Psalm 95 divides into two major parts: a call to worship and a warning.
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.”
Call to worship
The call to worship is repeated three times and strengthened by two listings of reasons for worship (1-7a). Verse 1 calls on them to sing to the Lord. Verse 2 calls on them to come into his presence. Verses 3-5 gives the first reason for worship. He is creator and therefore Lord or King of all. Verse 6 calls them to worship and bow down, again giving honour to him as creator. Verse 7 expands on the reason for worship, reminding them of their close relationship with the Lord.
Call to obedience
The second part of the psalm is a warning or a call to obedience (7b-11). It is based on their failure to honour the Lord as they should have at Meribah (provocation) and Massah (testing) in the wilderness (Ex 17:7; Num 20:13).
Praise and obedience is owed to the Lord because of his close, personal care (7). This is reiterated in the New Testament in passages like John 10:11-16, and elsewhere in the Old Testament in passages like Isaiah 40:11.
This shift from a call to praise to a stern exhortation or warning is a needed corrective to certain attitudes that are prevalent today. Some would broaden the idea of worship to cover anything and everything in life. Some of these same people, on different days of the week or in another mood, would limit worship to just praise — especially praise in song. The popularity of the term “worship leader” for what used to be called a “song leader” indicates too narrow of a concept of worship.
In song we are the ones doing the talking. We have not properly worshipped when we do all the talking. We must “hear His voice” as well as raising our voices in praise. Failure to hear and heed the voice of God is disastrous — even for, perhaps especially for, those who claim to worship him. As Marvin Tate has said, “Jubilation is one pole of worship; obedience of the demands of God is the other. The ‘resting place’ of God is closed to those who only jubilate” (503). Later he adds, “The old trek through the wilderness toward the promised land always passes by Meribah, where hearts may harden and the pilgrimage be lost…” (504)
This is the same thing Hebrews teaches in chapters 3 and 4, and that Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:21 and 15:8-9.
We must not harden our hearts as the Israelites did in the wilderness. We must honour him with our praise and with our obedience.