Devotional Short Note to Psalm 95: If Moses indeed wrote this Psalm as Middle-Ages Rabbi Rashi said, there are remarkable aspects also highlighted by Paul in the Book of Hebrews concerning the Sabbath, that Moses, who received the Sabbath Command from the hands of God, also then said and knew about.

This Psalm is about the importance of a second Sabbath, an inner one.

Let us start from the end. We read 95:11 first.

“Truly they will not enter into My rest”. The rest is the Sabbath, or is it?

Hebrews 4:3 and 5 shed more light on this question: Christ in the tomb on Sabbath died the eternal rest substitutionary on our behalf and if we accept that gift, we rest as He rested on that Sabbath in 31 A.D. We must enter together with Christ in the rest and when we are baptized, then the Holy Spirit buries the old self and take on the new person as a gift from the Holy Spirit.

How do we know it is the Sabbath? The root word is Noah. Noah means rest. About the ark it is said after the Flood that it “noah” on Ararat, “rested” on Ararat. This is the word that is used here. Furthermore, from the just after Isaiah, came a bilingual dictionary from Niniveh that was discovered in 1869 and this dictionary said that the word “Sabbath” has a synonym meaning “noah/rest of the heart”. (Pastors who like to read more should search online for my article on ‘Seventh-Day Cycles and Seventh-day Sabbath in Cuneiform Texts’). So we have confidence that the Sabbath is in view here.

Who are they? Canaanites, pagans, unbelievers?

Psalm 95:9 has a surprise. “When your fathers tried Me”.

They were Sabbath keepers, but they will not enter into His Sabbath. Why? The Sabbath is also the day of the Lord and belonging to Him and He reminded them at Sinai, that they should keep it since He rested on it from week one of this creation. But they would not enter into His rest, another rest then. That rest is the eternal rest that was mentioned supra.

How did they tested or proved (95:9b) the Lord?

They hardened their hearts in the wilderness. What is it ‘to harden the hearts’?

Part of the answer is in 95:9b: “They test Me, even though they saw My work”. For these ones, the revelation of God had no effect on them. When we experience the revelation of God, or we preach it, the Revelation of God in His Word, and more, getting the road of Christ in our sights, and we test God by hardening our hearts, then we have a big problem.

What was wrong with Israel’s spirituality and their hearts in the wilderness for 40 years amidst the Revelation of God?

In 95:10 is the answer: “It is a people that do err in their heart and they have not known My ways”. They are erring in their thoughts, desires, dreams, future plans and in their lives. It is also said that they did not know the ways of God (95:10c). How close can one be to God not to know Him? That was the problem of the twelve apostles walking with Christ for 3 and a half years. They all ran away that Thursday night and Friday when He was caught and crucified.

As South African poet Elizabeth Eybers said in her poem “Soos blare van n boom waai” [translated: ‘As leaves blown from a tree’] that is how they deserted Christ.

“Terrible” we say piously, “how could they have done it!” We shake our heads. Beware, we can also do it. Israel did it in the wilderness, the disciples next to Jesus did it, where are we standing? In an era of digital sins: digital sidetracking, digitally fed concentration, digitally fed focus, bored unless digitally and gone is the era of proper listening to the Revelation of God.

The warning comes today: “Today if you hear My voice” (95:7c). Why today? Because God pleads with us daily through His Bible and the Holy Spirit’s whispering that we crucify self and take up His yoke and follow Him.

Hardening of the heart is to delay, cancellation, a waiting for another occasion-thought, a pushing aside.

Therefore Psalm 95:1 asked that we sing in joy to the Lord and shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation. We are also asked to worship in 95:6. We must kneel and bend the knee. Also we have to come into His presence (95:2) and bring our thanks.

Why do we come to God? The answer is in 95:7 “For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, and the flock of His hand”. He is our Creator. We are the little lamb in the hand of Christ. He is our Shepherd, we will not have to fear anything or anybody. Goodness and mercy shall follow our souls even in bodily suffering and physical trauma, all the days of our lives since the day we have committed ourselves to Him.

The Lord is a great God in the first place, a King of the Ages in the second, a Creator of the mountains, sea and earth so that height, depth, or width has no effect on Him. We cannot get lost before Him. There are airlines that disappeared in our recent past and till today they have not found the fuselage. Lost people? No. God knows where they are and their DNA is stored in His brain and if they were faithful they will be resurrected again by Him. No-one can run away from God. With such a God, who wants to run away? With such a God we have nothing to lose.

PS. After completion of these thoughts from Psalm 95, my eyes fell on what one of the contributors to revivedbyhisword.org said on this Psalm. He said that Ellen White in Great Controversy (1911 of four editions) said on page 436 citing 95:6 [7 in my Hebrew] that it refers to the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath. She is talking about verse 11 which is not “Sabbath” in the original but “noah”. How did she know that a connection is made between “noah” and “Sabbath” as we have demonstrated with a bilingual dictionary from Niniveh found by George Smith in 1868 linking “noah” and “Sabbath?” She was no scholar so the Holy Spirit has led her to this conclusion.