A Word In Season: A Full Mouth (Psalm 81:10)

Psalm 81:10 and God’s Promise to Fill the Mouth

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. So spoke the Lord God in Psalm 81 and verse 10. He roots that promise in the verse in his past acts.

He points his people back to the Exodus, his deliverance of his people from Egypt, the great model of the salvation that he would accomplish in Christ Jesus. He reminds them of his faithfulness to them, of his strength toward them, of his love for them, of his mercy exercised in delivering them from oppression.

He wants them to remember all that he showed himself to be, and the promise that there was involved in that deliverance, that he would be their God and they should be his people. And it's because of that confidence in what God has been to them, and what he has therefore undertaken always to be to them, that he then says to them, open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

Coming to God with Need, Desire, and Expectation

They're to come in a posture of need, in a disposition to pray, and with an expectation of blessing. Perhaps you've seen footage, or you've seen for yourself, those baby birds that are crying for the food that the adults are going to bring them.

And they're in the nest, and their beaks are constantly prying open, and they're crying out. They're calling for sustenance, and the very call is an open mouth expecting to be fed. And here comes the mother or the father, and they bring the food, and they provide for those chicks what they need.

Well, in similar fashion, the believer is to open his mouth wide to God. He's to come with that sense of need, with that expression of desire, and with that anticipation of a blessing. Is that how we pray to God?

Do we cry out to him? Do we feel our need of what he alone is able to provide? Do we come with the confidence of those who know that God, our Redeemer, is both with us and for us? And do we actually anticipate that God, who hears prayer, will bless us?

Israel’s Unbelief and the God Who Still Fills

The problem in Psalm 81 is that despite all that God had said and done, all the promises he had made, and all the demonstrations of faithfulness he had provided, his people simply didn't believe that he would be to them again what he had always been.

But there's the promise. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. Here is the God to whom heaven and earth belongs. Here is the God whose redeeming acts struck fear into the nations of the world. Here is a God whose demonstrations of his heart of love toward his people simply stagger our expectations of what he can do.

And he says, I will fill your open mouth. I will provide all that you need. You cry to me and I will provide for you. There is no lack of strength in my hand. There is no lack of love in my heart. All that you truly need, I can and I will provide.

Trusting God’s Saving Power in Christ

Now, will we prove faithful in responding to the invitation of God? Will we, if we are Christians, remember the great acts of salvation, the great demonstration of God's saving power in the cross of Jesus Christ?

Will we believe that having given us his son, he will also with him freely give us all things? As we read this promise in the light of our experience of redemption, will we trust God to be true to himself and his word?

Will we plead with him for the blessings that only he can provide? Will we open our mouths, confessing our need, expressing our desires and anticipating his answer? Will we go on crying, waiting upon him, hanging upon his promises, who has said that he will fill our mouths?

Will God be behind hand in any of this? Will God hold back things that are needful? Will God restrain his blessing from us? Everything that he has always done, everything that he has always been, all assures us that if we still come and open our mouths, then the God of our salvation, the God who redeems, is still well able and most willing to fill it.