Read Psalms 95 in the King James Bible (opens in a new tab)
Psalm 95 calls God’s people to worship with joyful praise because the LORD is the great God and King above all gods, the Maker of sea and land. Yet the psalm quickly turns from celebration to a sober warning: worship is not only singing, but bowing the heart in obedience before our Shepherd. It recalls Israel’s hardening in the wilderness at Meribah and Massah, where they tested God despite seeing His works. The message presses urgency—“Today” if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart—because persistent unbelief leads to spiritual ruin. The psalm ends with God’s oath of judgment: the hardened generation would not enter His rest.
Psalms 95:1 - 95:11
1 O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
3 For the Lord [is] a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand [are] the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills [is] his also.
5 The sea [is] his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry [land].
6 O 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. To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, [and] as [in] the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
10 Forty years long was I grieved with [this] generation, and said, It [is] a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:
11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.