God's Holy Words - Psalm 81
Our lives are filled with attempts to find something else other than God to satisfy our deepest longings. We jump from one thing to another a scratch that we can never itch. The psalmist says, "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." It may take a lifetime but only after we learn to die unto ourselves, only when we reach the end of ourselves do we find God.
Oh, That My People Would Listen to Me
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith.[a] Of Asaph.
1 Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob! 2 Raise a song; sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp. 3 Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day.
4 For it is a statute for Israel, a rule[b] of the God of Jacob. 5 He made it a decree in Joseph when he went out over[c] the land of Egypt. I hear a language I had not known: 6 “I relieved your[d] shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket. 7 In distress you called, 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, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to me! 9 There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god. 10 I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11 “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. 12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow 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 foes. 15 Those who hate the Lord would cringe toward him, and their fate would last forever. 16 But he would feed you[e] with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
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