Open Your Mouth Wide and I Will Fill It
Standard; Ps 81:1 <<To the Chief Musician. On an instrument of Gath. A Psalm of Asaph.>> Sing aloud to God our strength; Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob.
2 Raise a song and strike the timbrel, The pleasant harp with the lute.
3 Blow the trumpet at the time of the New Moon, At the full moon, on our solemn feast day.
4 For this is a statute for Israel, A law of the God of Jacob.
5 This He established in Joseph as a testimony, When He went throughout the land of Egypt, Where I heard a language I did not understand.
6 "I removed his shoulder from the burden; His hands were freed from the baskets.
7 You called in trouble, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah
8 "Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you! O Israel, if you will listen to Me!
9 There shall be no foreign god among you; Nor shall you worship any foreign god.
10 I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11 "But My people would not heed My voice, And Israel would have none of Me.
12 So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels.
13 "Oh, that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways!
14 I would soon subdue their enemies, And turn My hand against their adversaries.
15 The haters of the LORD would pretend submission to Him, But their fate would endure forever.
16 He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat; And with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you."
(NKJV)
Ps 81:1 <<To the Chief Musician. On an instrument of Gath. A Psalm of Asaph.>>
Here is a Psalm given to the church that serves as a model for worship services for all times. It contains provisions for worship and praise music and for the proclamation of God's Word with admonition to follow God's ways. Along with a promise of reward for those who follow God and judgment for those who don't.
“Sing aloud to God our strength.” So, we need singing in our worship services. You say, well. I'm not much of a singer, guess what, the word “aloud” means to creak, so even if you sound like an unoiled hinge on a door...sing anyway! Who are you singing for anyway? Your neighbor or God? The psalmist answers that question by saying that we are to sing to God who is our strength.
What does it mean that God is our strength? Well, look at it this way. Has your arm ever fallen asleep to the point that you can't hold onto anything. That's what it's like to be without strength. Acknowledge that God is your strength. He's the One who can move that arm when you can't.
Remember the movie Princess Bride? The hero had all the strength taken out of him through torture, and his friends had to move his arms and legs and even move his head. This is how we must view the strength of God and acknowledge it. In Him we live, move, and have our being.
Joh 15:5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
(NKJV)
“Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob.” The King James says, “make a joyful noise,” The idea being that our joy is expressed loudly, and isn't that the way joy is usually expressed. It is at a Packer game, why not at a worship service. Who has done more for you? The Green Bay Packers or the God of Jacob?
2 Raise a song and strike the timbrel, The pleasant harp with the lute.
3 Blow the trumpet at the time of the New Moon, At the full moon, on our solemn feast day.
4 For this is a statute for Israel, A law of the God of Jacob.
Break out the musical instruments! Get a praise band going! Because God has commanded that music be a part of His worship.
Nu 10:10 "Also in the day of your gladness, in your appointed feasts, and at the beginning of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be a memorial for you before your God: I am the LORD your God."
(NKJV)
5 This He established in Joseph as a testimony, (Our worship is to be a testimony, an expression of joy over God's great strength which He used to deliver His people.)
“When He went throughout the land of Egypt,” (God went through Egypt....kicking butt, striking Pharaoh with blow after blow until he finally relinquished his hold on God's people.) If only we could see the spiritual battle involved in our own deliverance!
“Where I heard a language I did not understand.” (When you were baptized, you became a child of God. A citizen of heaven, you no longer spoke the language of the Egyptians, you no longer spoke the language of the world. This is not your heart language. It is foreign to you. But when you are in bondage to sin you speak it anyway, haltingly at first, but if you aren't careful, you will become all to fluent in the language of sin.
Have you noticed how comfortable the church has gotten with the language of the world? Have you noticed how comfortable you have gotten with the language and ways of the world?. And the more comfortable we get, the more our burden of sin is piled on our backs.
Who is strong enough, who is powerful enough to lift that burden? Who can lift our sins and guilt away like flicking away a flea to never be found again. God is!
6 "I removed his shoulder from the burden; His hands were freed from the baskets.
7 You called in trouble, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; God hears the sincere prayer of those seeking deliverance and the awesome power of God (the secret place of thunder) is called into action on your behalf.
Ps 145:18 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.
(NKJV)
“I tested you at the waters of Meribah.” Remember Meribah? The Israelites had just left Egypt but they had no water. They were very thirsty. Have you ever been thirsty. I know this last week after tennis practice in 90 degree heat, I was thirsty. I came home and inhaled a can of coke, and felt like I could drink a gallon of milk for supper.
I needed this liquid to satisfy my thirst.
And so this was the first test of the Israelites. They knew God had the power to deliver, but did He have what it takes to satisfy? Or did the world (Egypt) have more to satisfy? Well after a few days of thirsting, the people were ready to go back to Egypt.
This is a very real test for all who come to faith. God allows us to thirst, he allows us a time of dissatisfaction, a time of missing the wunderlust of the world, so that the question will be answered.
Can Christ deliver and satisfy? Those who wait it out, will find the answer to that question.
For the Rock at Meribah was nothing other than Christ as Paul wrote to the Corinthians: 1Co 10:4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.
(NKJV)
Selah Stop. Reflect on what has just been said. Praise God your strength because He delivers you from the burden of sin and satisfies the longings of your soul.
The second part of this Psalm also deals with the worship service as it relates to the preaching of God's Word. Words like “hear” and “listen” are evident. Blessing is set before those who heed what they have heard, and cursing set before those who refuse to heed.
8 "Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you! The word admonish here means to reiterate, to repeat over and over. It's like God is saying to His church, Look, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times,” and then you sense the deep compassion of God as He adds “O Israel, if you will listen to Me!”
9 There shall be no foreign god among you; Nor shall you worship any foreign god. “Don't put anything in your life before Me! Never forget.........
10 I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
I am the One who delivered you and I am the only One who can satisfy you. And it should be told and retold every Sunday in every worship service of the followers of Jesus Christ.
11 "But My people would not heed My voice, (They refused to believe it and sought their satisfaction from other gods,) And Israel would have none of Me.
12 So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels.
More often than not, God judges us by giving our flesh what it wants, and then lets sin take it's course.
“We're tired of manna!” And so He gave them meat till they choked on it.
We bought into evolution, and now we are finding out what happens when we don't look at other humans as being created by God and made in His image.
If God isn't the Creator, then what's wrong with blocking the creative process through birth control? And if we are going to prevent babies from being conceived, why not prevent them from being born after they are conceived? What's wrong with aborting a baby? For that matter what's wrong with eliminating anyone whom we don't like or find burdensome?
What's wrong with selective reproduction, purifying the race if you will? And God allowed Hitler to show us what's wrong, yet we still don't get it.
We no longer believe that marriage is forever and we have made a mockery of what God has joined together, and we wonder why homosexuals are now making a mockery of the institution that God loves. We are only getting what we asked for.
13 "Oh, that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways! (Oh the self-inflicted pain we could be spared)
14 I would soon subdue their enemies, And turn My hand against their adversaries. (How quickly God could turn things around if we called Him into the fray through prayer and hearts truly willing to do things His way.)
The psalmist closes with a word for the hypocrites in attendance at worship.
15 The haters of the LORD would pretend submission to Him, But their fate would endure forever.
16 He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat; And with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you."
(NKJV)
Pretenders will be found out. In the end God will know where you really turned to be satisfied. And if it wasn't to Him, through Jesus, your fate will be sealed forever. However there is Good News even for the hypocrite. The door is open to stop pretending,
Turn from your wicked game and false sources of satisfaction from the world. Ask God for deliverance and then seek to be satisfied with Him. His promise to you? He will feed you with the finest wheat, the bread of life, and the honey (the Gospel) that flows from the Rock which is Christ. It's all we need, everything else is frosting on the cake.
"Oh, that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways! Oh that we would understand how much God not only wants to deliver us but to satisfy us with Christ. Turn away from Egypt and turn to the Rock of Meribah and be delivered and satisfied from this day forth!
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