I like an app named The Daily Office. I don’t do it regularly, and most often I do the morning prayer or Compline (the late night prayer). I really like that both of those prayers start with a confession of sin. I have been thinking that I don’t confess my sins enough, but simply presume upon God’s grace to forgive me, though I haven’t named my offenses. Naming my sins is crucial to both my genuine repentance and developing a posture of humility before God. I am glad for how these written prayers remind me to come before God with my heart acknowledging my sin and his hotlines.
After the confession, the morning prayer always recites excerpts from Psalm 95:
Oh come, let us adore him.
O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are all the depths of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it and his hands prepared the dry land.
O come, let us worship and fall down, and 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.” (Psalm 95:1-7a)
This is such a wonderful psalm, and a great reminder that because God is our maker and sustainer, we are called to worship him with thanksgiving and praise. We love him, because he is our salvation and he has provided the pastures and protection for us that we need. I have sometimes begun explaining the gospel to people using the analogy of what I call “owners’ rights.” When someone invents and creates something, we humans think it is naturally right for that inventor/creator to have a patent or proprietary rights over their creation. How much more does God, who brought the whole universe into being, have the right to rule the creation he invented and sustains. So I love this psalm for its clarity in making known our proper relationship with our Maker.
The next line in the morning liturgy has always made me wonder, though most days I just ignore it: “The following verses may be omitted.” What are the following verses?
Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness,
When your fathers tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my works.
Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said, “It is a people that err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways,”
Of whom I swore in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.” (Psalm 95:7b-11)
The liturgy, after the allowed omission, continues with “The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: O come, let us adore him.”
Why may those verses be omitted? Why aren’t they actually omitted so that we don’t even detect the omission? I don’t know enough about the history of the daily office. Is the inclusion of the whole psalm historic? That might be a reason for not removing verses completely. 7b-11 is a warning against hardening one’s heart, complete with a lesson the people of God can learn from their original forefathers. The psalmist is saying it is a perilous thing to harden your heart against God, to close your ears to his word, especially if you know on some level that hearing his voice provides that guidance that keeps us thriving. The Israelites did NOT want God to go silent and forsake them. But when he told them what to do – enter the promised land and conquer its inhabitants with the promise of his help – they sadly forgot what amazing things he had already done for them. He had opened the Red Sea to let them escape from the Egyptians, rained manna from heaven for 40 years, and given water from the rock. It wasn’t just one failure either: they had repeatedly over the 40 years similarly doubted and maligned him, though he steadily provided for them and protected them. They hardened their hearts and incurred his wrath. The psalmist urges us to learn from their story.
This exhortation and warning flows right out of the first seven verses. But it intensifies the instruction to us. What do I mean by that? It presses us to not only thank God, adore and worship him, but also to listen to and obey what he says. To reject what he instructs has consequences. The suggestion that these particular verses may be omitted seems suspicious and short-sighted to me.
Do we only want to hear positive things? Do we want only “the carrot” and not “the stick”? Do we believe we have the right to freely choose to obey God or not, without consequences? What if we only talk about God as if he is indifferent about whether we acknowledge him or not, when in fact our failure to love and obey him has everlasting consequences?
I want to know if my choices are consequential. At the very least, I want to know how to avoid wrath! Maybe that makes me seem like a people pleaser. Certainly it is somewhat dysfunctional to be motivated by fear of bad consequences alone. But the Proverbs tell us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The word “beginning” indicates to me that fear is not the whole of wisdom about God, but it is the right starting place. The psalm teaches us the fear of the Lord in the second half, but it teaches us why and how to love and worship him in the first half. It seems to me that it provides for us a complete and healthy wisdom: perhaps we learn obedience to him out of fear of his wrath, but we grow to a joyous love and praise as we contemplate his grand creative power, his gracious salvation and his shepherding love for us, his people.
The elementary teaching that actions have consequences remains essential even for those of us who are mature in the faith. It seems to me that finishing the spiritual life well is not a “slam-dunk.” Sadly we all have heard about spiritual leaders wiping out before they reach their finish line. I don’t want to be one of those stories! And lest we think a warning like Psalm 95 is only necessary before Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we have passages like Philippians 2:12-13:
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
I’m not going to unpack the mystery of how we are working out our salvation while God is simultaneously working in us. But Paul exhorts the Philippians to work out their salvation “with fear and trembling!” God is working in me! He’s got this! That is true and it gives me assurance and hope of success, even while the earlier part of the verse urges me to work energetically, as if my life depended upon it. The word of assurance and the word of warning are both true. It is like being in the presence of a great leader who gives me confidence and makes me all the more zealous to do my work well! I plan to continue listening to both truths. I know I need to hear both as long as I am on this side of eternity. I want to know God’s will for me today. I believe I can only assuredly hear his voice if I am not editing the warnings out of my daily liturgy.