Listen To His Voice!

Psalm 95:7B-11

7Oh, that you would listen to his voice today!

8The LORD says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,

as they did at Massah in the wilderness.

9For there your ancestors tried my patience;

they courted my wrath though they had seen my many miracles.

10For forty years I was angry with them, and I said,

‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me.

They refuse to do what I tell them.’

11So in my anger I made a vow:

‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”

Wandering through the desert, the Israelites had an attitude problem. God had parted the sea for them and provided a miraculous food supply. But now they were thirsty, so they complained.

“Why are you testing the Lord?” Moses asked the people. Then he turned to God and asked, “What am I going to do with these people?” So God told Moses to take his staff, hit a rock, and water would come gushing out. Moses did as he was told, and water flowed from the rock, just as God promised (Exodus 17:1-7).

The Israelites’ same attitude problem resurfaced again and again in the desert. The worst of it came when the leaders decided they should not enter Canaan because the inhabitants were too big—even though God had promised that he had given the Israelites the land. For this, God kept his people wandering in the desert for forty more years. That generation died off, and only their children were able to enter God’s “place of rest.”

The book of Hebrews quotes this psalm at length, repeating verse 7 as a refrain: Listen to his voice! Come to God in faith and avoid the attitude problems of those unfortunate Israelites. Only then can you find true rest with God.

So are you worrying about some giant issues in your life? Are you wondering how your needs will be met? Listen to the Lord’s voice! The Good Shepherd wants to care for you. Let him!

Fear not, brethren, joyful stand

On the borders of our land;

Jesus Christ, our Father’s Son,

Bids us undismayed go on.

JOHN CENNICK

Bible Networking

To learn more about God’s “rest,” read Hebrews 4:9-10.

Notable Quotable

Psalm 95 “has about it a ring like that of the church bells, and like the bells it sounds both merrily and solemnly, at first ringing out a lively peal, and then dropping into funeral knell as if tolling at the funeral of the generation which perished in the wilderness.”

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON