes at the point where David's really the central figure of the Psalter, the king, the great king. Remember David's life, he was first a fugitive, then he came to the throne, then later on he would be in exile under his own son's rebellion, he'd be restored. And those ups and downs of David's life as he's surrounded by enemies outside of Israel, and often hypocrisy within Israel, David's continuance as the king is nothing less than by the remarkable providence and protection of God. And the Psalter has all the contours of those realities of the life of the king in it, beginning with the description of the ideal king in the 1st Psalm and the 2nd Psalm, and then right away beginnings with his sufferings. And then it slowly climbs, as it were, the Psalter to that final phrase, let everything that has breath praise the Lord, Psalm 150, verse 6. And here we're on the upswing in this section, the crescendo of praise for the enthroned king. And the Psalter has at its heart this blessed hope that through the Davidic king, God would destroy all of his enemies and all of our enemies, bring his people to salvation and gather a worshiping people and renew a new heavens and the earth in which the worship of God would be paramount, central, and universal. These Psalms here in the kingship section, the heart cry of these Psalms is that great hope. They're all full of universal calls to worship the universal King. God is King forever. And they have every... again and again with Psalm 100 a few weeks ago, the idea of a joyful, worshiping people responding to this kingship, excited about it. We have here, Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. It's an excited crowd here. It reminds us of the crowd at the triumphal entry, Hosanna to the Son of David. There's a call here, not only. There's a call here, as it were, to join the assembly. You can imagine the saints rushing to the temple here and calling to anyone who's left in the streets of Jerusalem to come and to worship the King. The language of invitation, come, let us come, let us shout, is all through the Psalms. The object of this worship is the Lord, who is the great God, and here's the kingship language, the great King above all gods, verse 3. The Lord, Yahweh, I am who I am, who is the great Elohim, who is the King of glory. He is the rock of our salvation. He is the creator of the ends of the earth, and His hands are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it. His hands formed the dry land. He is the creator of the ends of the earth, who never faints or grows weary. And the call is to express gratitude to Him, to worship Him, to give thanks to Him. And we went over this in Psalm 100 a few weeks ago. but it's not anything less than the whole person response, body and soul, to the majesty and glory of Almighty God, creator of the ends of the earth, worshiping as a people, come, let us sing to the Lord. Why? Because he is the creator of the ends of the earth, the great king above all gods, verses three through five, and then verses six and seven, because he is also the redeemer and shepherd of his people. Look at this section, verses 6 and 7. O come, let us worship, let us bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. And here is the invitation, verses 1 through 5, is now being answered. by a people that are on their faces before the throne of God, confessing Him to be their maker, and then saying, and for He is our God, communion with God. We are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand. Now from the picture, the throne room of God, the call to be worshipers, the confession that he's the creator. At the end of verse seven, we are at the zenith, the highest point of this worship cry and this assembly, because in view is nothing less than the redeeming, saving love of God for an unworthy people that have been brought into his presence by the great shepherd of the sheep himself, who we know to be in the new covenant, Jesus Christ. Who said, I am the good shepherd. Hebrews 13, Jesus, that great shepherd. 1 Peter 2, for you were once straying, but now have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. And 1 Peter 5, when the chief shepherd appears, the language of sheep and shepherd in the old covenant have everything to do with God's redeeming, saving, sin-forgiving mercy lavished on a people who were once wandering, but now have been brought to the shepherd and overseer of their souls. The father. to use the language of Jesus. Here, the worshiping assembly, the gathered church, inviting everybody around to come and join in this worship, they are experiencing the reality of a father who is seeking worshipers to worship him in spirit and in truth, as Jesus said. And they are bound in this assembly. They are filled with exuberant praise. And we know this is why you should come to covenant. Because Jesus Christ, through the blood of his cross, has made peace between God and men. And in him, you have access to the throne room of the King of Kings, to worship and bow down before the Lord, your maker, the shepherd, the great shepherd of Israel. And this is your covenant privilege. This is the privilege we have every single week. Jesus Christ himself, the great worship leader to usher us into the presence of the triune God. I use the greeting a moment ago from Revelation chapter one, grace to you in peace from him who is and was and is to come from the seven spirits of the fullness of the spirit before his throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth. You are invited to every week and have access to. Heaven, heavenly things, unshakable spiritual realities, a kingdom that cannot be shaken. You hear the voice of Him who speaks from the throne, and God invites you to come in, worship, and bow down. You children, you grow up with this. remarkably thinking this is normal, ordinary, regular life. Youth here at Covenant, some of you might be growing up and you might be forgetting how remarkable it is to have Christian parents and to have them take you and to say to you on the way, come let us worship, let's bow down before the Lord our maker. For God is our God. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. And to bring you, as it were, under their arms to God. These are our privileges. This is what worship is. This is what it's designed by God to do. It begins with this glorious invitation, oh come. And we enter into the throne room of heaven. And there, like fire warms the cold hands of someone on a winter day, the warmth and beauty and glory of God again is designed to warm our hearts and restore our spiritual life. And the Lord shines on us for good. And it's to warm our hearts and our souls as we live under the light of his countenance See His glory again. And it should make us worship with the exuberance that God calls for. Shout joyfully to Him with psalms. Worship and bow down. Kneel before the Lord, our Maker. Engage with your whole person, every fiber of your being. To be every single week amazed that God brought you through all the dangers of this life and he brought you back as the great shepherd of the sheep, and he placed you again in a pew at covenant to hear the kingdom, grace, and glory of Jesus Christ. And it's more than this, because the worship of God is the highest pinnacle of our privileges, but the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is in view, and all the blessings of the covenant. Again, having Christian parents, having Christian friends, being under the oversight of the great shepherd of the sheep through his under-shepherds, elders, having the ministry of deacons, so that if you were to be run into difficulty, you'd have your brothers and sisters around you through the coordinated mercy of ministry to lift you up. When you're in the hospital and sick, people come to pray with you. When you're in sin and wandering, You have brothers and sisters who pick up the phone or take you out for lunch and say, don't go down that road. When you're wrestling with a sin, you can find someone here in this place who say, I'll be accountable to you. You be accountable to me. Let's fight the good fight together. There's just privileges flowing from this covenant reality. You're surrounded by them. You probably haven't stopped to consider the nature, the length, the breadth, the width, of the love of God in Christ Jesus that is declared and testified to you as being a member of Christ's church. Lord, why was I a guest? Is William Cooper's cry. Why was I made to hear your voice? Enter while there's room. Thousands make a wretched choice, rather starve than cope. How about the Lord's table? This is just, I mean, I said this a few weeks ago at the Lord's Supper. It's not my voice that invites you here. I speak as an ambassador for Jesus Christ who sets the table. He himself is the feast. And he says, come dine with the triune God, even as you feast with me, and I give myself to you in the feast. We could go on and on. This is what we have in Christ's church. But then what happens? We get used to what we have, don't we? Children, I want you to imagine a prince living in a palace. I can imagine that some of you, or a princess, have thought, wow, wouldn't that be a good life? I wish I had. all the money I could ever have to buy all the things I could ever want, live in a big palace, be famous. But then if you looked in the window one day, you might see a prince and somebody, a servant somewhere puts his breakfast in front of him. And he says, I don't want to eat that. I don't want to eat that food. It doesn't taste good. I don't like it. And even though his father is a king, and it seems like a really neat thing to have a king to be your father, his father tells him what to do, what time he has to go to bed, because I imagine even princes have a bedtime. And he starts complaining against his father. And then he's outside playing and someone tells him that it's time to come in and eat dinner. Maybe with his mother. And you hear him complaining again. And then he has to go to school. And even princes and princesses have homework. And he has to work. Or she has to work. And you hear them complaining and you ask yourself, how could it possibly be that a prince or a princess could be unhappy with all those privileges? Psalm 113, God says that in His covenant of grace, He does this for us. He raises the poor out of the dust. He lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seed him with princes, with the princes of His people. In His church, He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. He lavishes good gifts on us in the covenant of grace. He gives us everything, everything that we have, As a matter of fact, what the psalm says at the beginning is that you are invited into and have a place in the palace of the king. Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us show joyful to Him with songs. For the Lord is the great God, the great king above all gods. Let us worship and bow down. The privilege of entrance to the throne. And then there's the shift. And it is the danger of taking lightly these privileges. It begins in verse 7b. Today, if you will hear his voice, the worshipers now are being directed to listen to the king. And what does the king say to the worshipers? You need to hear this. He's saying it to you tonight. The voice says, listen to the king. And the King says this to the worshiping people. Do not harden your hearts as in the day of rebellion. Here's the Lord, the great God, the King, the Shepherd, the Redeemer, the Savior speaking. And what he has to say this day in worship is, don't harden your heart. Tonight, you're in a worship service. So that means you're in Psalm 95 verses one through seven. With the eye of faith, you're here before the throne of heaven. With the ear of faith, you hear not only a preacher that says today, hear the voice of God, but you hear God himself speak. And he's saying to you tonight, don't harden your heart. It's a message of sober warning from God himself. The voice that rises above all the voices, that quiets the praises of the people, is the voice of God warning against the sin of presumption. This is a warning that Jesus often gave through the Word and in His preaching. He warns against a hard heart. Now here, there's a clue here. Do not harden your hearts. And then there's a historical reference. As in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me, they tried me, though they saw my work. For 40 years I was grieved with that generation, and I said it is a people who go astray in their hearts, for they do not know my ways." Well, this psalm is referring to the people of God just after the Exodus. The people of God who had remarkable privileges. What were their privileges? I imagine that you would never forget, ever. If you've been rescued from Pharaoh, delivered by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, led through the Red Sea with the water like a wall in your right hand and your left, your feet on dry ground, you'd never forget that. Never. But yet, the Bible says you can see all that, you can have those privileges, and then you can do this. And all the congregation of Exodus 17 of Israel set out on their journey from the wilderness of sin according to the commandment of the Lord and camped at Rephidim There was no water for the people to drink. People argued with Moses, give us water that we may drink. Why do you argue with me? Why do you tempt the Lord? And they thirsted and they complained against Moses and said, why have you brought us out of the land of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? So Moses cried out to the Lord saying, what shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me. God's mediator. Stretched out his arm above the Red Sea, and the waters opened. And they tell him, you just want to kill us, and you're a useless leader. The psalmist says, don't do this. Be careful, verse 9 and 10. You saw my work. Jesus, the Lord says here, they saw my work. They witnessed all the glory of the Exodus. They had remarkable outward experiences, but verse 10, what's the problem? It is a people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know my ways. So outwardly, all kinds of privileges, inwardly, heart is stone. They've never really embraced. Jesus offered in the gospel. Jesus prefigured before them in Moses. As a matter of fact, that's the problem. They don't want to reject God's mediator. Not good enough. That's the problem. The writer to the Hebrew says one word was the problem, unbelief. They did not believe God. They did not trust him. They did not take him at his word. Now, how could you Do this. Clearly, there's a warning here for a reason. Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. The central command, perhaps in Psalm 95, is this warning. It's what really makes this psalm jump out at us in this section, because it begins on that high note of privilege and then just rapidly stops us in our tracks, arrests us and says, now don't do this. And at first you feel like the two don't belong together. but they do belong together. We've had people in our own number here in the past 10 years since I've been a pastor who one day stand up and say, I want nothing to do with Jesus Christ. Walk away. That's a hard heart. How could you harden your heart? Well, let's think about the old Testament saints in the wilderness. You can complain against God. against His provision. Manna wasn't good enough? They thought they were going to die in the wilderness? They didn't trust Him. They didn't believe. They didn't believe that the God who would divide the Red Sea would keep His people alive to the Promised Land. They didn't like His mediator. They didn't like His leader. And they didn't trust that He would provide. Some of you tonight, maybe you are deeply dissatisfied with God's provision. You ought never to be. Maybe it's the kids he gave you, trouble they bring, husband or wife he gave you. Maybe it's your job. And you want to argue with God. Maybe it's the leadership he gave you in the nation, in the church, these elders. They remind me of Moses. Imperfect? We do. Surely we do. Worse than Moses. How about you young people here tonight? I want to speak to you again. You have amazing privileges. Let me ask you how you submit to your parents. You're becoming a teenager and you think you know the answers to life. And God, as you grow up, you're thinking more and you have more gifts and abilities and talents and you're able to figure more things out. And it becomes harder to submit to the will of someone else because you're growing up to be young adults. And what do you do? God says this, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in which the land in the land, which the Lord, your God is giving you. And you think you want to do this and your parents say you should really do that. What are you gonna do? Don't harden your hearts and rebel against the Christian parents that God has given you as a privilege in the covenant of grace. You could complain against the church, its imperfections, you could fall into secret sins. Think no one knows what I'm doing, but God does. And He's interested, look at verse 10, that you would not go astray, not just outwardly, but in your heart. He's interested that the things that live inside you would please Him, that nobody else could ever see, but He sees. He wants your heart. He wants you to follow Him. He doesn't want you to commit sexual sins. He doesn't want you to cheat on your taxes in the next weeks. He wants your life, the totality of it, and He wants submissive trust. He wants your heart. Again, you young people here tonight, I want you to think about the privileges you have here in worship and in your Christian homes and families, and I want to plead with you directly and plainly, face to face, look you in the eyes. And I want you to understand this. Ever. Take all the privileges that God has given you. And turn away from God. Don't ever do it. Don't disobey him. Christ is a good shepherd, a great king worthy of your worship now and forever. He calls you to suffer, suffer for it. He calls you to obey, obey him. He's the one who shed his blood on Calvary's cross for sinners such as we are. His love is the best love you could ever know. The life following him is the best life you could ever live. Don't take the privileges that God has given you and throw them away by hardening your heart in sin. What happened to these people? God was angry, verse 11. So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." No promised land. Some of you here tonight need to hear this. In danger of making bad decisions, grave sins against the Lord. Maybe it's in your family. You need to be careful because there is a point where God's, as it were, His final judgment becomes operative in history. And you've hardened your heart, and there's no point of return. That's why the Bible says today. Today is the day of salvation. Today, repent. That's why there's an urgency. Today if you will hear His voice. And when God and His Spirit brings to mind by His Word any sin that you are presently engaged in or tempted to commit, tonight purpose to repent and turn back to Christ. And hear the urgency. Before, the Israelites in the wilderness, you remember they didn't believe that God had left them. They tried to go into the fight the battles and go into the land and they realized he really wasn't with them and they really weren't going to enter the rest. They really were going to have to be in the wilderness. God really did swear in his wrath and it was an irrevocable oath. You're not going to the promised land. These are the hammer blows. God was grieved. He saw that they went astray in their hearts. They didn't know his ways. And then he swore in his wrath. No promised land for you. So what is Psalm 95 warning against? It's warning against any present casual attitude towards your covenant privileges, but instead to seize hold of them and in them lift your eyes to the God of grace, mercy, and glory. To think much of how Jesus Christ communicates His goodness to you. To love His people, His day, His worship, His law. To love Him. And the warning here is not meant to discourage you. It is always gracious when My family, we like to vacation on the coast every now and then, and we like to go to Hunting Island State Park. Some of you know that, and there's a lighthouse there. It's a historic lighthouse. It was built by very kind people who put it there. What for? So that those who are sailing up and down the East Coast, matter of fact, there's a whole line of them all the way up the East Coast, probably the West Coast too. I don't know. Sure there are. and all the money and time and effort to build each one of those and to hire somebody to climb up the steps. I can't remember if it was 130 or 170 steps and they would carry these buckets of oil from the bottom to the top around the spiral staircase every day so that every night a light would be kept burning so that the mariners would not go to their graves hitting the shoals. And if you don't like this kind of dig into the hidden areas of my life sermon, that's a problem. The reason Christ does this is because he is like the lighthouse keeper. And he doesn't want you to make shipwreck of your life. And it's good. And he does it because he's good to his people. There might be something easier to listen to. But the ministry of Jesus was filled with this. Think of the parable of the sower, the master parable of the kingdom. Three kinds of soil won't make it to heaven. There's only one. That is the one that bears fruit, 30, 60, 100 fold. Think of the parable of the dragnet. The kingdom of heaven is like a large net cast into the sea. All kinds of fish were caught. The net is drawn up. Then it's sorted. Some are cast away into judgment. Some are kept. Jesus is warning. Think of the parable of the virgins, wise and foolish. The foolish thought they had a relationship with the bridegroom, but when they got to the feast late, the door was closed. The wise were listening to the warnings of the bridegroom, and they were ready for him to come. Who did Jesus give these... Another one, the parable of the talents comes to mind. Same thing. Who did Jesus give these parables to? Did He go all the way to Assyria or Ethiopia or some faraway place? No, He was generally preaching on the streets of Jerusalem to the covenant people of God, who had fallen into the sins of their fathers long ago, and who had presumed that everything was right between them and God. because of their external privileges, such that they would crucify the Lord of glory rather than listen. We, by nature, are not better than them. We're the same. And so Christ comes again tonight by his word and spirit, and he says, don't harden your heart. John Bunyan, at the end of Pilgrim's Progress, wrote about ignorance, who came to the gate of the city, assuming he would come in, and that all was well. Then they took him, carried him through the air to a door that I saw on the side of the hill. They put him in there, and then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gate of heaven. So I awoke, and it was a dream. The word I want you to remember as you go from here tonight is simply this, today. Today, hear His voice. Today, what you are doing and thinking right now, at this moment, it counts forever. God wants your heart. Give it to Him without reservation. Let's pray. Lord, we are again overwhelmed by the privileges you give us in the covenant of grace. We pray that even by your words of warning, that you would stir new affections in our hearts for our Savior, Jesus Christ, who took the full penalty for sin on the cross in our place. And that we with unreserved love and affection would hear your voice again tonight, and that we would repent of anything that leads to the hardening of our hearts. Lord, we know that your word says that these things were written for an example to us, that we would not do the same things. We're sobered by this, and we pray for grace to listen carefully to your divine voice. We pray that you would also help us to remember that as we go from here, that you shepherd us with your rod and your staff because you love your people. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Oh, worship the King, all glorious above. Trinity hymn number two. Oh, grateful we sing his power and his love. Our shield and defender, the ancient of days. Familiar in splendor and girded with praise. ♪ O tell of his plight, O sing of his praise ♪ ♪ Whose throne is the white, whose canopy stays ♪ ♪ His chariots of wrath plotting thunderclouds torn ♪ ♪ And darknesses tap on the wings of love ♪ Earth, with its store of wonders adored, Almighty, your power has founded a whole, Established it has by a changeless decree, And grounded has passed like a mantle the sea. Mountain full of air, what dark can recite? It breathes in the air, it shines in the light. It streams from the hills, it descends to the plains. And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain. Children of us, can we bold as frail? If you do we trust, nor find you to fail. Your mercy's how tender, how firm to the end. Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer and Friend. measureless might, ineffable love, while angels divine to Him do abode. The humbler creation, the feeble their gaze, with true adoration shall listen to Your praise.