The Bible Study Hour

Narrator: The Gospel is founded on an historical fact, that Jesus died on the cross of Calvary. The history of the Bible helps us understand who God is, not a God of our imagination, but a God who invades history to accomplish his purposes. The writers of scripture laid out that history to remind God's people that certain actions must not be repeated.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice. Preparing you to think and act biblically.

God's people do not always learn from the mistakes of the past, but even in failure, there is hope. Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 78, a history of God's people and the message that our God is the God of second chances.

Dr. James Boice: For 10 years, between 1978 and 1988, I was chairman of a group known as the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. And one of the objections to the high view of the Bible, which we were trying to uphold, that has prevailed all down through the centuries of church history, is that the Bible may very well be accurate and true and reliable in areas of faith and morals. But it can't really be trusted in the areas of history and science.

So when it speaks of an historical matter, you don't have to take it seriously. All you really have to do is believe it when it speaks about God and what you want to do.

Now, we replied in those days, as I continue to reply today, that it's not that simple. You can't divide it up that way. Because although it may be true with other religions that the religious ideas are separated from history, it is certainly not true with Christianity. Christianity is an historical religion. The religion of the Bible is grounded in the acts of God in history.

Now, that is obviously true in the New Testament, because the entire gospel that we proclaim is that God invaded history in the person of Jesus Christ. He became the God-man, and not only did he live and teach and do the things that are recorded about him in the Gospel, but at the end of his earthly life, he died on the cross, becoming an atonement for our sins. The whole gospel hangs on that.

The very Son of God actually died in our place on the cross. So that's an historical gospel. And if you attack the history, well, you inevitably undermine the very essence of what Christianity is all about.

Now, not only is that true of the New Testament, where it is obvious to us, it is true of the Old Testament as well. Because the Old Testament is not just laws, it's not just the 10 Commandments, it's not just a revelation of God to Moses or something of that nature that can be expressed in theological language, it's also God's great saving acts in history.

And there are a number of psalms that talk about that. Psalm 78 is one of them, but it's only one. It's really the first great example of this that we've come to. Now, we are going to find other examples. Psalm 80 is one, we come to that in in two more studies, but there are psalms that do it extensively. Perhaps the best examples are Psalms 105, 106, 107, 114, 135, and 136. We're going to come to all of those in due time.

These rehearse the history of God's dealings with Israel in order to make the point. God is a certain way. He is like he has revealed himself to be in history and not other than that. And so we have to come to terms with the God who is, not a God of our imagination.

Furthermore, the history shows what happens when you follow God and when you don't follow God. When you follow after God, there's blessing. When you don't follow after God, there's judgment. And so the history is reviewed in order to say to the people in the present day, "Now, look, if this is the way God is like, and this is what history is like, this is how you ought to live."

We do have one example, one classic example of that in the New Testament, and that's Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrin that's recorded in the seventh chapter of the book of Acts. They hauled him up and were upset by his teaching, and he began to review the history of Israel. And his whole point was that God had sent a whole series of prophets to the people. And every time God sent a prophet, they rejected the prophet, and often they killed them, and now finally they've killed Jesus Christ.

So he used their history to show them that they were behaving that way today and they ought to turn from it. They ought to repent of what they were doing because that is what they had done and the judgment had come.

Now, Psalm 78 is like this. It's the longest of these historical psalms. And so it's a good one with which to begin, and it has a simple lesson. It's going to review an awful lot of history, but the lesson itself is a very simple one, and it's just this: history must not repeat itself.

The history of the people has been bad, but don't let it happen again. That's what he's saying. Remember what happened and repent and don't do it again. But of course, they did do it again. But the history says is that they rejected God, and they turned from his ways. They did do it all over again when they rejected Jesus Christ. But that's the message of the psalm.

Now, it falls into seven stanzas, and generally speaking, they're well divided in the New International Version. There are some variations in the way they're treated by the commentators, but the stanzas that you have here are good ones. The first eight verses of the psalm are a very compelling preamble to what's going to be said. He's going to be talking about this history, but he begins in these first eight verses to explain why he's talking about the history, and what it is exactly that he's going to do.

Now, there are two things to notice there in the first eight verses. First of all, he describes what he is going to do as a parable. He's going to open his mouth in parables. Now, a parable to us usually suggests just a story. It doesn't even have to be true, probably isn't. We think of it as a kind of fictitious story that's made up to make a point. And it's true. Jesus' parables were like that, but the word itself involves more.

The word parable itself is composed of two words. "Para" means alongside of, as in the Paraclete. It's a reference for the Holy Spirit. He's one who's called alongside of us to help us. That's the first part, "para." And then the second part, "bole," is to throw or to cast. So a parable is something, a story, an historical incident, or something of that nature that is placed alongside of something else in order that we might learn from the comparison.

So in this case, what we have are the Old Testament stories, the history of Israel, laid over against the present time so that we might not repeat the mistakes of those who lived in the past. So that's what he's doing. That's what this is going to be all about.

The second thing we want to notice is the emphasis in this preamble upon the children. Telling the children the sort of things that they need to know. And for the same reason. So the children won't repeat the mistakes of the past, do what their fathers had done before them.

Now when Asaph begins to talk about the children, he is reflecting a great theme of the earlier books of the Old Testament, particularly the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy means the second law, or the second giving of the law. The fifth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy repeats the Ten Commandments that you have in Exodus. But in the sixth chapter is very strong, the chapter that follows the second giving of the Ten Commandments, in stressing how it's important that we don't forget it and that we pass these teachings to our children.

It says that in a number of places, "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children." Then a little later on, it sort of writes out a little dialogue so you don't miss the idea. "In the future," it says, "verses 6 through 9, and 20 through 25, in the future, when your son asks you, 'What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws that the Lord our God has commanded you?' Then you tell him this: 'We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes, the Lord sent miraculous signs and wonders, great and terrible, upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. But he brought us up out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers. And the Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord our God so that we might always prosper and be kept alive as is the case today.'"

Now, that's what it says in Deuteronomy. That's what you're supposed to teach your children. And Asaph, as he begins to record this psalm and review some of this history, the very things that were supposed to be taught, is saying the same thing. He's saying, "Make sure you tell your children these things," in order that they might live righteous lives and follow after the Lord and be blessed and not experience judgment.

Now, there are different ways in which you can apply that, but one obvious way, in view of the struggles that we're having today in the area of education, is this: We are not in favor as Christians of what is commonly called value neutral education. The world strongly believes in value neutral education, and what that really means is that they resist moral standards. They want to be free to do exactly what they want to do. And so, if you try to talk about moral standards or absolutes or right and wrong, you're opposed by that in our world today, and that in a very vigorous way. The world will fight you for it.

There are organizations that will sue you if you try to say anything that has any morality in it in the public sphere. But of course, we're paying the price for that. If you throw out morals, then people begin to act immorally. And so we have cheating in the schools and violence in the schools, and rape and robbery, and all of the things that would just have been thought impossible even half a generation ago.

You see, we're not for that. Christian people, like the Jews of old, have the responsibility of reviewing the past in order that our children might learn truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and go in the Lord's way. Now, they don't always do it, of course, but we haven't always done it ourselves either, but that's our responsibility. And so we have to do that and we have to do it faithfully. If necessary, we have to do it in our own schools, if we're not allowed to do it elsewhere.

I was talking just this noontime with somebody who just came back from Russia, talking about how hungry they are to hear something about God in the schools. Teach us something about God and morals in the schools of Russia. Isn't that ironic? Russia, the great evil empire according to Ronald Reagan, now welcomes religion. America, the land of the pilgrims, the land of God, won't even let you say anything about God in the schools. Can't even pray in the school, can't even wear a cross in schools. Can't, can't do any of that, you see. But we are opposed to that as Christian people, and we do it in the whole line of the biblical tradition.

Now, that's the preamble. With verse 9, you come to the second of these stanzas, where he actually begins to get into this, and he begins with God's dealings with Ephraim. He was one of the 12 Jewish tribes. It's a little bit of a puzzle to us why Asaph should talk so much about Ephraim. For a couple of reasons. First of all, Ephraim does not seem to us to be one of the prominent tribes. We think of Judah, perhaps, or Benjamin, or whatever it may be. But we don't normally think of Ephraim. We wouldn't give Ephraim this kind of prominence. And secondly, the incident that's referred to here, that the men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day of battle, is something that we don't even know about. Whatever that's referring to, we don't find it anywhere else in the Old Testament. So, a little bit of a puzzle.

Some battle, apparently, they didn't fight. The others fought, they turned back, but we don't know anything about that. Now, why in the world does Asaph take that particular tack? Well, I think there's a very good reason, and it comes clearly later in the Psalm. What we find in the sixth stanza, verses 56 and following, where he begins to talk about Ephraim again, is that God rejected this tribe as the tribe out of which the Messiah should come.

In the early days, Ephraim really was a prominent tribe. When they came out of Egypt and during the years of the desert wandering, and when they entered into the promised land to begin the conquest, Ephraim was one of the strongest and certainly the most numerical of the tribes. So you would naturally think that it would be from Ephraim that the blessing would come, the Messiah would come. But at the end of the Psalm, it sort of ends on that note. This is what Asaph's trying to pound away at. We find that God rejected Ephraim as the tribe through which the Messiah would come. He established Judah instead. And not only did he reject Ephraim, he rejected Shiloh, which was a city in Ephraim's territory where the ark was kept, in order to bring the ark to Jerusalem and establish the center of the kingdom in Jerusalem in the tribe of Judah, in the south.

So you see the point is this: Ephraim did not follow after the Lord, so God rejected Ephraim. He's saying it here, he's going to say it at the end, and his point is for us, that's just the way it's going to happen. If you do not follow after God, you find that you suffer for it. Whole churches have been rejected, have become nothing in the sight of God, because they don't follow after God. Remember what Jesus told the church at Ephesus in those letters to the churches that we find in the early chapters of the book of Revelation. Jesus said, "Revelation 2:5, 'If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.'"

What Asaph is saying to the people of his day is, "Repent of your sin so that it doesn't happen with you. It's happened in the past, it'll happen again. So be careful."

Now, we go to the next stanza. When the devil tempted the Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness, which is recorded in Matthew 4 and also Luke 4, one of the things he tempted him to do was jump off the temple. Because the devil said, "You read in the Psalms, in the 91st Psalm, that God will send his angels to lift you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone." So he said, "Look, why don't you just try that out and see if it really works? If you really trust God, jump off the temple, he'll lift you up and you'll come floating down, you won't get hurt, people will say a miracle, it's a great way to begin your program."

And Jesus replied by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16. And the text he replied with was this: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." Oh, he replied rightly. Now when we come to this next stanza, the stanza that begins with verse 17, we find that that's exactly what the people in the wilderness did. Verse 18 says, "They willfully put God to the test."

Now, what did they do exactly that was putting God to the test? Well, they they didn't put him to the test by expecting him to provide life's necessities. Because God was obliged to do that. God had led them out into the wilderness and he didn't lead them out into the wilderness to die. So if they lacked food, he had to provide food. If they lacked water, he had to provide water. That wasn't the problem. The problem was first that the people were dissatisfied with what God had done. They wanted more.

Ever find yourself like that, being dissatisfied with what God has done? Think of all that God has given us. Just think back in previous ages of this world's history, how people suffered without any of the things we have that make life nice. We have all of that, and yet we're dissatisfied, we want more. That's what they did, the first thing. And then secondly, they considered that the reason why God did not give them everything they wanted was because he couldn't do it.

So, if you put that into theological terminology, their sins were first ingratitude and then second, unbelief. And so it was in those two areas that they put God to the test.

Now, Asaph is concerned here to highlight the base nature of these sins. And the way he does it is by highlighting the abundance of God's blessings. You just read through that stanza and you'll see how he does it. He talks about God raining down manna on them, an abundance of manna, plenty of food. He talks in verse 25 of them having all the food they could eat. And as for water, verse 20 says, "When he struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly." You see what he's saying? He's saying, "The food was not poor fare." He calls it a little later on, "the food of angels." As for water, they had plenty of water to drink.

And yet the people were still dissatisfied. What they say, verse 19, is this: "Can God spread a table in the desert?" I mean, the kind of table we would like, right? And verse 20, "Can he supply meat for his people? He's given us his manna, but is he really able to go beyond that? Is he able to give us meat? That's what we really want."

What Asaph reminds the people is, "So when they asked for meat, God gave them meat. He sent the quail, but they got sick on it, and many of them died." Because Asaph says, "God's anger flared out against the people because they weren't satisfied with what he had done." Dissatisfaction with God when he's given us all things richly in Jesus Christ is certainly one of the great sins of the church.

Well, the judgment that is mentioned at the end of the third stanza leads into the subject matter of the fourth stanza, which is verses 32 through 39. The theme of this stanza is repentance, and the connection is this: when the people were judged, they repented. The problem is that their repentance wasn't true repentance. It was sort of a temporary little thing to get God off their backs, as it were.

It reminds us of Hosea. Hosea, in that first of the great minor prophets, his writings has two sections, one in chapter 6 at the beginning, one in chapter 14 at the beginning, in which he talks about repentance. And at the end, he talks about a true repentance. But in chapter 6, he talks about a false repentance. And in Hosea, what they say is this: They say, "Well, let's just repent. You know, God's been tough with us, and we don't want this to go on anymore. Let's just repent because, you know, when you repent, he's always good to you again. He changes his mind. You know, it's like the sun coming up in the east and going down in the west, and like the moon coming out at night. That's what God is like."

It's a very glib kind of thing. And that's what is true here. Look what Asaph says, verses 34 through 37. "Whenever God slew them, they would seek him. They eagerly turned to him again. They remembered that God was their rock, that God Most High was their redeemer. But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues. Their hearts were not loyal to him. They were not faithful to his covenant."

You see, that's a hypocritical repentance, and it must be nauseating to God. What Hosea says in his prophecy is that true repentance involves this: First of all, an honest acknowledgment of sin. If you don't hear much of today. Secondly, a turning from it, and third, an appeal to God's grace. Now, all of that is absent here. And yet there's a striking note, almost a surprising note, because in the same stanza that talks about this false repentance, Asaph says, "Nevertheless, God is merciful, and he atoned for their iniquities and did not destroy them."

What he's saying is that obviously that's what they deserved, to be destroyed. And yet God was a merciful God and he preserved them anyway. Now, that is exactly the way God is with us. What if you and I got what we deserved from God? We'd be in hell right now. Or if it wasn't hell, if God held up on that, we certainly would not enjoy any of the blessings we enjoy as Christians. We wouldn't have the fellowship of other people. Nobody would be praying for us. We'd be all out there on our own like the world, without any kind of guidance, not knowing the law of God. If God wasn't merciful, if you say God is merciful. And so in spite of the fact that we deserve not only abandonment by God, but hell and damnation, that's what we deserve. In spite of that, God has been merciful.

Well, a mercy like that and a love like that demands our grateful response and our love. Isaac Watts wrote, "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." That's what Asaph is saying, you see. That's the way God has treated you in the past, in spite of the way you have treated him. Then he deserves everything from you and you should follow after him.

One of the commentators on the Psalms that I often quote from, Stewart Perowne of an earlier age, actually writing in the 1800s, calls this passage "a most striking and affecting picture of man's heart and God's gracious forbearance in all ages. Man's sin, calling for chastisement, chastisement producing only temporary amendment, God's goodness forgotten, and yet God's great love never wearied." Well, it really is affecting, except for the fact that quite often it doesn't affect us, and we go our own way.

Now, there's a sense in which the stanza of the psalm that begins with verse 40 is a new beginning. Some commentators have called it that, a new beginning, because what he does here is go back and review the history of the people again, going back to the Exodus from Egypt and talking about the plagues. Some commentators have divided the Psalm into two halves this way, and some of the more critical ones say it's actually two Psalms put together and so forth. It isn't that. This second half builds over where you come out at the end of the first half, but nevertheless, it does review the history.

And so you you look at that and you say, "Now, what is the point here? Why at this point, halfway through the Psalm, does Asaph go back to the beginning as it were and start all over again?" Well, the answer is obvious. You see, God has done all these things for the people. The people have not really repented and followed after him. So what in the world are you going to do? The only thing you can do is go back and tell the story again. Maybe they'll get it the second time. You see? That's what he's doing. That's exactly what he's doing here.

Think of what he has done. Look, stanza one, we were reminded that God had done miracles, but the people had forgotten them. In stanza two, we were reminded that he provided for the people's needs abundantly. But they remained unsatisfied. In stanza three, we're reminded of God's just judgments, but these only produced a false repentance. In fact, not even his mercy was effective, for in spite of his mercy, the people, verse 40, often rebelled against him in the desert and grieved him in the wasteland.

Put them together. You've got miracles, you've got provision, you've got judgment, you've got mercy. Four great actions on the part of God, and yet, in spite of them, the reaction of the people is rebellion and unbelief. How's that possible? Well, the answer is there in verse 42. It's probably the most important verse in the Psalm. It says, "They did not remember his power, the day he redeemed them from the oppressor." That's it. That's exactly it. They forgot the redemption that God gave them.

I'm glad he used that word redemption there because that is one of the key words in the Christian's vocabulary to describe the work of Christ. What Jesus Christ did for us on the cross is redeem us from our sin. He bought us out of our slavery to sin. He set us free. That's what the word means. Just as as God set the people of Israel free from their bondage in Egypt. But just as they forgot it, we forget it. And so we go on and live our lives as if God hadn't done any of that for us.

Isn't it appalling that that should be the case? But it is. That's exactly the way we operate. Derek Kidner, another commentator, says on this point, "If redemption itself is forgotten, faith and love will not last long." What he means by that is that if it's possible to forget the fact that Jesus Christ redeemed you on the cross from your sin, then you're not going to trust him for very long in life's trials or love him enough to obey him in times of temptation.

Well, what do we do in that situation? We call down some some special solution from heaven? Do we do we dig around in the past and find something new that we've forgotten? No, no. We have to do exactly what Asaph does, and that is tell the story all over again.

You see, if you forget about the redemption of Jesus Christ, what do you need? You don't need a miracle, you need to hear about the redemption of Jesus Christ. You need to learn it again because you've forgotten it. And so that's what he does. He goes back and he begins to talk about the redemption of the Jews from Egypt, from their slavery. He talks about the plagues. He gives a good description of them. There are at least six of them here. There were ten, he leaves out a few, but he covers them more or less.

First of all, the turning of the Nile to blood, and the plague of flies, the multiplication of the frogs, the locusts, the hail, and finally, the killing of all the firstborn of Egypt. Those plagues build toward that last terrible judgment against the firstborn and set the tone for the contrast. Because what happens at that point is that God, in quite a different way, leads his people out of Egypt like a flock of timid but safe and trusting sheep.

Now, at the very end of that stanza, that is, at the end of stanza five, there are verses that bring them to the very border of the promised land and into it, verses 54 and 55. Some of the scholars put those two verses with the next stanza, but it really doesn't matter where you place them. What really does matter is when you get to this next stanza, that is, stanza six, beginning in verse 56, you find again that they put God to the test. But here what they have done is even heightened over what they did before. You see, before they were ungrateful and unbelieving and rebellious, and they put God to the test that way. But here what they do is worship idols.

See it there in verse 58. "They angered him with their high places. They aroused his jealousy with their idols." They rejected God. You see, they went after other gods, like we go after the gods of our culture. We are more concerned with being famous or rich or well-regarded or whatever it may be than we are with obeying Jesus Christ. That's what they were doing. And what it says is this, "So he rejected them." That's what I referred to at the beginning. That's why he starts talking about Ephraim. Because God rejected Ephraim as the tribe from which the Messiah would come, and he abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, which is where the ark was kept. He sent the ark into captivity. That refers to the time when it fell into the hands of the Philistines. And when God eventually brought it back and it never went back to Shiloh again.

It was kept in the house of a man named Abinadab, and the tabernacle was removed first to Nob and then afterwards to Gibeon and then finally to Jerusalem. And then in the time of David, the ark was taken up to Jerusalem in Judah. But it never went back to Ephraim again. That's why I said, you see, the second half of the Psalm is not just a repetition of the first half. It's going over the story again, but it's heightening it. And it's saying, "Look, here was the final result. It was apostasy." And because they rejected God, God, in a certain sense, had rejected them. It's a way of saying that one sin leads to another. Sin hardens hearts and therefore is something to be feared and kept away from.

And yet there's good news too. Because where the final stanza ends is where the Psalm itself ends, and it's this. He's spoken of God's building anger against entrenched human sin, but it also says that his mercy is not end. We have it at the end of stanza four, here the entire last stanza, beginning with verse 65, is given over to it.

I mentioned earlier about the second half and some commentators calling that a new beginning. Some commentators refer to this last stanza and say, "This is the new beginning." And it is in one sense, but only in the sense that there are always new beginnings with God. You see, Ephraim is rejected, but Judah is chosen. Shiloh is cast off, but Jerusalem becomes the new center for God's dealings. And Asaph ends on the note that God from Judah chose David to be Israel's great and faithful king.

Now, as we know, the people also went downhill from that point on, and by the time of the coming of Jesus Christ, they actually did away with Jesus, conspiring with the Romans to have him killed. Well, you see, you never, you never get to a plateau in any of this. You're either following after God and going up, or you're rejecting God and going down. And the history repeats itself. And the only real lesson from history, someone has said, is that we never learn from history.

But you see, by the grace of God, you can learn, and there are people who have learned. And down through the ages there are people who say, "Yes, yes, that's right. We have sinned. We've gone our own way, but God sent Jesus Christ to be our savior. And we believe that, and by his grace, we're going to follow after him. We, we deserve nothing, but we received everything in Jesus Christ." That's great good news. And so our job is to remember it, not to forget it. To remember God's mercy, to remember God's blessings, and to tell the children so that we pass it on to the next generation. And that's our calling too. Let's pray.

Our Father, we are thankful for this Psalm that reviews this history, which is not really our history as Gentiles, and yet is part of the history of the people of God, and the principles are the same. Where the people, in spite of your mercy and your power, your grace, your provision, even your judgment, in spite of all of that, went their own way, just as we do. But we thank you that you're merciful in spite of it all, that you're merciful to them, that you continue to work through the Jewish people and eventually brought Jesus Christ, a Jew, from that background, and have brought many to faith in him now today, both Jews and Gentiles. Our Father, we would follow after Jesus. We ask for grace to do it. We're never going to do it by ourselves, but we ask for grace to do it. And we thank you for the strength that is there in Jesus Christ alone. We pray in his name. Amen.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church.

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