Praise to the Lord, and Warning against Unbelief.
95 O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord,
Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before His presence with [a]thanksgiving,
Let us shout joyfully to Him with [b]psalms.
3 For the Lord is a great God
And a great King above all gods,
4 In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
The peaks of the mountains are His also.
5 [c]The sea is His, for it was He who made it,
And His hands formed the dry land.6 Come, let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For He is our God,
And we are the people of His [d]pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, [e]if you would hear His voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts, as at [f]Meribah,
As in the day of [g]Massah in the wilderness,
9 “When your fathers tested Me,
They tried Me, though they had seen My work.
10 “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.
11 “Therefore I swore in My anger,
Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
This psalm starts out with shouts of joy, because God is great, and He is King above all. The earth is in his hands, the mountains, the seas, the very deeps. All were formed by Him, a very work of His glory and majesty. And so the psalmist has all the reason to worship, to bow down in v. 6. But this psalm would end in a dark place if we weren’t paying close attention.
God speaks of the rebellion in the wilderness, which was not just once, but multiple times. The people complained that being rescued and following God was worse than slavery in Egypt. Imagine it, if you can, they literally wanted to go back to being whipped, to having their children murdered, rather than put up with a little inconvenience for a short time in the wilderness so that they could receive the promise of God.
Yet that is not where the psalmist expects our minds to dwell. That is but a contrast of the reality and truth of God’s full glory, His amazing extravagance. Go back to v. 7 to find the shocking fact that He is our God, and we are His people… if we hear His voice and do not harden our hearts.
Think back to the beginning, to all that He created. Look around, and realize all nothing was created but what He made. And then know that He called you to be His own, to be under His protection, His loving care, His direction. You were not made to wander about witless in a wilderness of despair. No, you were made to dwell in His pasture, to dwell where He dwells. Do not sell yourself short, but be both humbled and renewed by His truth.