Sermon Tone Analysis

Psalm 78: A Song of His-Story Unlearned

We will wrap up the reflections on Psalm 78 this morning.

If you haven’t yet done it, I encourage you to read Psalm 78 for yourselves.

Although it is the 2nd longest Psalm in the Bible, it does not take a long time to read.

Read it clear through at least once without stopping to try to sort out or study each verse.

Just soak it all in before you go back to consider the individual themes.

Psalm 78 is not a prayer, like many of the Psalms.

It is also not a “Halellujah” Psalm of Praise.

This Psalm is a history lesson for the people of God.

It was a history lesson for those who entered Solomon’s temple courts, and for later generations as they continued to deal with the challenges of sins against God while they were still living under God’s grace as the Chosen People of God.

I’ve broken this up into just 3 themes which are clear throughout the Psalm.

The first is the opening admonition of the Psalm,

We Must Tell His-Story

Our history of faith is the story of our relationship with our God.

It is our story but more importantantly is that our history is His Story of relationship with us.

And we MUST Tell His-Story for history to be complete.

A summary of our responsibilities to our descendents, our children and grandchildren and on, is in verses 4 and 7:

That’s the What we must do, now here is the WHY we must tell the story:

Tell the next generations so they will know that God can be trusted to take care of our future because he has already taken care of us in the past, and blessed those who keep his commandments.

But then the Psalm dives into our basic problem of sin and idolatrry.

And don’t think we are free of idolatry just because we don’t usually carry religious idols with us or trek off to take pilgrimage to bow before a representation of God or because we don’t chant our daily promises to God and offer daily sacrifices to prove our devotion.

The truth is, we are are as idol-adept as any of our ancestors.

It is difficult for the human mind to wrap itself around the idea of the eternal God who is Spirit and yet Father of his human Son and yet has no form or description.

So we make something.

We paint pretty or thoughtful pictures of Jesus the Son of God even though the Bible gives absolutely no description of Jesus.

So we paint the Son of God in our own image.

We don’t learn to converse with God very well, so we have a set pattern of prayers we say.

How many of you say pretty much the same words when you say grace for your meals or other times in the day when your prayers are common?

Most of us can be counted on to be repetative in our prayers.

We have our own chants to call up our God for our blessings.

We have descriptions of God that run anywhere from Heavenly Father to GrandFather to the Man Up There or the Guy in the Sky, or see the great artistry of the paintings in the Roman cathedrals and confirm for ourselves that God is like us, because the Bible says that we are made in his image.

But there is a lot of difference between an image and the reality.

To be made in the image of God is about as thorough a picture of who God is as is a selfie taken to show off how we look today or who we are with or where we are.

We are still pretty good at being idolators.

So take heed that we don’t slip into dangerous ground where we make God all about what we want from him.

Which brought us to the second theme of Psalm 78,

Why Do We Keep Doing That?

We read the continual disobedience of God’s people, as they substitute what isn’t God for God himself, and the turn from what is true to what is visible.

And the sins of idolatry and the sins of faithlessness continue to run their rollercoaster ride of obedience and disobedience, until it looks like all is lost, or we suffer for our sins and we experience the consequences of disobedience.

But even after God proves he is faithful to his promises of discipline we can’t quite quit our misbehavior, and the Psalmist writes in vers 32,

And finally when we run out of every other option, we get smart again.

And for a fleeting moment our memories are clear, so when we read verse 35 we say “finally!”:

But then, in the very next phrase our sinfulness is exposed once again:

If we are honest, we know we fit that category of disbelief as well.

It’s a good thing that we find the next record of His-Story with us, memory of God’s grace always at work:

For if we really get a handle on God’s majesty and power and greatness, it is a good thing that :

So God doesn’t just anihilate us like we deserve.

I remember Moses talking with God in Deuteronoly, reminding God that the ungodly nations would take note if God destroyed his chosen people.

Moses’ side of the story was kind of like saying, “So you had power enough to get them out of Egypt but you had to destroy them because your own people did believe in you?”

Which is where we are this morning as the last theme I want to note is this one, more a question than a statement:

Why Can’t We See God at Work?

This is a question the Psalm is asking, as it runs through all the missteps, mistakes and misdeeds of Israel and the miracles of God that has brought them out of bondage in Egypt and into the promised land, and finally to Zion where David’s choice by God to lead, and Judah’s appointment as the one tribe to represent all of Israel.

It’s a question for us as we live through the ups and downs of living in the blessings of God which we so often take for granted.

Until finally, we find how to live with thanksgiving under the rule of God, to discover the perfect plan he has for us.

After the Psalmist Asaph had run through the need for us to share the story of God’s greatness, he rehearsed the ups and downs of all God did for Israel and of how the Israelites slipped into sin over and over.

The third part of this second-longest song in the hymnal of Israel is a rehearsal of the greatest story of all time, and God’s new plan of blessing.

Let’s hear how it turns out:

What, AGAIN??!!

OOooh Boy, it didn’t take long for things to keep on getting bad in terms of their behavior.

The Psalmist just has to say it:

So here they were, in the desert when they should have been in the promised land already.

But because of lack of faith, they were stuck where they were.

Again and again, provoking the Lord God.

What is the point in that, after all?

What is there to gain in causing the Lord to turn from grace to judgement?

Round and round they went, always wandering, always looking for something that was different than what God was planning to give them.

And always getting God’s purpose for them lost in their desire to fulfill every need instantly.

Their problem was a short memory.

Just like you and I often have.

Wrapped up in the challenge of our “now” we forget the lessons of our “then” and are pretty sure God can’t take care of us “when”.

Since they can’t seem to remember the work of God for them, the Psalm rehearses the story, the most important story of their foundation as a nation.

It is true for all us.

We need to. . .

Remember What God Has Done For You

If we think about it, we all have a story of what God has done.

It may not have been what we have expected, but it was always what we needed.

Israel needed a rescue from Egypt.

And the Pharaoh, at that time the most powerful ruler in the world, commanding the greatest people of his day, was not about to let this rabble of slaves leave just because they complained about the work they were forced to do.

The Israelites needed to tell the stories again of what God did for them, and what he did to Egypt.

Remember the Miracles

The invitation to remember was part of the song they sang:

Sounds like a real melodious lilt, doesn’t it?

Just press into the melody and sing with the Levites,

Aw, now I’m starting to get into it:

And we just say, “It’s about time that tyrant got his nation rearranged and counted his losses too high.

As we continue to sing, we sing that:

Pharaoh’s Disbelief Meant

God Had to Pull Out All the Stops:

because the king of Egypt wouldn’t listen to reason, wouldn’t listen to God’s voice, wouldn’t relent or repent, finally, God made a drastic move:

And so while we are shaking our fist at Pharoah saying that’s what he deserved, we forget that we aren’t really far off from deserving what he got.

So its important that we:

Remember God’s Care

By rehearsing the past blessings of God that got us through and carried us on:

What a mighty God we serve!

He a God worthy of glory and praise, a God worthy of our time and attention.

Don’t forget that His Story reminds us of the many facets of God, as it describes

God as Both Shepherd and Destoyer

God Clears the Path for His People

So with all God has done, with the way he has set them free, led them through, fed and watered them and fought their battles for them,

They—no, We— Just Don’t Get It