How blessed is the man who fears always,
but he who hardens
his heart will fall into calamity.

Proverbs 28:14

We pick up our sad story in King David’s Psalm 95. We know David wrote Psalm 95 because it is referenced quite clearly and fully in Hebrews chapters three and four. We will discuss those on Days 30-31. Did I mention this is a long, complex and throughout the Bible kind of story? 

A Psalm of David may seem like an odd place to travel to considering he lived about 300 years after Moses! But, as any good Hebrew, David knew his ancestors’ stories well and he often referred to them. And this Psalm is basically a postscript of clarification of God’s mind concerning those who hardened their hearts against Him.

David often began his songs with wonderful reminders of just who God is and why He deserves not only our praise, but also our faithful allegiance to Him and full trust in Him. He does the same in the beginning of Psalm 95. It is interesting to note David’s use of God’s rule over creation itself in His praise of reminders. Could he have been thinking of those rescued from Egypt and all the glorious miracles they witnessed in Egypt and on their way to The Promised Land and even in their 40 years of wondering in the wilderness? 

Psalm 95:3-5

For the LORD is a great God and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and His hands formed the dry land.

Vs 6-7 give a transition to the last portion of this song and it is imploring us to hear His voice because He is our Creator, Our Elohim, and we are sheep in His pasture…so listen…listen… 

Psalm 95:6-7

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. Today, if you would hear His voice…

After building his case of why God is God and we are not; David comes to God’s woe to the ones who harden their hearts against Him and the judgement that must come from His Holiness.

Psalm 95:8-11

Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways. Therefore, I swore in My anger, “Truly, they shall not enter into My rest.”

This is a reminder of a horrible season in Hebrew history…in David’s ancestors’ history. That first generation coming out of Egypt so tried and tested and hardened their hearts against God that He loathed them and was angered toward them. Whoa! That is not the little ‘g’ lovey-dovey god that never judges anyone that modern generations have created for ourselves. This is a song! Something David and others in his court sang, most likely, in the temple. We don’t sing songs like that today.

Maybe we should. The old hymns didn’t shy away from God’s holy judgement; His absolute right to judge. If God doesn’t judge sin, what was the point of Jesus? Why did He come? Why did He sleep on the ground instead of a bed inside a nice home? Why did He walk for thousands of miles instead of riding a magnificent horse? Why did He buck the religious system? And why did Jesus talk and teach as sternly about sin and hell and judgement just as much as the Old Testament does?

Have we even forgotten about the actual New Testament Jesus the Christ? 

The One who not only said…

He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me. I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness. If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has One who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him in the last day. 

John 12:45-46

Also said…

Therefore, everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Matthew 10:32-34

And He told Pilate…

Therefore, Pilate said to Him, “So, You, are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” 

John 18:37

Listen! Listen!

Do we hear Jesus’ Voice? Or do we deny that there is even a Voice to listen to? That is the scary place…the place that the first generation who left Egypt choose to remain and were by their own choice denied entrance into God’s Promised Land!