Heeding the Commands of Him Who Heeded Our Cries in Order to Give Us Himself - James Hakim
Why should we worship God’s way? In Psalm 81, the Holy Spirit teaches us that we should heed God’s commands to worship His way, because He has heeded our cries by delivering us out of bondage and into the freedom and blessedness of having Him Himself.
The Lord listened to His people’s cries. v7 says “You called in trouble, and I delivered you; I answered you. How gracious our God is, that He Who is on high listens to us. Even from the “secret place of thunder,” God hears and responds to His lowly people who are on earth. He treated the Egyptian tongue like a foreign language; v5 pictures Him going through the land of Egypt with His ear attuned for the Hebrew cries of His people. Of course, God knew Egyptian too. But this is a poetic way of describing how mercifully and attentively the Lord listens to His people’s prayers.
So, we must listen to Him. This is the great theme of the Psalm. In a moment, we’ll think about the four-verse-command with which the Psalm begins. For now, however, notice these repetitions: “Hear, O My people!” (v8a). “O Israel, if you will listen to Me!” (v8b). “But My people would not heed My voice” (v11a). “O that My people would listen to Me” (v13).
To listen to God is to Have Him Himself. It is horrible when people refuse to listen to God, simply because He is God. But it is even worse when we realize what is at stake. Their not heeding God’s voice was because they did not want Him (v11b). We live in a culture that tells us to listen to our heart. But v12a describes being given over to listen to their heart as a punishment that the Lord inflicted for refusing Him. Walking in our own counsels (v12b) is slavery and destruction, while walking as God’s own people in God’s own ways (v13b) is freedom and salvation. The Psalm carries this point so far as to describe those who walk in their own ways as “haters of Yahweh” (v15a).
Frighteningly, many of these haters of the Lord are in the church. How do we know? v15a tells us that they pretend submission to Him. These are people who know what He says and that they should do it; they even appear to be doing so. But their hearts are far from Him. They do what He says because it seems good to them, not simply because it seemed good to Him. Because of our capacity for self-deception, it is a mercy of God when He tests and tries us to show what is in us. The testing at the waters of Meribah (v7c) was an act of divine kindness.
When He gives us repentance, we get not merely manna from heaven but “the fat of wheat” (v16a), not merely water from the rock but honey (v16b). Wheat does not have fat, and honey does not slake thirst. So what is God getting at here? The Lord Jesus is the true Bread that came down from heaven. When His generation wanted a repeat of loaves-and-fishes or manna, He pointed to Himself instead (cf. Jn 6:31–58). When we come to Him to drink, we get something qualitatively different and better than water that can be drawn from a well (cf. Jn 4:13–14) or poured out on temple steps to remind people of the water in the wilderness (cf. Jn 7:37–38).
As v10 reminds us in taking us back to Ex 20:1, God’s laws are a good gift whereby He gives us to walk with Him in fellowship with Him. He prefaced the Ten Commandments with the same words, teaching us that He gives His statutes (v4a) and laws (v4b) in part as a testimony (v5a) to our relationship with Him. He gives His law especially to those whom He has saved and whom He has given the privilege of belonging to Him and His belonging to us.
This Psalm is full of that wonderful belonging. “God our strength” (v1a). “The God of Jacob” (v1b). “The God of Jacob” (v4b). “O My people” (v8a). “Yahweh your God” (v10a). “My people” (v11a). “My people” (v13a). This is what is so wonderful about His commands: they are His. “My voice” (v11a). “Listen to me” (v13a). “My ways” (v13b).
And the most important place to listen to God and reject the counsel of our own heart is in the worship of God. This brings us back to those opening four verses. For, the rest of the Psalm gives rationale for obeying this command to worship this intensely (v1) in this particular way (v2–3). The loudness, joy, and shouting of v1 is the intensity of joy at having God Himself in worship. The particularity of the instruments appointed to the temple worship (v2) and the calendar that God ordained with tabernacle worship (v3) was a particularity and a calendar that rejoiced in the fact that God Himself instituted their worship. Having God Himself be the One Who establishes how to worship demonstrates that it is God Whom we have in worship—not just feelings about God, but God Himself. If we come up with how to worship, or we come up with a liturgical calendar, then we are handed over to a condition like that of the strange nations (v12). It is fundamentally the same as worshiping a strange God (v9), even if we are pretending submission to the Lord (v15a). In fact, the “them that hate Me” language is repeated form the second commandment.
The Lord heard our cries and saved us for Himself. And when we come to worship in the way that He has commanded, according to the calendar that He Himself has devised, we open our mouth now not to dictate how we will worship but to be filled and satisfied with Him. To have God Himself in Christ as “the fat of wheat and honey from the rock.” This is what He especially gives us now, having removed the priestly instruments and the Levitical calendar and replaced them with Christ Himself (cf. Heb 1:1–12:29)!