Psalm 95
BSB
Do Not Harden Your Hearts
(Hebrews 3:7–11)
1Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
let us shout to the Rock of our salvation!
2Let us enter His presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to Him in song.
3For the LORD is a great God,
a great King above all gods.
4In His hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to Him.
5The sea is His, for He made it,
and His hands formed the dry land.
6O come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.
7For He is our God,
and we are the people of His pasture,
the sheep under His care.
Today, if you hear His voice,
8do not harden your hearts
as you did at Meribah,
in the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9where your fathers tested and tried Me,
though they had seen My work.
10For forty years I was angry with that generation,
and I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known My ways.”
11So I swore on oath in My anger,
“They shall never enter My rest.”
Introduction
Psalms 95
For the expounding of this psalm we may borrow a great deal of light from the apostle's discourse, Heb. 3 and 4, where it appears both to have been penned by David and to have been calculated for the days of the Messiah; for it is there said expressly (Heb 4:7) that the day here spoken of (Psa 95:7) is to be understood of the gospel day, in which God speaks to us by his Son in a voice which we are concerned to hear, and proposes to us a rest besides that of Canaan. In singing psalms it is intended, I. That we should "make melody unto the Lord;" this we are here excited to do, and assisted in doing, being called upon to praise God (Psa 95:1, Psa 95:2) as a great God (Psa 95:3-5) and as our gracious benefactor (Psa 95:6, Psa 95:7). II. That we should teach and admonish ourselves and one another; and we are here taught and warned to hear God's voice (Psa 95:7), and not to harden our hearts, as the Israelites in the wilderness did (Psa 95:8, Psa 95:9), lest we fall under God's wrath and fall short of his rest, as they did (Psa 95:10, Psa 95:11). This psalm must be sung with a holy reverence of God's majesty and a dread of his justice, with a desire to please him and a fear to offend him.
Cross-references: Heb 4:7 · Ps 95:7 · Ps 95:1 · Ps 95:2 · Ps 95:3 · Ps 95:6 · Ps 95:8 · Ps 95:9 · Ps 95:10 · Ps 95:11