I. THE INVITATION TO PRAISE. In this is shown:

1. To whom the praise is to be rendered. It is to Jehovah, the Rock of our salvation.

2. Think of the many ministries which the word "rock reminds us of. Shade: for God was to his people as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land;" and he is so still. Defence: "Thou art my Rock and my Fortress." Strength: "Thou hast set my feet upon a rock." Supply: "He smote the rock," etc. (Psalm 78:20; Psalm 81:16). Dwelling place: we read both in Isaiah and Jeremiah of "the inhabitants of the rock." Such were the ideas that gathered round this name of the Lord which the psalm summons men to praise.

3. The manner of the praise. It was to be by joyful song and resonant shout, with thanksgiving and with psalms. So hearty, so jubilant, so universal, so emphatic, was to be the praise of the Lord. But in ver. 6 there is the call to yet more profound adoration and worship, since yet higher manifestations of God's grace are to be commemorated. Therefore note:

4. The reasons for all this worship. And

(1) because of what God is - supreme over all the gods of the heathen;

(2) because of his rule over the whole earth - its depths, its heights, the sea, and the land;

(3) because - and here comes the summons to the higher praise spoken of - of what God is to his people - their Maker, their God, the Giver of their peace and rest (cf. Psalm 23., "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures"); so his people are "the people of his pasture." He is also their Guide, Defender, Ruler - "the sheep of his hand." Such are the grounds - and surely they are adequate - for this reverent and yet exultant worship. And they all remain still.

II. THE CALL TO HEAR GOD'S VOICE. (Ver. 8.) For as the former verses had told of the rich and lofty privileges of the people of God, so these tell of their great peril - the peril of unbelief. This had been their ruin in days gone by, in all that weary forty years. Nothing else could harm them; but this wrought all their woo (cf. Hebrews 4:6-9). And what was true of old and of Israel, is true today and of ourselves. The righteous live by faith; no unbeliever can enter into God's rest.

III. THE CALL TO FAITH. For this is the condition of our obtaining the prize of our high calling. The rest of God is God's reward to his faithful people - a rest not alone in heaven hereafter, but here and now, whilst in this world, which Christ promises to give, and does give. Saints of old knew it; saints today enter into it. Christ dwelt in it, and so may we - if we believe. - S.C.

I. ALL MEN MAY JOIN IN RECOGNIZING WHAT GOD IS TO ALL MEN.

1. God the Creator. Open out the idea that what God could say of his daily handiwork, "Behold, it is very good," man, observing the further workings, the operations, of what God has made, can repeat after him. Explain that, in a large way, man could always, by observation, see the goodness of God in creation; in minute detail man's science sees it still.

2. God the Provider. "Giving to all their meat in due season." Here show that the extraordinary, such as provision of manna, only illustrates the ordinary, God giving all their daily bread.

3. God the Saviour. In the lower sense of Preserver, Defender, Deliverer, from the common ills and perils of life. Apart, then, from all theological distinctions, all men should praise God.

II. SOME MEN MAY JOIN IN RECOGNIZING WHAT GOD IS TO SOME MEN.

1. Some men have special personal experiences of God's dealings.

2. Some men know God as their Saviour from sin. - R.T.

I. ITS NATURE.

1. Thanksgiving and praise. (Vers. 1, 2.) We need special seasons for thinking over our privileges and cultivating gratitude, and the utterance of the spirit of praise.

2. Adoration and prayer. (Ver. 6.) God's love thus a cause for our cleansing. Christ's promises and grace inexhaustible. Who can drink the river of his love dry? Confession and supplication.

3. Listening to the voice of God. (Ver. 7.) In his spoken Word and in our own hearts. Hearing what God speaks to us is as much worship as our speaking to God.

II. REASONS OF WORSHIP.

1. God's supremacy. (Vers. 3-5.) Here is the theme of the loftiest praise; a reason for the largest prayers; and an argument for submission to his perfect will.

2. God's tender guardianship. "He is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." intimate relationship to him: "our God." Living upon his bounty: "people of his pasture." We are being guided by him: "sheep of his hand."

3. God's oath against those who are hardened. "Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest."

4. He is the Rock of our salvation. (Ver. 1.) The eternal Foundation and Shelter of the soul. - S.

I. THE GREAT THINGS OF NATURE IMPRESS ALL MEN. Many of us may seem to be under grave disadvantage, because we live in a crowded city, a man-made city, an unaesthetic city. But even cities cannot wholly shut out the changing moods of nature. Smoke cannot hide the firmament, the sunshine, or the stars. Business cannot make us unmindful of the seasons, the winds, and the rains. Men's buildings cannot alter the conformation of the ground that makes the landscapes. And the very disabilities of city people only make them more open to nature influences when they can get away into the country. The beautiful and sublime will not always produce their due impression on us. Poets are not always equally sensitive. So much depends on our circumstances and on our moods. And therefore how important is the spirit in which we go into the country; the kind of society we seek there; and especially the quietness, the loneliness, we gain in which we may listen to nature's voice! Crowded trains, crowded piers, crowded seashores, crowded lodgings, too easily crowd men out of their spirituality. Can we recall times when nature has borne upon us with all its holiest force? At such times we were our real selves, our noblest selves; God touched us with his nature hand, and we felt the touch. Illustrate by the impressions of moor, mountain, seashore, sunset, or tempest. Upon David the voice of nature fell often, and found an exquisite sensitiveness that was partly his disposition, and partly his piety. Believe, then, in kinness between yourself and the grand in creation; and learn to expect that nature messages will come to you.

II. THE GREAT THINGS OF NATURE CALL TRUE-HEARTED MEN TO DEVOTION AND WORSHIP. To many men, warped and biassed by education and association, the great things of hills and seas and skies speak only of a higher power. If man is simple, true-hearted, they speak of the personal being of God. "The sea is his. The psalmist does not merely assert a fact; he asserts a man's feeling concerning the fact. We can have no reverence, no devotion, for the vague thing - a power. Reverence and devotion can only be felt m relation to a living being. So we must guard our faith in God, the living God. If open-hearted, nature makes us feel the kinness of man with creation in its daily dependence on God. He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." Our minds, receiving impressions of glory from earth and sky, transfer them to God. If this his handiwork be so glorious and so gracious, what must he himself be? And if all things depend on him, how should we bow before him, and worship? "Oh how I fear thee, living God!" But a further impression comes. That which fills us with reverence and worship is God's voice to humanity, and it reaches the whole brotherhood of men. So we become dissatisfied with lonely worship, and want to say, with the psalmist, "Come, let us worship and bow down." Search, then, and see what is the influence of the holiday times of life upon us. Have they made us more reverent, more devout, more earnest in our religious life and service? Do they give us a worthier sense of the value of common worship; and fill us with a holier determination "not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is"? - R.T.

I. THE PROFOUND MYSTERY OF SELF-EXISTENCE. Is it eternal, self-existent; or has it come from God in the way of direct creation or evolution? Self-existence an impossible conception, whether of the universe or of God; but it is also impossible to avoid it and find a substitute; only impossible to conceive of two self-existences.

II. IF THE UNIVERSE IS EVOLVED FROM GOD, THEN IT MUST BE A REVELATION OF PART OF HIS NATURE. Shows that God takes delight in material strength and beauty as well as in spiritual. The infinite variety of conceptions embodied. The infinite skill in the construction of the infinitely little and the infinitely great. But this only of a part of his nature, and that not the highest.

III. MANIFESTATION OF POWER. "Who by his strength setteth fast the mountains, being girded with power." Seas and mountains only functional examples of his power. The vastness of the universe. The child that Augustine saw ladling the sea into a hole in the sand. "Not more impossible than for you to empty the universe into your intellect."

IV. THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE GENERATES IN US THE SENSE OF WEAKNESS AND INSIGNIFICANCE. But mind, conscience, heart, are the only things that are eternally great. Mountains will melt, and seas dry up. "He is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." "It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." We are his children. - S.

1. In meeting together for public prayer, we follow the impulses of our own hearts, as well as obey the commands of our God. Prayer and worship are connected with our whole relation to God. God is in direct relation to the spirits that we are. We feel this, and therefore we must pray for spiritual blessings. God is in direct relation to the bodies that we have. They are his making, the care of his providence. They are subject to weariness and disease; they are the mediums of our virtue and of our vice. Out of the sense of the relation of our bodies to God, we are impelled to pray for temporal blessings. And God is also in close relation to our associations with one another - to our associations as families, as Churches, as fellow worshippers, and as citizens. Our best welfare, in all these relations, depends on him who is Lord of all natural laws, Lord of storms, Lord of harvests, Lord of sunshine, Lord of the wrath of men, and Lord too of their wealth. Let any man feel this, as every true man, every thinking man, must feel it, and that man will be impelled by his own spirit to meet with others, and say to others, "O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." God deals with us collectively here on earth. We may not think of separate Churches in heaven; of organized families in heaven. There are no towns, with distinct town interests, in heaven; no nations, with national qualities and national interests, in heaven. It is peculiar to our present human scenes that God deals with us collectively. This need not relieve our sense of individual responsibility. We do but show what a basis is laid for collective prayer, for public worship, in this fact, that God deals collectively with us. He can punish individuals in another world for their individual wrongdoings. He can only punish nations, as nations, for their national wrong doings, in this sphere. Collectively, God regards us; then collectively we should pray, collectively we should worship, collectively we should live for God. The man that refuses to join in public worship is breaking away from his humanity; and denying the gracious conditions and responsibilities under which God has placed him. It is a more familiar truth, that sharing in public worship is the direct command of our God.

2. What are the reasons which keep men from the performance at all, or from the due performance of this duty of public worship? To put our reasons out into the full blaze of the light is often sufficient to wither them up, and to make us altogether ashamed of them. Perhaps some persuade themselves to say, "Your worship is not really intended for us: it is for Christians, and we do not want to intrude." It is a mistake. God's worship is for men, all men, all God-made men, whether they fit in with our idea of what God would have them be or not. Some stay from public worship because they cannot arrange their domestic affairs so as conveniently to attend it. Be sure that you have really tried and failed, before you rest in this excuse. Most stay away from sheer indifference, from the carelessness which settles down over souls that willingly live to self and sin. Some men are indisposed to worship; and it is this indisposition with which we have to deal.

3. Under the terms, "associated, and public worship," three forms may be indicated.

(1) Family prayer. When the devoted Richard Baxter lived in Kidderminster, it is said there was not a house in which the evensong of praise might not be heard, and the uplifted prayer of earnest hearts. The rush of modern business life has swept away much family prayer.

(2) Social prayer. Times when two or three meet together, to plead the promise made to two of the disciples who agree to ask. The smaller meetings are specially fruitful in spiritual blessings.

(3) Public prayer. The services of the sanctuaries. The spiritual antitypes of the old temple worship at Jerusalem, "whither the tribes go up." Public worship sustains, as nothing else can do, our dependence on God, the Creator, the Provider, the Redeemer. "He made us, and not we ourselves;" "He redeemeth our life from destruction." He "sent his Son into the world, that we might live through him." Then surely we ought "to worship and bow down." - R.T.

I. OUR MORAL RELATIONS WITH GOD INCLUDE OUR CHARACTERS. Illustrate from the shepherd's estimate of each sheep. But the end at which the shepherd aims is health, fatness. The end at which God aims is cultured, developed, perfected character. And this is the Divine aim forevery man, and the Divine work in every man. If we can see the issue more plainly reached in some men than in others, this need not dim our confidence that the work is going on in all.

II. OUR MORAL RELATIONS WITH GOD INCLUDE OUR MOODS. For no man can study human nature without observing that men are constantly acting, on occasion, out of harmony with their characters. The difficulty of dealing wisely with children lies in their occasional strange lapses and oddities. God bears shepherd-like relation to the odd moods of his moral beings.

III. OUR MORAL RELATIONS WITH GOD INCLUDE OUR SINS. This brings us into a very familiar field, and opens to view the redeeming and sanctifying work of God. These moral relations of God to us are the real reason why we should "worship and bow down." - R.T.

I. WHEN A MAN WANTS TO WORSHIP GOD, HE CAN HARDEN HIS HEART BY ENCOURAGING DOUBTS. Some one is ever ready to whisper, "Is there a God at all? If there is, is he really a good God? If he is good, might he not have done a great deal more for you?" Give room to such doubts, and all interest in worship will soon take to itself wings and flee away.

II. WHEN A MAN WANTS TO WORSHIP GOD, HE CAN HARDEN HIS HEART BY MURMURINGS. Illustrate from the historical allusion to Meribah (Exodus 17:1-7). If anybody wants to murmur, he can easily find something to murmur about. There is a sunny side and a dark side to almost everything; and, if a man chooses, he can see only the dark side; and, if he does, he will surely spoil all desire for worship, all grounds for thanksgiving. - R.T.

I. PUTTING GOD TO THE PROOF MAY BE PERMISSIBLE. But the conditions are very clear. If a man wants to believe, and wants encouragement to faith, God will permit him to put him to the proof. This is illustrated, in a very different way, by the sign of the fleece asked by Gideon. The rightness or wrongness of asking the sign depended entirely on the state of Gideon's mind and feeling. He wanted help to belief, so he may put God to the test. Circumstances may arise now which may allow of our proving God; but that work should never be attempted save at the utmost strain.

II. PUTTING GOD TO THE PROOF IS GENERALLY UNPERMISSIBLE. Because generally it implies doubt of God's power, or faithfulness, or mercy. See the mood of the Israelites; and see the spirit in which the scribes and Pharisees came, putting Jesus to the test. They did not want to believe in him. They wanted to get something which would encourage their unbelief. So Jesus refused, saying, "There shall no sign be given unto them." Keep right attitudes and moods of mind, and right relations with God, and then it will never come into our minds to attempt to put him to the test. - R.T.

1. Notice that God is said to have been grieved with the effort made to test or tempt him; but his grief is not to be thought of as distress, it is rather that he was "moved with indignation," and therefore found an immediate and severe judgment necessary.

2. Notice that the basis of all the wrong in Israel is recognized as unbelief; but that is not here an intellectual sin, it is a heart sin; it is not "inability to believe," it is "untrustfulness," and untrustfulness when God had laid down such abundant grounds for their trust.

3. Notice that the judgment fell upon the generation, and not upon the race. In all God's judgments that recognize personal failings, we may find personal suffering and loss, but no frustration of the Divine purposes. The untrustful generation died in the wilderness; but the race, in good time, entered and possessed the "rest" of Canaan.

4. Notice that our own human feelings enable us to understand the Divine indignation. All good men love to be trusted. You can never so sorely try a good man as by failing to trust him. This applies even more strongly to those who are in close, loving, family relations with us. The supreme indignity, to our humble view, is a son failing to trust a good mother. Work out the various relations in which God, the infinitely Good One, stood to Israel, and stands to us; and so bring to view the shame of our untrustfulness, and the reasonableness of our coming under disciplining Divine judgments. - R.T.