Psalms 95:1-11: a reflection

1Oh come, let’s sing to the LORD. Let’s shout aloud to the rock of our salvation! 2Let’s come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let’s extol him with songs! 3For the LORD is a great God, a great King above all gods. 4In his hand are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the mountains are also his. 5The sea is his, and he made it. His hands formed the dry land. 6Oh come, let’s worship and bow down. Let’s kneel before the LORD, our Maker, 7for he is our God. We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep in his care. Today, oh that you would hear his voice! 8Don’t harden your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, 9when your fathers tempted me, tested me, and saw my work. 10Forty long years I was grieved with that generation, and said, “They are a people who err in their heart. They have not known my ways.” 11Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They won’t enter into my rest.”

Psalm 95 begins as a joyful call to worship: come, let us sing to the LORD; let us come before him with thanksgiving; let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. But then it turns, sharply, to a warning: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as your fathers did at Meribah in the wilderness, who tested God and never entered his rest. Worship and warning are held together: adore him, and do not harden your heart against his voice today.

Notice the word today, and its urgency. The psalm does not say someday respond to God, or eventually soften your heart. It says today, if you hear his voice, respond now, do not put it off, do not harden your heart against what he is saying to you this day. And it points to the wilderness generation as the warning: they heard God's voice, hardened their hearts against it, and forfeited the rest he had for them. Deferred response became no response, and they missed what God offered.

That urgency presses on us. When God speaks, in his word, in conviction, in a prompting toward some obedience or change, the temptation is to defer, to mean to respond eventually, to leave the heart a little hard for now. The psalm says: today. Do not put off responding to God's voice, and do not let your heart harden against it, or, like the wilderness generation, you may find you have drifted past the rest he offered. When you hear his voice today, respond today. Worship him, and do not harden your heart.

Lord, your psalm joins joyful worship with an urgent warning: today, if I hear your voice, do not harden my heart. Keep me from deferring my response to you, meaning to obey eventually while leaving my heart a little hard for now. When you speak today, in your word or in conviction, help me respond today, and not drift past the rest you offer as the wilderness generation did.