Psalm 95

Psalm 95 • 1 min. read • grade level: 8

Thus encouraging themselves, their hearts are tuned to a song of joy and praise, so lively and fresh are their anticipations. The Lord by His Spirit seems to break in on all this anticipated joy, not to check or alter it, but just to give holy admonition in the midst of it (Psa. 95:7-11⁷For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, ⁸Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: ⁹When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. ¹⁰Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: ¹¹Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. (Psalm 95:7‑11)). And this interruption, or this voice of the Spirit, acts in two ways; it tells them that there is a rest (see Heb. 4); it tells them also that they must take heed and avoid all that which in their fathers caused a loss of that rest. (See Heb. 3.) For they are still in spirit in the wilderness or place of discipline—still, as of old, between Egypt and Canaan, and therefore in need of such admonition. The Apostle’s commentaries on these chapters give this character to this voice. But we know surely that the admonition is rightly applied to us all.