Psalm 81 – Open wide your mouth and I will fill it

Psalm 81

I never before realized the importance the Bible places on sound, and the complimentary sense of hearing. What I mean is the importance of sound rather than sight in how God reveals Himself to us. In part one, the Psalmist exhorts us to loud praise and the sounding of a Ram’s horn. It is as if he is preparing our senses for what it to come….the sound of God’s voice.

And what does the Voice say? “Listen“, “If you would only listen“. Our ears, awoken by the loud praise and sounding of the horns, are primed for the act of obedient listening.

In his book, “The Message of Exodus“, Alex Motyer observes that the purpose of the second commandment (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… ” (Exodus 20:4)) is so that we don’t worship a visual, man-made representation of God, but that we worship God in the way He has chosen to reveal Himself to each one of us through His Word.

According to Alex Motyer, “…the thrust of the second commandment is that the Lord is to be worshipped without the aid or interposition of visible representations. Behind that rule….lies a theology, a doctrine of God, that he is spiritual and self-revealing and, when we turn to worship Him, we must fill our minds and our imaginations with what he has revealed and the word he has spoken.” (p 217).

Our God is invisible. Our eyes cannot perceive Him, but we can hear His Word; “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17 KJV)

Maybe then it is no accident that music can speak so directly to our hearts, as though using an inner, private language known only to ourselves. “Bring me a harpist“, Elisha instructed when asked to enquire from God on behalf of king Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 3:15), “While the harpist was playing, the hand of the Lord came on Elisha“.

Of course, once you first truly notice this principle, you encounter it everywhere throughout the Bible; In John 3:8 for example, Jesus said to Nicodemus; “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

The wind represents the Holy Spirit. We can hear wind, but we cannot see it. We can only observe it indirectly through the effect it has on its surroundings.

It us up to us to adopt a listening attitude, as a prerequisite to obedience. No one can obey instructions that they haven’t heard first. Listening obviously presents a challenge for us in our modern culture, where emphasis is placed on the visual senses. To really listen requires that we surrender our preconceptions. It implies patience and diligence. Patience to wait on the Lord’s revelation, and diligence to seek Him out in His word. Finally, it requires us to engage our minds and our imaginations; A relationship with God is not a passive thing like watching a television program, He requires our active participation.

“Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon,  and when the moon is full, on the day of our festival;  this is a decree for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob“. (Verse 3-4)

This command was first given in Numbers 10:10, “Also at your times of rejoicing-your appointed and New Moon feasts – you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the Lord your God.”

The New Moon feasts, accompanied by the sounding of the ram’s horn, were intended as a memorial to the Lord. A way of remembering Him and his great work of deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

How sad then, in the very midst of this memorial, when God’s voice is finally heard, it is a voice unknown to the revelers; “I heard an unknown voice say…”.

Remember what the Lord has done

It is as if to emphasize the total estrangement between the people and their God, that when He speaks His voice is unfamiliar and unknown to His chosen people…

In verses 6 and 7 the Lord reminds them of who he is; He removed the burden of slavery from their shoulders and set their hands free from enforced labor. In response to our distress calls he rescues us.

At the end of this section the Lord says “I tested you at the waters of Meribah“, followed by the now familiar “Selah”, which indicates a pause for reflection.

When we pause to reflect on what Exodus actually says, we will notice that it was the people who tested God at the waters of Meribah;  ^“And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”” (Ex 17:7). Nevertheless, the Psalmist insists that it was God who is in control and who tests our faith. It is simply human vanity to think we can test the Lord. God is Sovereign, and He is the one who will determine the best circumstances to reveal Himself to us. It is not lightly that Jesus answered Satan when he was tempted “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test“.

God’s warning to us

The wonderful news is that God loves us and actively seeks our good. In verse 8 we read how earnestly God calls to His people, and He calls to us with the same urgency and earnestness to this very day: “Hear me, my people [that’s us!], and I will warn you – if you would only listen to me“.

God calls us to listen, He warns us not to worship other Gods. We might think that in today’s secular world there are no other gods left to worship, but when you think about it they are really around every corner; Drugs, hours spend in front of the television, workaholics, gymaholics, food addition, image addiction, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, pornography etc, etc . The list goes on and on. How easy it is to surrender our will and our souls to these many idols of the modern world. Unremittingly they clamour for our attention and attempt to drown out God’s voice.

Worship the Lord. He alone can deliver us out of Egypt, out of the meaningless land of slavery and the endless, and purposeless toil of that barren country.

“Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” evokes an image of hungry birds jostling each other in the nest and crying with their mouths stretched open wide for the mother to deposit a fat juicy worm into it. We often think of God as aloof and uncaring, but this scripture vividly illustrates the nurturing side of His nature. Jesus demonstrates this same nurturing character in Matthew 23:37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.“

The sad truth (Verses 11-12)

The sad truth is that despite the Lord’s earnest and continuous call, we simply refuse to listen. And because of God’s grace and mercy, He doesn’t enslave us and force us to obey like an earthly dictator would under the same circumstances. He simply lets us go our own way; “I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” (Verse 12). Reluctantly He lets us go, knowing the disastrous results that would inevitably ensue.

Final attempt (Verses 13 to 16)

In verses 13 to 16 the Lord paints a final word picture, contrasting the fate of those who hate the Lord and who will receive everlasting punishment to those who listen to Him and follow His ways, who “would be fed with the finest of wheat” and satisfied with “honey from the rock“.

He will “subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes“. God will do the fighting on our behalf, provided we listen to Him. “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Ex 14:14)

The prayer of Jehoshaphat

When I first read this Psalm, I thought it was all about obedience. But as I continued to meditate on it, I was struck by God’s caring initiative, by His vision for His people. What awed me most was His desire to bless His people, expressed repeatedly and with great earnest. Is God really calling to us like this even today? I believe He is.

I remember watching a YouTube video of Ravi Zacharias where he spoke about the prayer of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20. According to Ravi, King Jehoshaphat posed three stereotypical questions in his prayer. These three questions are still asked of God by humanity to this very day:

• “God, are you not….? (Verse 5)
• God, did you not…? (Verse 7)
• God, will you not…? (Verse 12)

I found this idea very compelling, and I was reminded of it whilst thinking about this Psalm. Only in this Psalm it is God who asks the questions, and He says something like this:

• Am I not…. the Lord your God? (Verse 10)
• Did I not…. remove your burden, set you free, test you and bring you out of Egypt? (Verse 6, 10)
• Will you not…. listen to me so that I may bless you? (Verses 13..16)

With such a great and loving God calling us, should we not listen…?

 

Does prayer serve a purpose?

Does prayer serve a purpose?

Someone I know on Facebook recently shared this image:

When I saw this the first time I wondered how, as a Christian, I could possibly respond to this. Clearly whomever went to the trouble of putting together this flowchart is somehow convinced that the “logic” debunks prayer as a useless exercise.

However, when you think about it, the type of prayer illustrated here shows a mechanistic and transactional view of the person’s relationship with God, as well as a simplistic and one-dimensional view of the Divine Plan. Let me try to illustrate this simply by posing the following question:

What if God’s Divine Plan includes that we should pray for something?

If that is the case, the flowchart would look quite different:

You see, it really doesn’t matter whether what we pray for is in His Divine Plan or not. God is not a mechanistic, transactional God. He is a relational God. The act of praying itself is greater that the thing asked for (cf. Jesus in Matt 23:19 “You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?”). Prayer allows us to build a relationship with our creator and we fulfill His Divine plan by praying to him.

“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests“

(Eph 6:18 NIV).

The author of the original flowchart has somehow imagined a God who has a divine plan that has nothing to do with human moral duties and obligations. Yet that is the most important part of God’s Divine plan; To redeem humanity and allow us to enter into a relationship with Him, through prayer.

We are mistaken when we think that God’s divine plan is so straight forward that it can be easily transcribed as a bubble in a flowchart. God’s will is complex and many-faceted. There is the concept, for example, of God’s perfect will and His permissive will. By his grace He allows us great latitude and freedom in what we ask for and what we do with our lives. God is not a dictator, He is a liberator. Jesus said in John 8:32 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free“.

But even the amended flowchart is not yet complete. Consider the flowchart below:

By not praying, you place yourself outside of God’s divine plan and turn your back on a relationship with your creator. It is God’s will that all men should be saved (1 Tim 2:3-5), so clearly this is not in His perfect will, yet He will respect the non-prayor’s freedom of choice in a life away from God, both here and throughout eternity .

Therefore it is not the case that prayer serves no purpose. It serves the greatest purpose of all. Not the purpose of getting stuff from God, but the purpose of entering into a relationship with Him, learning about His nature and consequently, since we are created by Him and for Him, also learning about our nature and purpose in life.

But what about the non-prayor? What is his or her purpose behind refraining from prayer? Evidently the purpose is to reject God’s Divine plan and to preclude any relationship with Him. Once again, the words of Jesus in John 3:19 captures it nicely: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

If prayer then has such great purpose and significance for our eternal souls, why would anyone purposefully not pray?

Should we not also say like the disciples of Jesus as recorded in Luke 11:1 “Lord, teach us to pray…”

Psalm 67 – Then the land will yield its harvest

Psalm 67

In verse 1 the Psalmist pleads “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us“. But what blessings are being asked for? Is it wealth or security? No, the petition is for a blessing that will cause God’s ways and His salvation to become known throughout the earth.

In a way this Psalm pre-figures the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew 6:9-13. The Psalm starts with a petition that God’s ways may be known throughout the earth. Jesus starts His prayer with a petition that God’s name may be hallowed, that His kingdom come and His will be done throughout the earth.

Both the Psalm and the Our Father are public or communal prayers, as is signified by the pronoun “our” in “our father, who is in heaven” in Matthew and “God, our God will bless us” in verse 6 of the Psalm.

It is significant that the blessings being sought in this Psalm all have the purpose of spreading the knowledge of God and His salvation, so that “the ends of the earth will fear God“. It is a reminder that when we pray, we should always pray first for the glory of God and His kingdom, and only then ask Him to meet our physical and spiritual needs, our “daily bread” and forgiveness of sins.

The Psalm also reminds us that being a Christian isn’t only a private, inward-focused affair. Jesus commands us to reach out, to make our lights shine (cf. Matthew 5:16). Firstly in our family and church context, so that we may truly pray, in the spirit of this Psalm,  to “God, our God” and to “Our father in heaven”. Then also by shining the light of the Gospel into the dark world of the unbelievers so they may come to know the salvation of Christ.

This is the true blessing we will receive from God when he causes his face to shine upon us; Then the land will yield its harvest. Not a literal harvest of grain or other crops. God, in His infinite mercy, causes the earth to yield this harvest every year unconditionally and without fail (cf Matthew 5:45; “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous“). But the harvest referred to in verse 6 refers to a spiritual harvest. Perhaps it is the harvest Jesus mentioned in Matthew 9:37-38 when He said “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Then the land will yield its harvest

Unlike the shining of the sun , which is God’s grace bestowed on both believers and unbelievers, and which brings forth growth and life from the earth, so that the “land yields its harvest” (Verse 6), the “sun” of God’s face shining in our hearts (i.e. the Holy Spirit) is a special grace known only to believers. And instead of bringing forth an earthly harvest, the Holy Spirit brings forth a spiritual harvest in our hearts and our lives, transforming us into the likeness of Christ.

The Holy Spirit also fills our hearts with a desire to share the gospel with the rest of the world, so that “… your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” (verse 2). God’s desire is for everyone to be saved; He says in Isaiah 45:22 “turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other“.  We should therefore not be surprised to find that His Spirit generates the same desire in the hearts of believers. Because we know God to be a just and righteous God, we desire a world that is totally surrendered to Him, so that all may be ruled and guided by His divine will (Verse 4). Only then will there be gladness and joy over all the earth. No wonder Jesus instructed His disciples to pray “… may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven“.

Only then,  according to the Psalmist, when all the peoples praise God, will the land yield its harvest. When I meditate on this verse, I cannot help but be astonished by the fact that everything we have has somehow come from the earth. The very same earth that was created for us by God had somehow yielded all that we see and enjoy today, from cars to computers to cellular technology to roads, parks and clothes. Nothing we possess or use has originated from anywhere else. Surely the earth has yielded and is yielding a rich harvest.

If the harvest of this earth, which God has given freely to all nations, is so rich and plentiful, how much richer the harvest of the Spirit!

May God’s face shine upon you, and may your heart bring forth a harvest, “…yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)