Remembrance Is Necessary to Change

“O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!  Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!  For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods…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. –Psalm 95:1-3; 7b-9.

What was the Psalmist’s reference to Meribah and Massah here?  How did remembering what happened there influence singing and worshiping the Lord in the present?  This psalm summons those seeking to worship God to think back to a time when worship was hindered by actions.  At Meribah—also called Kadesh-Meribah and Kadesh-Barnea (meaning the waters of strife) was a place where the children of Israel spent most of thirty-eight years after leaving Mt. Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments and before the people moved on to enter the Promised Land (a total of forty years in that vicinity).  To add Massah to the places of remembrance indicates the vicinity near Mount Horeb (Sinai) where the people put God to a test by demanding water of Moses.  The place name itself means “to test, to try,” and became a reminder of Israel’s hardness of heart.  Often the two names—Meribah and Massah—are given together, with the meaning of “places of striving, contending, finding fault with.”  Psalm 95 is both an historic hymn and a prophetic hymn.  Historic in that it recalls a distinctive period of Israel’s history, a time when, because of lack of faith and strife and contention, they did not move forward to claim the land God intended for them to settle.  History proves that failure to follow God ends in delays and disappointments.  A whole generation lost intended blessings because they contended with God.  The psalm is prophetic in that it predicts what is to come yet if God’s people do not align themselves with His purposes.

What was the result of the rebellion at Meribah and Massah?  The answer is aptly stated in Psalm 96:10-11:  “”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.  Therefore I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest.’”

This week we will celebrate a significant holiday in America’s history—Thanksgiving Day.  It is not that other nations have no Thanksgiving Days.  It is that remembrance of the Pilgrims and Indians gathering at Plymouth in 1621 is a wonderful remembrance in our country’s beginnings.  How the natives helped the Pilgrims in their hard years in a new land was cause for celebration.  It was cause, too, for stories and traditions that have been held dear in our nation for centuries.  Now for those who want to cry “politically incorrect” and to negate the influence of God in our country’s formation, we stand to lose the significance of milestones in our rich history.  For us, then, even the celebration of Thanksgiving becomes, like the message of Psalm 96, both historical and prophetic.  Historical in that it is good to remember and to see where adjustments are necessary to avoid pitfalls of the past, or to remember what was good and continue the tradition and make it a part of our heritage and practice.  It is prophetic in that unless we hold dear to certain verities, we will know rejection, delays and sufferings even as the children of Israel knew because of Meribah and Massah.

Prayer.  Lord, Thanksgiving is a time of remembrance.  Let us recall with deep gratitude Your faithfulness to us.  In everything we give thanks, and offer our songs of praise to You.  Amen.