PSALM 81 - Will You Not Listen?

Introduction

This morning marks the first of our Summer Psalms series—throughout the next ten weeks we will continue working our way through the Book of Psalms (with a week in the middle there for our Celebration of Baptism on July 14th!) We pick up this morning where we left off last August, with Psalm 81 . As we get our bearings this morning on this passage, it’s worth it to step back and take note of the entire sweep of all 150 psalms as a group. You will notice in your Bible that the Psalms are divided up into five “Books”—this was an arrangement most likely put together by the priest Ezra (whose Old Testament book bears his name). The first Book, from Psalm 1-41, focuses on the Covenant Kingship of David and God’s preservation of his life through trials and persecutions. Book II, from Psalm 42-Psalm 72 (which we finished up last summer), are psalms that describe how that Covenant Kingship that began with David begins to spread throughout the nations—whereas in Book I David prays for God’s protection of him personally, in Book II the focus shifts to the protection of God’s covenant people from their enemies, with a growing emphasis on the extension of the rule of God’s Anointed One over all nations.

Book III, which we began last summer (and will finish at the end of this series), marks a dramatic shift in tone, as it is a collection of psalms that tend to focus on laments over the apparent failure of God’s covenant with His people. You’ll recall we saw several examples of these laments last summer:

Psalm 74:1 (LSB)

Why, O God? Have You rejected us forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture?

Psalm 77:7–8 (LSB)

Will the Lord reject evermore? And will He not be favorable again? Has His lovingkindness ceased forever? Has His word ended from generation to generation?

Psalm 79:1–2 (LSB)

O God, the nations have come into Your inheritance; They have defiled Your holy temple; They have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the dead bodies of Your slaves for food to the birds of the heavens, The flesh of Your holy ones to the beasts of the earth.

Psalm 80:4–5 (LSB)

O Yahweh God of hosts, How long will You smolder against the prayer of Your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears, And You have made them to drink tears in large measure.

Book III of the Psalter is the darkest, lowest point of the entire collection; a cry to YHWH, the God of the Covenant, to remember His promises during the darkest days of the world’s opposition and hatred for His people and His reign.

And somehow, this seems to be entirely fitting in our day, doesn’t it? We live in an age when God’s promises and the reign of His Anointed One is ignored to the point of annihilation in our world, doesn’t it? It is easy to believe that God has abandoned us; that somehow His As one commentator puts it:

We have wicked agendas being enacted in educational systems, wicked messages being broadcast by the entertainment industry in ways we’ve never seen before, legal decisions that … will make it increasingly hard to live biblically in this culture, the very governments that God designed to protect innocent life are defending the murder of the innocent... Where is the hope? (Aniol, S. (2023). Musing on God’s music: Forming Hearts of Praise with the Psalms. page 104)

Book III of the Psalms is a collection of songs to teach God’s people how to sing in the dark. For a weary people, a troubled people, a discouraged people, these songs are God’s inspired means of forming in us hearts of praise and hope in troubled times. God is faithful; He has not forgotten His people; His reign will not fail.

Because it is not just on the outside that the reign of God’s Anointed and the promise of His covenant is being opposed today, is it? If we are honest, we have to acknowledge that we are not immune from that same kind of disregard. The voices that clamor around us to fear everything but God and trust anyone but Christ, the constant burdens and struggles that we bear as faithful followers of Jesus in this broken world can wear us down, can make us apathetic toward God, can leave us in a kind of numbness towards spiritual things.

As a result, there are a lot of Christians in a lot of churches today who are actively serving, but spiritually bored. Mind you—not hypocrites pretending to be Christians, and not Christians who are abdicating their war with their sin and who are living a compromised life. I’m talking about genuine brothers and sisters in Christ who are committed to Christ and are actively serving Him among His people, but they have become apathetic towards God. They go through the motions, they put one foot in front of the other, they show up for worship or ministry more out of inertia than anything else.

What do we do when we find ourselves in those spiritual doldrums? How do we fight that boredom with God? For starters, we need to understand that there is no word for boredom in the Bible—our notion of being “bored” (being weary or restless through lack of interest) is not discussed in Scripture. What we do read about a lot, though, is slothfulness. So the first thing we must do is recognize that boredom with God and His Word is a sin. God clearly warned Israel in Deuteronomy 28:47-48

Deuteronomy 28:47–48 (LSB)

“Because you did not serve Yahweh your God with gladness and a merry heart—because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom Yahweh will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

And so if you are here and recognize those symptoms of boredom with God, the first thing you need to do is confess it as sin. The blood of Christ shed on the Cross is sufficient for your sin of apathy; your sin of not serving your God with gladness and a merry heart.

1 John 1:9 (LSB)

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God’s grace to you in Christ is sufficient to cleanse you from the sin of boredom with God—and our Psalm this morning assures you of a wonderful promise from Him—what I want to show you from Psalm 81 today is that

God abundantly REWARDS His people’s EARNEST attention

Not only is it a sin to be bored with God, but we find here in Psalm 81 that we are forfeiting great blessings from God by our apathy. This psalm divides into two main commands for God’s people to call them out of their spiritual boredom. The first, from verses 1-7, is

I. A Call to God-HONORING WORSHIP (Psalm 81:1-7)

Look at the way the psalmist calls God’s people to worship in verses 1-4:

Psalm 81:1–4 (LSB)

Sing for joy to God our strength; Make a loud shout to the God of Jacob. Lift up a song of praise, strike the tambourine, The sweet sounding lyre with the harp. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, At the full moon, on our feast day. For it is a statute for Israel, A judgment of the God of Jacob.

Right away, you notice that there is nothing bored or apathetic about this worship, is there? “Sing for joy to God… Make a loud shout to the God of Jacob...” God actually commands joy in worship; He directs His people to make a loud shout of joy. Despite our common modern understanding that “you can’t command people to produce an emotion”, this is exactly what God does here. He commands joy—and what He commands, He gives us the strength by His Spirit to obey.

It is very important to see here in these opening verses that God-honoring worship is

Animated by RESPONSIVE acts of PRAISE (vv. 1-4)

In other words, we do not stir up some kind of emotional high in ourselves in order to get God to come down to us—that’s what the prophets of Baal did on Mount Carmel, after all. Look carefully here at our text and you will see that our joy is a response to God. Mark it well—when worship is described in terms of joy and shouting and music in the Psalms, it is always in response to God’s command, and is always governed by His direction.

God-honoring worship is not random, it is not an “anything goes” type of free-for-all governed by whatever we think is fitting or appropriate. God-honoring worship is always a response to the way God directs. One commentator suggests that these three verses all represent the different people who carried out worship in the tabernacle—the people themselves were summoned to sing and make a loud shout (v. 1), the Levites were the trained musicians playing on the tambourine, lyre and harp (v. 2; cp. 1 Chronicles 6:31-32), and the priests were the ones who sounded the trumpets to inaugurate the feast days (v. 3; Leviticus 23:24; Numbers 10:8).

Add to this the specific statement in verse 4 that this worship “is a statute for Israel, a judgment of the God of Jacob”. The psalmist is making it clear here—this is all worship that has been specifically commanded by God, and He has commanded that it be earnest worship! The reference to blowing the trumpet at the new moon and offering a feast at the full moon is probably a reference to the feast of Trumpets and Feast of Booths, which took place at the beginning and the end of the seventh month (with the Day of Atonement in between.)

These verses are not a picture of everyone “doing what is right in his own eyes” in worship—this is a picture of a people who are obediently carrying out the specific instructions of YHWH Himself on how He is to be praised!

God-honoring worship is animated by responsive acts of praise—and that praise is full of joy and delight in God because it is

Focused on God's MIGHTY acts of SALVATION (vv. 5-7)

See verses 4-7:

Psalm 81:4–7 (LSB)

For it is a statute for Israel, A judgment of the God of Jacob. He established it for a testimony in Joseph When he went forth over the land of Egypt. I heard a language that I did not know: “I relieved his shoulder of the burden, His hands were freed from the basket. “You called in distress and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah.

The joy and shouting and earnest delight in praise that God commands of His people does not simply spring up out of nowhere—it is grounded in the marvelous works of salvation that God has accomplished in them! We don’t just “praise” God—we praise Him for something; we praise Him for what He has done for us. For the original singers of this psalm, their praise was rooted in the power of God that delivered them from slavery in Egypt— “I relieved his shoulder of the burden, his hands were freed from the basket…” When His people cried out in their distress,

Exodus 2:24 (LSB)

So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He rescued them from their slavery in Egypt, and verse 7 goes on to focus on God’s mighty acts at Mount Sinai, where He spoke to them in thunder and earthquake, and when He provided water for them in the wilderness at Meribah. Earnest and heartfelt worship of God always comes from meditating on what He has done for us.

Christian, when was the last time you considered—really considered—what slavery to sin God delivered you from? Can you remember the hopelessness and guilt and shame He washed away from you, what despair and hopelessness He lifted you out of? And lest you say to yourself, “Well, I don’t have as much to thank God for because I was saved as a child and never had a terrible past of lost darkness to be saved from...” — Ask anyone in this room who was saved out of such a life and they will tell you that your “boring testimony” of growing up as a Christian is an incalculably precious gift of God’s grace to you! Whether for the life He saved you out of, or the life He kept you from ever living in the first place, you have enormous fuel for earnest praise when you recognize God’s mighty act of saving you through Jesus Christ!

You’ll notice that verse 7 ends with the term Selah—it is most likely a musical notation indicating a pause or a crescendo or musical interlude, and it comes at key points in the lyrics of a psalm as a way of indicating a change of direction or focus or emphasis on what has just been sung.

In this case, you’ll notice that the term selah comes right after the reference to God “testing” His people “at the waters of Meribah”—we saw this a couple of weeks ago in our study of Hebrews. The people were beginning to complain that Moses had brought them out into the wilderness to die of thirst: Exodus 17:7 “So he named the place Massah and Meribah because of the contending of the sons of Israel, and because they tested Yahweh, saying, “Is Yahweh among us or not?””

So follow the psalmist’s progression here—he begins with establishing what God-honoring worship looks like: responding to God’s mighty works of salvation with grateful hearts of praise. The rest of the psalm is a call to turn away from a heart of indifference and ingratitude—such as was on display there by the waters of Meribah. And so the rest of this psalm is taken up with

II. An invitation to God-ENTRANCED APPETITES (Psalm 81:8-16)

Verses 8-10 turn from an exhortation to praising God to an indictment of the people’s indifference toward Him:

Psalm 81:8–10 (LSB)

“Hear, O My people, and I will testify against you; O Israel, if you would listen to Me! “Let there be no strange god among you; And you shall not worship a foreign god. “I am Yahweh your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

For a faithful member of God’s Old Testament people, these verses would immediately bring to mind some of the most foundational Scriptures of their covenant with YHWH—the first words are a direct reference to the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4:

Deuteronomy 6:4 (LSB)

“Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!

And the phrase “I am YHWH your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt” is a direct reference to the first of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:2

Exodus 20:2 (LSB)

“I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Put these two references together, and the message of Psalm 81 is clear, isn’t it? This is an admonishment:

Do not be SATISFIED by other GODS (vv. 8-10)

Look again at the last sentence of verse 10: “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” Kids—have you ever come across a nest of baby birds? What happens when a momma bird lands on the edge of the nest? Those chicks all strain themselves up as far as they can, with their mouths opened as wide as they can—they are straining to be fed by their mother.

This is the question that stands before you this morning, Christian—what are you straining to being fed on today? What are you earnestly opening your mouth, your ears, your mind to be fed with? Because the gods of this world are more than happy to fill your mouth and mind and heart with all of their false promises of success and happiness and significance that comes from swallowing their lies. If your belly is full of the junk food of cable news and social media and reality TV and everything else that the world around you has to offer, then no wonder you come to the feast of God’s presence here in worship with an uninterested soul!

If you would put to death the sin of boredom with God, Psalm 81 says, then seek to be filled from His hand! Don’t binge on this world’s junk food before coming into God’s presence—come hungry to worship, ready to open your mouth and heart and mind to be satisfied with His excellencies! Instead of taking your satisfaction from the false gods of this world, feast on the remembrance of God’s mighty acts to save you by the blood of Christ and rejoice in what He has done for you. Open your mouth wide, and He will fill it:

Psalm 107:9 (LSB)

For He has satisfied the thirsty soul, And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.

Fight spiritual boredom with God-honoring worship and God-entranced appetites—do not let yourself be satisfied by other gods, and

Do not WALK by your own COUNSEL (vv. 11-13; cp. Ps. 1)

Look at verses 11-13:

Psalm 81:11–13 (LSB)

“But My people did not listen to My voice, And Israel was not willing to obey Me. “So I released them over to the stubbornness of their heart, That they would walk in their own devices. “Oh that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways!

See here how God speaks of His people as “walking in their own devices”—this ties back to one of the great themes of the Psalter, introduced in the very first verse of the book:

Psalm 1:1 (LSB)

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the way of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!

This thread runs the whole way through the Psalms, and here it is in verse 12—instead of obeying God’s voice and listening to His counsel, His people in their boredom and indifference decided that they would walk after their own counsel instead. Instead of singing with Psalm 119--

Psalm 119:34–35 (LSB)

Cause me to understand, that I may observe Your law And keep it with all my heart. Cause me to walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it.

they instead turned to their own wisdom and insight for guidance. And so God left them to it. He allowed them to eat their own cooking, as it were—and the results were as bitter and empty as you would expect. Once again the Psalmist is bringing back themes from Deuteronomy—verse 12 is an echo of Deuteronomy 28:45:

Deuteronomy 28:45 (LSB)

“So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not listen to the voice of Yahweh your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.

Christian, where are you getting your counsel from? Whose voice do you listen to when it comes to advice on your relationships, your education, your finances, your career path, your marriage and family? There are authors and influencers and podcasters and motivational speakers and “life-coaches” galore who will all give you one variation or another of the same advice: “Follow your heart!” “Practice mindfulness!” “Listen to the whispers of your soul!” “Always stay humble and kind...” And on it goes.

But you have an immeasurably superior source of counsel than anything the world around you has to offer--

Psalm 119:98–100 (LSB)

Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, For they are mine forever. I have more insight than all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation. I perceive more than the aged, Because I have observed Your precepts.

Christian, the very wisdom of God has been revealed to you here in the Scriptures—do you believe that? This Word is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness that you may be equipped for every good work! How could anyone ever be bored with this Book??

Let this Word be a lamp for your feet and a light on your path—if you don’t have a regular plan of Bible reading yet, the great news is that today is a perfect day to start! Start with the book of Proverbs—it contains some of the most practical, yet powerful applications of wisdom to every day life of any book of the Bible. And Proverbs has 31 chapters—so every day, read one chapter, and you will get through the book in a month. (Today is June 23rd, so start with Proverbs 23!) Then next month, start over! You will never use your time more profitably than by reading and re-reading God’s Word—do not walk by your own counsel, but walk in the wisdom that God has given you in His Word!

God abundantly rewards His people’s earnest attention in worship, their earnest hunger for His blessings, their earnest searching for His counsel. And in the concluding verses of this Psalm, we hear God promising great blessings for those who listen to Him:

Psalm 81:13–16 (LSB)

“Oh that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways! “I would quickly subdue their enemies And I would turn My hand against their adversaries. “Those who hate Yahweh would cower before Him, And their time of punishment would be forever. “But I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

And so the last exhortation the psalmist lays on us this morning is:

Do not FORFEIT the blessings of OBEDIENCE (vv. 14-16)

See here in these verses what we lose when we wander away from God out of boredom? Charles Spurgeon is worth quoting at length here in his commentary on these verses:

See what we lose by sin. Our enemies find the sharpest weapons against us in the armoury of our transgressions. They could never overthrow us if we did not first overthrow ourselves. Sin strips a man of his armour, and leaves him naked to his enemies. Our doubts and fears would long ago have been slain if we had been more faithful to our God. Ten thousand evils which afflict us now would have been driven far from us if we had been more jealous of holiness in our walk and conversation. We ought to consider not only what sin takes from our present stock, but what it prevents our gaining: reflection will soon show us that sin always costs us dear. (Spurgeon, C. H. (n.d.). The treasury of David: Psalms 56-87 (Vol. 3, pp. 402–403). Marshall Brothers.)

The last verse of the psalm shows what great things God will do for His people who earnestly seek Him—this is another quotation from Deuteronomy, where Moses sang of the faithfulness of YHWH to His people:

Deuteronomy 32:13–14 (LSB)

“He made him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field; And He made him suck honey from the rock, And oil from the flinty rock, Curds of cows, and milk of the flock, With fat of lambs, And rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats, With the finest of the wheat— And of the blood of grapes you drank wine.

Christian, the God you serve is a God who will even bring “honey from a rock”. In some parts of the world—including the deserts in the Middle East—it is not unusual to see honeybees building combs in clefts of the rocks. Picture a barren, desolate desert, stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction. No water, no shade, no food, no sustenance of any kind. For the one who delights in God and seeks Him with obedient earnestness, even the barren desert rocks will drip with honey! His presence with you, His sustenance for you, His provision and protection have all been promised to you through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son—your Rock in a weary land, your Shelter in the time of storm, your fortress and refuge and strength!

Christian, does God’s Word expose a heart of boredom with God in you this morning? Does it uncover a heart that has been opening wide to be filled with the false promises of the false gods of this present darkness, a mind that has been filled with the foolishness of “follow your heart” instead of submitting to the wisdom of God in His Word?

If that is you, then the remedy for your spiritual boredom is plainly written for you here in these verses—see the magnitude of your salvation through the mighty work of God for you in Jesus Christ! He has rescued you from a far greater plight than slavery to a cruel Egyptian Pharaoh—He has rescued you from the very wrath of Almighty God!

You had done nothing but enrage Him by your sinfulness, you were nothing but the stench of godlessness in His nostrils,

Ephesians 2:3 (LSB)

[conducting yourself] in the lusts of [your] flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, ...by nature [a child] of wrath, even as the rest.

The avalanche of God’s holy wrath was barreling down the mountainside toward you, tens of thousands of tons of snow, ice and rock at a hundred miles per hour, and you had nowhere to turn, nowhere to run. and just before that roaring wall of God’s holiness slammed into your wretched hide, Jesus Christ stepped before you and shielded you from the wrath of God. He bore in His flesh the brunt of every last blow of His Father’s judgment on your sinful human flesh, and three days later rose victorious from the grave so that you might walk in His righteousness throughout your days in this life and all of eternity in the next.

And He didn’t have to do any of that for you. Had He simply stood by and watched you be damned forever into the agonies of Hell for your wickedness He would have been perfectly justified. He saved you, Titus 3:5-6 says,

Titus 3:5–6 (LSB)

...not by works which [you] did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon [you] richly through Jesus Christ [your] Savior...

Let me ask you, Christian—can you be bored praising a Savior like that? Can there be any meeting any other time of the week that can even come close to filling you with the joy and anticipation of meeting with your Savior in worship on Sunday? Beloved, even if you never sing a note in any other part of your life, can’t you see how this is a reason to sing your heart out??

Let me ask you Christian—is there any other God that can possibly satisfy you? For all that He has done for you, for all of His promises that have come true for you, for all that He promises to be for you, how can you want to be filled by any other hand than the nail-scarred hand of your dear Savior? He gladly and freely gave Himself up to the wrath of His Father’s holiness for you—is there anything that He would then withhold from you to satisfy you in Himself? Why would you rather listen to all of the self-worshipping drivel of this fading and failing world than to the voice of your dear Savior calling you to be satisfied in Him alone?

And friend, if you are here today and all of this talk of this kind of joy and delight in Jesus Christ for His work of salvation sounds foreign to you—maybe Jesus is important to you, a Teacher worthy of listening to, Someone Who can guide you into being a more moral person and Who can provide a sympathetic ear when you have a hard time in life—if He is an inspiring role model for you, but you really don’t understand the kind of joy in Him and complete, radical dependence on Him as your absolute only hope before God and man that this Psalm describes, then you need to consider whether you really know Him at all.

Being a Christian doesn’t mean that Jesus has added value to your life; being a Christian means that you have no life apart from Jesus. Being a Christian doesn’t mean that you are able to become a more moral person; being a Christian means that you recognize that you are a hopelessly wicked, evil and degenerate wretch apart from the work of Jesus Christ for you. Being a Christian doesn’t mean that you have read all the terms and conditions and have decided that adopting that label feels like a good thing; being a Christian means that you would never have sought Christ out if He had not come to seek and save you first.

Stop playing games with Christ; He will not have it. If your “Jesus” is set on some kind of dimmer switch in your heart that you can turn all the way up to “good Christian” when you want and all the way down to cursing and swearing “I do not know this man you are talking about!”” (Mark 14:71) when the situation calls for it, then will you not listen to His call this morning? He calls you in John 10:27-29

John 10:27–29 (LSB)

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish—ever; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

Listen to the invitation of the Shepherd this morning—lay aside everything that you are, everything that you have, everything that you have done and accomplished and cherish. There is nothing that you can bring to Him but your sin, and He has already suffered and died to atone for them. So come to Him for grace—open your mouth wide, and He will fill it. Come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:20–21 (LSB)

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________

ADDITIONAL NOTES: