Psalm 95 Part 4

The strong words in the second half of this psalm are connected to the stirring words of the first half. Humble worship of Yahweh and the recognition of Him as Creator and God should lead to a listening ear and a soft, surrendered heart toward Him. There is something wrong when a worshipper does not obey and trust God.

Everyone comes in the Christian life, once at least, to Kadesh-Barnea [Numbers 13:26]. On the one hand the land of rest and victory; on the other the desert wastes. The balance, quivering between the two, is turned one way by faith; the other by unbelief. Trust God, and rest. Mistrust Him, and the door closes on rest, to open to wanderings, failure, and defeat.

 God offered the generation that came out of Egypt the opportunity to take the Promised Land by faith. Their unbelieving rejection of God’s offer ‘grieved’(KJV) Him for forty years. It was evident that they went ‘astray in their hearts,’ away from humble confidence in Him as Creator and Redeemer. To know God is to trust Him, unbelief is evidence of small or faulty knowledge of God.

God condemned Israel’s generation of unbelievers to die in the wilderness(v11) so that a generation of faithful believers could inherit the Promised Land, His appointed place of ‘rest’ for His people. There can be no rest to an unbelieving heart. If manna and miracles couldn’t satisfy Israel, neither would they have been content with the land which ‘flowed with milk and honey.’ In Hebrews4 Paul uses this passage to spiritualize the Sabbath as a symbol of the rest we have in Christ, which can only be entered into by faith. Some fail, as did this generation of Israelites, to enter that rest. The Sabbath to a NT Christian symbolizes the rest in a finished work that we have in Christ.

By ending on this note the psalm sacrifices literary grace to moral urgency. If this is a psalm about worship, it could give no blunter indication that the heart of the matter is severely practical: nothing less than bending of wills and renewal of pilgrimage.