February 5

Reading: Psalm 95

1    Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;

     let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

2   Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;

     let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

3   For the LORD is a great God,

     and a great King above all gods.

4   In his hand are the depths of the earth;

     the heights of the mountains are his also.

5   The sea is his, for he made it,

     and his hands formed the dry land.

 

6   Oh 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 pasture,

     and the sheep of his hand.

 

     Today, if you hear his voice,

8   do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,

     as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,

9   when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof,

     though they had seen my work.

10 For forty years I loathed that generation

     and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,

     and they have not known my ways.”

11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,

    “They shall not enter my rest.”

 

Psalm 95 is an invitation to worship.  It initiates a series of worship psalms that runs through Psalm 100.  In exile there was no Temple; therefore this is a general invitation to worship the Lord wherever one may be.  It might have been used in the celebration of any of the Jewish festivals.  Moreover, it is an invitation that comes with a warning.

This psalm begins with a summons to worship the Lord.  We are to come into the presence of the Lord with singing, joy, and thanksgiving.  You and I tend to underestimate the transforming power of praising the Lord.  One can be in the midst of the worst of days.  If you then turn to the Lord in faith-filled praise and begin singing, the day can be changed into glorious victory.  Praise offered to the Lord can lift our focus off of the problems and onto eternal truths.

Verses 3-5 provide reasons for praise founded in the truth.  We should sing joyful praises to God, thanking Him, because He reigns over all things.  In His capable hands are the deeps and the heights.  Nothing is outside of His sovereign control.  Which means that when we think that things are out of control, we are simply not able to see reality at the moment.

Again, in verse 6 we are invited to come and worship the Lord.  Now it is that we are His people and He is our creator.  To say that we are “the sheep of His hand” is to affirm that He cares for us and all that we need comes from Him.

Beginning at the end of verse 7 is a warning to not harden your heart toward the Lord.  We are especially tempted to do this when things are not going our way.  It is easy to put our desires before the Lord’s call to worship Him, as if my refusing worship is punishing God for not giving me what I want.  Actually, I am refusing to trust the Lord and inviting His wrath.

We read about the events of Meribah in Exodus 17:1-7.  It was the beginning of a pattern of grumbling and disobedience to the Lord.  God’s people began doubting that the Lord was doing good to them.  The result of this attitude was catastrophe.  The people wandered in the wilderness for forty years and they died there.  It is better to trust God and worship Him.