Psalms 78
Bible Passage: Psalms 78
Today’s psalm is a pretty long one with 72 verses, but it has one clear main theme to it all. And this is the relationship between God and the Israelites that dwelled in the wilderness after being brought out of Egypt. So remember when we read in earlier books (i.e. Exodus to Deuteronomy) about how they behaved towards God, and that they kept disobeying Him and tested Him in their hearts and all that other obnoxious stuff? Yea, this psalm pretty much reminds us of those things…
And this psalm can also be tied in with some verses in 1 Corinthians 10.
Learning from the Children of Israel…
Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted…
– 1 Corinthians 10: 6
And they tested God in their heart, by asking for the food of their fancy…
Psalm 78: 18
As seen in Psalm 78, and the verse above from 1 Corinthians, the Israelites at the thing desired for a lot of things. They desired for meat because the manna from heaven was not good enough to satisfy their cravings. They desired to return to Egypt because it seemed that life in the wilderness was a lot worse.
Nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; Nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer…
– 1 Corinthians 10: 9-10
Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power; The day when He redeemed them from the enemy…
Psalm 78: 41-42
Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God, and did not keep His testimonies…
Psalm 78: 56
In addition to desires, they were shown to be a very unsatisfied and ungrateful bunch, weren’t they? Not only did they constantly complain about their “pitiful” state, but they also tempted and tested the Lord in their hearts. They kept blaming God and Moses for whatever bad things had happened them and sorta “challenged” Him to do things (thinking that He couldn’t do them). And what’s worse, even after all that God had done for them (e.g. the 10 plagues, brought them out of Egypt, game them water from rocks, gave them manna and even the quails, parting the Red Sea, blah blah blah, and so on and on and on and on…), they still doubted Him and kept testing Him! And they were always mostly unhappy…
Examining Ourselves
Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come…
– 1 Corinthians 10: 11
Now we may be thinking about how terrible these guys were, or that we can’t believe that they could behave like that towards God, or that they can be so unbelieving. Although we may not be as bad as them, the Bible did say that they serve as examples to us that we may not behave like them or commit the same wrongs as them. This means, we too are susceptible to whatever sins they had committed.
Now the questions are: Are we in any way like them? Are we better than them?
I think many of us have some sort of cravings and desires. But whether we let them get the better of us, such that we place those things above God, is for each of us to consider within ourselves. For example, if we are willing to skip Sabbath just to get a chance to meet our favourite celebrities who have chosen just that time to come to Singapore, then we are no better then the Israelites…
And how many of us can safely say that we have gone through life (so far) without a hint of complaints? I know I have complained about many things over the years, some big and some trivial. But even worse than that, how many times have we actually blamed God in our hearts, whether we realised it or not? We must be careful that sometimes we might just think that God wants to make our lives difficult or that He cannot benefit us. We must guard our hearts from such thoughts…
Understanding our God
Now that we’ve looked at the Israelites and ourselves, what about God?
Therefore the Lord heard this and was furious; So a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel…
– Psalm 78: 21
We can see that God did reprimand and punish the Israelites on numerous occasions (righteously of course) and gave them many warnings. Even in our case, when we have sinned, the Holy Spirit will rebuke us and sometimes we face punishments in many forms. And He gives us many warnings through the Holy Scriptures. He does all these things because He is a righteous God and He does not want us to sin.
But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them. Yes, many a time He turned His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath, for He remembered that they were but flesh, a breath that passes away and does not come again…
– Psalm 78: 38-39
However, He is also a compassionate and merciful God. Even though the Israelites kept sinning and committing the same mistakes over and over again, He forgave them and showed them mercy over and over again too. He did not forsake them, but instead continued to lead them on in the wilderness , and even the future generations when they entered into the promised land of Canaan.
Likewise, God is full of compassion and mercy towards us. As long as we have a heart of repentance, He is willing to forgive us. He will continue to lead us onwards in our life of faith.
For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust…
– Psalm 103: 14
He knows our every weakness, because we are just like the dust. He understands us because He had come down to earth in our form of flesh and was tempted based on the weaknesses of the human flesh (i.e. lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life), but was victorious over Satan.
Therefore, we can see that God really loves us and understands us. But He wants us to obey Him and not do the things that the Israelites did against Him…
Let us continue to draw from these lessons with regards to the Israelites during that time, that we may not commit the sins that they did, but learn to appreciate and understand our merciful and righteous God…