It is due our God and King that we should speak forth and sing forth His praises out of the abundance of a heart filled with love, joy and thankfulness.
Psalm 1
1 O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.
5 The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
6 O 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. To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:
11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.
Psalm 1 – J. Vernon McGee
Psalm 95 – Praise the Lord and Tempt Him not
This psalm is deeply inwoven into the life of the Church, because of the worshipful strain which pervades it, and also because of the illuminating manner in which it is introduced into the argument of Hebrews 3-4. The works of God in creation are specially enumerated as incentives to praise. The sea, the hills, the deep places of the earth have often inspired the minstrel, but how much more the devout soul!
Let us remember, also, when we are tossed on the seas of life, or are called to descend into valleys of shadow, that faith will still dare to sing. But in the second stanza of the psalm, from Psalm 95:6 onward, we are confronted with the sad story of Exodus 17. There are Meribahs and Massahs in all lives, where we murmur against God’s dealings and lose our inward rest. There is a sabbatism of the heart when the will is yielded to God’s will, and the bean is cleansed from its wayward whims; when the very peace that fills the divine nature settles down on the heart. That experience is an entrance into God’s rest. It remains unexhausted for all the people of God. Let us not miss it through default of faith! —Through the Bible Day by Day
Psalm 95:11—Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.
God’s Rest has been waiting for man’s entrance, since He rested from all the work that He created and made. To all other days there were evening and morning, but not to this. It does not consist in circumstances, or conditions of existence, but in disposition. It does not lie, as sacred poets have too often suggested, beyond the confines of this world—it is now, and here. Canaan is not primarily a type of heaven; but of that blessed experience which is ours when we have passed the Jordan of death to natural impulse or selfish choice, and have elected for evermore to accept, and delight in, the will of God.
Will you not take up this position today? Today! Oh that ye would hear his voice! To hear his voice speaking in the heart, in circumstances, and in nature, and to obey promptly, gladly, blithely,—this would bring the soul into the rest that remains unexhausted for the people of God. Are you hardening your heart against some evident duty to which you are called, but which you are evading? Are you hardening your heart to some appeal which comes to you through the ties of kinship and nature? Are you saying, Can God subdue these Canaanites, instead of God can? Beware, for this is the sin of Massah and Meribah, which, being interpreted, means strife. Woe to those that strive with their Maker; let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth.
Every one comes in the Christian life, once at least, to Kadesh-Barnea. On the one hand the land of rest and victory; on the other the desert wastes. The balance, quivering between the two, is turned this way by faith; that by unbelief. Trust God, and rest. Mistrust Him, and the door closes on rest, to open to wanderings, failure, and defeat. —Our Daily Homily