Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Paying Attention | The Writings | Psalm 81

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

We live in a world full of voices that are competing for our attention. What voices are you listening to? What if these voices have the power to shape how we live? In today's episode, Jeff shares how��Psalm 81 invites us to pay attention to the powerful and personal voice of God. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 81

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. You've probably been in a scenario like this. So imagine you're in a coffee shop or a restaurant, maybe at a party, and you're engaged with a conversation partner, and you are locked in, listening with your eyes and your ears. And then out of nowhere, your attention is allured away by voices nearby. Maybe you overhear the use of a particular word or the mention of a topic that interests you. Or maybe your eyes catch one of the speakers and you decide that you just have to know what's being said in this other exchange.

But the problem is obvious. You're still, quote unquote, listening to the person in front of you. Or at least you're pretending to. And then you find yourself in a listening battle, a dilemma. Do you intentionally disregard this newer, captivating conversation so that you can focus on the person you're committed to hearing? Or do you feign attention with your friend and give your ears over to the competing voices? If this has ever happened to you, you're not alone. In fact, we can't help but focus our attention

on a particular sound amidst a cacophony of voices. Researchers call this phenomenon the cocktail party effect. In a room full of sound, we are wired to cut through the fog of noise and grasp a particular voice to pay attention in a singular direction. But the question is this. Amidst the competing voices in the room, who will we pay attention to? The allure of listening to other competing voices has plagued the people of God for millennia, stretching back into the history of the Bible and into our lives today. So it's no surprise that the Bible addresses our attention problem in many places, including Psalm 81. This Psalm will help us recognize our tendency to pay attention to the wrong voices while also helping us cut through the noise and hear the one voice that gives us life.

As we approach God's word, let's pause and ask for His grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life and breath. and we thank you for your word today. Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in Psalm 81. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, let's pick up in the middle of Psalm 81 with verse 8.

Here, the living God shines a bright light on our listening issue. We read this. Here, oh, my people, while I admonish you, O Israel, if you would but listen to me, there shall be no strange God among you. You shall not bow down to a foreign God. Okay, did you notice here how the listening problem of God's people is tied to the tendency to listen to competing voices? There's an intentional connection here between verses 8 and 9. God is saying to his people, listen to me. Don't listen to the competing voices appealing to your allegiance. Listen to me. Verses 11 through 13 unpack this problem further by

looking back on the rough track record that God's people have in listening to him. Pick up in verse 11. But my people did not listen to my voice. Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels. Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways. So here we see. See, how the competing voices don't just impact what we hear, but how we live. There's an emphasis here on how the people of God live, who they submit to, the ways that they walk in, which is just a biblical image for how you live in every area of your life. These competing voices don't just want us to pay them our attention.

They want us to pay them our money, our calendars, our bodies, our emotions, all of who we are, is impacted by who we listen to. So if your life is like a cocktail party, what are the voices drawing you away from listening to your creator? Maybe it's a voice on social media, calling you to become a kind of person who better fits the temporary values of our cultural moment. It could be the voice of vanity, the voice of pleasure on your own terms, or perhaps it's the voice of God's enemy, telling you that you're not worthy of his love, the lying voice, telling you that you'll never belong in God's family. Psalm 81 is trying to tell us that these voices are more powerful than we tend to believe, but it's also trying to tell us that there is a different, better, stronger

voice in the room. There are two big themes in Psalm 81 that point to God's voice as the one worthy of our attention. The first theme is evident in verses 6 through 7 as the psalmist reflects on the deliverance of God's people from slavery in Egypt. So God's voice is worthy of our attention because he is the only voice that saves us. The other theme shows up in verses 10 and 16 and they tell us that God is the only voice that really provides for us and satisfies us. I'll read verse 10 because it combines both of these themes together. Notice how God is both Savior and provider here. Verse 10 says this, 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. Now, this is an especially powerful verse because it gives a biblical hyperlink to the prologue of

the Ten Commandments back in Exodus 20, verse 2. It's God's way of saying, if you want to know whether my voice is worth your attention, remember who I am. Remember what I've done for you, what I will do for you. There is no other voice that saves you and provides for you and satisfies you. The theme of God as our saving, satisfying provider turns out to be a huge emphasis not only in the words of this Psalm, but in the way that this Psalm was used in history of God's people. So quick pause for a history Bible nerd moment. I promise. This will be worth it. The first three verses of Psalm 81 described the celebratory music of a feast day. This tips us off to the fact that this Psalm was likely used during two annual feasts for the Jewish people that occurred in the fall at the end of the harvest.

So the first is the feast of trumpets when the Israelites stopped their work and presented offerings of gratitude to God. The second feast is the feast of Booths, where God's people remembered their wilderness journey from Egypt to the Promised Land while they lived in Booths or tents. Now, both feasts were occasions to remember God's faithful provision in the past, while looking ahead to the next harvest, trusting that God would provide again. Okay, why are we talking about these feasts? The use of Psalm 81 in both of these celebratory feasts, it indicates that,

the perennial nature of the attention question for God's people. The need to pay attention to God's voice became a part of the rhythm of life for the Israelites. They knew that they needed to remember why God's voice is worth listening to. So this Psalm and the feasts themselves became ongoing, living reminders of who God is, what he's done, what he will do,

and why his voice is different. He's the only one who has a personal affection and love for the people he's called to himself. Now there's an interesting detail with the cocktail party effect that I think applies here. When you're surrounded by other voices in a crowded room, one of the things that enhances your ability to focus on the one voice that matters is when that voice reaches out to you in a personal way by using your name. There's an intimacy, an affection that's created when someone uses your name.

It's a way of saying, I'm not just another voice in the room. I'm the voice that cares about you. So if the influences vying for our attention and our allegiance are like voices in a cocktail party, then God's provision and care are like a direct link to his people. It's him using our name, using your name, to get your attention.

I'm the one who saved you. I'm the one who satisfies you. So listen to me. Throughout the Old Testament, the people of God did not have a great resume of listening to their saving, providing king. But Psalm 81 isn't just a history lesson. It's a mirror. It's throwing the question our way.

Who will we listen to? Who will you listen to? Are there competing voices that you need to recognize and then turn away from? so that your eyes and ears are on the one who loves you and satisfies you. Are there ways that you're intellectually listening to God, yet aren't responding with the kind of listening that changes how you live, the kind of listening that changes your thought patterns, your desires, your habits,

a kind of listening that changes the words you use with other people. We're surrounded by the clamor of competing voices, marketing themselves for our attention. But cutting through the noise, there is a different voice, a voice that calls you by name, a voice that says, I know you, I've saved you, I'm providing for you, and I love you. Listen to me.