Psalms 81:1 “Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.”
Psalms 81 exhorted Israel to worship and obediently serve “God”. They were to loudly annouce the time and place of worship and they were to come together, unified in singular focus upon the “God our strength”, “the God of Jacob”. To “Sing aloud” is to jubilantly declare the Glory and Majesty of “God” in pleasant sounding hymns with truthful poetic words. When the poetic words are sung to pleasant sounding hymns, the harmony stimulates our minds to enhance our memory of the Gospel Message contained in the poetry. Poetic singing has long been a favorite tool of teachers; remember the “ABC” jingle that even very mature folks still remember from their early childhood. It is believed that this Psalm was energetically sung at the time of Israel’s Feasts to remind them that “God” is their “strength”, the “strength” that sustained and delivered them from bondage and trials from which they could not have possibly delivered themselves. The Apostle Paul tells us that these ceremonial Feasts were “a shadow of things to come” (Colossians 2:17); that is, they pointed to the Glorious New Testament Church that the Messiah, Himself has now built and still maintains (Matthew 16:18). Thus, even down to this very day we meet to worship, to “Sing aloud unto God our strength”! Thus we worshipfully declare in song that it is our God’s “strength” that delivers us from our enemies, it is our God’s “strength” that so bountifully provides for us, it is our God’s “strength” that “hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (II Timothy 1:9), and it will be our God’s “strength” that will raise us from the dead and convey us to our Eternal, Heavenly Home! So, let us prayerfully come together to worshipfully “Sing aloud unto God our strength”!