The God Who Frees and Fills Text: Psalm 81:6-10
Introduction: Selective Amnesia
We live in an age of curated memory. Modern man is a master of selective remembrance. He remembers every slight, every perceived injustice done to him, every grievance he can nurse against his neighbor, his history, or his God. But he has a terrible memory when it comes to benefits received. He is a spiritual amnesiac when it comes to grace. He wants the blessings of liberty without remembering the God who grants it. He wants a full belly without giving thanks for the daily bread. He wants, in short, to be a perpetual orphan, a self-made man who owes no one anything, least of all the God who gave him breath in his lungs.
This is not a new problem. It is the ancient problem of Israel, and it is the problem of the human heart in every generation. In this portion of Psalm 81, God Himself takes the stand to testify against His people. He does not bring a charge they can dispute. He brings a charge they have simply forgotten. He reminds them of who He is and what He has done, and on that basis, He calls them to a life of exclusive fidelity. He reminds them of their liberation in order to warn them against a new and more insidious form of slavery.
The central issue here is covenant memory. What a people remembers defines them. What they choose to forget destroys them. God calls Israel, and by extension He calls us, to remember our deliverance not as a quaint historical fact, but as the defining reality of our existence. He freed us for a reason: to be His people. And being His people means we listen to His voice, and His voice alone. To listen to other voices, to entertain other gods, is not just a minor infraction. It is cosmic treason. It is like a rescued man turning his back on his rescuer to go make friends with the kidnapper.
This psalm is a courtroom drama. God is the plaintiff, the witness, and the judge. Israel is on the stand. And the charge is a spiritual adultery that began with a simple failure to listen. The remedy is not complicated, but it is total. It is a return to exclusive worship, which is the only pathway to the abundant life God promises to pour out on His people.
The Text
"I relieved his shoulder of the burden, His hands were freed from the basket. You called in distress and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah. Hear, O My people, and I will testify against you; O Israel, if you would listen to Me! Let there be no strange god among you; And you shall not worship a foreign god. I am Yahweh your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it."
(Psalm 81:6-10 LSB)
The Divine Deliverance Recounted (vv. 6-7)
God begins His testimony by reminding Israel of the central, defining act of their history: the Exodus. He speaks in the first person, taking full credit for their salvation.
"I relieved his shoulder of the burden, His hands were freed from the basket." (Psalm 81:6)
The imagery here is potent and earthy. This is not abstract theology; it is the memory of aching backs and calloused hands. The "burden" was the forced labor of Egypt, the endless drudgery of hauling materials for Pharaoh's vanity projects. The "basket" was the tool of their slavery, filled with clay and straw for making bricks. God is saying, "I am the one who took that weight off your back. I am the one who took that tool of oppression out of your hands." This was not a negotiated settlement or a labor union victory. It was a unilateral act of divine power. God did not help them carry the basket; He freed them from it entirely.
This is the foundation of our relationship with God. It does not begin with our performance for Him, but with His rescue of us. Before God gives a single command, He first gives grace. The law at Sinai is given to a people already redeemed. The indicative of salvation precedes the imperative of obedience. We do not obey in order to be saved; we obey because we have been saved. Forgetting this is the first step toward either legalism, where we try to rebuild our own tower of bricks to impress God, or license, where we despise the freedom He purchased.
God continues, reminding them of the intimacy of their early relationship in the wilderness.
"You called in distress and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah." (Psalm 81:7)
Their part was simple: they "called in distress." This is the cry of utter helplessness. It is not the eloquent prayer of the righteous, but the raw scream of those who know they are finished. And God's response was immediate: "I rescued you." He answered from "the hiding place of thunder," a clear reference to the awesome power and mystery of His presence at Mount Sinai. God is not a tame God. He is a terrifying God, whose voice shakes the mountains. Yet this terrifying God stooped to answer the cry of slaves.
But notice the next phrase, which seems jarring: "I tested you at the waters of Meribah." Meribah means "quarreling" or "strife." This was the place where the people, desperate for water, grumbled and rebelled against Moses and against God (Exodus 17). Why would God include this shameful failure in His reminder of deliverance? Because God's testing is a form of His grace. He tests us not to destroy us, but to reveal what is in our hearts and to teach us to depend on Him alone. The test at Meribah was a diagnostic exam. It revealed Israel's unbelief, but it also revealed God's astonishing faithfulness. Despite their quarreling, God still brought water from the rock. He is faithful even when we are faithless. The Selah invites us to pause and consider this profound mystery: a God who rescues, thunders, and tests, all as part of the same covenant love.
The Covenant Condition (vv. 8-9)
Having established the basis of His relationship with them, their deliverance, God now lays out the central obligation of the covenant.
"Hear, O My people, and I will testify against you; O Israel, if you would listen to Me! Let there be no strange god among you; And you shall not worship a foreign god." (Psalm 81:8-9)
The plea is passionate: "O Israel, if you would listen to Me!" This is the cry of a jilted husband, a grieving father. God's desire is not simply for outward compliance, but for the ear of their heart. To "listen" here means to hear and to obey. The great tragedy of Israel's history, and ours, is a failure to do this one thing.
And what is the one thing He wants them to hear? It is the first commandment, the foundation of everything else. "Let there be no strange god among you." A "strange" or "foreign" god is any god that is not Yahweh. It is any object of worship, any source of ultimate trust, that is not the God who brought them out of Egypt. This is not a suggestion; it is the non-negotiable condition of covenant life. Why? Because God is God. He is not one deity on a pantheon of equals. He is the Creator of all things, and He will not share His glory with another.
Idolatry is the native language of the fallen human heart. We are idol factories. If we do not consciously and deliberately worship the one true God, we will inevitably worship something else. It might be a carved image, as it often was for ancient Israel. Or it might be something more sophisticated. We worship our careers, our political ideologies, our sexual appetites, our children, our personal autonomy. A foreign god is anything we look to for what only God can provide: security, identity, meaning, and salvation. The command is absolute because the danger is total. To worship a foreign god is to place yourself back in slavery, to put the basket back in your own hands.
The Divine Promise (v. 10)
The chapter concludes with God restating His identity and issuing one of the most staggering promises in all of Scripture.
"I am Yahweh your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." (Psalm 81:10)
Once again, He grounds His command in His character and His past action. "I am Yahweh your God." This is His covenant name. "Who brought you up from the land of Egypt." This is His covenant deed. Everything hangs on this. He is not an abstract philosophical principle. He is the God who acts in history to save His people.
On that basis, He gives a command that is also a promise: "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." This is the language a mother bird uses for her chicks. They do nothing but open their mouths in helpless expectation, and she fills them. God is telling His people that the alternative to idolatry is not a grim, empty life of religious duty. The alternative to idolatry is infinite satisfaction in Him. The foreign gods demand everything and give nothing. Yahweh demands everything and gives everything.
What are we to open our mouths for? For everything. For provision, for wisdom, for forgiveness, for joy, for strength. This is an invitation to audacious prayer. It is a command to ask for great things. We are not to come to God with a thimble; we are to come with a tanker truck. Our problem is not that we ask for too much, but that we are content with too little. We go grubbing in the trash heaps of idolatry for scraps of satisfaction when our Father has prepared a feast. We are content to sip from muddy puddles when He offers us a river of living water. The only limit to God's generosity is our capacity to receive. He says, "Ask. Ask for big things. Test me in this. Open your mouth wide, and see if I will not fill it to overflowing."
Christ, Our Deliverer and Our Fullness
As with all the Psalms, we must read this through a Christological lens. Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of this entire passage. He is the one who truly relieves our shoulder of the burden. The burden He removes is not slavery to Egypt, but slavery to sin and death, a far more terrible taskmaster. He frees our hands not from the brick-basket, but from the works of the law by which no man can be justified.
When we were in distress, dead in our trespasses, we called out, or rather, the Spirit groaned within us, and God rescued us by sending His Son. God answered us from the true "hiding place of thunder," which is the cross of Calvary. At the cross, the full, terrifying thunder of God's wrath against sin was unleashed, but it was hidden from us because it was absorbed by Christ. He is the rock from which the water of life flows, even though we, like Israel at Meribah, were a quarreling and faithless people.
And it is in Christ that we are enabled to finally obey the command to have no other gods. He is the perfect image of the invisible God, and in Him, all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily. To worship Him is to worship the Father. All other gods are revealed as cheap imposters and pathetic counterfeits in the light of His glory. He is the true bread from heaven, the only one who can satisfy the deep hunger of the human soul.
Therefore, the promise finds its ultimate "Yes" in Him. "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." How does God fill us? He gives us Christ. He gives us His righteousness to cover our sin. He gives us His Spirit to dwell within us. He gives us His Word to be our food. He gives us His own joy as our strength. The Christian life is one of ever-expanding capacity for God. He calls us away from the dirt pies of idolatry, not to leave us hungry, but to give us the wedding supper of the Lamb. He is the God who frees, and He is the God who fills.