Songs, shouts, gratitude, and praise erupted from those gathered to worship the Lord. While there are certainly many examples of stillness and silence in God's presence taught and illustrated in Scripture, there are equally as many examples of raucous worship. Both peaceful silence and enthusiastic praise are appropriate expressions of worship to our great God.
Psalms 95:8
A hardened heart is as useless as a hardened lump of clay or a hardened loaf of bread. Nothing can restore it and make it useful. The writer warns against hardening our hearts as Israel did in the wilderness by continuing to resist God's will (Exo 17:7). The Israelites had been so convinced that God couldn't deliver them that they simply lost their faith in him. When people become so stubbornly set in their ways that their hearts are hardened, they find it impossible to turn to God. This does not happen all at once; it is the result of a series of choices to disregard God's will. If you resist God long enough, God may toss you aside like hardened bread, useless and worthless.
Meribah means "arguing," and Massah means "testing." These refer to the incident at Rephidim (Exo 17:1-7) when the Israelites complained to Moses because they had no water (see also Num 20:1-13).
Psalms 95:11
What keeps us from God's ultimate blessings (entering his "place of rest")? Ungrateful hearts (Psa 95:2), not worshiping or submitting to him (Psa 95:6), hardening our hearts (Psa 95:8), trying God's patience because of stubborn doubts (Psa 95:9). In Heb 4:5-11, we are warned not to harden our hearts, but to reject the glamour of sin and anything else that would lead us away from God.
