Introduction to Psalm 95
Psalm 95. Now there is no superscript here, but I mentioned last time that the Septuagint, that is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, does have the expression, the superscript of David, the Psalm of David. And then that is confirmed for us in the New Testament as well. In fact, we’ll see that later this morning. So this is a Psalm of David.
“O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it. In his hands formed the dry land. O 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 hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For 40 years I loathed that generation and said, they are a people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.”
Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we’re grateful for this psalm, we’re grateful for the caution, the warning, and the exhortation that it gives us, and we pray that you’ll help us to take it to heart. We’re thankful also for how it gives us, in the Old Testament, glimpses of Jesus. We pray that you’ll enlighten our eyes to see that, and then to see the seriousness of the exhortation that he gives. We pray that you’ll encourage our hearts with it, and Lord, we ask today for the Zascoda family, we pray that you’ll give them every encouragement in Christ. We give you thanks for Dan and the faithful years that you gave him here with us. We’re thankful for the memory, and we pray that you’ll give every encouragement to his family. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Two Divisions in the Psalm
We saw last time that there are two divisions in this psalm. Actually, not two psalms, it’s a single psalm, but it’s two psalm forms. We have in verses one to seven a praise psalm. Rather typical of praise psalms, it gives the call to praise and then the cause or reason for praise.
We have that repeated, in fact, in verses 1 and 2, we have a call to praise, “come let us sing to the Lord,” and then the cause for praise in verses 3 to 5, because he’s such a great God. Again, in verse 6, we have a call to praise, “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” And then verse 7 gives the cause or the reason for praise, “for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.” So it’s a call to exuberant praise because of God’s greatness and because of His grace to His people in making them His.
Now at the very last part of verse 7, and then through the rest of the psalm, through verse 11, we have what we’d classify as a didactic psalm, a teaching psalm. It gives an exhortation to the people. You’ll see that at the end of verse 7, it turns to exhortation. “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
You’ll notice, in fact, I think I mentioned this last time, the shift in pronouns here. In verse 7, at the end of the verse, it’s like the rest, the previous part of the psalm, we have David speaking. But now he says, “today if you will hear his voice,” and that’s the transition. It begins the section of exhortation. “Do not harden your hearts as Meribah on that day of Massah in the wilderness when your fathers put me to the test.” So now God is speaking: “and put me to the proof as though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said, These are a people who go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways. Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.”
So at the end of verse 7 through verse 11, we have God himself speaking. This is a prophetic oracle then; David speaks for God, and it’s very different from the first seven verses of the psalm. Here the worship leader now, verses one to seven, takes the role of a prophet. In the end of verse seven through verse 11, the tone changes from a call to joyful singing to submissive reverence to God, and now it takes this tone of exhortation, calling us to submit to God absolutely and to worship Him only. Instead of “us” now, “let us sing,” in this part of the psalm we have, instead of “we,” it is “you.” Don’t you turn your hearts away. It’s almost a judgment speech of some kind that he gives here. It’s a stern warning and an exhortation. Those who sing to God, verses one to six, are called now to a submission to him to respond submissively to God.
Historical Setting and Incidents
Now the setting—this is a psalm of David, we know that, but we don’t know the exact setting at all. In verses 1 to 7, first part of verse 7, we have a hymn of praise. So he’s called, we have the king here acting as the worship leader, which was traditional in the ancient world generally and also in Israel in particular; the king was the worship leader, bringing the people to the temple to sing and to give worship to God. So he’s doing that in verses 1 to 7.
But then the end of verse 7 through verse 11, he points the readers back to familiar incidents in Israel’s history. Verse 8: “Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah, in the wilderness.” Now you may not recognize those names but I’m sure most if not all of you will remember the incidents that he has in view. First of all, there’s actually two of them.
First of all, Exodus chapter 17. Israel is newly freed from their slavery in Egypt. This is the first year after the Exodus. They come and they camp at Rephidim and there’s no water. They’re in this desert place. They’re thirsty. There’s not enough water to give everyone. And so they begin to grumble and they complain. And finally they say to Moses, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us? Is the Lord among us or not?” So they’re grumbling against the Lord. He’s not providing like we had expected he would. And so Moses, we read in Exodus 17, cried to the Lord. And the Lord commanded Moses, “you take your staff, the one that you used in Egypt to strike the Nile, you take that staff and you go hit that rock over there, and striking that rock you’ll have your water.” And so he did, and they had their water to drink provided from that rock. And verse seven of Exodus 17 says, Moses called the name of the place Massah, which means “testing,” and Meribah, which means “quarreling.” So he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord.
Well, that’s Exodus 17 in the first year after the Exodus. And then 40 years later, at the end of the wilderness wanderings, we have another incident. It is virtually the same, different in a couple of important details. Numbers chapter 20, we have a similar incident at Kadesh. This is Kadesh Barnea, they’re on the borders of the promised land, and we have the same problem, the same unbelief, the same grumbling, and we have the same response from the Lord, tells Moses to go take your staff, strike that rock, and you’ll have your water. And Moses is a little upset with the people, and we see that when he goes to strike that rock. He strikes it two times. And that was a mistake that cost him dearly. He then was not allowed to go into the Promised Land because of his unbelief, God says.
What we have there in Exodus 17, at the beginning of their wilderness wanderings, and Numbers chapter 20, at the end of the wilderness wanderings, we have something of bookends of Israel’s time in the wilderness. The entire period of Israel’s time in the wilderness is marked by the same kind of unbelief that we see there at the beginning and again at the end. They’re kind of brackets that characterize Israel’s experience in the wilderness during that time. Some have suggested that even in addition to David’s making reference to that in verse 8, those incidents, there’s an echo of it in verse 1 as well: “Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” Some have thought that that may be a reference, a brief echo of the same incident.
So we have some occasion during David’s reign. And at the end of verse seven, he begins to give a warning for this occasion. We don’t know what the occasion was. Evidently, the people are beginning to harden their heart. How do we say it? There’s some evidence that they’re becoming lax in worship. Maybe this call to worship in verses one to six is more than the routine call to worship. Maybe he was seeing on the part of the people a turning away from God, and so he calls them in that sense, and that’s why he follows up here with this exhortation at the end.
But we have in verse 1, verse 2, verse 6, a call to worship. Maybe it’s calling them back to worship. David senses something in their experience that demands that they be called back to a seriousness in approaching God in worship. It just might be that this is another time of drought. You remember way back in Psalm 4, David had to deal with that in the part of the people. The time of a drought became a time of unbelief and they were turning against David because of it all and turning against the Lord. This might be that as well. So they’re at some point of crisis that David recognizes and so he calls them back to sincerity and submission in worship of God.
Introductory Exhortation and Warning
All right, let’s work our way through these verses. We have in verses, the end of verse 7 through verse 9, the introductory exhortation and the warning. “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test. They put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.”
So this is a new generation of Israel that faces their own crisis. Virtually all, at this point, virtually all of that initial generation age 20 and up, are gone now. They’ve died over the last 40 years, and here they are facing—this new generation is facing their own crisis, and David cautions them, don’t repeat the mistake that your fathers made 40 years ago. That generation hardened their hearts, they failed to trust God and his provision; don’t make the same mistake. Verse nine: “they had seen my work.” They had seen God’s work on their behalf, the miracles in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the exodus itself, God’s deliverance from enemy after enemy. They had seen it all and now they come to a point where they lack water and they forget it all as though God is no longer trustworthy.
And as a result, verses 10 and 11, they incurred God’s anger. Verse 10: “for 40 years I loathed that generation and said they are people who go astray in their hearts and they’ve not known my ways. Therefore I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.” Now the “rest” here that he is speaking of is the promised land. That language describing the promised land goes back, I think, as far as Exodus chapter 33, where God says to Moses, after the terrible incident of Israel’s unbelief there, “will you go up with us or not?” God says to Moses, “my presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” The time in the land was to be a time of rest from their conflicts, rest from their enemies, a time as they are faithful, they will be prosperous, and so it’s described as the time of rest. That language is used in the book of Numbers, it’s used in Deuteronomy. Their time in the promised land is their rest that God had promised for them.
And so now David warns the people of his own day, verse 7, “today”—and mark that word, we’ll be back to that a few times—”today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the wilderness.” That is, still today, in this time of difficulty, in your drought or whatever it is they’re experiencing there, you must remember God’s past faithfulness, His proven trustworthiness, trust Him, and worship Him in the way that He deserves.
Now this is certainly one application that jumps off the page. It’s a familiar one that we find in the Psalter, that God is deserving of our trust whatever the circumstances. Israel’s problem time and again is that although they had seen God’s works, they come to another occasion of difficulty, and suddenly God is not trustworthy, and they’re grumbling and complaining. And in response, they incur God’s anger as we see here. So that’s one application that we see from this: trust God in adversity, whatever the circumstances. There is never a time when God is not worthy and deserving of our trust.
Now we’ve seen that lesson many times through our studies in the Psalter. Interestingly, when we come to the New Testament, one of the New Testament writers, we’ll see in a minute, picks up Psalm 95. And that is not the application he makes. He draws other applications from it. And before we leave here, I want you just to glance through verses, the end of verse seven through verse 11, and think, what do we see here that a New Testament writer will pick up? Particularly, do you see here any glimpses of the gospel?
Now that’s interesting because what we’re going to do in the rest of our time this morning is have a lesson from a New Testament writer on how the New Testament writers read the Old Testament. Now the use of the Old Testament in the New, or how the New Testament writers understand and interpret the Old Testament, is a study on its own. You have long seminary courses on that, books are written on that. And here’s one particular example of it where you’ll be able to see, I trust, that the New Testament writers are not doing anything creative in finding Jesus in the Old Testament. They’re just reading the text carefully. More carefully than we generally do. Now that’s what we’ll find, and you might want to keep a hand here, we just might be back. But look at Hebrews chapter 3.
The Greater Rest in Hebrews
Hebrews chapter 3. Here the writer takes Psalm 95 and applies it to the church in its moment of crisis. Now setting is everything here, context is everything here in Hebrews chapter three. The inspired writer here in the letter to the Hebrews is writing to Jewish professing believers. They had come from Judaism; following Moses, they’d heard the gospel, they professed faith in Christ, and now, having believed in Christ and joined the Christian church, they’re beginning to experience some persecution for it. They’re beginning to realize that there’s a cost to following Jesus. The family isn’t really happy about this. Sometimes their goods are plundered. We read in the book of Hebrews they’ve had their belongings taken without any legal recourse. And their experience of persecution, it’s come to the point where it is so difficult for some that they’re tempted to go back. Maybe we’ll just go back to worshiping with Israel the way Israel always did, and things will be easier.
And the whole book of Hebrews is a sermon, exhortation, primarily to that crowd, explaining to them, on the one hand, the superiority of Jesus, and on the other hand, giving exhortation of the seriousness of turning back. And throughout the book of Hebrews, there are a number of what we call warning passages, directed to those people who are tempted to go back. And so he expounds the superiority of Jesus and then he’ll stop and he’ll pause and give a warning about how awful it would be and what you would lose if you were to go back.
Now that in a nutshell is what it’s about, but here in chapter three, beginning with verse seven, we have one of these warning passages. And what we have here is a very careful consideration of David’s Psalm 95. He’s got his eye close to the text. I want you to think as we read through it, how he draws out implications from Psalm 95 to apply it to the church and its crisis there. And in fact, what we’ll find is that he finds significance to that word “today.”
All right, keep that in mind, and I’m gonna begin reading a long passage here, Hebrews 3, beginning with verse 7. “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,” and here he quotes Psalm 95, verse seven and following: “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their hearts. They have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.” End quote.
And now he’s returning to his own exhortation to the people. Verse 12: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart. Lest you fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,” and here he quotes Psalm 95 again, “today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who are those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”
Not a good chapter division here. Chapter 4, verse 1 continues: “therefore, While the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as it did to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. We who have believed enter into that rest. As he said,” here’s Psalm 95 again, verse 11: “As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.” Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way. And here he quotes Genesis 2, verse 2: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again in this passage,” Psalm 95, 11, “he said, They shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, today, saying through David so long afterwards in the words already quoted,” Psalm 95, verse 7, “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”
All right, a long passage here, let’s highlight it. First of all, I just have to point this out. It’s not the thrust of the message of the passage at all, but it is one element of it that deserves pointing out. In chapter three, Hebrews three, verse seven, notice how he begins the quote from Psalm 95: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,” and then chapter four, verse seven, “Today, saying through David, so long ago.” This is a fascinating phenomenon in the New Testament, where the New Testament writers reach back to the Old Testament writers and see what David wrote, and they’ll say, “God said that.” Marvelous passage concerning the doctrine of biblical inspiration. The Holy Spirit said that. You’ll find a number of passages like this in the New Testament that we’ll have in the Old Testament where David said, or Isaiah said, or Moses said. The New Testament writers pick it up and say, “God said.” And so what you find is that these people who—what David said, God said. What Moses said, God said. What Isaiah said, God said. You’ll find sometimes where they’ll just quote scripture and they’ll say, “God says.” It’s a marvelous passage with regard to the doctrine of verbal inspiration of scripture.
But now more to the point. In chapter three here, verses 12 and following, the writer makes a contemporary application, an exhortation to his people. Again, chapter three, verse 12: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” That is to say, don’t harden your hearts like your fathers did back at Rephidim. Back at Kadesh, don’t be like them. Don’t harden your hearts. They were at the very shores of the promised land. They were faithless. They couldn’t trust God to give what he promised. And as a result, they had 40 years in the wilderness, and that whole generation died off because God loathed them for their unbelief. And so he says, today, don’t make that same mistake. When you hear God’s voice, believe and obey. When God speaks, we are obliged to believe and to obey.
Now then, we get to chapter 4, and he looks more deeply into Psalm 95 and draws out some entailment. First of all, most prominent thing here, the important thing to see is that Israel’s rest, Israel’s rest that was offered in taking the promised land—the writer here understands that in terms of a larger rest theme that we find in scripture. Psalm 95 verse 11 says, “I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest,” my rest, God’s rest. Now Hebrews 4 verse 1, he refers to that: God’s rest, “his rest.” Now Hebrews 4 verses 3 and 4, he makes a connection with that God’s rest, the rest of the promised land. He makes a connection with that through Genesis chapter 2, God’s rest at the creation of the world. “As I swore in my wrath,” Psalm 95, 11, “they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day this way,” Genesis 2, “God rested on the seventh day from all his works.”
So God’s rest, Genesis 2:2, God’s rest at the end of creation week, the seventh day, God’s rest established a paradigm. His rest, God’s rest that he entered on day seven, was a rest that God intended then to share with his people. This would be a rest that “my people will enjoy with me.” That paradigm was set up in Genesis chapter 2. Even if you don’t know back then, we find that here. We’ll see that in a second. So we have God’s rest on the seventh day of creation week. Later, Israel is given the weekly Sabbaths. It is reflective of that. We’re told that. Israel is given yearly Sabbaths, holidays, pointing back to creation week. And Israel was given the promised land, their rest. All of this is part of one package of God’s rest that he had prepared for his people. He entered his rest in Genesis 2 after creation. He instituted the weekly Sabbath, and that was reflective of that, but all of it becomes prospective. Prospective of a greater rest that God plans for his people.
Hebrews 4:1: “The promise of entering God’s rest still stands.” The rest that God entered in the seventh day of creation, that rest still stands and is available for others to enter into it. Verse 3, Hebrews 4: “We who have believed enter that rest.” That rest that God entered on day seven, that rest that was reflected on in the weekly Sabbaths, that rest that God gave in going into Canaan under Joshua’s leadership, that was all prospective of a rest that God had prepared for his people.
Now how does he know that? How does he look back? Is this just creative exegesis on the part of the New Testament preacher? How does he know that? Well, he knows that because of that word, “today.” Psalm 95, verse 7, “today.” “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” And so the New Testament author of Hebrews is simply reading the Bible chronologically. Some 400 years after Joshua, David comes along and says, “today,” you can enter that rest. And so he just draws the conclusion from that. If 400 years after Joshua, David is still saying that rest is available today, then whatever it is that Joshua gave his people was not the end goal.
Hebrews 4 verse 6: “Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, today, saying through David, so long afterwards In the words already quoted, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” So he’s simply reasoning. If 400 years after Joshua led the people into the promised land, David’s still inviting people to come and enter, then whatever that rest was that Joshua led his people into was not the end goal. There’s something more in view.
And that’s verse eight, chapter four, verse eight: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” In other words, the rest, the entering into the land, the rest that they enjoyed in Canaan was prospective of a greater rest that God had planned for his people. And that still remains. And he says, we enter it by faith. Verse three: “we who have believed enter that rest.” That rest was prospective of a greater rest that we have in Jesus. And so the warning and the exhortation that he gives stands today as well. Chapter four, verse 11: “let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”
So the writer of Hebrews here is looking back and he sees in David’s reflection on Joshua leading the people into rest, he sees in it glimpses of the gospel. Just as in the book of Hebrews we find Jesus is the greater priest, he’s the greater sacrifice, in Jesus we have a greater covenant and greater promises, so also in Jesus a greater rest is experienced as well. The rest that Joshua gave pointed forward and was intended as pointing forward to an ultimate rest that we have in Jesus. In Jesus’ cross work, he provided the rest. He did all the work. He answered to God on our behalf. He made satisfaction for sin. And now we don’t have to work and strive; what we have to do is rest in Jesus.
And so the author here is saying simply, I’m not reading into Psalm 95 anything that wasn’t already there. This is not a clever manipulation of scripture, it’s what David in Psalm 95 directs us to see. Today, today it remains for us to enter into God’s rest. And what else could that rest be than a rest in Christ who said, “come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And so, Hebrews 4:3, “we who have believed, enter into that rest.” When we come to Jesus, we cease from our works. It’s no more our struggles. We rest in him and what he has done. And we come trusting to him who gives rest. And this is the rest that God has been intending to give with his people ever since day seven of creation week.
This is why, by the way, that you find exhortations from the Apostle Paul, such as in Colossians chapter two: “Don’t let anybody judge you in terms of new moons and Sabbaths and holy days.” That’s old covenant stuff. It was a shadow of things to come. These holy days and Sabbaths and rest, those were all shadows of which the substance is Christ. That’s why in Romans chapter 14 we find the same. It’s the weaker brother that thinks one day is more holy than another. It’s the stronger brother that recognizes in Christ all days are holy. And so God’s rest at creation and the rest that God gave in the land of Canaan, all of that was prospective of the rest that we have in Jesus. It foreshadowed what Christ has done for us in providing us rest from our works as we rest in Christ to do for us what God required of us.
It’s one of the wonderful ironies of the gospel. We naturally think that we have to do something. Surely we must do something to make ourselves acceptable to God. The gospel comes to us saying in so many words, so long as you hold on to that kind of thinking, God won’t have you. We don’t come arguing that, well, we’ve done this much and we’ve done our best and we’ve been sincere. Or, “you know, most days, the good things I do outweigh the bad.” Or, “the bad things I do aren’t really that bad. I mean, I haven’t murdered anybody, raped or…” We do not come to Christ—we don’t come to God—claiming that we have done anything. We come to God claiming our utter bankruptcy before God and saying, “all I have to plead, all I have and my only hope is Jesus. And I rest in him.”
And so the warning that this writer to the Hebrews gives to the Jewish believers of his day is really the same as David’s. You turn your back and you fail to trust in Christ, you will fail to enter God’s rest. The rest that he had planned for his people since day seven of creation week, you won’t have. You may be going through hard times. You may be learning that it costs you a lot to follow Jesus. You might have your goods plundered, he says. You might find conflict with family. The cost of following Christ is high. But if you turn back in unbelief, you’ll lose it all. You will not enter God’s rest.
You might be very close. You might surround yourself with the people of God. You might surround yourself with people who know the gospel. And you’ve grown up hearing the gospel. It’s kind of in the atmosphere of the community you live in with your family and friends. In fact, in the words of chapter 6, you might even have tasted the blessings of the gospel. But if you turn back, there will be no rest for you to have. And you will not participate in God’s rest at all. You might, you might appreciate, you might even enjoy the things of God. It might be the world that you live in and yet you imagine that somehow your involvement in that kind of thing makes you acceptable before God. All the gospel remains the same. Stop trusting your own works. Words of that old revival hymn, “cast your deadly doing down, down at Jesus’ feet.” Come to Jesus and rest.
Chapter four, verse 13, it’s still today. It’s still today. There’s still time. The promised rest may still be had. It’s still today. And as long as it’s called today, he says, you may succeed where your fathers in ancient Israel failed. Today, for the time being, the invitation is open. “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest.” You’ve attended church. You’ve heard the gospel preached. Don’t turn back. Don’t harden your heart. There’s one Savior who alone can lead us into rest, and there’s one way, and that is to rest in Him to provide for us what God requires of us. Okay.