Psalms 95:7 - Meaning and Application

The last part of this psalm, which begins in the middle of a verse, calls those who sing gospel psalms to live gospel lives and listen to God’s word. Otherwise, how can they expect him to hear their prayers and praises? The people of Christ are expected to hear his voice, because he has said, “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27). If we call him Master or Lord, then we should do what he says and become willing, obedient people.

We must hear the voice of his teaching, his law, and his Spirit. We must hear, pay attention, and obey. We should hear his voice and not the voice of a stranger. Some take the words as a wish, “Oh, that you would hear his voice,” meaning, “If only you were wise enough to do what is best for you,” like, “If you had known” (Luke 19:42), meaning, “Oh, that you had known.” Christ’s voice must be heard today. The apostle stresses this when he applies it to the gospel age. While he is speaking to you, make sure you listen, because this day of opportunity will not last forever. Use it while it is called today (Hebrews 3:13, Hebrews 3:15). Hearing Christ’s voice is the same as believing. Today, if you accept the gospel by faith, that is good, but tomorrow may be too late. In a matter this serious, nothing is more dangerous than delay.

They are also warned against hardening their hearts, because that does not fit with a believing, obedient ear. If you hear his voice and want to profit from it, do not harden your hearts. Seed sown on rock never brought fruit to full growth. The Jews did not believe the gospel of Christ because their hearts were hardened. They were not convinced of the evil of sin, or of the danger sin put them in, so they did not care about the offer of salvation. They would not bow to Christ’s yoke or yield to his demands. If a sinner’s heart is hardened, that is his own doing, and he alone will bear the blame forever.

They are warned by the example of the Israelites in the wilderness. “Be careful not to sin as they did, or you will be shut out of the lasting rest, just as they were shut out of Canaan.” Do not be like your fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation (Psalm 78:8). So here: do not harden your heart as they did, that is, your ancestors, in the provocation, or at Meribah, the place where they quarreled with God and Moses (Exodus 17:2-7), and in the day of testing in the wilderness (Psalm 95:8). They kept provoking God with distrust and grumbling until their whole time in the wilderness could be called a day of testing, or Massah, the other name for that place (Exodus 17:7), because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

This happened in the wilderness, where they could not help themselves and had to depend on God, yet God gave them amazing help and clear signs of his power and favor, more than any people had before or since. Days of testing are also days of provocation. Nothing angers God more than not believing his promise and doubting that he will fulfill it because obstacles seem too great. The more we have seen God’s power and goodness, the greater our sin if we distrust him. To tempt him in the wilderness, where we live by his care, is both ungrateful and unreasonable. Hardness of heart lies beneath all our distrust of God and our complaints against him. A hard heart does not receive the signs of God’s truth or conform to his will. It will not melt, and it will not bend. The sins of others should warn us not to follow them. Israel’s grumbling was written for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Now consider the charge God brought against those unbelieving Israelites (Psalm 95:9, Psalm 95:10). Many ages later, God still speaks of their behavior with deep anger. Their sin was unbelief. They tested God and examined him, as if his word were not enough. They demanded more proof before going forward to Canaan, and they wanted spies sent first. When the spies gave a bad report, they rejected God’s power and promise and wanted to choose a leader and go back to Egypt (Numbers 14:3-4). This is called rebellion (Deuteronomy 1:26, Deuteronomy 1:32).

What made this sin worse was that they had seen God’s work. They had seen what he did in bringing them out of Egypt, and they were seeing his care every day, even then, in the bread he rained from heaven and the water from the rock that followed them. They could not have had clearer proof that God was with them. Yet seeing was not believing for them, because they hardened their hearts, even though they had seen what Pharaoh gained by hardening his heart.

God also names the causes of their sin. “They are a people who go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.” Their unbelief, distrust, grumbling, and quarrels with God came from ignorance and wrong judgment. First, they did not know his ways. They saw his works (Psalm 95:9), and he made his acts known to them (Psalm 103:7), yet they did not understand his ways, either the ways of his providence, by which he led them, or the ways of his commandments, by which he wanted them to walk toward him. They did not truly know them, so they did not approve them. The reason people turn away from God’s ways is that they do not really know them.

Second, they made a mistake in their hearts. They wandered off the path and turned back in their hearts. Sin is a kind of error, a practical error, an error in the heart. Such errors are real, and they are as deadly as errors in the mind. When sinful desires twist a person’s judgment and lead the soul away from duty and obedience, that is an error of the heart.

God’s response to their sin was also clear: “For forty years I was grieved with that generation.” The sins of God’s professing people do more than anger him, they grieve him, especially their distrust of him. God keeps track of how often they grieve him and how long they do it (Numbers 14:22). This shows God’s patience toward provoking sinners. He was grieved with them for forty years, yet those years ended with the next generation entering Canaan in triumph. If our sins have grieved God, then they should grieve us too. And in all our sin, nothing should trouble us more than the fact that it grieves him.

The sentence on them was this: “So I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest.” If they enter my rest, then I am unchanging and untrue. See the full sentence in Numbers 14:21 and following.

Notice, first, where this sentence came from: from God’s wrath. He swore solemnly in his just and holy anger. But people must not copy that in a sinful way and swear out of their own wild anger. God is not ruled by passions the way we are, yet Scripture speaks of him as angry, even very angry, at sin and sinners, to show how evil sin is and how right his rule is.

That verdict is a clear sign that sin is a terrible thing, since it deserves the kind of judgment a offended God may rightly give. Second, notice what the sentence was: that they should not enter his rest, the rest he had prepared for them. He had set apart a home for them and their descendants, but none of those counted when they came out of Egypt would be found among the living when they entered Canaan, except Caleb and Joshua.

Third, notice how God confirmed it: “I swore it.” This was more than a plan, it was a fixed decree. The oath showed that his purpose cannot change. The Lord swore, and he will not change his mind. It ruled out any idea that he might quietly set the warning aside. God’s threats are as certain as his promises.

This case of Israel also speaks to the people who lived in David’s time, when this psalm was written. They were to hear God’s voice and not harden their hearts, just as their fathers had done. If they became stubborn like them, God could deny them the privileges of his temple in Jerusalem, the place he called his rest. But this warning applies to Christians too, because the apostle applies it that way.

A spiritual and lasting rest is set before us and promised to us, and Canaan was a picture of it. We all, at least in name, are on the way to that rest. Yet many who seem to be going there will fall short and never enter in. What keeps them out? Sin, especially unbelief, the sin that rejects the remedy and turns away from God’s appeal.

Those who, like Israel, distrust God, doubt his power and goodness, and choose Egypt’s garlic and onions over Canaan’s milk and honey, will justly be shut out from his rest. That will be their own verdict, because they have chosen it for themselves. So let us fear (Hebrews 4:1).