The majority of Psalm 81 is God’s speaking to Israel, “My people” (vv. 8, 11, 13). His people had gone astray from the Law. His people had stopped listening to God and worshiped strange or foreign gods (v. 9). Israel had broken the first two commandments of the Decalogue.
And in breaking God’s law, they had also broken God’s heart. Whenever God’s people – whether Israel or the church – sin, it grieves Him. Psalm 78:41 says that Israel’s disobedience in the wilderness “pained” the Lord. Eph 4:30 says that our sins grieve the indwelling Holy Spirit. It pains Him so for many reasons – His holiness being one of them – but the language of pain and grief, lament-language, tells us how deeply God loves His people. So that when we sin against His goodness revealed in His Word, it hurts Him as a husband would be hurt if His wife betrayed Him. And that marital reality is the deeper truth behind our relationship to God. That’s why verses like Jeremiah 3:8-9 and Ezekiel 23 call sin, especially the sin of idolatry, “adultery.”
The God of the universe, eternal, self-existent, infinitely perfect in His character…this God sees us as His bride. Christ, of course, picks this up throughout the Gospels (cf. Matt 9:15; 25:1ff). And in Revelation 19:7-9, the heavenly assembly with the Lamb and all the saints (called “the bride”) is called a “marriage supper.”
Consider how deeply and intimately Christ loves us, identifies with us, and invests in us that we would be called His bride. The marital intimate love of the Father and the Son applied to our hearts by the Spirit secures us in joy, peace, and confidence before our Triune God forever.
So, this is why our disobedience stings His heart so. This is why in Psalm 81:8, 13, God pleads with His people to listen to His voice and obey Him, to hear His admonition (lit. “testimony”) against them and believingly obey Him. And this is God’s same heart sounding forth through the NT commands today: calling the Lamb’s bride, His beloved people, to not be stubborn in heart but to believe in Him and humbly and gladly walk in His ways.
It is our pleasure to do that for our Bridegroom. Christ has married us to Himself by dying for us on the cross so that we might be a purified bride beautiful in His sight and zealous for good deeds. Let this gospel-truth fill our hearts till we can’t help but do whatever it takes to not grieve His heart but to please Him.
