Psalms 81

Psalms 81:1-16

The new ways that go with the new experience. To the chief musician: upon the Gittith: [a psalm] of Asaph. The connection of the eighty-first psalm with the preceding one is as simple as it is beautiful. Israel has been crying for God’s face to shine upon her as of old: here it does shine upon her. As the result she shines: for this new moon, clothing itself again with the glory of the sun; is her own symbol. The blowing of the trumpets at the beginning of the seventh month is the first of the series of set times which speak of Israel’s blessing (Leviticus 23:1-44, notes). Passover, the Sheaf of First-fruits, Pentecost -that is, the Cross, the Resurrection; and the Coming of the Holy Ghost, (the Christian endowment,) -are some time past; and the seventh month speaks of the time for the completion of the divine purposes having arrived, which necessarily, therefore, brings Israel once more to the forefront. In the blowing of trumpets we hear the voice of her recall; in the day of atonement -though this naturally links itself with the past, for the day of atonement has really begun long before they come into it, -their sins as a nation are taken away from them in the ordinance of the scapegoat; and in the feast of tabernacles we find them in permanent blessing in the land, remembering their wilderness-wanderings (which for so many centuries now have been renewed to them) as past forever. The new moon; therefore, is Israel’s own symbol. The light is beginning to shine upon her: she, therefore, is beginning to reflect it; and here the beauty and evangelical character of this eighty-first psalm become fully apparent. As a fourth psalm of this series, it speaks of man’s walk, -of the practical life, -and this is evident in the psalm itself: it speaks of what Israel’s ways should have been; and of what, alas, they were; but the God who spake to them of old is afresh speaking to them, afresh inviting them to obedience. But how, then; is that obedience to be rendered? how are they to escape the recurrence of that terrible departure from Him; under the shadow of which they have been for so many generations? Here the psalm itself can give us no plain speech. It simply gives and ends with the invitation.

For us who have realized the law to be only the condemnation of man; there can be no hope if we think of man. He has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. And there is no difference between men: as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The gospel thus comes to us as helpless -“lost” -and casts us altogether upon grace, -that is, upon God, for all that is to come. If the blood of Christ avails alone for our sins before God, it is this also which, applied in the power of the Spirit, reconciles the heart to God, and makes the life the expression of the reconciliation. Grace becomes, not only our deliverance from condemnation, but our sufficiency for all the way. And this the beautiful type of the new moon expresses; the life must be the outshining of that which has first shone in.

It is not by effort, and it is not a peradventure, if the moon shine. Men can predict it, and know certainly how it is effected. The light is derived -dependent: that which is received is reflected and shed abroad; and this is the light of all God’s witnesses.

1. The feast of trumpets is the beginning of Israel’s civil year; and this naturally connects itself with that national restoration which is implied in its three “set times.” The jubilee, when it occurred, began on the tenth of the same month, after their sins had been removed by the scape-goat carrying them into a “land cut off.” The civil year waited for these national feasts, and thus was parted from the sacred year, which presents God’s order, and began with the passover. But the passover was a family ordinance, not (in the strict sense) national. All the nation did not keep it at the same time, but there was a second day appointed for those defiled with the dead or on a journey. Its aspect, therefore, is what the apostle’s word to the jailer declared: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Israel, as a nation; refused the passover, and thus the disjointing between their civil and religious years. In the prophetic application of this psalm; therefore, Israel’s national life is now truly beginning. Praise is in their heart and on their lips: God is celebrated as their strength and as the God of Jacob. Power has come in for them in grace, and this is the key-note of their joyful song with which, as we have so often seen in the case of Israel, nature finds its voice in accompaniment. Let them sound the trumpet, then; in the new moon; at the set time, for their feast-day.* The blowing of trumpets may be itself the feast here spoken of; or this feast may be the feast of tabernacles. This last was but the fulfillment of the promise of the former, and therefore the passing over of the day of atonement (which Delitzsch objects against this interpretation) is readily accounted for. The feast of tabernacles was, so to speak, really the fullness of that which in the new moon was beginning to appear. In the time spoken of in it, Israel would be enjoying the presence of God; the brightness of His glory would be upon her: and this at the “set time” which proclaimed the foresight and purposes of eternal Wisdom, which could not be disappointed, because they could not be defeated. Therefore the trumpets may indeed be blown, and the whole earth, now to come into blessing, echo Israel’s joy. \
2. The ordinance itself bears witness of the God of grace, who would thus keep that which His goodness would accomplish for them and in them before the eyes of His people. Looking back to the beginning of the nation; as is so constantly the case in these psalms, Joseph is still the representative of the tribes, and we have seen for what reason. The past deliverance out of Egypt is naturally connected with it, as the anticipation and pledge of the deliverance to come; as the foreign language that they had heard there is the suggestion of the many languages they have since had to learn in the many lands in which they have been made to sojourn since. But in all these at last they shall praise Him with joyful lips.
3. The Lord’s voice now makes itself heard, and to the end of the psalm it is He that is heard alone. The psalmist becomes here a prophet in the highest sense, therefore. The two verses that follow are an appeal to their hearts by putting them in remembrance of that old deliverance. It becomes more direct as it goes on. “I removed his shoulder from the burden,” says their divine Redeemer: “their hands were freed from the basket” (the task-basket for the removal of clay and bricks). From such hard and servile labor He had freed them, from a distress in which their cry had gone up to Him by reason of their bondage. They had cried, and He delivered them: He had answered them in the Cloud of His Presence from which He looked in wrath upon their enemies -“the secret place of thunder,” which they themselves had heard at Sinai. At the waters of Meribah also, where the smitten rock had poured out water for them, He had proved them by an intervention which answered their very murmurings with the witness of abiding love.
4. Thus they had been cared for up to Sinai itself; and these were the circumstances under which He spoke to them; demanding but (what should have been so easy to them) their allegiance to One who had manifested His power over the false gods of the nations, and in such perfect goodness toward themselves. He repeats now the essence of it, in a new appeal: for grace of necessity calls for obedience, and without this no blessing were possible. Grace, too, it had been with them of old, until their fatal self-sufficiency had made them take up a legal covenant to their ruin; but for grace they were not ready. Yet the terms were made all that divine love could make them: love appealing in them for that answer of love for which it had wrought; and still love appeals for that without which it cannot be satisfied. “Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto Me; there shall no strange god be with thee: nor shalt thou worship any foreign god. I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open wide thy mouth, and I will fill it.” How blessed to know that still, if we but yield Him our heart, we may assure ourselves of the fullest satisfaction from Him! “Open wide thy mouth” is what He bids us; and it is but obedience, therefore, to do this. Love will believe Him, and satisfy itself at this free fountain. Israel, alas, fell away, as the Lord now reminds them: “My people did not hearken unto Me; and Israel would none of Me.” It was not merely failure: it was revolt. And the recompense could not but follow: “So I gave them up to the stubbornness of their hearts, and they walked in their own counsels.” The saddest thing that men can be left to is what is here expressed.
5. But now He returns to the yearning of His heart over them: “Oh that My people would hearken unto Me” now, He says -“that Israel would walk in My ways!” And then He proceeds to speak of the blessed consequences. How soon would their enemies be put down. Jehovah, a living fence around them, would make those cringe before Him who, in being their haters, would be His; while their time would be forever (comp. 1 John 2:17). Finally, the land would yield them fat of the wheat and honey from the rock, the tender care of the Creator for the creature He had made. There the psalm ends, and we are left to find the assurance of the actual blessing that we look for from that prophetic ordinance with which it began. The new moon with its returning light speaks, as we have seen; not only of the favor of God toward Israel returning, but of the nation also reflecting back the light. And that is the method of grace in producing holiness, love begetting love. “God,” says the apostle, “who made the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give out the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6, Gr.). But there is another witness to the evangelical character of the psalm that is found in the title. We have already had “upon the Gittith” in that of the eighth psalm, and saw reason there to believe that in its fullest significance it speaks of the joy born from sorrow in the work of the Cross (p. 38, notes). If this be so, there is exact accordance between the two psalms in this respect. The work of atonement is not explicitly referred to in either of them; while it underlies both; and thus the grace which is seen in the re-appearing of the moon here finds its only stable foundation. It is the power and value of the blood of the Lamb that the joy of Israel’s New Year’s Day attests. Thus can the glory of God shine forth again upon them: it is in very deed the “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”: and the salvation so attained is neither a merely external nor a temporary salvation. It is that salvation to the uttermost which every soul receives that comes in its ruin and helplessness “unto God by Him.”