Psalms 95
Do Not Make the Same Mistake! ▼▼95:0 The psalm is in 2 parts: – Verses 1 – 7a, telling God that he is great, – Verses 7b – 11, telling us to obey God.
1Come, we will sing together to the LORD! We will shout aloud to the Rock that makes us safe! ▼▼95:1 In verse 1, the psalmist (the person that wrote the psalm) asks people to come with him. Together they will praise the LORD, (or tell him that he is great). LORD is a special name for God. Only people who have promised to love and obey him should use it. The promise to love and obey is the Covenant. If they do this, God will make them safe. So, LORD is the ‘Covenant name’ for God. ‘Rock’ is another name for God, as in Psalm 94:22.
2Come into God’s house and thank him! Tell him that he is great! Do it with music and with songs! 3This is because the LORD is the great God. He is the great king that is more important than every other god. 4The deep places of the earth are in his hand. The tops of the mountains are his. 5The sea is his, because he made it. Also, his hands made the dry land. ▼▼95:5 In verses 4 and 5 ‘in his hand’ and ‘his’ means that he rules over them. So, God rules everything on the earth, including the sea.
6Come, we will fall down on our knees in front of him. We will stay on our knees in front of the LORD that made us. ▼▼95:6 In verse 6, ‘fall on our knees’ means that we go on our knees in front of him. We do this when we worship him. ‘Worship him’ means ‘tell him that we love him and think that he is very great.’
7We will do this because he is our God. Also, we are the people that he feeds and keeps safe. We are as animals and he is as the farmer that feeds us! Today, if you hear his voice, ▼▼95:7 In verse 7, the animals are sheep. God feeds his sheep and keeps them safe. But his people are the sheep. We find this in Psalm 23:1: ‘The LORD is my shepherd.’ A shepherd is a sheep farmer. We also find it in John 10:14, where Jesus says, ‘I am the good shepherd.’ He also says in John 10:27, ‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.’ In all these verses, sheep are a picture of people that love and obey God. The last part of verse 7 starts the second part of the psalm. If we hear God speak, we must listen to him (verse 8). Here, ‘you’ means the Jewish people who were at Massah and Meribah. They were the people that Moses led from Egypt to Israel. They had seen what God could do, (verse 9b). But they asked for more! At Massah and Meribah (2 names for the same place), they tested God. A test is an exam, something to find out what a person can do.
8do not refuse to listen to him. You did this at Meribah and you did it one day at Massah, in the desert. 9There, your fathers tested me to discover what I could do. But they had already seen my work! 10For 40 years I was angry with those people. And I said, ‘They are people that refuse to obey me. They say that they do not know what I want them to do.’ 11I was so angry that I said, ‘They will never come into my rest.’ 12 Be careful, brothers. None of you should have a bad heart that does not believe. It will lead you away from the God that is alive. ▼▼95:11 The bad heart means ‘the mind that stops believing in God.’
13 Tell each other (this) every day, while it is still ‘today.’ Then none of you will stop listening (to God). And sin will not make any of you think what is wrong. ▼▼95:11 The ‘today’ in verse 13 is the same as in Psalm 95:7b. Sin is not obeying God’s rules. Christ gives us many things. The most important is life that never finishes, with him in heaven. Hebrews 3 and 4 says a lot about Psalm 95:7b-11. The ‘rest’ in verse 11 of the psalm is not the land of Israel. It is living with God in heaven after we die. Heaven is the home of God. We do not know where it is.
14 Because we will have some of what Christ gives us if we believe to the end.
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