Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm 95: Gratitude and Grumblers

Part of an ongoing series on selected psalms.
If you’re like me, you have people in your life who are grumblers. You don’t enjoy being around them because the conversation soon turns downward. In trying to coax them to count their blessings instead of rehearsing old negatives, you realize you’re not completely clean of negativism yourself. Psalm 95 holds up a mirror to this very problem. We know that praise and worship please God. But the sin nature pulls us down into complaining, even though God has done so much for us. With its two-part message, this psalm lifts us, then chides us.

COME AND WORSHIP (vv. 1-7)

The psalm opens with a bold call to worship. We’re to sing for joy to the LORD, rendered in small capitals in English Bibles for the Jews’ holiest name for the most high God, “YHWH.” We’re to “shout aloud,” the word indicating loud and enthusiastic responses, like people hailing a beloved monarch. The object of our praise is the “Rock of our salvation,” a term we encountered in David’s Psalm 18. Hundreds of years earlier, Moses used the metaphor “Rock” to refer to God’s stalwart, protective essence (Deuteronomy 32:4, 31). The “come” of verse 2 is a different Hebrew word than that of verse 1. It comes from a root that suggests projecting oneself, deepening the meaning of worship as having an Audience. The behavior before this Audience is, first, “thanksgiving,” from a word for extending the hand, as in praise. Second, we are to “extol” Him with music and song, from a Hebrew word that includes the meaning of “loud shouting.” You get the picture of all-out, hand-waving praise!

The basic reasons for this praise are in verses 3-7. First, God is the “great God, the great King above all [false] gods” (v.3). He is the Creator-God (vv.4-5) of the all the earth and sea. He also made us (v. 6b). Thus He is worthy of another worship posture: bowing down. Finally, He is our redemptive God. “We are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (v. 7). His plan from all time was to take care of us, and that care now has the image of His Son’s nail-pierced Hand.
 

IF ONLY! (vv. 7b-9)

The end of verse 7 brings an abrupt change in tone. From all-out praise, it turns to a stern warning based on the failures of the Hebrews during the Exodus wanderings. Linger on the tone of the opening sentence: “Today, if only you would hear his voice.”  In my interaction with grumblers, I think, “If only they would realize how much they’ve been blessed.”  Of course, the finger points back at me for my failures, too. The warning is blunt and harsh: “Do not harden your hearts as you did….” Two examples are given.

*“At Meribah.” Exodus 17:7 records this failure, shortly after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea and drowning of Pharaoh’s soldiers (Exodus 14), and provision of miracle manna and quail to eat (Exodus 16). When they set up camp at Rephidim, their water skins were empty, and they were so angry at Moses for leading them there that they considered stoning him. When Moses cried out to God, He told him to strike a rock, and water would come, which it did. But Exodus 17:7 records this negative of the situation: “And he called the place Massah [testing] and Meribah [quarreling] because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’” They doubted God’s Person and power!

*“At Massah in the wilderness.”  Numbers 20 tells this story. Continuing their wilderness wanderings, they arrived at Kadesh and once again experienced a water crisis. They quarreled with Moses, blaming him for their predicament. Moses and his brother Aaron went before God, who told Moses to “speak” to a certain rock. God would then cause it to pour out water. Instead, Moses took his now-famous staff and growled, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then he struck the rock twice and water poured out. Moses’ anger, his sin of putting himself on par with God (“must we bring you water”), and disobedience in striking the rock, would have consequences. God told Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” The passage ends, “These were the waters of Meribah [quarreling], where the Israelites quarreled with the LORD and where he showed himself holy among them.”

The alternative names of “Massah” and “Meribah” can get confusing, but these were separate incidents over water. That had this in common: unbelief and grumbling. The people didn’t believe that God had a plan and would provide for them.

THEY KNEW BETTER (vv. 9b-11)

“They tried me,” continues verse 9, “though they had seen what I did.” Over and over, God is faithful to us. Even in the greatest problems or sorrows, He never abandons us. We can’t begin to measure His patience, and His care of the emancipated Israelites is a prime illustration. For forty years, in some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable, He provided food and water. Yet, verse 10 continues, “For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways’” (v. 10).

 IT’S US, TOO

The consequence of failing to trust God was such important theology that the author of Hebrews dipped deeply into Psalm 95 to teach about unbelief. Hebrews 3:7-4:13 quotes the psalm and warns against letting our hearts be hardened:
See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. (Hebrews 3:12-14)
The writer of Hebrews sharpened the analogy: because of their grumbling and disbelief, a whole generation of Israelites wouldn’t enter the “rest” (the gift of settling in one place) in Canaan. For us, that “rest” is the salvation rest in Christ and our future eternal “Sabbath rest” in glory. If we harden our hearts, grumbling that God can’t be trusted to take care of us, He is grieved. He gives and gives. But we ignore, and even malign, the Giver when we live in the murkiness of doubts, stubbornness and grumbling.

A thankful spirit rests on the foundation of seeing life as a gift from God. Gratitude is evidenced by:

*Humility, giving up “rights” to God.

*Noticing each day’s little blessings and kindnesses. For some, a “gratitude journal” is helpful.

*Thankfulness, expressed in prayer and as a testimony to others.

*Service to others in the name of Christ.

Grumbling mars our testimony. The apostle Paul sat in a prison as he wrote a letter to the church at Philippi. In that wretched environment, he probably heard his share of grumbling. Yet he kept His eyes on Jesus. Just after a section in which He extolled Christ’s obedience to the cross (Phil. 2:5-11), he admonished, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation” (vv. 14-15).

 

Next time: Psalm 100

Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm 90: Lifespan

 Part of an ongoing series on selected psalms.

I pondered a blip of punctuation, the hyphen, as I wandered among graves at a small cemetery where many of my husband’s relatives are buried. Perched between birth and death dates, that hyphen represents the brevity of life. As expressed in a couplet found on many plaques, “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”  The quote’s author was C.T. Studd (1860-1931), who left stardom in England’s cricket-playing circles for sacrificial years of missionary work in China, India and Africa.

A similar message comes from Moses, whom most believe wrote Psalm 90. Scripture records two other songs by him. One was a victory song after the Red Sea swallowed up Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 15:1-18). The other was his “farewell sermon” before ascending Mount Nebo to die (Deuteronomy 32:1-43). Scholars suggest he wrote this reflective psalm about the time of incidents recorded in Numbers 20. His sister and brother died, and God barred Moses from entering the Promised Land for dishonoring God in a water-from-the-rock episode. Those circumstances left Moses keenly aware of mortality and of the short lifespan allotted to do God’s work.

Psalm 90 opens with the grand expanses of time known to God:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Eternity is “forever backward” and “forever forward.” Our lives are but tiny dots on this infinite timeline, but God is its entire, unfathomable existence. God had no beginning and has no ending. He is our “dwelling place” or security. As Moses also said in Deuteronomy 33:27, “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

 TO DUST.... (vv. 3-6)

“You turn men back to dust,” says Psalm 90:3. One morning my vacuum cleaner gave up in a burst of toxic fumes. I suspected it was beyond repair, so I was an easy target for a call offering me a “free rug cleaning” for learning about “a comprehensive vacuum system.” The cleaning consisted of a misting of spray, then vacuuming by the demonstration machine—after more than two hours of sales pressure. That included shaming me as a housekeeper by vacuuming the top of my mattress, which yielded  a thick haze of dust mite debris on his pristine demonstration filter. The truth is that all mattresses get these tiny, dead-skin-munching visitors over time. (Note I said “mites,” not “bed bugs,” a different and vicious problem.) I didn’t buy his super-deluxe and overpriced vacuum, but I’ll never forget that “dead-bug dust.” On the bigger scale, these bodies that we pamper at such great expense, at the end, also return to “dust.” The mighty end up like mites. Our earthly existence is temporary. We’re like fresh morning grass in the thin Palestinian soil, burnt quickly the same day by the merciless sun.

THE BAD NEWS (vv. 7-12)

Sin offends a holy God. The first sin brought the ongoing penalty of death. God knows all our sins, public and private (“our secret sins,” v. 8). Though Moses lived to 120, the typical life span was 70 to 80 years, and still is. Because of sin, we suffer the death of dreams, relationships, plans and finally health.

In 1975, Natalie Babbitt published a children’s novel titled Tuck Everlasting. The main characters were a family who had discovered the “fountain of youth” and would never die. But because others around them did die, immortality wasn’t all that great. They realized they’d experience the world’s brokenness forever, unable to get away from it. Here’s where the New Testament answers the sorrow of the Old.  When Jesus came, He said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25-26). Believing in Him and His promise of eternal life will make immortality in Heaven a real and wonderful thing. In the meantime, we have work to do: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (v. 12).

THE HOPEFUL NEWS (vv. 13-17)

In the mid-1980s, an older friend gave me calligraphy he had done of Psalm 90:12, 14 from the 1966 Jerusalem Bible translation. It hangs above my kitchen sink, reminding me daily of its truths:
Our lives are over in a breath.  Teach us to count how few days we have and so gain wisdom of heart.  Let us wake in the morning filled with your love and sing and be happy all our days.
Psalm 90’s closing section is an appeal for God’s mercy in the short time we do have on earth. Every day is a gift. Even though the days, months, and years may bring their share of sorrows, God intends that we grow through them and beyond them. Moses was bold enough to ask God to allow the bad times to be balanced by the good: “Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble” (v. 15).

When I am around people whose conversation dwells on the past or on their difficulties, I feel dragged out. We can’t undo the past, but we can go forward with God into a fresh future. Our trust in God can encourage others to do likewise, and is a testimony to the generation behind us: “May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children” (v. 16). Notice the phrase, “sing and be happy”? Indeed! Singing happy and worshipful songs lifts the spirits.  One suggestion: the classic 1719 hymn by Issac Watts that paraphrases Psalm 90, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”

JOB EVALUATION (v. 17)

Employment typically involves a regular “evaluation,” in which a superior tells the employee what’s been done well and what needs improvement. The “evaluation” of our whole lives is still ahead, and will take place in Heaven before God. The psalm ends with a reminder that life is so short that we dare not throw away our skills and opportunities, particularly those which draw others to the Lord Jesus. Moses concludes:
May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.
The word “favor” in Hebrew is noam, which also translates “beauty” or “delight.” Derek Kidner, known for the Hebrew scholarship in his commentaries, preferred “delight.”

God, who crafted us--weak humans that we are--does delight in seeing us do what He originally intended, and that’s to bring Him glory through the skills He gave us. Doing so will lead, at the end of this short life, to the “well done” from the Master (Matthew 25:21, 23). As often said, we’re saved not just to “get to heaven,” but to serve well until we get there. Or, as Ray Waddle remarked in

A Turbulent Peace (Upper Room, 2003, p. 110): “Knowing the inevitability of death brings zest to life.” Time’s short: live it for God. One life: live it right.

Next; Psalm 91