Psalm XCV
An exhortation to praise God for his greatness, and for his goodness, and not to tempt him.
O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the deep places of the earth; the strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands formed the dry land.
O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
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,
Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
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:
Unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my rest.
This Psalm is a prophecy concerning Christ, and its contents are fully and learnedly explained in the Apostle’s epistle to the Hebrews. It prophecies concerning the time of the New Testament, and sets forth the lovely and sweet voice of the gospel. In a word, the Psalmist instructs us in, and allures us to, the knowledge of the riches of the grace of God; which riches were known to our fathers as well as unto us, in the promised seed—Christ.
‘Come (saith the Psalmist) and let us rejoice in the Lord. Come ye that are afar off and ye that are near, and let us exult in the Lord; let us triumph in the God of such salvation:’ that is, Come and let us rejoice with the whole triumph of our hearts, in that infinite benefit and mercy—the granted grace of Christ! Since we have such promises, let us not neglect such great salvation. For to believe in the promise of grace, contrary to all the objections of conscience, the temptations of Satan, and the fears of the heart, is the true worship of God!
In a word, the Psalmist warns against unbelief. “Harden not your hearts (says he) as ye did at Massah and Meribah in the desert: your fathers, on account of their unbelief, entered not into the holy land of promise.”
The whole of this Psalm is to be referred to Christ: for he is that blessed God in whom we ought to rejoice, and whom the Psalmist would have to be known. He is our Shepherd, and we are the sheep of his pasture. He is that God, whom our fathers tempted in the desert, as Paul saith, (1 Cor. x.) It was he who took out of the way the law, and abolished all the ceremonial worship of the Old Testament. He will no longer have the worship established by Moses; but he will have faith in the gospel, the preaching of the remission of sins, and that one true offering—praise, instead of the whole Levitical worship.