Psalm 81, this is part two of
that psalm and I want to read back through this psalm. There's
only 16 verses and then I want to summarize the first part and
point out something that I didn't mention in the first part last
week. The first part being the first four or five verses, and
then we'll move on to the rest of the psalm. So let's begin
by reading through Psalm 81. It says in verse one, sing aloud
unto God our strength. Make a joyful noise unto the
God of Jacob. Take a psalm and bring hither
the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery. Blow up the
trumpet in the new moon in the time appointed on our solemn
feast day. For this was a statute for Israel
and a law of the God of Jacob. This he ordained in Joseph for
testimony when he went out through the land of Egypt where I heard
a language that I understood not. I removed his shoulder from
the burden. His hands were delivered from
the pots. Thou callest in trouble, and
I delivered thee. I answered thee in the secret
place of thunder. I proved thee at the waters of
Meribah, Silah. Hear, O my people, and I will
testify unto thee, O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me.
There shall no strange God be in thee, neither shalt thou worship
any strange God. I am the Lord thy God, which
brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide,
and I will fill it. But my people would not hearken
to my voice, and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up
unto their own hearts' lust, and they walked in their own
councils. Oh, that my people had hearkened
to me and Israel had walked in my ways. I should soon have subdued
their enemies and turned my hand against their adversaries. The
haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him,
but their time should have endured forever. He should have fed them
also with the finest of the wheat, and with the honey out of the
rock should I have satisfied them, or satisfied thee. So we
see here in the first of this psalm, and I went over some of
the high level lessons in the psalm last week, but we see here
in the first part of this psalm this instruction by God to sing
aloud to the Lord, who is our strength, and make a joyful noise
to the God of Jacob, take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel,
the pleasant harp, and the psaltery." Now, I wanted to mention this
because as I was going back through the notes and updating them for
tonight's study, I came across this place that I thought would
be helpful. It was helpful to me to see this,
and I thought it would be helpful also to you. All right, so this,
I'm looking where I, oh, I know where I put that. I put it in
the footnotes. Last week I pointed out that
there are several places in scripture where it talks about singing
to the Lord. And I also mentioned that the
instruments that the Lord is mentioning here to take a psalm
and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery,
that these instruments, he says in verse 3, to blow the trumpet,
these instruments signify the greater instrument of the heart
of a believer in making song, hymns in their heart to the Lord
in joyfulness. Excuse me. And then I read from
Ephesians chapter 5 where it says, speaking to yourselves
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody
in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things
to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what I wanted to point out
from that text of scripture in Ephesians 5, 19 and 20, is that
the instruction of the apostle, which was by the Holy Spirit
to the church, is to make melody in our hearts to the Lord. And
that answers what is given as a command in this psalm to sing
aloud to God our strength, make a joyful noise to the God of
Jacob, to take a psalm and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant
harp with the psaltery. So what I wanted to say here
is that there's two things that are mentioned in verse two. The
psalm which is the lyrics, the God-given inspired lyrics, and
then there's the instruments. the lyrics of the song that we
sing as believers are given to us in Isaiah chapter 52. This
is the part I wanted to point out to you. In Isaiah 52, let
me read this to you. You'll recognize this text of
scripture as I read it, but it says in Isaiah 52 verse 6, Therefore
my people shall know my name. Therefore they shall know in
that day that I am he that doth speak behold it is I So this
is the Lord talking to his people and he's telling them in that
day. They will know me They'll know my name. They'll know me
and it they'll know that it is me the Lord who's speaking behold
it is I And then in verse 7, he says, how beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him that brings good tidings, that
publishes peace, that brings good tidings of good, that publishes
salvation, that saith to Zion, thy God reigneth. So that's the
gospel, isn't it? This is the good tidings of the
gospel. The next chapter, Isaiah 53, is going to be the gospel,
and here he's saying the good news of the gospel brings salvation. It's the message of salvation,
and it is about a sovereign God in saving his people. Thy God
reigneth. He says in verse 8, Thy watchman
shall lift up the voice. With the voice together shall
they sing, for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall
bring again Zion. So from this text of scripture,
and there's others, we see that the message of the song is salvation
by the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, it's the gospel.
So when in Ephesians chapter 5 we're told to sing and make
melody in our hearts to the Lord, the melody is referring to the
sound of the music and the score, if you will. But here it's talking
about what goes on in the heart. And so we know that the psalm
contains the message of that song that we sing, and the message
is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's a very comforting
thing to me, that the Lord says not only is the gospel the glad
news from heaven, but it's also the song that God gives his people
to sing in their hearts. And I find that to resonate,
and not to over-emphasize this notion of music. Resonance is
what happens when you strike the key or the string of a musical
instrument. It vibrates at that frequency
that it's tuned to vibrate. And that's what happens in the
heart of a believer. Our hearts resonate with the
message of the gospel, and it produces this joyful singing
in our hearts. I want to say something very
practical here. When I was a kid, when I was a young person, my
mom sang in our house all the time. The TV wasn't on very much,
at least she didn't watch it. She went about her work, whether
it was washing dishes or washing clothes or cleaning or whatever
it was, and she was always singing. I noticed that and I learned
the words to several hymns just from my mom singing them a lot.
And so I encourage you parents to sing in your houses. It's
good to sing in our hearts, but very practically let that singing
come out too. I think singing is something
God has given people to do. And there's a good reason for
it. It's because it expresses the joy and the message of what
gives us that great joy in our hearts, which we know now is
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. How often have you just
felt this uncontrollable urge to sing something when you realize
it? In fact, as I was reading Isaiah
52 this morning, I was singing to our new grandbaby those very
words. How beautiful are the feet of
him that brings glad tidings. It's a wonderful thing to think
about how great the Lord is. All right, so that's one thing
I wanted to mention in this first section of Psalm 81 that we didn't
touch on last time. And then the other thing too
is that in the first section is in verse three, when he's
talking about making this joyful noise, singing aloud, he says
in verse three, blow up the trumpet in the new moon in the time appointed
on our solemn feast day. And he goes on in verse four,
for this was a statute for Israel and a law of the God of Jacob. This he ordained in Joseph for
a testimony when he went out through the land of Egypt where
I heard a language that I understood not. So the blowing of the trumpet,
as I mentioned last week, occurred during the Feast of Trumpets. In Leviticus 23, there are several
feasts that are mentioned, but there are three where there is
a feast associated with them, and Passover was the first one. the Feast of Trumpets was the
first day of the seventh month and then the fifteenth day of
that same month was the Feast of Tabernacles. And we went over
those last week briefly to summarize that each of those feasts have
their fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament
era. Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed
for us. And that's the reason that we
were delivered from the bondage of sin and Satan, the curse and
the bondage of God's law. We couldn't fulfill it, and yet
the law held out this threat and promise that if we would
just do it, we could live by it. And that made our hearts
even more hostile towards God because sin in the heart, with
the law applied to it and demanding obedience from a sinful heart,
does so many things that are wrong. By the sin in the heart,
it produces pride. it causes us to hide, it causes
us to accuse God of being overly strict, and that he would demand
from us what we can't produce, and then there's this self-delusion
that thinks that we can possibly do it, and so we go about to
try to fulfill the law by our own obedience, or our own sorrow,
or tears, or whatever it is, enduring suffering, thinking
that somehow paying God a payment, in part at least, for our sins
against Him. So there's so many things that
God's holy law does when it comes to our sinful heart. And in Romans
chapter 7, the apostle Paul makes a point of showing that the law
comes to us and it produces an abundance of sin. Where sin abounded,
Romans 5.20, grace did much more abound. But then in Romans 7,
it was the fact that he was dead until the law came along and
that law showed him his own sinfulness and then it became exceeding
sinful. And it was the holy law that did that, which made that
sin that was in him even worse, appear much worse than he ever
realized before. So, that's what the law does,
but in this text of scripture here, What it says is, blow up
the trumpet of the new moon in the time appointed. The law required
these feasts. The Israelites were to meet three
times in the year at least, Passover, Trumpets, and Tabernacle. There
were other times too, but those in particular. And they all have their fulfillment
in Christ. And what this shows us here in verse, if you notice
this in verse four, this was a statute for Israel and a law
of the God of Jacob. He ordained this in Joseph for
a testimony when he went out through the land of Egypt. Well,
when God went out through the land of Egypt, remember, it was
with the determination to deliver them from Egypt. And the way
he did that and the time that he did that was the Feast of
Passover. So we would expect that the new
moon here primarily has a reference to the Feast of Passover. And
as I said, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, therefore
The blowing of the trumpet, and the Feast of Trumpets, and Passover,
and Tabernacle, these things were to teach us that all of
this would have a fulfillment, would have its fulfillment, this
law would be fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that reminds
us of so many scriptures in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 20, it says, all of
the promises of God in Christ are yes and amen to the glory
of God. All of the promises are yes and
amen in Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 5, verse
17 and 18, he says, think not that I am come to destroy the
law and the prophets. I am not come to destroy but
to fulfill. And we read last week in Romans
10 verse 4 that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
because he obviously fulfilled the righteousness of the law
and magnified the law and justified his people by his own obedience.
So there was no more need for the law to demand of us because
Christ satisfied its last demand and fulfilled all of its obedience
for our righteousness. So, the command here, then, to
blow the trumpets in the new moon, this is telling Israel,
even in the Old Testament, Christ is coming. Christ will be our
Passover. Christ will be the one who trumpets
out the good news of the gospel and will send, by his Holy Spirit,
in his apostles and in his church, that good news to all of his
people, his lost sheep throughout the world, whether they be Jew
or Gentile. When Jesus came and preached the gospel
in Luke 4, verse 18 and following, he was talking about the year
of Jubilee, the acceptable year of the Lord. And then the Feast
of Tabernacles, of course, has to do with Christ himself dwelling
with us and we dwelling in Christ, sojourning in this world, living
by Christ, living in us, and living by faith upon him, and
so we look for that city which has foundations, whose builder
and maker is God. We live in Christ. He's our refuge. He's our rock. He's the booths. He's the fulfillment of those
booths that the children of Israel, those little shelters they made
out of palm branches, to signify that the Lord had them dwell
in those booths when they came out of Egypt. because they were
delivered by the Lord Jesus Christ. So they all have their fulfillment
in Christ. And then this reminds us that Jesus told the Pharisees,
you search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal
life, but these are they that testify of me. And Moses wrote
of me, if you believed him you would believe me because he wrote
of me. And that was in John chapter 5, but in Luke 24, Jesus told
the two on the road to Emmaus, out of the law and the Psalms
and the prophets, the things concerning himself. So the law,
the Old Testament, therefore, speaks of Christ, and Christ
fulfilled the law of the Old Testament in his life, in his
death, in his resurrection. And that's why in this particular
psalm, When he talks about blowing the trumpet, he's declaring the
joy that should be ours because of Christ's accomplishments. that would fulfill these feasts
and that's the reference here to Joseph is a reference to the
entire nation of Israel which came into Egypt by Joseph and
they were delivered from Egypt later by the blood of Christ
and so we see that all of this points to him, to the Lord Jesus
and that's why it adds so much weight to the rest of this psalm
which I want to go through now when it talks about Israel's
response to God's revelation of the coming fulfillment of
their salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. These feasts were given
in the law. The law was given to point to
Christ. Christ would fulfill that law.
The advantage the Jews had over all other nations of the world
is that to them, the oracles of God were committed. Those
oracles revealed Christ and what he would do to save his people,
both fulfilling the precept of the law and the penalty for his
people. The sacrifices that were in the Old Testament were pointed
to the penalty he would endure, the satisfaction he would make
to God by that penalty, by his own sacrifice of himself, and
of course the obedience that he yielded to God in offering
himself to God was the fulfillment of that righteousness demanded
by the law. It's all fulfilled by his love
for his Father, his love for his people. So in the next verses,
now in Psalm 81, he says, I removed his shoulder from the burden,
his hands were delivered from the pots. In history, the nation
of Israel was delivered from Egypt. They were under slavery
to the Egyptians by cruel They weren't held captives of their
own free will. They were held against their
will, and they had to serve as slaves. So God's people are held
against the will of God by their own sin, and in order for them
to be free from that sin, God has to shed the blood of his
Son, because he had to provide for himself, the Lamb, in order
to redeem us from our sin and everything that sin brings with
it. Alright, so that's what he's talking about in verse 6. He
removed his shoulder. Typically, that was the nation
of Israel, but in fulfillment, it was all of God's people, the
true spiritual people of God. And let me just take a couple
of lines here to talk to that fulfillment. Now, in the New
Testament, one of the barriers the gospel had in preaching
the gospel to the Jews is that the Jews held their fathers as
the way that they were to be saved, just like their fathers.
So Abraham, Moses, David, it doesn't matter who it was, those
were the fathers. And they said, well, Moses said
we had to keep the law in order to be saved, for example. Or
David said this, or Abraham did that. And they would use those
men as their reference. But the apostle Paul... through
the wisdom given to him by the Spirit of God, showed them that
Moses, Abraham, David, and all of those men of old spoke of
Christ. It was to Abraham that God gave
the promise that God would bless all the nations of the world
through the Lord Jesus Christ, the true seed of Abraham through
his death on the cross. You can read that in Galatians
chapter 3. And then it was also through Abraham that God proved,
say in Romans chapter 4, that it was not by the flesh, but
it was by the promise that he would save. And not by our work,
but by grace, he says, to him that worketh not, but believes
on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
And then David also in Romans chapter 4, he said, blessed is
the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. And David was
referenced also by Jesus himself when he asked the Pharisees whose
son is Christ. And they said, well, he's David's
son. And Jesus said, well, if he's David's son, then why does
David call Christ Lord? In the Psalms, Psalm 110, he
says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand till I make
thine enemies thy footstool. And then Peter referenced David
also in Acts 2 and other places where he said David spoke of
Christ when he spoke of the resurrection of Christ, because David obviously
was still in the grave, whereas Christ was risen from the grave.
And so Christ's resurrection was the reason for the justification. It was the justification of his
people and it was the reason God sent the Holy Spirit into
the world to preach the gospel of Christ's sovereign rule to
save his people from their sins by his redeeming blood. So that's
David. So we see that Abraham, Moses,
and David all spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses spoke of
Christ in several ways, not the least of which were all these
signs that were given in the law, such as the Passover, the
Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles, as well as the
sacrifices and the laws. So now I mention all that because
This Psalm, Psalm 81, is talking about the history of Israel.
But that history has a spiritual fulfillment in the Lord Jesus
Christ with a spiritual people. But the spiritual people Now,
this is important. The spiritual people that this
psalm is talking about, which is the church, they also have
the same weaknesses. They're no better in themselves
than the physical nation of Israel was. And that's why when we read
the rest of the psalm, we're going to see the sinfulness of
human nature in contrast to the saving grace of God. What we're
going to see here is that we bring ourselves into our own
ruin by our sin. and that sin is all of our fault.
And all of the plagues that come because of our sin are all due
to us and it's all our fault. And we can't deliver ourselves.
that we're in a prison that the Lord has to deliver us from.
And He does do that by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what we
see is that sin is all of our fault. Salvation is all of God's
grace because of Christ. And that's the rest of this psalm.
Let me take you to a New Testament text of scripture in Romans chapter
11. Romans chapter 11, if you want
to turn there, we'll look at verse 30 of Romans 11. Take a
look at this, because I'm going to quote this from Romans 3 verse
9, where it says, what then, are we better than they? And
that was the Apostle Paul asking the Romans concerning the Jews
those who were Gentiles, are we better than they? Are we better
than those Jews who were self-righteous and doubly guilty than the Gentiles? No, we're not. We're no better
than they are. But here in Romans chapter 11 and verse 30, he says
this, For as you, speaking about the
Gentiles now, for as you in times past have not believed God. Do you see that? In times past,
we Gentiles did not believe God. Now, isn't that the sin that
the book of Hebrews in chapter 3 especially highlights as the
reason why the nation of Israel that didn't believe God fell
in the wilderness, their carcasses fell in the wilderness because
of unbelief. Remember that in Hebrews 3? And this is the theme of Hebrews.
It's the contrast between unbelief and faith. Hebrews 11 is all
about faith. And he's exhorting the Hebrews,
look, you better look to Christ. All the Old Testament is fulfilled
in Him. If you cling, if you cling to
the Old Testament, then you're going to face God and answer
to God according to strict judgment based on your works. But if you
look to Christ, then you receive all that Christ did as a blessing
because of God's grace that He's performed by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the book of Hebrews is
telling us that in chapter 3 highlights the sin of unbelief in the Hebrews,
the Jews, in the wilderness and beyond the wilderness, really,
that they didn't believe God, so God swore in His wrath, they
won't enter into My rest. They won't enter into the eternal
salvation that was typified by the land of Canaan. They won't
enter into eternal glory. They'll be left out. They'll
be left out to die in their sins and to hear Christ pronounced
to them, depart from me you that work iniquity. And so that's
why here in Romans chapter 11, I read this verse in verse 30,
Romans 11, 30, where it says, for as you in times past have
not believed God, so what this is saying is that we also, like
the Jews, did not believe God. That's unbelief. He goes on.
yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief. What was characteristic
of the Jews? that fell in the wilderness? What was the problem with the
Jews who rejected Christ through the prophets, through the law,
through the Psalms, through John the Baptist, through Christ himself
and the miracles that he did, and his death on the cross, his
resurrection, and then the preaching of the gospel by the apostles?
What was it that kept the Jews, unbelieving Jews, from seeing
him? It was their unbelief. Now, it
says here in verse 30 of Romans 11, we also did not believe God,
but we've obtained mercy through their unbelief. What he's saying
is that because the Jews rejected Christ, the gospel was sent to
the Gentiles in a very successful and open way. That was beginning
at Pentecost when the apostles preached and all those different
nations heard the gospel in their own language. And so he's saying
because of the unbelief of the Jews, God used their unbelief
to bring about Think about this mercy, the salvation of his elect
from among the Gentiles. And then in verse 31, Romans
11, verse 31, he says, Even so, just like you who didn't believe
God have obtained mercy through the unbelief of these reprobate
Jews, so that the nation was essentially destroyed and the
gospel through the persecution that came on the church was spread
throughout the world and the spirit of God sent Paul into
all the Gentile places that he sent him. He says in verse 31,
even so have these also now not believed that through your mercy
they also may obtain mercy. First of all, God sent the gospel
to the Gentiles because of the Jewish unbelief, and now he's
going to send the gospel to the Jews, unbelieving Jews, through
the mercy the Gentiles obtained through their unbelief. So, see
God's mercy in this? He says in verse 32, here's the
conclusion, for God has concluded them all in unbelief, all, Jews
and Gentiles, that he might have mercy upon all, all of his elect
from among the Jews and the Gentiles. So in Psalm 81 then, when he
talks about this, we're reading here in verses 6 and following,
he's talking about the horrible unbelief and the resulting affliction
that came on the nation of Israel, which was typical of our own
unbelief as Gentiles and our own unfaithfulness, and how that
in ourselves we ruin ourselves, it's all our fault, yet in the
Lord Jesus Christ we are saved with an eternal salvation out
of his pure mercy and grace. All right, back to Psalm 81.
He says in verse 7, Thou callest in trouble, and I delivered thee. Remember the Israelites, when
they were in the land of Egypt, they said, you know, they were
crying by reason of their taskmasters, and the Lord heard their afflictions,
and he visited them. Of course, it was according to
his will, but he used that means. And this is another important
point in this psalm, that God uses God-appointed means. It's not the reason for our salvation,
but He has determined before how He will save His people,
and it will be through the affliction that came upon them because of
their sin, right? All right. He said, I answered
thee, verse 7, I answered thee in the secret place of thunder.
I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. So they were in Egypt. They cried because of their afflictions.
God delivered them. Then immediately they go through
the Red Sea. They saw the wonder of God opening
the sea. And they come to a place where
there was no water. And they found this place called
Meribah. which means bitterness. The water
was bitter. They couldn't drink the water
because it was bitter. They cried, murmured against
God. And Moses prayed to the Lord. God told Moses, you cut down
this tree, cast it into the water. The waters were made sweet. And
he said, and I think this is in I think it's in Exodus 15,
verse 26, where he says, that I am the Lord that healeth thee.
And he's healing them, if I got the reference right. All right.
So, what we see here is that God delivered them from Egypt
through the Passover, through the Red Sea, brought them into
the wilderness, and just as their entrance into the wilderness
for those years they were there, he proved them at the waters
of Meribah. Of course, they failed, right?
They failed miserably. And it says in verse 8, So now
he's getting into the wilderness sojourn. He's talking about the
giving of the law. and how the first commandment
to the law is that the Lord, that they're to love the Lord
only, to worship Him only, have no other gods before Him. He
says in verse 10, I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out
of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide and I will
fill it. So in the wilderness, God gave them the law, but throughout
all of this, He kept pointing to their own failure and their
inability to do their track record, really, their history of idolatry. They were idolaters in Egypt. And as soon as they came out,
they held to their idols still. And that's why he tells them
this, there shall no strange God be with thee, neither shall
thou worship any strange God. He told them that because they
were idolaters. They already had broken that
law. And so the command revealed what they were. Sinners. It's
wrong to be an idolater. It's spiritual adultery against
God. It's unfaithfulness. It's finding
satisfaction in someone other than Christ. And that's a terrible
thing, isn't it? It's wanting someone else to
be on the throne than God himself. And to be the judge, the one
who determines whether we should worship this or that or the other
thing. It's a complete rejection of the truth of God. So he says
here, I'm the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land
of Egypt. What is he saying? Well, in spite of your sinfulness,
in spite of your iniquity, your idolatry, your idolatry, the
Lord delivered you from Egypt. He could have destroyed you.
He said he would because of your idolatry, but he didn't. Therefore,
he's showing them his grace. Look at Look at Ezekiel, Ezekiel
chapter 20. I want to just point out this
principle in Ezekiel 20, and I'll let you read this more thoroughly
in your own time, but in Ezekiel chapter 20, he first talks about
the time of Israel and Egypt, and then in verse 9, in verse
7, Ezekiel 20, verse 7, he says, Then said I unto them, Cast ye
away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves
with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Sounds
just like Psalm 81, doesn't it? But they, here's what they did,
they rebelled against me, and they would not hearken to me.
They did not, every man, cast away the abomination of their
eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt. See, these
were idols they worshipped in Egypt. Then I said, I, this is
God talking, I will pour out my fury upon them to accomplish
my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. That's
what they should have received by the just deserts. But look
at verse nine. But I wrought for my name's sake
that it should not be polluted before the heathen among whom
they were in whose sight I made myself known to them in bringing
them forth out of the land of Egypt. So what he's saying in
verse nine of Ezekiel 20 is that was in spite of their idolatry,
God delivered them from Egypt for his name's sake, you see? And then if you go down the next
section, I won't read it, what he's talking about is when he
gave them the law in the land and the wilderness. And he says
in verse 13, but the house of Israel rebelled against me in
the wilderness. They walked not in my statutes. They despised
my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them. But my Sabbaths they greatly
polluted. Then I said I would pour out my fury upon them in
the wilderness to consume them. But verse 14 says, but I wrought
for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted before the heathen
in whose sight I brought them out. You see, the reason was
not in them, it was in God's character, in his fame, his reputation. And you can look at this chapter
in scripture and you'll see this throughout that chapter. The
point is that the same principle is holding in Psalm 81, where
he says in verse 10, I am the Lord thy God which brought thee
out of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide and I will
fill it. You see, since God did deliver you out of Egypt, even
though you were idolaters, Understand that salvation is by grace from
your sin, which you could not deliver yourself from either
the punishment of it, the penalty of it, or even the cause of it,
which is your own inner corruptions. And so the Lord says, open your
mouth wide and I will fill it. And he says the same thing to
his church. When Jesus saw the woman at the well, he says, give
me to drink. And she said, why are you asking drink from me?
I'm a woman of Samaria, no less. He said, if you knew the gift
of God, you would have asked me and I would have given you
living water. You see, she was a sinner. He asked her to give
her a drink and she couldn't do it. But he said, if you would
have known the gift of God, Christ the Lord, he would have given
you living water. That's what he's saying here.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. Come to God through
the Lord Jesus Christ because of his saving grace in Christ
and open your mouth wide. You don't deserve this, but God
is good. That's the reason for your salvation. And that's what the message of
this psalm is here. He goes on, verse 11, but my people would
not hearken to my voice. Israel would none of me. So I
gave them up under their own hearts lust, and they walked
in their own counsels. This is the result. This is God's
judgment on unbelief, to give up people to the imagined, the
preferred and imagined falsehood that they want to hold to instead
of the truth of God. Romans 1 talks about this. They suppress the truth God showed
them and they, out of their vain imaginations, they produce these
idols and they worship them. And so God gives them up to their
reprobate heart, to their covetousness and their pride and everything.
It leads to destruction. And it says in Psalm 81, verse
12, and they walked in their own counsels. Oh, verse 13, oh,
that my people had listened or hearkened to me and Israel had
walked in my ways, the ways of the Lord. They're all right.
There's nothing wrong with the law, but the law can't save us. Only Christ can do that. What
is God's ways? the Lord Jesus. He's the way,
the truth, and the life. Verse 14, I should soon have
subdued their enemies and turned my hand against their adversaries.
See, looking to Christ is the only way we can be delivered
from our sins, our enemies. Verse 15, the haters of the Lord
should have submitted themselves to Him, but their time should
have endured forever. In other words, if they had looked
to Christ, If they had seen God's grace to them in Christ and looked
to Christ as they were taught to do even with the uplifted
serpent in the wilderness by Moses, then they would have endured
forever. But he says in verse 16, he should
have fed them also with the finest of the wheat and with honey out
of the rock should I have satisfied thee. The honey out of the rock? That's Christ. That's Christ.
That's the sweetness that comes from Christ's suffering and death. It reminds me of Samson. Remember he killed the lion with
his bare hands and then there was a a honeycomb that was produced
by bees in the carcass of the lion, out of the strong came
sweetness. And he was talking about Christ
who gave himself for our sins and how the gospel comes from
the Lord Jesus Christ in his death. But here he says, honey
out of the rock, because remember in 1 Corinthians 10, the Apostle
Paul says, the rock that followed them was Christ. That's in 1
Corinthians 10 and verse 4. That rock was Christ. Honey out
of the rock, the gospel, the pure gospel of God's grace, that
righteousness and everything that God requires of His people,
He has provided in the Lord Jesus Christ by His precious blood.
That's honey, isn't it? That satisfies, doesn't it? He says, he would have fed them
also with the finest wheat and with honey out of the rock should
I have satisfied thee. True sweetness, true sweetness
is to know that God is pleased with me in Christ with nothing
else." Isn't that what the gospel teaches us? Doesn't that gospel
message make the message sweeter than honey to our hearts? And
it produces this grace of faith and love for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I wanted to point out, too, before we close here, with this
Psalm, a principle in this Psalm, and that is this, is that, and
I alluded to it earlier, is that the Lord has given, He has appointed
certain means, certain means, or the way through which He brings
grace to His people. There are many reasons given
in this chapter why the Lord's people should take heed. One
of the things that you do, or I do, naturally, when I read
a chapter in a scripture like this, is I begin to think about
how I've committed the same sin, I'm in the same helpless impotence
in my corruptness, my corruptions, and what do I do since I can't
seem to produce what the Lord is requiring here? These people
didn't. I want to, and so I think, how
can I get myself to conform to that? But what the Lord is showing
here is that, first of all, never think that you can do better
than those Israelites. You can't. And that's one of
the messages that are maybe not so obvious to us, because our
pride blinds us to this. We can do no better. And so that
brings us back to the lesson here, is that we have to be saved
by grace entirely, without any help from us, and God has to
do it for his own purpose, his own name's sake, for Christ's
sake. But notice here that the Lord has these means through
which he says, but my people would not hearken to my voice,
in verse 11. So the Lord, one of the means
through which he uses is hearing, hearing the gospel, because faith
comes by hearing. He says, I gave them, let's see,
if my people would have opened their mouth wide and I would
fill it, verse 10. He says, oh, open thy mouth wide and I will
fill it. You see, that's one of the means. God wants us to
recognize our sinfulness and his salvation in Christ and therefore
open our mouths wide. And this corresponds to what
Jesus told us in the New Testament, ask. and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock,
and it shall be opened to you." Remember, everyone that asks
receives, everyone that seeks finds, and everyone that knocks,
it's opened. And that's the means that God has chosen. And so,
the first thing I find myself needing to do is ask the Lord
to cause me to ask. to ask the Lord to cause me to
seek and to ask the Lord to make me knock, to pursue the Lord
Jesus Christ, to open my mouth wide so that He will fill it. Because this is the way God works.
And it starts with this honest recognition of our sin as revealed
to us by the gospel. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. If we don't find ourselves there,
then we haven't started in the way of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is the way to the Father.
There's no other name. We can't get there ourselves.
He's the truth. There's no other truth. It's not in us. He's the
life. We don't have life in ourselves.
It's in Him. and so we have to go to him,
we have to look to him at all times, and so the Lord Jesus
himself used to separate himself to pray when he was on the earth.
The apostles prayed, we need to pray, so pray that the Lord
would cause us to pray, that he would cause us to do these
things that he's chosen. Daniel prayed, he knew God's
promises that he was going to deliver the people of Judah from
the bondage or their captivity in the land of Babylon and on
the very year that he learned that this was the time when God
was going to deliver them. Do you know what he did? He asked
the Lord to deliver them. He asked him according to his
promise to keep his word and the way that he asked him is
he confessed his own sin and the sin of his people in Daniel
chapter 9. And he asked the Lord to do it for his own sake, for
his righteousness sake. And so we see all these things
coming together in this psalm. I love these texts of scripture
in Psalm 119. He says, order my steps in thy
word and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. Can you
pray that? I find myself always capable of praying that. I need
that. That's why I can say, Lord, order
my steps in your word. Command me to go in your way. And don't let any iniquity have
dominion over me. So, I see in this psalm, Psalm
81, even though we see the darkness of man's unbelief and sinfulness
and his helplessness to get himself out of the ruin he brings himself
into by his sin and unbelief, we see the Lord's grace that
he does what he does for his people because of who he is and
for his own honor and his own namesake. And that's the message
of this psalm. It's the message of scripture.
It's for the Lord's sake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we pray
that we would always look to the Lord Jesus Christ and find
in Him our all, everything that you have to give to your people,
you've given to him everything that you require of your people,
you've required and received from him for them. And Lord,
help us to look to the Lord Jesus Christ and find everything that
you have given to him to be all that we need, that we're complete
in him. Thank you for such grace, for
such goodness. In your son's name we pray, and
for his sake, amen.