Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 78: Remembring in untethered times

Psalm 78: 
God’s Guidance of His People in Spite of Their Unfaithfulness.

¹ Listen, O my people, to my instruction;
Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
² I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,
³ Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us.
⁴ We will not conceal them from their children,
But tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord,
And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.
⁵ For He established a testimony in Jacob
And appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers
That they should teach them to their children,
⁶ That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born,
That they may arise and tell them to their children,
⁷ That they should put their confidence in God
And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments,
⁸ And not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not prepare its heart
And whose spirit was not faithful to God.
⁹ The sons of Ephraim were archers equipped with bows,
Yet they turned back in the day of battle.
¹⁰ They did not keep the covenant of God and refused to walk in His law;
¹¹ They forgot His deeds and His miracles that He had shown them.
¹² He wrought wonders before their fathers
In the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
¹³ He divided the sea and caused them to pass through,
And He made the waters stand up like a heap.
¹⁴ Then He led them with the cloud by day
And all the night with a light of fire.
¹⁵ He split the rocks in the wilderness
And gave them abundant drink like the ocean depths.
¹⁶ He brought forth streams also from the rock
And caused waters to run down like rivers.
¹⁷ Yet they still continued to sin against Him,
To rebel against the Most High in the desert.
¹⁸ And in their heart they put God to the test
By asking food according to their desire.
¹⁹ Then they spoke against God;
They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?
²⁰ “Behold, He struck the rock so that waters gushed out,
And streams were overflowing;
Can He give bread also? Will He provide meat for His people?”
²¹ Therefore the Lord heard and was full of wrath;
And a fire was kindled against Jacob
and anger also mounted against Israel,
²² Because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation.
²³ Yet He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of heaven;
²⁴ He rained down manna upon them to eat
And gave them food from heaven.
²⁵ Man did eat the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.
²⁶ He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens
And by His power He directed the south wind.
²⁷ When He rained meat upon them like the dust,
Even winged fowl like the sand of the seas,
²⁸ Then He let them fall in the midst of their camp,
Round about their dwellings.
²⁹ So they ate and were well filled, and their desire He gave to them.
³⁰ Before they had satisfied their desire,
While their food was in their mouths,
³¹ The anger of God rose against them
And killed some of their stoutest ones,
And subdued the choice men of Israel.
³² In spite of all this they still sinned
And did not believe in His wonderful works.
³³ So He brought their days to an end in futility
And their years in sudden terror.
³⁴ When He killed them, then they sought Him,
And returned and searched diligently for God;
³⁵ And they remembered that God was their rock,
And the Most High God their Redeemer.
³⁶ But they deceived Him with their mouth
And lied to Him with their tongue.
³⁷ For their heart was not steadfast toward Him,
Nor were they faithful in His covenant.
³⁸ But He, being compassionate,
forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them;
And often He restrained His anger and did not arouse all His wrath.
³⁹ Thus He remembered that they were but flesh,
A wind that passes and does not return.
⁴⁰ How often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness
And grieved Him in the desert!
⁴¹ Again and again they tempted God, and pained the Holy One of Israel.
⁴² They did not remember His power,
The day when He redeemed them from the adversary,
⁴³ When He performed His signs in Egypt
And His marvels in the field of Zoan,
⁴⁴ And turned their rivers to blood,
And their streams, they could not drink.
⁴⁵ He sent among them swarms of flies which devoured them,
And frogs which destroyed them.
⁴⁶ He gave also their crops to the grasshopper
And the product of their labour to the locust.
⁴⁷ He destroyed their vines with hailstones
And their sycamore trees with frost.
⁴⁸ He gave over their cattle also to the hailstones
And their herds to bolts of lightning.
⁴⁹ He sent upon them His burning anger,
Fury and indignation and trouble, a band of destroying angels.
⁵⁰ He levelled a path for His anger;
He did not spare their soul from death,
But gave over their life to the plague,
⁵¹ And smote all the firstborn in Egypt,
The first issue of their virility in the tents of Ham.
⁵² But He led forth His own people like sheep
And guided them in the wilderness like a flock;
⁵³ He led them safely, so that they did not fear;
But the sea engulfed their enemies.
⁵⁴ So He brought them to His holy land,
To this hill country which His right hand had gained.
⁵⁵ He also drove out the nations before them
And apportioned them for an inheritance by measurement,
And made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.
⁵⁶ Yet they tempted and rebelled against the Most High God
And did not keep His testimonies,
⁵⁷ But turned back and acted treacherously like their fathers;
They turned aside like a treacherous bow.
⁵⁸ For they provoked Him with their high places
And aroused His jealousy with their graven images.
⁵⁹ When God heard, He was filled with wrath
And greatly abhorred Israel;
⁶⁰ So that He abandoned the dwelling place at Shiloh,
The tent which He had pitched among men,
⁶¹ And gave up His strength to captivity
And His glory into the hand of the adversary.
⁶² He also delivered His people to the sword,
And was filled with wrath at His inheritance.
⁶³ Fire devoured His young men, and His virgins had no wedding songs.
⁶⁴ His priests fell by the sword, and His widows could not weep.
⁶⁵ Then the Lord awoke as if from sleep, like a warrior overcome by wine.
⁶⁶ He drove His adversaries backward;
He put on them an everlasting reproach.
⁶⁷ He also rejected the tent of Joseph,
And did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,
⁶⁸ But chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which He loved.
⁶⁹ And He built His sanctuary like the heights,
Like the earth which He has founded forever.
⁷⁰ He also chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;
⁷¹ From the care of the ewes with suckling lambs He brought him
To shepherd Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance.
⁷² So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart,
And guided them with his skillful hands.

This is a psalm about remembering a big story… it is a passionate history lesson with a clear agenda. We need to remember to live fully in the present and to have a forward-looking hope for the future. Perhaps one of the gifts of lockdown has been remembering things from our past that we are so utterly grateful for because of God’s great and bountiful goodness. For, forgetting the big story of God means we lose the guy ropes that hold down the tent of loving faith and grateful understanding. Everything begins to flap around in the wind and soon we become untethered and exposed.

In this psalm, after scores of verses retelling the age-old founding story of the Jewish faith, suddenly, the story of remembering ends. It ends with a shepherd who has ‘skillful hands’. Psalm 78 is a moderately long poem of remembrance. And it is aptly placed following Psalm 77, where one of the important discoveries of the desolate psalmist is the importance of remembering God’s deeds in order to have hope.

This psalm takes the broad sweep of the history of the exodus, the wandering in the desert, the many disobediences and the almost incessant forgetfulness of the chosen people – until the very last verses where we arrive at God’s choice of a dwelling place (Mount Zion) and a leader (David).

The superscription for this psalm is: God’s Guidance of His People in Spite of Their Unfaithfulness. What the psalmist does is lay out the constant tension between God and his ‘chosen’ people. Notwithstanding their privileged place in God’s affections, the Israelite nation’s story is one of receiving a blessing and then, distressingly, soon forgetting that blessing. It is as if there is an inevitability about this. As soon as a God-follower becomes confident, things fall apart. We get drawn to other competing forces. In the case of the recounting of the serial disobedience (vs8, 17, 23, 32, 36, 40 etc). ‘They did not keep in mind his power, or the day when he redeemed them from the foe,’ is one of the most significant statements of the whole psalm (vs42). The propaganda of the psalmist’s history lesson focuses on repeated failures of the nation, the testing and stretching of God’s patience, demonstrations of his anger and wrath, followed by periods of true repentance and renewed hope. The psalmist wants the hearers to know, for future generations’ education’s sake, that God keeps coming up with a rescue plan, despite everything. And the psalm ends on the high note that a shepherd boy, plucked from virtual obscurity, becomes the instrument of God’s gracious rule. ‘With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with a skilful hand’ (vs72).

The purpose of the psalm is that that future generations should know – from the experience and history of the chosen people – that God is present and God is active in history. And that all God’s children should never fail to trust this activity.

In this time of Covid19, as in any other age, God is at work. God’s supreme work has already happened. He has sent his son Jesus to confront – to bring into the open – the powers of darkness that seek to destroy life again and again and again. This significant moment, the still centre of being around which everything else revolves, is the moment of God’s greatest defeat and humiliation – the death of Jesus on the cross. We remember Jesus’ death and resurrection as the founding centralities of our faith. We also remember his loving sacrifice in that missionally worshipful feast around a shared table, which is called the Eucharist. And we wait with hope for the day when we can again share bread and wine together, in remembrance of all Jesus did and all Jesus is doing, forming and shaping today.

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

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