Psalms 95:10
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: 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:
The verse belongs to the call to worship and bow down and kneel before the Lord our Maker as the sheep of His hand who hear His voice today, instructing the attitude to maintain in prayer. It records that God was grieved for forty years with the wilderness generation who tempted and proved Him even while seeing His work. Their grieving of Him was a repeated going astray in heart through sin, distrust, disobedience and unbelief. It was a settled failure to trust and obey that left them not knowing His ways.
The leaders especially yielded to Satan's temptations and did not obey His voice but listened to the voice and policy of Lucifer rather than God's voice. Because of this He could not give them the blessings He designed for an obedient people. Because of this unbelief God swore in His wrath that they would not enter His rest. This shows that disobedience forfeits promised blessing and that hearing God's word without faith falls short of the promised rest.
God would have led them to the promised land sooner if they had submitted to Him and trusted His leading. Only the two who wholly followed Him were excepted and entered. The passage requires God's people to trust in Him alone and not to seek help from those who do not serve Him. The psalm stands with Psalms 91, 92 and 96 as a warning against calling evil good and good evil, putting darkness for light, being wise in one's own eyes, justifying the wicked for reward, and casting away the law of the Lord of hosts and despising the word of the Holy One of Israel. Its end is destruction like fire devouring stubble with rottenness in the root and blossom going up as dust.
For today it warns to hear His voice today and not harden the heart as in the provocation and temptation in the wilderness. It calls to take heed against an evil heart of unbelief departing from the living God. Sin is deceitful, and yielding to it hardens the heart and dulls the conscience, so believers must encourage one another daily while it is called Today so none becomes hardened. This history will be repeated with intensified perils in the last years of the history of God's people established by grace and power. Men greatly honored by God, including leaders honored with high intelligence as Solomon was honored, will pattern after ancient Israel and come under opposing influence.