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Psalm 81 is about finding God’s blessing – in strange places. It
begins (verses1-5) with a call to a loud and joyous celebration. Shout, sing,
blow your horn, shake your tambourine. We’re having a party!
God has made us party people. He set the table for the celebration when he
came to Egypt and set us free and brought us home. When God does that for
you, you can’t do anything less than have a party!
The beginning premise of Psalm 81 (and a correct one, in my view) is that
we all want to be at the party. We want to get to verses 1-5, to blow our
horns and sing out loud because our God has rescued us with a mighty arm and
has brought us into the Land of Promise. The rest of Psalm 81 tells us about
the way there.
In verses 6 and 7 God recounts his acts of deliverance. In the midst of your
distress, he remembers, you called and in gracious response to your call,
I acted. I rescued you. I answered you with power (out of the thundercloud).
I tested you.
Wait a minute! When I call to God in my distress and he answers me, I welcome
his rescue and his answer with power, but how did testing get into this list?
This is a recounting of how God acted graciously and redemptively in response
to my cry of distress. What does testing have to do with blessing?
Lesson One – Sometimes God answers our prayer for rescue by putting us
in a place of testing. The story of the testing at Meribah is recounted in
Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20:1-13. It is not a story that you would naturally
describe as a story of blessing. It’s a story of murmuring and complaining,
weak faith and human frailty. Yet Psalm 81 clearly portrays the testing of
Meribah as a response of blessing.
Let’s be honest. We want easy, good experiences. But God wants what is
best for us, which is not always the same thing. In Psalm 81 God seems to
be saying that all roads to the Land of Promise lead through Meribah. That
may cause us to be careful how we pray. If we pray, “Use me,” or
“Make us a great church,” or “Do your work in me,” God’s
answer will probably lead us through Meribah.
Why is that? Verses 8-10 give us an answer. Lesson Two – The place of
testing is where we really learn that God’s faithfulness exceeds our
need. Only when we are thirsty without water – only when we are discouraged
without resource – only when we are bewildered without answers –
only when we are empty, do we really discover the absolute reliability of
God’s faithfulness. “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”
When we obediently trust him with our need he proves that he is faithful.
Verses 11-16 complete the message. Lesson three – We have to pass the
test to get to the Promised Land. This passage portrays contrasting test results.
The story of Meribah shows them to us. The people of Israel were without water
at Meribah. But the question wasn’t about water, it was about God. “Is
the Lord God among us?” “Is the Lord God holy?” In other words,
is God trustworthy? The murmuring of the people in the face of their plight
was a way of questioning God’s faithfulness, his integrity and character.
Is God to be trusted in the face of the objective reality of our distress?
It is here, in this event in the history of the exodus, that Moses fails to
pass the test. Scripture names this encounter as the reason Moses was not
allowed to enter the Promised Land. He would approach it. He would look over
into it. But he would not accompany his people into it. The reason, God says,
is that “you did not trust me enough to honor me as holy in the sight
of the people” (Numbers 20:12). To grasp what that means we need to remember
that “holy” here includes the meaning of trustworthy, faithful.
Moses somehow failed to lead from the conviction of God’s absolute faithfulness
and trustworthiness. The details of that failure are not clear, but the nature
of the failure – and its consequence – are painfully clear.
The place of testing is a means of God’s blessing – if we trust
him. Verse 11-12 of Psalm 81 give us a sense of what is at stake for us in
the times of testing. If we don’t trust God he will leave us to what
we do trust. Verse 16 offers a promising alternative. If we do trust him he
will bless our trust with “honey from the rock” – rich blessings
from a strange place.
Sometimes we discover God’s blessing in the strangest places. Some of
us are in some of those places today. Some of us are at Meribah right now.
We are thirsty without water. We are discouraged without resources. We are
bewildered without answers. We are empty.
Psalm 81 is trying to remind us that if we will trust him, no matter where
we are, we are sure to discover that God is trustworthy.
