“Today, if you would hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
As in the day of Massah in the wilderness,
When your fathers tested Me,
They tried Me, though they had seen My work.
For forty years I loathed that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
Therefore I swore in My anger,
Truly they shall not enter into My rest.” (Psalm 95:7-11 NASB1995)
[See also: 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13]
We read in 1 Corinthians 10:1-22 that God was not pleased with most of the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years because they craved evil, and they were idolaters, drunkards, revelers, and immoral people who tried and tested the Lord, and who grumbled against God and his servant Moses. And these things happened as examples for us, so that we will not crave evil things as they did, and so we will not do the evil that they did. And these things were written down for our instruction, as examples to us.
Then in Hebrews 3 and in Hebrews 4 we have a repeat of what we read in Psalm 95. The wording is a little different, but the message is the same.
And we read in Hebrews 3 and 4 that we are to take care that none of us has an evil unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. For it was the disobedient to God who did not enter into his rest. And they were not able to enter because of unbelief, i.e. disobedience. And those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter into God’s eternal rest because of disobedience. So we are to be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.
Therefore, what we are to take away from this is that disobedience to God = unbelief, and obedience to God = belief (faith in Jesus Christ).
For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).
For by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).
So, the call here is to let us all know that if we hear the voice of the Lord, through the written word by reading it ourselves, or by hearing someone else read it to us, we are to take God’s word seriously, believe it, and then obey it. For faith in Jesus Christ is not of ourselves. It is not of our own doing lest we should boast that we did something to earn or to deserve our own salvation. Both our faith and our salvation are gifted to us by God, and they are persuaded of God for us to die to sin and to obey God’s commands.
We are not to harden our hearts in rebellion against the Lord and against his commands. We are not to put Christ to the test thinking that we can keep on in our sin, and that we don’t have to obey God, because we prayed the prayer to “receive Christ” or because we made a verbal profession of faith in Christ as Lord, believing that God resurrected him from the dead. For if you read these Scriptures you will see that faith in Christ, which is genuine, results in us dying to sin and obeying God, or it is not faith which saves.
[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 2:5-10; Romans 3:23; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 10:19-39; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22]
For Our Nation
An Original Work / September 11, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Recording Via Gerry Peters, music producer and arranger
Bombs are bursting. Night is falling.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Trust Him with your life today.
Make Him your Lord and your Savior.
Turn from your sin. Follow Jesus.
He will forgive you of your sin;
Cleanse your heart, made new within.
Men betraying: Our trust fraying.
On our knees to God we’re praying,
Seeking God to give us answers
That are only found in Him.
God is sovereign over all things.
Nothing from His mind escaping.
He has all things under His command,
And will work all for good.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Men deceiving: We’re believing
In our Lord, and interceding
For our nation and its people
To obey their God today.
He is our hope for our future.
For our wounds He offers suture.
He is all we need for this life.
Trust Him with your life today.
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If You Would Hear His Voice
An Original Work / November 20, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Video Talk on the Same Subject
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