Good morning. Psalm 95:11 is a painful verse of scripture to read:
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
When we read that God “swore” it means He made an oath, a promise, a covenant. It was in righteous anger that God made this covenantal promise. Let’s read it in context:
Oh 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.
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. They answered Him with complaint. In the desert God provided water from a rock. They answered Him with complaint. God took them to the threshold of the Promised Land and offered them rest. They answered Him with complaint. God took them into the wilderness for forty years. They answered Him with complaint. They were indeed stubborn and ungrateful people. God answered them with a covenant of anger, 40 years in the wilderness until that generation had all passed away, save the two of them who were faithful.
God blesses us every day. God protects us constantly beyond our knowledge and certainly beyond our appreciation. God’s faithfulness is constantly on display, as is His love and adoration for us. By the blood of Jesus, we have entered into a new covenant with God. It is a covenant of forgiveness, of hope, and of joy. It is a covenant that promises eternity with Him after all that is painful is gone. May we never give the Lord our God reason to consider a covenant of anger!
I’m going fishing! It is that time in the summer when I will be gone for nearly two weeks enjoying friendship, fellowship, and fishing. Where we go is unplugged, so my thoughts for the day will be on hold for a bit. Please check out our church website newlifedaily.org You will find a “thought for the day” link that has hundreds of these daily devotional thoughts archived. God Bless!
Vern