Psalm 81:1-16 You Won’t Listen
God is speaking through Asaph’s psalm to His people. I would do SO MUCH for you but you won’t listen! So now you are reaping the consequences of your actions.
Our psalm starts out joyous. “Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob!” (verse 1). One would expect this to be a psalm of deliverance and rejoicing, but it’s not. We see it turn very quickly into a directive.
“For it is a statute for Israel, a rule of the God of Jacob” (verse 4). The people are not gathering in celebration but being told to lift up their hearts regardless of their circumstances because GOD commanded it.
The people have been neglecting the commandments of God, ESPECIALLY the one of “You shall have NO other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). And their circumstances reflect their abandonment of their God. They are once again enslaved. They have been taken into exile by Babylon.
Our last psalm asked God to “restore” His people. They wanted Him to once again stand and fight for them. Absent from the psalm though was the reason they were in the situation they were in to begin with. In this psalm God leaves NO doubt as to the root of their troubles.
“Hear, O My people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to Me! There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god” (verses 8-9). The people refused to listen. “But My people did not listen to My voice; Israel would not submit to Me. Si I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels” (verses 11-12).
Something just occurred to me. When Israel was following other gods, God withholding His hand was a lot about letting them see how ‘well’ their other gods could perform. God didn’t necessarily have to stir up trouble for them. Simply taking His hand off them and letting them “follow their own counsels” was enough to get them into hot water. God had been holding back their enemies. When He took His hand off that restraint, ‘nature took its course’ and Israel was shown where they were without Him. They should have easily have discerned the impotence of their gods at that time. But did they? Nope. Otherwise God told them what He would do if they abandoned those gods. “Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes” (verses13-14).
It took a LONG TIME for Israel to fully turn back to God. There were many more lessons along the way to get them there too. I wonder if this is why they have such a hard time accepting Jesus as God’s Son. Do they equate worship of Him with worship of foreign gods? Their religious leaders led the way in rejecting Jesus and saying that He was trying to take the place of God. They still hold this opinion today, to the best of my knowledge. This was just a question that occurred to me.
We KNOW the truth about Jesus. He was God’s only begotten Son. He was God in the flesh, come to walk with man and make a way of reconciliation between God the Father and man. There is NO salvation without Him.
One last observation that is a bit off topic. Did you happen to notice that Joseph’s line was once again singled out in this psalm? In Psalm 80:2, Asaph mentions three tribes. All three tribes are descendants of Rachel. In this psalm that line is refined even more to include only Joseph. “He made it a decree in Joseph when he went out over the land of Egypt” (verse 5). I’m curious why “Joseph’s” name is used here instead of Jacob, whose name was used twice in the previous verses. Why the narrowing of the focus, even for a few verses? I have a feeling that this may be one of the ‘bench questions’ that I just have to wait on.
So what does this psalm say to me (us)? Plain and simply, it says the same thing to us that it said to Israel in that day; LISTEN to the Lord and follow His commands. And still first in His commands is to have NO other gods. It is God, ALL parts of the Godhead, or we are on our own. He doesn’t share! And if you want to find out how ‘powerful’ other gods are, He won’t stop you but neither will He stand by and help you. He will let you make an honest comparison. You will wish you listened too, just like Judah did.
Father God, forgive me for all the times I haven’t listened. I know I have had times when I allowed other things to occupy Your place in my life. Those things ALWAYS fell flat. NOTHING compares to You! Help me remember this lesson better than ANY other lesson. It is critical to our relationship. Thank You Lord for loving me enough to let me learn this lesson.
