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Testing God and Hardening Your Unbelief


Despite witnessing the spectacular miracles that led up to the Exodus, the nation of Israel tests God and harden their hearts.

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."
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
"They shall not enter my rest." (Ps 95:7-11, ESV)

Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink." And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" (Ex 17:2-3, ESV)


And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" (Ex 17:7, ESV)


1. What does the Psalmist reveal about testing / tempting God? What does it mean to test God?




2. What is the Psalmist saying, "do not harden your hearts… when your fathers put Me to the test?"




3. What is the consequence of a hard heart towards God?





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