OUR GOD
Psalm 81: 6-10
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A PRESBYTERIAN PSALTER - by Pastor Max A Forsythe |
Have you ever tried to maintain a friendship with someone who is standoffish? By that I mean, you must carry the burden of maintaining the ongoing relationship? Certainly, you may sense that the other person truly values your gift of friendliness, but never ever takes the initiative to return your heartfelt affection? The short passage before us today should warn us about the true state of human affections. Certainly we know and treasure our daily relationship with the Lord God Almighty, but let us never presume that in that relationship that we are the one who pushes the relationship along!
Yes, God is indeed our friend, we are His and He is our God, but as we see in these short verses, our heavenly affections are limited in ability and were it not for God's gracious ongoing friendship, we should be left to ourselves and our own fancies, dreams and interests. In these short five verses we hear the God of heaven speak to our hearts even as He spoke to the children of Israel in the Exodus experience. In verse six the burden and the basket fully describe the day by day slave experience of Israel in Egypt.
This week, I hired two neighborhood boys to help me with a landscaping project for another good neighbor. We are moving dirt and gravel and leveling out various beds and patio sub-foundations. Can you imagine what my charges would say if I used Egyptian construction techniques? "Okay boy's, here are some baskets, just fill them with dirt and carry it from here to there." Or how about, "bring you sleeping blanket with you and we'll just carry the dirt in that!" Twenty years ago when I was landscaping my own home, I wore out a wheelbarrow. At least this time around we have access to a small tractor with an eight hundred pound bucket. Life is so much easier, since I'm the boss I get to play with the equipment, dump the dirt and let my ground crew spread it around!
No wonder so few people today understand the labor intensive methods used by the Egyptians, Romans and all of the other means by which roads, buildings and temples were built in antiquity. As late as the early nineteenth century, a Scotsman by the name of MacAdam believed that he could generate work for those in poverty by employing them to turn large rocks into gravel for his new high speed highway system. Are we having fun yet? Can you see yourself, or anyone in the Western World pounding stones to make smaller ones? Yet this was partly the method by which the Roman road system was built and it was 10,000 miles longer than our own Interstate Highway system!
This type of labor is what the God of heaven delivers the people of Israel from. Slave labor, heavy construction and tedious movement of tons of sand, dirt and small and large stone from daylight to dusk. At least my crew knows that I won't work them more than four hours in the morning so that they can go home and get out of the hot blinding sun! They'll grow up soon enough and be able to work on their afternoon tan!
Fanciful writers in our time imagine that the Egyptians must have had magic wands to move mountains of stone, dirt and sand! No indeed, the people of Israel did indeed call out to their very own God, the One God, the true God and as we see in verse seven He rescued them and removed the burden of slavery. Not only did He answer them but He also tested them to see if they preferred their new found relationship. At Meribah, they had cried out for water and just as they had off and on throughout the whole forty year Exodus journey, the people complained and preferred the miseries of slavery in Egypt. At least in Egypt they whimpered that they had had food and water. There had also been a multitude of Egyptian gods as well. From that the Lord of heaven would save His precious people.
Yet, we learn here and in next week's portion that the affections of Israel are not focused on the One God who reveals Himself and in the biblical image of extending His hand, uses His Holy Spirit to draw people to Himself. Now, we have to comprehend something important about the Exodus experience that we do not experience today. Just like the visible presence of Jesus Christ in His time, there were in the desert journey all types of miraculous proofs that God was indeed with the people on a day by day level. There was the miraculous manna which was finely tuned to the weekly cycle of the Sabbath. There were regular provisions of water, even quail fell out of the sky to satisfy the meat eaters in the crowd. The Pillar of cloud of something, which is how the Hebrew language describes the visible presence, followed or led them throughout the desert journey. There could be no excuse that the people of Israel could not visibly know that their God was with them.
Yet, what do we see in verse eight? The Lord's admonition that their affections are not focused on Him. Their belly is more important! And so the Lord instructs them, the land of Egypt from whence they came was full of strange gods and in the plagues of Egypt the Lord God of creation had demonstrated plague by plague that each of the Egyptian gods was powerless. These He will not tolerate in the midst of His people. Neither shall He tolerate the worship of the lesser wicked spirits imagined by pagans. Come out, come out my people from their midst has always been the invitation of our precious Father God.
The people of Israel took many many centuries to step aside from idol worship. And when the Lord of heaven again appeared in their midst in the body of Christ, they did not recognize Him. Just as their ancestors in the desert heard thunder when He spoke, just as their ancestors complained about better food in Egypt, the Jews rejected His word and His supper. To this day the Jewish community will not allow themselves to be fed the bread of life given in their own promised Messiah. Even after centuries of loving care, continued rescue and providential guidance, Israel finally refused to submit to the God of heaven.
Where is your heart today? Here you have come by the invitation of the Holy Spirit, the affections of the world are as much with you and I as they were with the Hebrew people of old. Humbly and on our knees we must learn to admit that the worldly charms would draw us astray even as God's people were led away after their own desires. Except for the fact that His Spirit draws us to Himself and empowers us to live a life pleasing to Him. Let us learn to give thanks to Him who delivers us from the burden of sin. Let us treasure the testing that He sends, praying continually that we might be a people who will open wide our mouths to accept the living bread of Christ instead of the fallen images being created by the mind of mankind. Amen.
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Resources Used: |
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Bratcher, Robert G. |
A Translator's Handbook on The Book of Psalms. | |
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Spurgeon, C.H. |
The Treasury of David. | |
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IBS: The Holy Bible, New International Version (1984) | ||
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Psm 081c |
27 July 97 | |