All right, let's read Psalm 81
together tonight. Psalm 81, it says in verse 1,
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
a 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, Selah. 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
counsels. Oh, that my people had hearkened
to me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have
subdued their iniquities, 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 wheat and with honey out of the rock should
I have satisfied thee. All right, so this psalm, you
can see the first half of this psalm or so is talking about
the praise that Israel ought to give to God. It says, sing
aloud to God our strength, make a joyful noise to the God of
Jacob. Take a psalm, bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp
with the psaltery, and blow up the trumpet in the new moon.
So that's the opening of the first half of this psalm. And
then in the second half, it talks about the deliverance of Israel
from Egypt and yet how they turned away from the Lord. He says, He told them, there shall no
strange God be with them in verse 9. And then he says, I am the
Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, I will fill it, but my people would
not hearken to my voice, and Israel would none of me. So you
can see here that in this psalm there's these two big parts. The one is the praise and the
joy that God's people ought to give to him in their song. And in the second part, of the
psalm, the disappointing fact that Israel did not. They turned
away from God and God gave them over to their own heart's lust.
It says in verse 12, so I gave them up to their own heart's
lust and they walked in their own counsels. So it's a very
sad psalm in that sense. It even ends on a sad note. He
should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat and with
honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee. But he
didn't. He didn't, because they would
none of him. And so in this psalm, there seems
to be a disappointment. And I think, as I thought on
this, what this psalm was saying here, I couldn't help but think
of some places in scripture that I think are an excellent commentary
on Psalm 81. And so that's what I want to
consider here is some of these places in scripture. And the
first one I want to look at is in Isaiah 65. If you look at
Isaiah 65, it's helpful because it talks about how the Lord was
found of those who did not seek him. In Isaiah 65 it says, I
am sought of them that ask not for me. I am found of them that
sought me not. I said, behold me, behold me
to a nation that was not called by my name. So that's an amazing
prophecy, a very bold prophecy that God would be found of those
who didn't seek him. And he even says this, even though
the Lord throughout scripture commands us to seek him. So that
obviously in chapter 1, I'm sorry, chapter 65, Isaiah 65 verse 1,
is talking about the grace of God to those who he saved. I'm going to also read verse
2 of that same chapter, Isaiah 65 verse 2. He said, I have spread
out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people which walketh
in a way that was not good after their own thoughts. Now that
sounds like the second half of Psalm 81. He goes on in Isaiah
65 verse 3, he says, A people that provoketh me to anger continually
to my face, that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense
upon altars of brick, which remain among the graves, and lodge in
the monuments, which eat swine's flesh and broth of abominable
things is in their vessels, which say, stand by thyself, come not
near me, for I am holier than thou. These are smoke in my nose,
a fire that burneth all the day." Okay, so that sets the context,
doesn't it? In Isaiah 65, he opens with this
amazing prophecy of grace that there would be those who found
him who didn't seek for him. And those who didn't call on
his name, he would say to them, behold me, behold me, to a nation
that did not call on his name. or was not called by his name.
But then in the rest of this, it talks about those who were
smoke in God's nose, fire that burns all the day, they ate swine's
flesh, they drank abominable things, and they thought themselves
to be holier than others. Okay, so that's really kind of
the prophecy that is used as some of the groundwork in Romans
chapter 10. And so Romans chapter 10 also
helps us to understand Psalm 81. But of course, the backdrop
to Romans 10 is Romans 1. So let me read just a few verses
to refresh our memory from Romans chapter 1. He says in Romans
chapter 1 verse 18, he says, after he said in verse 16, I'm
not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of
God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first
and also to the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed,
as it is written, the just shall live by faith, and then he launches
into this long condemning account of both jews and gentiles beginning
with the gentiles and he says this for the wrath of god is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness that means they
suppress it they know something about god but they don't like
what they know they don't like god as he has revealed himself
as he is verse nineteen because that because that which may be
known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it to them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."
Now this is true of everyone, Jew and Gentile. But he's especially
focusing on the Gentile because the Jews, as he is giving this
account here, would naturally assume that he's talking only
about the Gentiles. But a little later on, he's going
to prove that he's actually talking about both. But in verse 21 of
Romans 1 he says, which is exactly what it said
in Psalm 81 verse 12. He gave them up to their own
heart's lust. So that's the context, and I'm
not going to read through it here, but if you go to the conclusion
in the end of this section of scripture in chapter 3, Romans
3 and verse 8, 10, he says this, as it is written, there is none
righteous, no not one, there is none that understandeth, there
is none that seeketh after God, they are all gone out of the
way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that
doeth good, no not one. And then in verse 19, now we
know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them
that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and
all the world may become guilty before God, therefore by the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his
sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Now, that
was a necessary foundation in the book of Romans in order to
bring the gospel to bear. Because, here's the fact, until
we know we're sinners, the gospel is uninteresting to us. It makes
no difference. We might use it for some kind
of an intellectual badge or some kind of a theological arm wrestling
match, but it won't mean anything to us unless we're sinners. And
so that's why in the book of Romans, immediately after saying
the gospel is the power of God to salvation because in it the
righteousness of God is revealed, he then proves that man is unrighteous,
universally unrighteous. Jews and Gentiles, not one is
better than the other, all have sinned, all have come fallen
short of the glory of God, and there's no hope by man's own
obedience to the law for him to establish a righteousness. And so, in the book of Romans,
this is the way it begins, and there's two righteousnesses that
are set forth in the book of Romans. There's a righteousness
called the righteousness of the law, and there's one that's called
the righteousness which is of faith. And we know what that
is in Romans chapter 10. He describes both of them. And
he describes those who hold to these two different righteousnesses.
And that's why I read Isaiah 65 verses 1 and following. Because
the opening verse of Isaiah 65 is talking about those who found
the Lord when they didn't seek him. And so in Romans 9, And
verse 30, Romans 9, verse 30, it says, what shall we say then,
and this is what we shall say, that the Gentiles, which followed
not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even
the righteousness which is of faith. So that's the righteousness
he's contrasting to the other righteousness, which is the righteousness
which is of the law. And then he goes on, he says,
but Israel, even though the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness,
they didn't follow after the righteousness of the law, yet
they attained to the righteousness of faith, but Israel, which followed
after the law of righteousness, that's the other kind, has not
attained to the law of righteousness, wherefore, because they sought
it not by faith. But as it were, by the works
of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling stone as it
is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock
of offense, and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed."
So that was a quotation from Isaiah, I think chapter 28, or
maybe it was chapter 8, but wherever it was in Isaiah, he's quoting
that, in order to prove that Christ was set forth as the cornerstone
and the foundation, and whoever believes on him would not be
ashamed, but he would be a stumbling stone, because those who hold
to the law of righteousness, meaning a righteousness that
they can produce by their own personal obedience to the law.
they would stumble at Christ. And so that's who he describes
in the opening of chapter 10. Listen, he says, brethren, my
heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might
be saved. That's the Israel we were reading
about in Psalm 81. For I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God. He's commending them for that,
but not according to knowledge. In other words, even though they're
zealous, it's a zealous zeal based on ignorance. And here's
what they're ignorant of. For they being ignorant of God's
righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness,
so that we can see that the righteousness of faith, therefore, is God's
righteousness, And that's contrasted with our own righteousness, which
is what we produce by our own obedience. Those who are ignorant
of God's righteousness and have gone about to establish their
own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God. And verse 4 tells us what that
is. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to
everyone that believeth. OK, so now we see what the righteousness
of faith is. It's the righteousness of God.
And we also see that the righteousness of God is Christ, who is the
end of the law, as it says here. It means he's the consummate
end. He's the one the law anticipated with all of its commands and
all of its penalties. He would fulfill them all. and
that would be the righteousness that he established, and it would
be the righteousness of God, because God provided it in him,
he fulfilled it in Christ, he approved it of Christ, and he
gave it to his people, and he justified them by that righteousness.
So this was all of God's doing and all to God's glory. But the
other righteousness is all of man's doing and all to man's
glory, if he could produce it, but he can't. And that's the
next verse he's going to show it's impossible. He says in verse
5, For Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the
men which do with those things shall live by them. But since
no one keeps the laws he proved in Romans 3. They are all guilty,
non-righteous, and so on. Therefore, no one can live. So
it's impossible for man to keep the righteousness, which is of
the law. And yet, the Jews, who refused Christ, stubbornly held
to their own personal obedience, and they rejected the obedience
and the suffering and the death of Christ, which was the justification
of his people. And he goes on and he talks about
this righteousness that Christ established. And I'm not going
to expound the rest of this chapter. But the point here is that in
this chapter he talks about a righteousness which we now know is what Christ
worked out. And the righteousness that Christ
worked out is given to all those who believe, not because they
believe, But because the righteousness given to them is a righteousness
of faith, faith is God's ordained means by which we receive that
righteousness and know and are persuaded that this is the righteousness
of God and the one. in which God has provided for
us to appear before him in Christ. And so faith lays hold of that,
and that faith that lays hold of this righteousness in Christ
is an allotment, a gift of God. Look at 2nd Peter, 2nd Peter
chapter 1 and verse 1, I want you to see this, that word allotment
is actually used there even though it doesn't appear in our King
James Version. So 2nd Peter chapter 1, And verse
one says, Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to them that have obtained, like precious faith with us, in, it
should say in, the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our God and Savior.
His righteousness is what we trust in. And the faith given
to us that to trust in Christ's righteousness is a precious gift.
And we obtained it. We obtained it from God as an
allotment. That's what the words here mean.
Obtaining as an allotment. A gift. An inheritance. We were given this. And so God
gave this gift of faith to us. That faith is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. and His righteousness, and He
is our God and our Savior. So this is the New Testament. This is the Gospel, right? So
we have here now, just at a real high-level thumbnail sketch,
the contrast, the huge contrast between the Law and the Gospel.
In the Law, God requires everything of us. In the gospel, everything
He required of us under the law, He required of Christ and Christ
provided it for us. He provided it to God for us.
And so in the gospel, God provided for Himself in Christ. In fact, He provided for Himself
His justice, He took away His wrath, He covered our sins and
provided our righteousness all in the blood of His Son. And
so God has provided all this, and this is not only what He
provided as a righteousness, forgiveness of our sins, the
remission of our sins, our reconciliation, our justification, our sanctification,
everything has been provided in the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. But also, back in Psalm 81, where we were just reading
here, what we see is this huge contrast between those in the
wilderness and this blessing that comes on those who receive
the righteousness that is in Christ alone through faith. All
right, so going back to Psalm 81, what we're going to see then
is that The teaching of the gospel that is revealed in the New Testament
is that Israel, in fact, not only Israel, but every Gentile
by nature, every person, every man, woman, and child by nature,
have failed to keep God's holy law. And here in Psalm 81, it's
highlighted in that nation that God brought out of Egypt and
brought through the wilderness and brought into the land of
Canaan. And whether it was in Egypt, or whether it was as they
were walking from Egypt to the Red Sea, or when they passed
through the Red Sea and went to the next stopping point, or
whether it was the 40 years in the wilderness, whether the first
time they came to Canaan or the second time. or the time when
they were in Canaan, or all that time they were in Canaan and
were finally carried away by their enemies because of their
idolatry. Throughout that entire history of that nation, God records
throughout the Old Testament that they were disobedient to
Him. They failed. They failed. But they didn't
fail alone. We also failed. We were no better
than they. Romans 3 verse 9, the apostle
asks, he says, What then? Are we better than they? No,
in no wise. For we have before proved both
Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin. As it is written,
there's none righteous, no not one. And so he goes on in Romans
3, it says, there's none that understandeth, there's none that
seeketh after God. They didn't seek none, no, not
one that seeks after God. So now when we go back to Psalm
81 and we take that explanation given in the New Testament, contrasting
our utter failure in the law to adhere to what God required
of us, and yet Christ's unique and only, only Christ's obedience
to the law in precept and the satisfaction to the justice of
the law, enduring its penalty, so that all of the law is brought
to perfect fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore
it is utterly abolished, because it's only finished in Him, so
that Christ Himself is the end of the law for righteousness.
It had a terminal point in history. Christ established everlasting
righteousness, therefore there's no need for a righteousness by
the law because he finished that righteousness. He put away the
iniquity and he completed the obedience necessary to glorify,
to magnify God in the law. This he did in the salvation
of his people. Okay, so that's the first thing
we see here in Psalm 81. Israel and every Gentile, without
mentioning them in that chapter, by nature failed to keep the
law and they've also failed, notice this, they failed to believe
Christ. In the law it says, children
in whom is no faith. Remember those words from Deuteronomy? And then remember how Hebrews
chapter 3 and 4, it goes on to show the reason that the people
of Israel fell in the wilderness was because of their unbelief?
And that is contrasted to those who do believe. So then you have
this situation here now. We have everyone by nature has
failed to keep the law. And everyone by nature is in
this state of unbelief. We can't produce faith in Christ,
even though faith in Christ is the way by which God enables
us to receive the righteousness and the forgiveness of our sins
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet we can't produce that faith,
can we? And the main impediment to that
is the blindness of our pride. Because like the Israelites in
Romans 10, we stubbornly hold to our own. We prefer to come
to God by our own personal obedience and to take some comfort and
find assurance in our own performance. So we're always checking to see
how we're doing to see if it's good enough. And we feel good
when we think we're doing well and we feel horrible when we
think we're not doing so well. And this describes all of humanity. And that's why you have these predominant emphasis on man's
self-esteem. Because self-esteem is essentially
saying, I'm doing great, you know, and you watch sports, you
watch entertainment, it doesn't matter what you watch, they're
going to emphasize this, you need to have confidence in yourself. You know, that's basically the
bottom line. You need to believe in yourself. And so the foolishness
of that is seen in great contrast in the gospel. There's only one
we can really trust, one who we can have confidence in, one
who is our hope. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything
else, total failure. We ourselves, total failure.
And it's all our fault. So here in this psalm, What we're
going to see is that we ought to. We ought to adhere to what
is said in the beginning. The singing and the joy and the
trumpets and all these things that were given to Israel to
do. But like Israel of old who failed, we also by nature are
going to fail. We're going to fall. And the
gospel comes and pulls back this, you know, the fact that in ourselves
we're filthy rags. All of our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags. And there's no one among us that
is clean. And we can't bring a clean thing
out of an unclean thing. And that's what he's saying in
the rest of Psalm 81 is that Israel didn't do that, even though
God had done all these things for them. And they were set up
then as a monument to the fact that man cannot save himself. He can't get himself out of his
own ruin. He can't uncorrupt what he's
corrupted and he can't reconcile what he wants caused by his sin. He can't remove his own offense
to God. All right, so that's the first
thing here. The only way that we can be saved is that the Lord
Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that God reveals Him to us in
the Gospel, and we are caused by that grace given to us to
trust in Him. Only by God's electing grace,
by Christ's redeeming blood, and by the regenerating grace
of the Spirit of God can anyone come near and hear the gospel
and the obedience of faith. That's the message of Romans,
that the obedience of faith which is required for us to receive
this righteousness of Christ and to stand justified before
God. That gift of faith has to be
given to us in order to believe on Christ, and it's called an
obedience. And it's not our obedience to the law, it's Christ's obedience
to the law that saves us. And this is what faith says.
Faith abandons all confidence in self. Faith abandons all claims
for recognition from God. Faith says there's only one sacrifice
acceptable. It's the one that Christ made.
There's only one obedience that God can accept. It's the obedience
of his Son. And that's what faith does, and
faith says, I only have one hope, and that hope is the Lord Jesus
Christ. In fact, he's not only my only hope, but he's an all-sufficient
hope. He's a complete and perfect righteousness. All right, so Psalm 81, now let's
go through this a little more in detail. I want to point out
a couple more lessons from this psalm before we do. In verse
12, it says, I gave them over to their own heart's lust. There's
nothing more horrifying to me than if God were to leave me
to my own heart's lust, if he were to leave me in my sin. because
we can't deliver ourselves. It's like all those people that
Jesus healed in the New Testament, whether it was blindness, lameness,
or any other disease, leprosy, or even death, they could not
heal themselves. They couldn't open their own
eyes. They couldn't raise themselves from the dead. They couldn't
remove their leprosy. They couldn't get up and walk. All those things,
they were completely unable to do any of those things. They
were left to themselves until the Lord Jesus Christ came. And
so there's nothing more horrible, more horrifying than if God were
to leave us to our own sin. And that's what this chapter
is teaching here. It's intended to heighten our
awareness of our own wretchedness and dependence on Christ and
to heighten the urgency and the earnestness with which we come
to God looking to Christ. See, that's what the book of
Hebrews is intended to do. He says, in contrast, the perfect
work of Christ and those who trust Him, in contrast to those
who trusted in the law and did everything that the law required,
ceremonially and morally, and yet failed to come and to God's
inheritance. They fell short of that rest,
to enter into that rest. All right, so that's the second
lesson. And the third lesson really is just an explanation
of that, that is the righteousness of God is unattainable by any
of the works of man. And then also, this psalm also
proves that God must intervene to save us from ourselves. Otherwise,
we will prove like the Israelites in the end. And then, fifth,
we, if we see our own guilt and corruption
and our impotence then we know that we are no better than the
Israelites and that we are utterly dependent upon Christ so we have
to look to Him, flee to Him, plead only Him and this is what
the gospel teaches us and we can't bring a clean thing out
of our unclean thing and so as this psalm opens up with this
command to sing to the Lord we find ourselves the ones who are
most we should be the ones who most sing to the Lord, because
the Lord has done this for us in Christ. So those are some
of the highlights from the lessons from this psalm, and I want to
just go through it now with you. Look at verse one, it says, Sing
aloud to God our strength, make a joyful noise unto the God of
Jacob. Jacob was a conniving supplanter,
a trickster, a cheat, we know that. In his life, that's what
his name meant, but his name also meant one God had chosen.
Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. So Jacob here represents
God's chosen people, and he's telling them, sing aloud to God
our strength. Who is our strength? The Lord
Jesus Christ. We should publicly worship Him
as our strength. This is why we should worship
Him. We don't have anything to bring except what Christ is and
has done for us. And so we worship Him. We worship
Christ. We worship God the Father and God the Holy Spirit by Him.
He is our strength. So let us make a joyful noise
to the God of Jacob, sinners chosen in Christ. In verse 2
he says, take a psalm and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant
harp with the psaltery. Now these instruments in the
psalms like the timbrel and the harp and the psaltery, these
instruments signify the melodies that are made in the hearts of
God's people. It's fine to have musical instruments
in church. I don't have a problem with that
as long as they don't become necessary or the central focus. I dislike, and I can't say that
it's wrong, but I dislike it when churches have bands that
sit up front and they play and then everyone sings. It's like
the band becomes the all-controlling focus in whatever they call worship. But I dislike that very much
because it's the words. It's the words, it's the doctrine,
not the sound of those instruments. And what he's saying here is
that that resonant melody in the hearts of God's people that
is the instrument on which God is to be highly praised. In Ephesians
5 verse 19 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. You see, The emphasis
here is heart singing. It's heart singing. You're comforted
by that when you can't sing well because it's in the heart. And
then he also says in Revelation 5, they sung a new song. saying thou art worthy to take
the book and open the seals for thou was slain and has redeemed
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and
people and nation. So that's the song. The song
of the redeemed. Song to Christ. Song to Christ
who by his blood redeemed us to God out of all these different
places. Amazing, isn't it? He was slain
to redeem us to God out of all these other nations. And then
it says in Revelation 14 verse 3, they sung as it were a new
song before the throne and before the four beasts and the elders
and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty-four
thousand which were redeemed from the earth. So the hundred
and forty-four thousand are those who are redeemed. That includes
everyone redeemed by Christ. It represents all of God's elect,
redeemed by Christ, in the New Testament age at least. But I
think they're redeemed throughout all time. They're the ones who
can learn this song. And they therefore sing from
the heart. And that's why I emphasize the fact that the instrument
is the heart instrument. And then he says in Revelation
15.3, they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song
of the Lamb, saying, great and marvelous are thy works, Lord
God Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou
King of saints. You see how these songs are to
Christ? And Christ fulfilled the law, the song of Moses and
of the Lamb. All right, now Psalm 81 verse
3. He says, blow up the trumpet in the new moon in the time appointed
on our solemn feast day. Remember in Leviticus 23, perhaps
you don't remember the chapter, but in that particular chapter
of the book of Leviticus, God talks about the feasts. And there
were three, mostly, besides the day of atonement. There was the
feast of Passover, And remember the Passover, that was when God
delivered Israel out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover
lamb. And we know, without a shadow of doubt, the Passover Typical
it typified it pictured. It's fulfilled in Christ our
Passover who was sacrificed for us as Israel was redeemed out
of Egypt Christ redeemed us as the lamb in in that day was slain
in order to For God to see the blood and Passover Israel So
Christ was slain and sacrificed to God so that when God saw his
blood he would pass over us And as God brought Israel out of
Egypt, because of the blood of the Passover lamb, God has redeemed
us from sin, and from Satan, and from the law, and from all
that comes through the curse of the law, death and hell, and
the wrath of God. These things Christ redeemed
us from by His own blood. And that's what this deliverance
by the Passover lamb from Egypt signify Christ, our Passover,
is sacrificed for us. That's 1 Corinthians 5, verse
7. The second feast that was mentioned in Leviticus 23, that's
significant with the blowing of trumpets here, is the Feast
of Trumpets, strangely enough. And so, in the Feast of Trumpets,
what God is signifying is that the gospel would be sent and
proclaimed by Christ and his apostles and his entire church
through the Spirit of God. And the proclamation of the gospel
would be like the sounding of the trumpet. And there was a
day in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 25, it describes it,
called the Year of Jubilee. And they would blow a trumpet.
And on that day, all the debts were forgiven, and the land was
returned to the proper owner, and the slaves were set free.
And when the Lord Jesus came in the book of Luke, chapter
4, verse 18, he picked up the scroll, he read from Isaiah 61.1,
where it says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, sent me to
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them
that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord,
the Jubilee year. That's what he's talking about
here, where everything is set free. Christ said in that particular
place in Luke chapter 4, he says, this day is this scripture fulfilled
in your hearing, in your ears. He is our redeeming, liberating
savior. He's the one who preached the
true jubilee. And so that feast of trumpets
now was the sending forth of the gospel of Christ and his
redeeming work that set us free. Remember Galatians 5, stand fast
in the liberty with which Christ has set us free and do not be
entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Because to do anything
to try to contribute or obtain salvation through what we do,
through our own merits, is to make the grace of God meaningless
to us. We're entirely going to come
to God on our own works, and that's going to be ruin. All
right, so that's the second feast. It was the Feast of Trumpets.
So the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Trumpets. And then
the third feast was the Feast of Tabernacles. And in the Feast
of Tabernacles, the people were to dwell in what they called
booths. B-O-O-T-H. It was like these
little shelters they would make from palm branches. And they
dwelt in those because when God brought Israel out of Egypt,
the first thing they did was they, passing through the Red
Sea, they dwelt in booths. And so that was to show them
that they were dwelling in these little tabernacles, as the Feast
suggests, the Feast of Tabernacles, and there was a blowing of the
trumpet. And so all of this is fulfilled in the Gospel time
as well. The Feast of Tabernacles was
typical of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, God himself, who tabernacled
among us. Not only did Christ tabernacle
among us, but in the New Testament, Christ in you is the hope of
glory. So He's in us. We're in Him. He's in us. He's our being in
Christ. We are safe and we also enter
into our inheritance. We have all things in Him. So
that's what the Feast of Tabernacles is meant to teach us, that being
in Christ, who took our nature and came and in that nature sacrificed
himself to God and became our reward, our inheritance, and
brought us to glory. We live in this world as in a
tabernacle. We live by faith on Christ, and
we look in expectation of our heavenly home. That's what it
means to dwell now in this tabernacle, the tabernacle of this flesh,
in this world, trusting Christ. This is our booth, if you will. We're in the Lord Jesus Christ
by faith. All right, now, so you can see
then in this third verse of Psalm 81, blow the trumpet in the new
moon in the time appointed on our solemn feast day. God appointed
these feasts. And in the New Testament, we
must be in Christ. He must be our Passover. He must
set us free by his own death on the cross and his obedience
in that death. And we must dwell in him by faith.
We must live in expectation of eternal glory during our sojourn
in this world. If we do not, then we're not
being obedient to these verses in this psalm. And so he says
in verse four, for this was a statute for Israel and a law of the God
of Jacob. And this he ordained in Joseph
for a testimony when he went through the land of Egypt where
I heard a language that I understood not. What was this language, and who
didn't understand it? Well, if you look at a couple
of verses, and I'll take you to a couple of them, you'll see
that the language was the language of the Egyptians, which the Israelites
didn't understand. In Psalm 114, in verse 1, he
says, when Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob, from
a people of strange language. They left Egypt, they went out
of that place, the house of Jacob from a people of a strange language. They didn't understand their
language. Well, I'm sure that over time, many of them learned
that language and were able to communicate like Moses or like
Joseph. Remember, his brothers came to
him. He spoke to them through an interpreter because they didn't
understand the Egyptian language. And it's interesting, if you
want an interesting text of scripture, look at 1 Corinthians chapter
14. This is something I I've always
been amazed at, 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Remember in 1 Corinthians,
the Apostle Paul is correcting the Corinthians because they
were greedy, I'll use the word greedy, they coveted these gifts
to promote themselves. They were puffed up by their
gifts and one of those was the gift of speaking in foreign languages. And he says in 1 Corinthians
14 and verse 21, he says, in the law it is written, with men
of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people,
and yet for all that they will not hear me, saith the Lord. Now, in the law, that means in
the Old Testament, because it doesn't just mean the law of
Moses. And this is actually in Isaiah 28. I'm not going to go
read it. It's basically the same as it
says here. What he said in Isaiah was that with men of other tongues
and other lips will I speak to this people. Now, what is he
talking about here? Well, first of all, to the Corinthians
he's saying, You're coveting this gift of tongues, but realize
that when God gave that prophecy in Isaiah 28 about how he would
speak to the Jews with men of other languages, it wasn't a
good thing. It was a bad thing. It was showing
that Israel had heard God sending prophets and had heard in the
days of Jesus through the apostles through Jesus himself, they had
heard the gospel. And because they refused, because
they refused, God pronounces this warning to them. All right,
I'm going to speak to you. through men of other languages,
and yet you will not hear." And on the day of Pentecost, remember
all the people there with other languages, hearing the gospel
preached by Peter, hearing him in their own mother tongue. And
so these languages that the Jews heard, they were hearing the
gospel. And yet they did not believe it. And even though they
saw this great sign, they didn't understand it. And so God is
saying that because over those centuries when God spoke to you
through the prophets and through the providences of going into
captivity to the Assyrians or to the Babylonians or to the
Egyptians and not understanding their languages, it would typify
how that in the New Testament The same people, the children
of those same Jews, would reject Christ because they held tenaciously
to their own personal righteousness in preferment of that righteousness
over Christ's own righteousness. Therefore, God would speak to
them through people of different languages, like He did in their
captivity to the Egyptians, the Syrians, and the Babylonians.
and to whoever they were in captivity to. And then these languages
in the Corinthian church that were being used this way, they
were coveting this, and yet the apostles telling them, look,
you're coveting something that God designed to be a sign of
His displeasure of the Jews, casting them off. And they were
really left, the Jews, and so are we as Gentiles, we're really
left with only one hope. We've got to look to Christ.
We have to trust Him. We have to obey the gospel. And
how can we do that? Only through the grace of God.
And the warning here is that if we don't, if we turn from
Christ, then it'll become gibberish to us. We won't understand it.
And I think that's a lot of what's happened in this whole movement
of the Pentecostal movement. is that people who didn't believe
Christ are now hearing it through this gibberish and they're hoping
that by being able to do that, they've got some spiritual gift,
but it's not true. It actually leaves them more
in the dark, doesn't it? Okay, so Psalm 81 talks about this.
He says, I heard a language that I did not understand. And so
they were brought to Egypt like this. Joseph was there first. That's why he mentions Joseph.
And in verse 6, I removed his shoulder from the burden. His
hands were delivered from the pots. God brought them out of
Egypt. He redeemed them. Now call us in trouble. I delivered thee. I answered
thee in the secret place of thunder. it thundered when he parted the
Red Sea, and I proved thee at the waters of Meribah." Remember,
it was bitter, and he had to cut down and cast a tree into
that bitter water. Will they complain? No. Yes,
they would. And the only way the water was
made sweet is by the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, I
don't have time to get through all this tonight, but I want
you to see The way that this is turning out here is that these
people who had God's word in the law concerning Christ, they
did not believe Him and they couldn't enter into the land
of promise because of their unbelief and God is cataloging all of
their disobedience in this unbelief here and He's warning not only
them, But us, because we only have one thing, God has given
us one thing, it's Christ, through the Gospel, and we have to hear
Him. Otherwise, we will be turned over to our own lusts. And there's
nothing worse than that. Nothing worse. And so, since
faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, we have to
give ourselves to hearing the Gospel, don't we? He says, seek
the Lord while he may be found. We have to give ourselves to
seeking the Lord. We have to also realize that seeking the
Lord is not something we do naturally. There's none that seeketh after
God. Understanding the gospel is something we don't have naturally.
There's none that understandeth. And we certainly don't have obedience
naturally. There's none that's righteous.
But now the righteousness of God which is Christ. At the end of the law for righteousness,
we're justified out of grace, freely, by His grace, through
the redemption that is in Christ. And so we're brought to the end
of our own sinful selves, and we're left with Christ alone.
If we turn away from Christ, there's no hope for us. in much
worse way than there was no hope for Israel. And just as there
was necessary for them to seek the Lord through faith in Christ,
it's necessary for us. And never take it for granted,
but recognize that these things are necessary for us. We have
to be saved. We have to be delivered from
our sins and from our sinful self, from our unbelief and from
everything else. And only Christ can do that.
He is our strength. He's our song. He's the one we
worship and so that's what this psalm here is teaching us and
maybe next time I'll be able to complete it. Let's pray. Father,
thank you for your word. Help us not to turn away from
the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to realize that he's
given for sinners. He's given to save sinners and
that we ourselves are sinners and we would not stubbornly hold
to things that are not Christ but we would find him to be our
all and we would find perfect sweetness and satisfaction in
the Lord Jesus Christ because He is all and there's nothing
more than Him that we need and having Him we have all things.
And so we pray that you would teach us this in our heart so
that in our hearts we would sing and make melody to the Lord because
of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of His goodness
and grace to sinners like us that He would fulfill and magnify
your law and honor yourself in your name in our salvation, what
a Savior. Grant us this allotment of faith
that we might trust in Him alone. In His name we pray, amen.