When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
In the psalm the verse belongs to direction on the attitude to maintain in prayer, for after the call to sing and give thanks to the Rock of salvation, the great King above all gods who holds the deep places and hills with the sea and dry land formed by His hands, comes the call to worship and bow down and kneel before the Lord our Maker because He is our God and His people are the sheep of His pasture and of His hand, and within that call is the warning to hear His voice today without hardening the heart. The verse recalls the provocation and day of temptation in the wilderness at Massah and Meribah, when the fathers put God to the test. To tempt and prove Him means they tested Him and put Him to proof even while seeing His work, witnessing what He had done through forty years.
That testing showed hard, straying hearts, always erring in heart and not knowing His ways, in unbelief and disobedience and grief and distrust of God. Although God had declared what He would do for them if they obeyed His voice, their leaders yielded to Satan's temptations and listened to the voice and policy of Lucifer instead of God, so He could not give them the blessings He designed for them. God was grieved with that generation for forty years and swore in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest, and only the two who wholly followed Him would enter.
God wanted to lead them promptly into the promised land, but they needed to trust Him alone and not seek help from those who did not serve Him. The history warns hearers today not to harden the heart but to hear His voice, not to delay obeying the light received since each ignored call leaves them less responsive to the next, but to hold faith firm and enter God's promised rest. The warning calls believers to take heed lest there be in any an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, and to resist sin's deceit by remaining faithful and exhorting one another daily while it is called Today lest any be hardened.
The same experience will be repeated in the last years of the history of God's people established by grace and power, when men greatly honored by God will pattern after ancient Israel as with Solomon, and the perils of past ages will be encountered again intensified under Satan's influence.
In the psalm the verse belongs to direction on the attitude to maintain in prayer, for after the call to sing and give thanks to the Rock of salvation, the great King above all gods who holds the deep places and hills with the sea and dry land formed by His hands, comes the call to worship and bow down and kneel before the Lord our Maker because He is our God and His people are the sheep of His pasture and of His hand, and within that call is the warning to hear His voice today without hardening the heart. The verse recalls the provocation and day of temptation in the wilderness at Massah and Meribah, when the fathers put God to the test. To tempt and prove Him means they tested Him and put Him to proof even while seeing His work, witnessing what He had done through forty years.
That testing showed hard, straying hearts, always erring in heart and not knowing His ways, in unbelief and disobedience and grief and distrust of God. Although God had declared what He would do for them if they obeyed His voice, their leaders yielded to Satan's temptations and listened to the voice and policy of Lucifer instead of God, so He could not give them the blessings He designed for them. God was grieved with that generation for forty years and swore in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest, and only the two who wholly followed Him would enter.
God wanted to lead them promptly into the promised land, but they needed to trust Him alone and not seek help from those who did not serve Him. The history warns hearers today not to harden the heart but to hear His voice, not to delay obeying the light received since each ignored call leaves them less responsive to the next, but to hold faith firm and enter God's promised rest. The warning calls believers to take heed lest there be in any an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, and to resist sin's deceit by remaining faithful and exhorting one another daily while it is called Today lest any be hardened.
The same experience will be repeated in the last years of the history of God's people established by grace and power, when men greatly honored by God will pattern after ancient Israel as with Solomon, and the perils of past ages will be encountered again intensified under Satan's influence.