I’ve been in Colorado these last two weeks visiting churches that support our ministry here, and looking for support for the building project, as I said before. I talked with a lot of pastors I know and love, and a lot of individuals I’d never met before. My last day there, Wednesday, I had lunch with the pastor of Park Church in Denver, a guy named Gary McQuinn. Gary and I have known each other for a long time, but always in the context of ministry—we hadn’t had a lot of time to really get to know each other.

During this lunch, we were chatting about our lives, about our families, and we somehow got on the subject of climbing. Jack and I go climbing fairly regularly, and Gary said that’s pretty much all his family does together for fun. So he just looked at me at one point and said, “What are you doing after this?” I had to go get a couple of things at the store, but otherwise my last day was pretty free. Gary said, “Want to go climbing?” We didn’t have time to go to the mountains, but his house and one of the biggest climbing gyms in Denver were just up the road.

So Gary took me climbing. We had a great time—we were doing big walls, taking turns belaying each other. After every climb there was a break as we moved to a new route, got the ropes set up. And Gary started talking about how climbing has helped him to understand the gospel, and how it’s given him an opportunity to teach his kids about the gospel. It was so encouraging, this ordinary physical activity that we both love, being a springboard for conversations between two pastors about the gospel.

That happened over and over on this trip.

I said all that to explain what I’d like to do today; I’ve decided to change plans a little bit. If you were in home group this week, you know that I was supposed to preach on Psalm 87. The last time I preached on that text was in 2018. But it turns out—something I hadn’t realized—that other, visiting pastors have preached on Psalm 87 at least twice in the last two years. 

So I’ve decided not to preach on that text—we’re going to do this one with no prep. We’re going to go to Psalm 81.

And the reason I want to go to Psalm 81 is, at least in part, because of these conversations I’ve had this week which have been so encouraging for me. We can never understand the gospel well enough. We are always learning to understand the gospel. And we always need to learn to understand the gospel better, because our natural inclinations will always fight against this good news, even if we believe it.

There’s something in every Christian, no matter how good our theology is, that makes us want to try and work as hard as we can to do what we need to do, in order to get into God’s good graces. We work hard to try to be morally righteous enough for God to want to save us. We do our best to be “good Christians,” to get Jesus’s attention, so that he might just love us and keep on loving us.

This is our natural mode of thought: when we discover what the gospel actually is, we naturally think, What do I have to do for God to choose to show ME grace?  It’s the same question the jailer asked Paul and Silas in Acts 16.30: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Their answer is beautiful—v. 31:  

“BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved...”

In Psalm 81, we see a beautiful description of what this means. In this psalm, the psalmist Asaph not only tells us what to believe—long before Christ—but how to go about it. And as so often happens in the Bible, the answer is wildly different from what we would expect.

This psalm is actually very similar to many of the oracles of the Old Testament prophets. The OT prophets’ main function was not to predict the future, but rather to call God’s people to covenant faithfulness (which is very clearly the point of this psalm). And the first way in which the psalm calls God’s people to faithfulness is by describing God’s faithfulness to them.

The Faithfulness of God (v. 1-7)

81 To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. 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. 

Asaph begins his psalm by reminding Israel of the feasts they keep—Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day. He calls on Israel to worship God with joy during the feasts.

There were lots of feasts for the people of Israel in the Old Testament, and every one of these feasts reminded the people of God’s past and present grace to them, and actually foreshadowed what Jesus would do when he came.

For example, between the Feast of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles, the Israelites observed the Day of Atonement (Lev. 23.23-44). The “stars” of the Day of Atonement were two goats. One goat was killed for the sins of the people. The idea is that the people’s sin—their disobedience to God’s commands, their moral imperfection—deserves punishment, but that in his grace, God is willing to accept punishment by proxy: he accepts to have a goat killed in the place of the people. That goat’s life is the price of the people’s forgiveness.

The second goat featured during the Day of Atonement is actually set free—released into the desert to find its way back to life. This goat’s life represents the success of the people’s forgiveness: that when God forgives his people, on the basis of this sacrifice they had offered, they are set free from their sin and forgiven.

So Asaph begins his psalm by reminding the people of the feasts they kept, which would very naturally remind them of God’s goodness and grace to them.

Next, he reminds them of the various ways God had been good to them in the past, v. 4.

4  For it is a statute for Israel, 

a rule of the God of Jacob. 

5  He made it a decree in Joseph 

when he went out over the land of Egypt. 

I hear a language I had not known: 

6  “I relieved your 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 

This word “Selah” marks a pause. It’s a moment in the psalm—possibly an instrumental break—in which the people are meant to stop and think about what had just been said. It’s a good point—a good practice to get into. Whenever we’re singing on Sunday, and there’s an instrumental break, we shouldn’t just sit there listening to the person playing the guitar or the piano; that’s a perfect time to think about what we just finished singing, because what we just sang is true. It’s the reason for our worship.

During this pause, here’s what the people are meant to reflect on: God has always been faithful to his people. He rescued them from slavery in Egypt when they had no other hope of being rescued. He delivered them when they were in danger. He provided for their needs in the desert. Every time, in every need, God was always there, protecting them and providing for them.

The conclusion the people are meant to reach is obvious: if God is this kind of God—a God who is always faithful to his people—then his people should trust him, and love him, and obey him.

The Grace of God (v. 8-10)

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. 

This is a simple repetition of the first of the Ten Commandments—the people of Israel were to worship one God, and one God only. 

The question is, Why? 

Have you ever wondered why the God of the Bible demands allegiance of his people? A lot of people have a hard time when they see this in the Bible. They see God saying things like, “Worship me only; praise me only; serve me only,” and they think, Wow! God sure is self-centered! 

It’s important to remember that what would be sin for us is not necessarily sin for God. If we demanded that kind of allegiance and loyalty, it would be narcissism, because no human being actually deserves that kind of attention.

Here’s the difference though: the Bible tells us what kind of God our God is. Firstly, because he is morally perfect, he actually deserves our loyalty and love. 

But that’s not all. Think of the most egocentric ruler you can imagine. Imagine this ruler demanded the same kind of allegiance from the people in his nation as God demands of his people. What would be this human ruler’s motivation for demanding that kind of loyalty? 

To serve himself. To serve his own need for praise and love.

That’s not how God works. He doesn’t need our praise—his motivations for demanding our worship are far better than anyone would expect.

God speaks prophetically through the psalmist here, and he tells us precisely what kind of God he is, and why he demands our worship. V. 9 again:

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.

You see, God does not call his people to worship him in order to be served by them, or to fill some need in himself. 

He calls his people to worship him so that HE might serve THEM.

Back in February we went to visit my family in Florida. My dad decided to smoke a brisket while we were there: he has a smoker on the back porch, and he bought a fifteen-pound brisket that he spent over 12 hours smoking. When he finally pulled it out, he asked for help cutting it up. And as we’re cutting, obviously, we’re taking little bites. It was the most delicious meat I’ve ever had. Even Loanne, who doesn’t like meat very much, couldn’t stop. 

So what did we do? We called the kids. They were playing, and didn’t really want to come at first, but we kept calling. We said, “Kids, get in here—you have got to try this, you’ve never tasted anything like this.”

That’s God’s attitude when he calls us to worship him.

He created us to be satisfied by his glory; so if he demanded anything else but that we worship him alone, he would not be loving us well. But because he loves us, he orders us to do the only thing which can satisfy us forever: to worship him alone.

Although he has need or obligation to do it, God actually takes this commandment to worship him alone, spins it around, and turns it into a gift for those who obey.

Isn’t this different from the way we usually think about worship? If you have ever had the opportunity to lead worship in a church in the past, you’ve probably had this experience. The worship team meets before the service to go over the songs, and to talk about what they’re doing. And either before or during the service, someone will pray, and will often say something like, “Father, we’re not here for ourselves. We’re here for you. We’re here to serve you. We’re not here to receive anything from you, but to give you what you deserve.”

This kind of prayer has become so common in church culture that we think nothing of it—and it’s totally unbiblical. 

That’s the way normal, human rulers function: they demand allegiance to serve themselves. But that’s not how God calls us to worship him. He says, “Come to me, and worship me, SO THAT I MIGHT FEED YOU. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”

As the author of the letter to the Hebrews says (Hebrews 11.6):  

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he REWARDS those who seek him. 

If we want to please God, we must first and foremost come to him to be fed by him. This is the kind of God we serve. And yet, his people have always resisted his grace.

The Gospel: “Be Satisfied in Me” (v. 11-16)

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! 

Our stubborn hearts refuse God at every turn—they assume God is not good, and he is not calling us to himself for our good. 

We’re like children who refuse to eat their vegetables, and who assume their parents are mean for making them do it. Kids don’t have the wisdom to see that the vitamins in vegetables, the things they need to be healthy and to survive, are worth getting through any means necessary, and they don’t have taste that’s developed enough to recognize that vegetables are actually delicious. (Most of them.) 

That’s what we’re like. God tells us what to do, and we hear his commandments, and imagine they are trying to stifle our joy, to stop us from “being ourselves” (as if that would actually be better!). 

We trust the desires of our own hearts above all things, and we don’t realize that our hearts are stubborn and twisted, and if we give them what they want, they will starve us. 

So you can hear the longing in God’s voice as he says, Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! Why does he want his people to listen to him? Why does he want Israel to walk in his ways?

Because he wants them to be happy.

V. 13 again:

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 with the finest of the wheat, 

and with honey from the rock I would SATISFY you.” 

One of the humbling things about becoming an adult is realizing how often your parents were right about a whole range of things. They were never perfect, but quite often, just through the fact that they’d lived longer than us, they knew things we didn’t. When we were younger, we didn’t believe them (because of course they were old, they didn’t understand how the world of today worked). Then we grow up, and are surprised to remember conversations and think, You know, Dad was right. Mom was right.

How many times did my parents say, “I wish you would just listen to me?” Not because they wanted me to be miserable, but because they knew more than me, and wanted me to be happy.

That’s what the psalmist is getting at here: that’s what the gospel is. It’s God saying, “I wish you’d listen, because I know better. If you would just listen, you’d find provision in me, you’d find protection in me, you’d find satisfaction in me. You won’t find those things in yourself. Come to me, and listen, and I will satisfy you.”

Do you see what this means? 

I mentioned Gary McQuinn earlier, the lead pastor at Park Church in Denver. I’ll never forget a conversation we had a few years ago (I didn’t know him very well at the time). I was sharing with him that this year has been a difficult one for me personally; there have been some pastoral cases that have weighed on me, plus just the usual fatigue that comes with having a new baby at home (Zadie was about two months old).

Gary modeled the gospel for me in that conversation we had. At one point as I was sharing this, he thanked me for being honest, and he said, “I just want you to know that you don’t ever have to try and give us the impression that you’ve got it all together. You don’t have to be doing well. We are here, and we’ll support you even if you’re totally falling apart. We’re not going anywhere.”

Brothers and sisters, in this psalm, God is telling us the same thing.

The gospel is rest. The gospel is coming to God to be fed.

The gospel is not for those who work; it is for those who are tired of working.

It’s not for the strong; it’s for those who have no more strength.

It’s not for those who provide; it’s for those who are hungry, and who can’t fill their hunger.

It’s not for the moral or the righteous; it’s for those who need righteousness but can’t drum it up on their own.

Few things could be more difficult for modern, educated, cultured, self-sufficient people to accept—they don’t know what to do when someone tells them that they have nothing to do, because Jesus did it all for them. And part of it is the very real fact that it shouldn’t work this way: if God really is holy, and we really are accountable to him, then we shouldn’t be able to just come rest.

So how can God possibly make such a statement? How can he say, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it”? How can Jesus say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”?

The answer to that question is the reason why the gospel is “good news”—because the gospel tells us that whatever God requires for us to belong to him and be saved by him and be fed by him, Jesus has already done for us.

He lived the life we should have lived—the humble, gracious, holy life God commands us all to live, and which none of us have. 

He took on himself the sin of our arrogance and pride, our rejection of God, our so-called and imaginary self-sufficiency, and was killed for those sins. 

He gave us his perfect life in exchange for our sin, and on the basis of Christ’s perfect life which was given to us—like a coat we put on and wear from here on out—God has declared us as righteous as Christ.

So when we come to Christ in faith, he finally tells us the words we’ve been wanting to hear our whole lives, without even being aware of it: there truly is nothing left to do. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more—he already loves with an infinite love. There’s nothing we can bring to the table to add to what he has already done. When Jesus said  “It is finished” on the cross, he meant it.

It is FINISHED.

Now the logical question at this point is, “If that’s true, what about obedience? Why do we still have to obey God’s commandments if Jesus has already obeyed them for us?”

Good question.

So many people see what I’ve just said—an absolute affirmation of God’s grace being totally sufficient for us—as the enemy of obedience, but it’s the exact opposite: God’s absolute, all-sufficient grace is the only thing that makes our obedience possible.

God knows that the only lasting motivation for obedience is grace. 

One of my best friends in the world is a guy named Jeff Otero; he and his wife Jill have been here to visit us several times. Jeff is one of the most gracious people I have ever met. I have never seen him act out of self-interest; he is always thinking of others, and how he can serve others. 

And I realized recently that something has happened to me over the time I’ve spent with him. When I spend time with Jeff, I find myself observing him. I listen to how he talks to his wife. I listen to how he talks about his church. I watch how he serves others.

And because I admire him and I’m thankful for him, I find myself wanting to be like him, wanting to model my own life after his.

This is as natural as breathing, and it happens every time we are in the presence of grace, and truly see it for what it is.

God has given us free and perfect access to himself in the finished work of Jesus Christ. And as we live with him, as we walk with him, as we grow with him, as we continue to understand more and more what he did for us in Christ, we WILL want to be like him.

As we grow to know Christ, we will want to be like him. We will begin to love what he loves and hate what he hates. We’ll find holiness pleasant, and sin repulsive.

And that is how when God calls us to obey, he describes that experience by saying, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”

I talked about this a few weeks ago in our series on work, but I’ll say it again: it’s not hard to do what you want to do. 

It’s one thing to work hard because you know you’ll be sanctioned or fired if you don’t. 

It’s quite another thing to work hard because you LOVE your job. 

The person who loves his job looks forward to going to work every day; he has no trouble going the extra mile to finish something that needs finishing. 

For the person who loves their job and is motivated by a passion for their profession, work is rest—work feeds their passion, feeds their joy, feeds their happiness.

This Christian knows from experience that obedience brings joy, because it allows us to know God more deeply and delight in him more fully, with a clean conscience. When we understand the grace of Christ, and we begin to love what he loves—because what he loves is actually worth loving—the work of obedience isn’t just light; it’s refreshing. 

Nothing is more satisfying than wanting the right thing, and then doing exactly what you want.

Conclusion

Make no mistake—we are all hungry. We all want something. And this psalm is asking each of us a question: 

What is it you want, and how is Jesus better? What are you hungry for, and how can God fill you better?

Maybe you want God’s affection. Maybe you believe that God will save you, but that ultimately, he’s not all that happy about it, because he sees you as you really are: he sees your sin and your guilt and your failures, and the only reason he’s saving you is because he said he would.

So you work as hard as you can to do what he calls you to do, to earn your way back into his love and his good graces.

And you’re always exhausted, and you’re always thirsty for more, because no matter how hard you work, it never seems to be good enough.

Jesus is better than that. God has always loved his people perfectly—the only reason we received his wrath instead of his love is because we sinned against him. And Jesus took that sin on himself on the cross. 

It’s not that God wasn’t angry against your sin; he was. And he poured out every drop of wrath against your sin when he poured out his wrath on Christ on the cross. So if you have faith in him today, there is no more wrath for you. There is nothing left for you to do. All you have is the perfect love of a perfect Father for you, his child—imperfect, yes, but declared perfect in Christ. There is nothing you could do to make his love for you any better, or any worse.

So he is inviting you to come and be filled—be filled by his grace, be filled by the blessing of obedience to his commands, be filled by a knowledge of him that grows deeper and deeper as you receive from his hand.

Maybe you want freedom. Maybe you see any rule given to you as a hindrance to your joy. Maybe you really want to believe that you are a beautiful and unique snowflake, and you are perfect just the way you are.

But you know deep down that you’re not. You’re missing something. You aren’t complete; you aren’t perfect. You want to be free from any and all rules, but the freedom you crave is starving you. 

The freedom Jesus offers is better than the freedom you think you want. 

Jesus is honest with you and tells you that you aren’t perfect; you do need something outside yourself to make you more than you are. And the one thing that actually could satisfy you—the thing you were created to do, seeing and loving the glory of God—is out of your reach, because you are a sinner, and you have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3.23). 

So Jesus took care of that sin for you. He has done what needed to be done for you to finally see what you were created to see, and to be satisfied by what you were created to enjoy. To anyone who comes to Jesus in faith, he gives a new heart, with new desires. 

To put it simply, Christian freedom is not the freedom to do whatever you please; it’s the freedom to finally want desire you ought to desire.

So if you want freedom, come to him and be free—it’s the only freedom which actually is freedom.

Whatever it is you desire this morning, good or bad, Jesus is better. 

And his call to you this morning is to let go of everything you think you have to offer and to come to him empty-handed, knowing that there is nothing left for you to do, nothing you can bring him, but that everything is already done for you, and everything is already given to you.

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.