7 For he is our God; and we are the people to whom he gives food, and the sheep of his flock. Today, if you would only give ear to his voice!
After a long time, again naming a certain day, he says in David, Today (as he had said before), Today if you will let his voice come to your ears, be not hard of heart,
As it is said, Today if you will let his voice come to your ears, be not hard of heart, as when you made him angry.
And so, as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you let his voice come to your ears, Be not hard of heart, as when you made me angry, on the day of testing in the waste land, When your fathers put me to the test, and saw my works for forty years. So that I was angry with this generation, and I said, Their hearts are in error at all times, and they have no knowledge of my ways; And being angry I made an oath, saying, They may not come into my rest.
See, I am waiting at the door and giving the sign; if my voice comes to any man's ears and he makes the door open, I will come in to him, and will take food with him and he with me.
Because, like sheep, you had gone out of the way; but now you have come back to him who keeps watch over your souls.
Because this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide.
Saying, Let your hearts be turned from sin; for the kingdom of heaven is near. For this is he of whom Isaiah the prophet said, The voice of one crying in the waste land, Make ready the way of the Lord, make his roads straight.
Give attention to yourselves, and to all the flock which the Holy Spirit has given into your care, to give food to the church of God, for which he gave his blood.
I am the good keeper; I have knowledge of my sheep, and they have knowledge of me, Even as the Father has knowledge of me and I of the Father; and I am giving my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep which are not of this field: I will be their guide in the same way, and they will give ear to my voice, so there will be one flock and one keeper.
While he was still talking, a bright cloud came over them: and a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am well pleased; give ear to him.
And they will be certain that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, the children of Israel, are my people, says the Lord. And you are my sheep, the sheep of my grass-lands, and I am your God, says the Lord.
Give ear, and come to me, take note with care, so that your souls may have life: and I will make an eternal agreement with you, even the certain mercies of David.
See, the Lord God will come as a strong one, ruling in power: see, those made free by him are with him, and those whom he has made safe go before him. He will give food to his flock like a keeper of sheep; with his arm he will get it together, and will take up the lambs on his breast, gently guiding those which are with young.
But our God is in heaven: he has done whatever was pleasing to him.
Be certain that the Lord is God; it is he who has made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep to whom he gives food.
<A Psalm. Of David.> The Lord takes care of me as his sheep; I will not be without any good thing.
I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 95
Commentary on Psalms 95 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 95
For the expounding of this psalm we may borrow a great deal of light from the apostle's discourse, Heb. 3 and 4, where it appears both to have been penned by David and to have been calculated for the days of the Messiah; for it is there said expressly (Heb. 4:7) that the day here spoken of (v. 7) is to be understood of the gospel day, in which God speaks to us by his Son in a voice which we are concerned to hear, and proposes to us a rest besides that of Canaan. In singing psalms it is intended,
This psalm must be sung with a holy reverence of God's majesty and a dread of his justice, with a desire to please him and a fear to offend him.
Psa 95:1-7
The psalmist here, as often elsewhere, stirs up himself and others to praise God; for it is a duty which ought to be performed with the most lively affections, and which we have great need to be excited to, being very often backward to it and cold in it. Observe,
The latter part of this psalm, which begins in the middle of a verse, is an exhortation to those who sing gospel psalms to live gospel lives, and to hear the voice of God's word; otherwise, how can they expect that he should hear the voice of their prayers and praises? Observe,
Now this case of Israel may be applied to those of their posterity that lived in David's time, when this psalm was penned; let them hear God's voice, and not harden their hearts as their fathers did, lest, if they were stiffnecked like them, God should be provoked to forbid them the privileges of his temple at Jerusalem, of which he had said, This is my rest. But it must be applied to us Christians, because so the apostle applies it. There is a spiritual and eternal rest set before us, and promised to us, of which Canaan was a type; we are all (in profession, at least) bound for this rest; yet many that seem to be so come short and shall never enter into it. And what is it that puts a bar in their door? It is sin; it is unbelief, that sin against the remedy, against our appeal. Those that, like Israel, distrust God, and his power and goodness, and prefer the garlick and onions of Egypt before the milk and honey of Canaan, will justly be shut out from his rest: so shall their doom be; they themselves have decided it. Let us therefore fear, Heb. 4:1.