Psalms in Worship—Psalm 95 An Antiphonal Call to Worship, Call to Confession, and Prayer

Published March 3, 2026

Updated March 3, 2026

trees by streams of water
By Joyce Borger

Psalm 95: 1–7a reminds us that we belong to God and that God is like a benevolent king who desires his people to flourish, or like a shepherd who will go to great lengths to make sure all the sheep are safe and healthy. These verses function well as an antiphonal psalm of praise between a leader and those gathered. They could also be read as presented here by the congregation divided into two parts. How you split those gathered and the language you give to each is very contextual, so, for our purposes, the regular font is “Group A” and the bold is “Group B.” The text in italics should be spoken together. 

These first verses are the part of the psalm that we are most familiar with as they are often used to call us to worship. But what starts off so positively takes a sharp turn as the tone shifts from praise to God recounting Israel’s past sins.

Initially the change in tone may be hard to comprehend until we examine our own selves. Like God’s people in the Old and New Testaments, indeed throughout all of history, we are fickle and quickly change our allegiances to fit our fancy. On Sundays and other convenient moments we declare God to be our Lord and King and then promptly deny that reality. We deny it through our words, thoughts, and actions towards God’s creation that he told us to care for, towards God’s people whom God loves so deeply and whom we are called to love, and even towards ourselves, God’s beloved. While we might not have been physically present at Meribah, we have had plenty of our own Meribahs, our own acts of denial. This human fickleness is reflected in the second half of the psalm which functions as a call to confession and is laid out here as a litany between a leader who reads Psalm 95:7b–11 and those gathered who use an adaptation of the first line of verse 7 as a refrain. 

It is understandable that the first half of Psalm 95 gets a lot of airplay in worship services, but let us not forget the warning the second half of the psalm presents. The hinge between the first and second half of the psalm is the plea, “O that today you would listen to his voice!” Let us respond with open ears and open hearts. 

Psalm 95:1–7a—An Antiphonal Litany For the Beginning of Worship

The translation used in these litanies is the NRSVUE

Group A
Group B

O come, let us sing to the Lord;

let us make a joyful noise 
to the rock of our salvation!
 

Let us come into his presence 
with thanksgiving;
 

let us make a joyful noise to him 
with songs of praise!

For the Lord 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 the dry land, 
which his hands have formed.

O come, let us worship and bow down;
 

let us 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.

Leader: 

O that today you would listen to his voice!
 

Psalm 95:7b–11—A Call to Confession

Leader:

O that today you would listen to his voice!

All: 

You are our God. 

Leader: 

Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
    as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me
    and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

All: 

You are our God. 

Leader:

For forty years I loathed that generation
    and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
    and they do not regard my ways.”

All: 

You are our God. 

Leader:

Therefore in my anger I swore,
    “They shall not enter my rest.”

All: 

You are our God. 

Leader: 

O that today you would listen to his voice!
 

Prayer of Confession in Response to Psalm 95

Leader: 

Recognizing the tension that exists within our own hearts and lives, 
between our declarations of belief and our acts of unbelief, 
let us go to God in a prayer of confession, 
asking for God’s forgiveness. 
Let us pray. 

Holy, righteous, and loving God, 
forgive us for the ways in which we deny your Lordship. 

Forgive us for forgetting that you are the Creator, 
that you are all powerful, and that you hold all things in your hands. 
Forgive us that we too quickly bow 
to the powers and forces of this world, 
that we put our hope in the things of this world. 

Forgive us for forgetting that you are the Creator, 
and have invited us to join in the work of caring for all of creation. 
Forgive us for neglecting the created world
and not seeking its flourishing.  

Forgive us for forgetting that you are the God of love,
who loves us deeply and desires only good things for us.
Forgive us for searching for love and acceptance 
in the wrong places. 

Forgive us for forgetting that you are the God of love,
who calls us to be the representation of your love to all in this world: 
to care for the poor, the orphan, the widower, and the foreigner. 
Forgive us for living in fear of the other 
and for believing that you are unable to provide for the flourishing of all. 

Forgive us for intentionally plugging our ears 
and hardening our hearts 
so that we don’t hear your call 
and neglect to share in your heart for creation and all people. 

Unstop our ears so that we may once again listen to your voice
and find our hearts filled with love and compassion for all, 
so that we may declare that you are indeed our God. 
Amen. 

Revised Common Lectionary

Year A: Lent 3, Proper 29/Christ the King