Remember Your History
A people who forget what God has done will not trust Him for what He has promised.
What is the “shiny” you keep reaching for, even after it bites you again and again? In Remember Your History, Dr. Toby B. Holt preaches Psalm 78, where Asaph the Levite musician calls a forgetful people to remember and to teach the next generation everything God has done. Israel turned back in the day of battle, lost the Ark, doubted that God could “set a table” after the Red Sea and the manna, and ran after carved images — yet God remained faithful, raising up David and, at last, the Good Shepherd. Asaph pleads that the children “may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God” (Psalm 78:7). From a Reformed and Westminster perspective, this psalm presses the sufficiency of Scripture and the covenant faithfulness of God toward a faithless people.
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Questions This Sermon Answers
Psalm 78 is a long historical psalm that retells Israel's story from the Exodus to the reign of David in order to teach a forgetful people to remember God's works and obey Him. Asaph rehearses the Red Sea, the manna, Israel's repeated rebellion, the loss of the Ark, and God's mercy in raising up David. Its aim is stated plainly: “that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Psalm 78:7). Dr. Holt frames it around one question — what is the “shiny” you keep reaching for even after it bites you.
Psalm 78 is ascribed to Asaph, a Levite and a chief musician in the court of King David. He was “a man of the Word” who applied the lessons of what God had said and done to his own generation. The psalm opens, “Give ear, O my people, to my law” (Psalm 78:1), not as new revelation but as a call to remember truth already given. Asaph speaks for God to a people prone to forget.
Dr. Holt opens with the saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.” By that measure Old Testament Israel was “perpetually insane,” repeating the same sins and never learning. He pictures a shiny quarter in a box that also holds a rattlesnake: no one risks a hand for a quarter, because “the risk outweighs the reward,” yet Israel “liked the shiny too much” and kept reaching in and getting bit. Psalm 78:8 calls them “a stubborn and rebellious generation.”
Asaph insists the fathers must tell the children “the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works” (Psalm 78:4). Dr. Holt warns that if you do not learn the lessons of your history — your people's, your church's, and Scripture's — you are doomed to repeat them, and so are your children. Because God has not changed, knowing how He dealt with sin in the past tells us how He deals with it now. The Westminster Confession (1.1) grounds this in Scripture, given so the truth of God would be kept and propagated.
The psalm commands each generation to pass God's works to the next: “We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD” (Psalm 78:4). The goal is “that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born” (Psalm 78:6). Dr. Holt urges believers to be men and women of the Word who teach their children, that they in turn might teach their children. This duty reflects the covenant nurture the Westminster Standards require of parents and the church.
“The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle” (Psalm 78:9). Most commentators tie this to Israel's defeat by the Philistines when the Ark was captured (1 Samuel 4). The people had strayed and the priests were wicked, yet they carried the Ark into battle “like a magical amulet” and were slaughtered. Dr. Holt notes that from “ten thousand feet up” they looked the part, “but it was a facade if you got close” — a hollowed-out shell of religiosity, because they had forgotten God.
Ichabod means “the glory has departed,” the name given when the Ark was captured and Eli and his sons died (1 Samuel 4:21). Dr. Holt warns that any era of the church can wake up one day “with stained glass, pews, and hymnals, but it is Ichabod — God is not present.” If it could happen to His beloved people with the Ark in their midst, no denomination should presume it cannot happen to them. The remedy is to remain people of the Word rather than to rest in dead, formal religion.
After the plagues, the Red Sea, water from the rock, and the pillar of cloud and fire, Israel grew hungry and doubted God's provision: “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness” (Psalm 78:19)? Dr. Holt compares it to a father who dives in front of a speeding train to save his child, only to face a tantrum five minutes later — “what have you done for me lately.” God answered by raining down manna, whose Hebrew name means “what is it,” fresh every morning, yet “they sinned even more against Him” (Psalm 78:17).
“They provoked Him to anger with their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their carved images” (Psalm 78:58). Dr. Holt likens Israel to a disobedient child who not only does wrong but runs to any other adult on the playground, saying, “I'll go find me a different father.” Israel sought another father, worshiping a rock carved on Tuesday by Wednesday. God was moved to jealousy because He loved them as a father, but they did not want Him as their father.
Even against a faithless people God remained faithful, choosing “David His servant” to “shepherd Jacob His people” (Psalm 78:70-72). That shepherd-king points beyond David to Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, sent to bring His people back. Dr. Holt closes that “God is faithful even when we are faithless,” preserving His church corporately and seeking out each believer personally when we were not seeking Him. This covenant faithfulness is what the Westminster Confession (17.1) calls the perseverance of the saints, secured by God's unchangeable love.
In the Reformed tradition, Psalm 78's charge to teach each generation is anchored in the covenant of grace, whose promise runs to believers and to their children. Herman Bavinck argued that because covenant children stand within the sphere of God's promise, parents and church bear a solemn duty of nurture, instructing the young in God's redemptive acts rather than presuming upon or neglecting them. The Westminster Standards likewise frame catechesis as covenant obligation, and the Shorter Catechism itself was composed to hand the faith down.
1. The Duty to Remember and Teach God's Works
Psalm 78 commands each generation to hand down what God has done: “We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done” (Psalm 78:4). Forgetfulness breeds rebellion, while remembrance sets hope in God. The Westminster Confession (1.1) teaches that God committed His truth to writing precisely so it would be preserved and propagated to the church and her children.
2. The Peril of Forgetting God and Resting in Formal Religion
Ephraim “turned back in the day of battle” and “forgot His works and the wonders that He had shown them” (Psalm 78:9-11). They kept the outward forms — the Ark, the priesthood, the sacrifices — yet it was Ichabod, a hollow shell from which the glory had departed. The Westminster Confession (16.7) warns that works done without a heart purified by faith cannot please God, however religious they appear from a distance.
3. God's Covenant Faithfulness to a Faithless People
Though Israel tested, provoked, and forsook Him, God did not let His people go but “chose David His servant” to “shepherd Jacob His people” (Psalm 78:70-72), pointing forward to Christ the Good Shepherd. He is faithful even when we are faithless. The Westminster Confession (17.1) affirms that those whom God accepts in Christ can neither totally nor finally fall away, but persevere to the end by His unchangeable love.
The Scripture Text: Psalm 78:6-7 (NKJV)
“That the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.”
Continue studying: explore the full Book of Psalms sermon series, or browse the complete Reformed Sermon Archive.
About The Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt serves as the third President of New Geneva Theological Seminary (Colorado Springs, CO), founded 1993. An expository preacher with over 1.9 million sermon downloads on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Holt brings over 17 years of pastoral experience to his verse-by-verse Bible teaching. New Geneva offers fully online Reformed theological education — M.Div., Th.M., D.Min., and other degrees.
Summary. In this expository sermon on Psalm 78, Dr. Toby Holt of New Geneva Theological Seminary teaches that a people who forget God's law and His mighty works in their history are doomed to repeat the sins of their fathers. Preaching from Asaph's psalm, he shows that Israel became a stubborn, rebellious generation because they neither cherished God's commandments nor remembered His faithfulness, and he calls the church and the individual believer to remember God's steadfast covenant faithfulness so that fear of the future gives way to trust in the God who has always seen His people through.
The Folly of Repeating History: Israel's Stubborn Generation
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Now, if that is the definition of insanity, then based on that definition, if you were to look at the people of the Old Testament and read how often they went back to the well and kept doing the very things that they ought not do, that had never worked out in the past, if insanity is defined by doing things over and over and over and expecting a different outcome, then the people of the Old Testament were functionally, habitually, perpetually, repeatedly insane.
They could do the same thing a thousand times, expect a different result, and when it never turned out that way, they seldom changed course. They didn't seem to learn their lesson. If you were to take, I don't know, take something shiny, take a quarter or something like that, and you put it in a box, and in that box there's a rattlesnake, you would expect that people, they might see the quarter, and they might go, hey, I could use a quarter, but they'd see the rattlesnake too and say, well, I'll just let that alone.
The trade-off is not worth it to me. Even if that was a shiny silver dollar, even if it was a ten dollar bill, I'm not going to stick my hand in with the snake, because the risk of getting bit outweighs the reward of grabbing this money. A shiny quarter is not worth risking your life over.
Now, that should seem obvious. I trust in this room we're in general agreement with that precept. We don't value a quarter more than we value our own hand and skin and lives. However, the people, at least the Old Testament Israel, they liked the shiny too much.
They liked shiny things too much. And so again and again they did the equivalent of sticking their hand in the box of the rattlesnake. They went and did things that they knew were wrong, that God had told them that was wrong, that the prophets said were wrong. They had so much scar tissue on their hand for making that same bad decision in times past, and yet what do they keep doing?
Look, there's something shiny. They reach in, and they get bit time and time again. It didn't matter how often God warned them. It didn't matter how often God said, hey, you know what?
Stop marrying pagan wives because they bring in pagan practices. It doesn't matter how often he said, stop carving up idols of wood and stone because they will do you no good. It doesn't matter how often God said these things. They might nod their head yes at the time, but then they would go and do it anyway.
They would make the same mistake time and time again, and no matter how great a price that they paid when they made it, no matter how loudly the prophets had warned them, no matter what God had told them to expect would happen if they did the wrong thing, they kept on doing it.
They had to have whatever this shiny thing that their heart desired. And that's what verse 8 of today's passage calls them, and that's why verse 8 calls them a stubborn generation. They were a thick-headed, rebellious generation who refused to do what he told them. Now, here's the thing.
Whenever you pick on people in the Old Testament, that's easy. Why? Because they're not here to defend themselves. Anytime you pick on any other people group and say, hey, what idiots these people were, that's easy because they're not here.
Continue reading the full transcript 34-minute read · 14 sections · every section links back to the audio
Examining the Heart: What Is the 'Shiny' in Your Life?
However, the question for you and I is, what's the shiny in your life? In what ways have you pursued things regularly, consistently, habitually, perpetually, where you keep putting your hand in the box, getting bit, and then you go right back to it? Because there are things. I've done this job long enough to know there are things we do that we know we ought not do.
There are things corporately we do that we are wiser than, yet we kept doing them. We do this as individuals. We also do it in the greater, wider, broader church. The greater, wider, broader church is also capable of doubling down on bad decisions in times past and thinking that a better outcome is right around the future.
It doesn't work that way. You can't keep repeating mistakes. You can't keep doing what God told you not to do and think that the road leads to nirvana. To think that utopia is just around the bend.
This time, this time I can pursue this thing and this time it's okay. It doesn't work that way. Old Testament economy, New Testament economy. If you don't learn the lessons of your own history, your people's history, your church's history, people in scripture's history.
If you don't learn the lessons of your spiritual forefathers, you will be doomed to repeat them. And so will your children.
The Charge to Teach the Next Generation (Psalm 78:1-4)
“Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.”
— Psalm 78:1-4 (NKJV)
Alright, let's look at verses 1 through 4. Again, this is a large psalm, so we're not going to be able to go through every verse in it. We'll work through a balance, and I might pick and choose a few verses in particular, but we're going to start at the beginning. Let's look at verses 1 through 4 and work our way north from there.
Verse 1, give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. The people's ears were inclined to all manner of other things. And he says, hey, listen up.
Incline your ears. That sounds like high King James language. What it means is pay attention. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I'll open my mouth in a parable. I'll utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and the strength and His wonderful works that He has done.
Psalm 78 begins with this basic premise, I done told you. The premise is you already know this stuff. He's not saying, hold the phone here, I got some new theology. He's not saying, hey, there's some new revelation, something new here.
Instead, he says, I'm giving you something old, something old and helpful, and yet something that you've forgotten.
Asaph the Levite and the Peril of Forgotten History
Now, Psalm 78 was written by a Levite musician who served in King David's court. His name was Asaph. Asaph was a man of the word. He knew what God had said.
He knew what God had done in times past. And he, unlike other people in church history or the Old Testament, was willing to apply the lessons of what he had read to the present. However, a lot of people in his generation and subsequent generations and every generation might have been unwilling to do that.
They did not necessarily look back to what God had said, what God had done. Rather, they came up with new thoughts and precepts and innovations on their own and ignored their history. And this was a profoundly bad idea. You know, a number of years ago, The Tonight Show, Jay Leno was the host of The Tonight Show.
One of the things he would do, he'd go out on the streets of New York and he'd take a microphone and he would ask people like historical questions. Just really basic stuff, you know, about our forefathers or the constitution or state capitals or things like that. And I'm sure that they only put on television the most hilarious bad answers.
And yet the hilarious bad answers, I think were somewhat representative of the people that he was interacting with and their understanding of history. If you watch some of those clips on YouTube or what have you, as he does this man on the street sort of interviews, he could ask people things that you would think would be no brainers.
And man alive. They would just get completely wrong answers. You would think based on his inquiry that 99% of this country thinks Benjamin Franklin was the United States president. He asked another question.
He asked this question. He was asking about a president, James Garfield. And he talks about James Garfield. He says, what do you know about James Garfield?
He says to someone. That person sits there and thinks for a while. And he says, well, I think that's the cat that likes lasagna. You could go on with those sorts of examples.
But the bottom line is this. Sometimes we forget even our own cultural history, even just like 20th century history, let alone much further back. And if we're inclined to forget things that happened just a handful of years ago or the past few decades or let alone the past 100 years, we're really going to be in trouble as we start going even further back.
As we start going further back in our nation's history or European history or biblical history. We can really be in trouble. I have found, I won't put anyone on the spot on this, but I have found when I talk about history that the main thing that folks do is they look at the passages of the Old Testament and they see them as morality tales.
You'll see the story of David and Goliath or you'll see the story of Jonah and the whale and you'll see that as a morality tale. You won't necessarily fit that in any sort of historical context. And so if you ask people, when did David live? Was David before Moses?
Was Moses before Abraham or what have you? And you can get some people scratching their head because they don't understand the history or the context. And again, the problem is if you really don't grasp what's happened in the past, and if you don't cherish what God has done in the past, especially as we find it in Scripture, then what chance do you have when similar crisis or issues come up in your own day?
If you don't know how God has dealt with these matters in times past and the faithfulness that He's shown.
The Unchanging God: Why Remembering Shapes the Present
Well, Psalm 78, the author is imploring the people to know their history, to look back and understand what God has done, because God Himself hasn't changed. If God did X, Y, Z a hundred years ago, what's the chance that under similar circumstances, He's going to do the same thing? Very high. If God hated certain sins of the people of Israel way back in the time of the judges, what's the chances He still hates those sins in the time of the kings?
Very high. If the people didn't know God or hadn't read these things or studied these things, though, they were going to be floundering in the dark. And Asaph, the psalmist here says, don't do it.
Law and Commandment: God's Testimony to His People (Psalm 78:5-8)
“For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments; and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God.”
— Psalm 78:5-8 (NKJV)
Let's look at verses five through eight. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make known to them, to their children, that the generation to come might know them, that the children who would be born, that they might arise and declare them to their children, that they may have their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.
That they not be like their fathers, a stubborn, rebellious generation that did not set its heart aright and whose spirit was not faithful to God. In these verses, we see words that a lot of generations don't like. Words like laws and commandments. You see, if you tell people that God wants you to have your best life now, it doesn't matter if you live in the time of David or in today.
Everyone likes that message. If you tell people that God has given you laws and commandments to follow, intrinsically, fallen man doesn't care for that so much because it tends to hedge in his autonomy and remind him that he's not the measure of all things. Well, here in Psalm 78, Asaph doesn't care if the people don't like it.
He says, look, God gave you laws. If you keep them, things will go well. It's a side in culture and the world around you. He's given you commandments to follow.
They're not hidden. These aren't in the dust jacket of the Old Testament. Rather, these are things that are explicitly declared in His word, and it's only the stupid, the stubborn, the rebellious, they ignore them. Verses 5 through 8, he says, God has appointed a law to the giving of the Ten Commandments.
The Grief of Disobedience: A Parent's Analogy
You know, in the room this morning, we have a lot of parents, we have a lot of children. Now, for the parents, many of you can relate. One of the most exasperating things as a parent can be, when you tell a child to do something or not to do something, and then they go ahead and do it anyway.
If you have a, let's say you go down to the beach, and you're okay with the kids just walking along the beach, but you don't want them to get wet. Don't get wet, you say. And in your mind's eye, you're thinking all the places you've got to go, places you've got to do, and you don't need wet boots and shoes and feet and socks and stuff in the car, your brand-new car, what have you.
You've got a thousand reasons for declaring what you want the child to do. Well, if you've been an adult or if you've been a child, you know that oftentimes that's not the way that it turns out. The water's just so appealing. I can get this close to the water, maybe that close, and then next thing you know, a wave comes in, you turn your back, you're laughing, and you're up to your knees in water, and the parent does what?
The parent says this, I told you not to do that. Now in that moment, in that moment, do you think that the parent's irritation is more about the wetness of the feet, or more about the fact that you just told them what to do or not to do, and they went and did it anyway?
Well, as a parent myself, I can tell you my experience is that in those moments, what frustrates me the most is that they didn't listen. I mean, I'm no fan of the wet feet. I mean, that'll dry off. So that's not the end of the world to me.
But what's frustrating to me is I just told you that. Were you not listening? Were you not paying attention? Or were you just rebelling and didn't care what I had to say?
That's what frustrates many of us most as parents. Well, if you're God, here's the thing. You had told your children the equivalent of stay away from the water a thousand times, and yet 999 of those times your children either put their feet in, their toes in, or just dove in entirely and immersed themselves.
If you're a God, you kept instructions and commandments and laws and precepts, and the children kept doing that which they desired to do on their own. And the psalmist, he's talking to himself, he's talking to his own generation, he's looking back previous generations, he's looking forward to generations like ours, and he says, don't be like those who are stubborn.
He says, don't be like those who are stubborn, rebellious generations that didn't set their hearts right, whose spirit was not faithful. to God.
Ephraim's Defeat: Religiosity Without a Faithful Heart (Psalm 78:9-11)
“The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They did not keep the covenant of God; they refused to walk in His law, and forgot His works and His wonders that He had shown them.”
— Psalm 78:9-11 (NKJV)
All right, let's look at verses 9 through 11. Verse 9 says, the children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows they turned back in the day of battle. They did not keep the covenant of God. They refused to walk in his law.
They forgot his works and his wonders that he had shown them. Now in Verse 9, he wants to give us a specific example. It was probably an example that resonated more with the original audience that was more familiar with what he was saying when he refers to the children of Ephraim. So what does that mean for us?
What is he talking about? Well, here, most commentators believe this is a reference back to a time when God's people marched off to war and then wilted under pressure. They turned back and suffered a terrible defeat. Specifically, a lot of commentators believe this is a reference to the time that the Israelites were conquered by the Philistines when they had the Ark of the Covenant in their midst.
Do you remember how this story went down?
The Ark Taken: When God Departs and It Is Ichabod
It's in 1 Samuel 4. You've got the Israelites, and they've strayed in their hearts. They've strayed in their affections. They've not paid attention to God and His law and His precepts.
Their priests have just grown wicked. The priests have been bad. If the priests are bad, the whole lot is in rough shape. So people have ignored God.
They haven't paid attention to God. The priests are bad and they're doing their own thing. The high priest was a guy named Eli, a judge at the time. This was a motley generation, a motley crew.
Well, the Philistines had threatened and the people said, hey, let's bring that ark. We got the ark, right? The ark's been helpful in times past. They treated it like this magical amulet.
If you wear it in the battle, everything will go fine. They took the ark out. It did not go fine. The people were devastated.
They ran. There was a slaughter. And the ark of the covenant was taken by the Philistines. God's people thought that, hey, we got the ark.
We're the chosen ones in the life. God's chosen people. Everything's going to be okay. And yet in their heart and minds and affections, they'd forgotten everything God had said and told them.
They were just basically keeping up appearances with God. And they thought that that would be enough in the day of disaster. It wasn't. They were slaughtered.
This is a reference back to the children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows. They turned back in day of battle. They were absolutely slaughtered at that time. The Ark of the Covenant was stolen, taken by the Philistines.
If you want to know how much God was willing to judge and deal with His own people at that time, it's this, that God allowed the Philistines to take the Ark, at least for a season. Now, you remember what happened with Eli. So, Eli's this priest, and he's this real heavy-set guy because all the priests at this time were known for fattening themselves off the people's gifts and sacrifices and the like.
They're really living off the people in extreme ways. Well, Eli, he's sitting on a bench and the report comes back to him about what happened in this slaughter. And he hears these words. He hears that his children are dead.
He hears that the Philistines have taken over. And he hears that the Ark of the Covenant has been lost. And Scripture says at this point, he's leaning on this table, this thing he's sitting on. He falls over, he breaks his neck, and he dies.
And scripture says it was because he was heavy. Well, he was heavy, all right. He was heavy in sin. And it's very possible that Psalm 78 is looking back at this exact situation, looking at this generation in times past that had looked godly in clothing and appearance, who had weapons, who had the bows, who had the ark of the covenant, and yet whose hearts were so far from God that they turned in and ran away at the first sign of struggle, and they were subsequently defeated.
Now if you had looked at that generation from, I don't know, 10,000 feet up, they would have looked the part. They had the men with the tall pointy hats. They had scrolls. They had sacrifices.
They had priests. They had all that. From 10,000 feet up, you know, this is a religious society. It's what it would have looked like.
But it was a facade if you got close. It was people who were holding on to the shell of religiosity, but it had been hollowed out of any meaning, mostly because they had forgotten God. This is a danger for any era of the church, any era of God's people. You can wake up one day and realize that whether it's a denomination, an institution, some broad swath of the church that becomes so focused on other things or the desires of our hearts or the shiny or what have you, at the same time forgotten God, dismissed Him, put His laws on the shelf, redefined who He is.
And one day you still got the stained glass, you still got the pews, still got hymnals and the like, but it's Ichabod. God is not present. If it could happen to His beloved people when they had the Ark of the Covenant in their midst, do not think it cannot happen to any particular denomination, institution, or swath of the church.
We must all be diligent to be men and women of the Word, to look to this, to lean on this, to trust on this, to remember this, to teach our children this, to teach our children this, that they might teach their children this. This is the objective, not only for the people on Asaph's day, but for ours as well.
The Marvelous Works of the Exodus and Israel's Rebellion
All right, let's look at verses 12 through 19. Marvelous things he did in the sight of their fathers. So now Asaph's saying, hey, God had shown them how amazing He was. He had come through for them.
He hit home run after home run for them. Marvelous things he did in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt and the fields of Zoan. He divided the sea and He caused them to pass through. He made the water stand up like a heap.
In the daytime He led them with a cloud, and at night with the light of fire. He split the rocks in the wilderness. He gave them water to drink in abundance from the depths. He brought streams out of the rock.
He caused waters to run down like rivers. But they sinned even more, sinned even more against him, rebelled against the Most High in the wilderness. They tested God in their heart by asking for the food of their fancy. As they spoke against God, they said, can God prepare a table in the wilderness?
You know, one of the most amazing seasons in the history of God's people is found in the Old Testament book of Exodus. What's the main event that took place in the book of Exodus? The Exodus. Whoever got that gets that right.
The Exodus is the most fascinating event that took place in the book of Exodus. Why was it fascinating? Think who they were up against. The people of God, God's people, were living in Egypt at this time.
They were oppressed. They didn't have weaponry. They didn't have infantry. They didn't have chariots.
But they had this. They had God on their side. And God used Moses to lead them out of Egypt. He sent the plagues upon the people.
And then after sending them out, freeing them from Egypt, He parted the Red Sea to give them a path to travel. And then when Pharaoh's chariots went after them, He swamped over Pharaoh's chariots, destroyed their enemies, and He led them out into the desert beyond. However, as the narrative goes in the book of Exodus, despite all that the people had seen, despite seeing plagues that would pull your eyes back just to watch, despite seeing plagues and despite seeing a red sea, waters piled up in heaps, despite water coming from rocks, despite the cloud of fire in the sky that was a perpetual reminder between that and the cloud of smoke that God was with them, what did they do when any sort of obstacle hit?
The minute that they got hungry, they started to complain, they wanted to kill Moses. The minute that their tummies grumbled with rage, what did they do? They complained. They shook their fists at the sky.
They thought as if, well, you know, God can free us from the Egyptians. He can send plagues, but He can't apparently send food. Well, yes, He can. And the narrative we see in Exodus is that God sent provision.
He sent food. He sent water from rocks where you otherwise wouldn't expect to get it. He sent food called manna. And what does the word manna mean in Hebrew?
What is it? They didn't even have a word for what God sent to them. Not a word to even define or explain this weird substance that was gathered every morning on the rocks. What an odd thing this was.
God provided them using a means that they never would have dreamed up on their own. And it was provided anew and afresh every morning to sustain them throughout all their time. God provided miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle. And yet, marvelous things He did in the sight of their fathers.
Verse 12. But by the time you get to verse 17, and yet they sinned even more against Him. They forgot what He had done. They forgot what He had done even in recent days.
Limiting the Holy One: Forgetting God's Redeeming Power
Let's look at verses 40 through 43. I'll jump ahead a bit. Verse 40, how often they provoked Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert. It wasn't as once or twice or thrice.
It was multiple times. How often, Scripture says, how often they provoked Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert. Yes, again and again they tempted God, verse 41 says, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They limited Him by only believing that He could do little things.
They forgot that this is the God of the impossible, the God of the miraculous, the God who had led them out of Egypt. Verse 42 says, They did not remember His power or the day when He redeemed them from the enemy, when He worked His signs in Egypt. As we said at the outset here, the repeated emphasis of Psalm 78 is if you forget your history, you're doomed to repeat it.
This author, Asaph, that was his point long before those words were ever coined. He's saying the same thing. He's saying that the people of God, if you forget who God is or what God has done in times past, then when you are faced with some challenge in the present, you'll think this is new to you.
You'll think you're standing on your own foundation, on your own two feet. You won't necessarily trust in Him who has overcome these sort of things time and time and time again. It's like, I don't know, you've got a man, and there's a child, and the man, maybe it's his son, and he sweeps, and there's a speeding train coming by, and the father runs and dives in front and spares and saves his child and holds him close.
He saved his life from this speeding train. And then five minutes later, his kid's having a temper tantrum on a totally different issue. Why? Because the child's mind basically says this.
What have you done for me lately? Who cares what you did back then? Five minutes ago, ten minutes ago, five years ago, twenty years ago, a hundred years ago. What have you done for me lately?
Well, in the face of God's repeated care and provision, the people kept doubting the provider. God could literally rain bread from heaven. I mean, where does that happen? God did it.
God brought it about. God brought these miraculous things about. And they became kind of non-events in the people's eyes. Non-events.
They either forgot or they willfully ignored His hand. And then, as if forgetting wasn't bad enough. These verses say that they just doubled down on their sins. As if forgetting what God had done wasn't bad enough, they just kept sinning.
Seeking Another Father: Idolatry and Provoked Jealousy
Let's look at verses 56 through 58. Again, moving a little further in. Verse 56. They tested, they provoked the Most High God.
They did not keep His testimonies. They turned back and acted unfaithfully like their fathers. They were turned aside like a deceitful bow, for they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and they moved Him to jealousy with their carved images. When a child disobeys a parent, that hurts.
Those of us who have been parents, you don't like it so much. And it's not just because your kid's done something silly or stupid or sinfully. It's because your child didn't believe you or trust you or listen to you, on some level that hurts. You know what hurts even more though?
Imagine, imagine you have a child who goes and does something that you told them not to do. Imagine you have a child who's disobedient, and then let's say that child does something disobedient on the playground, does something you told him not to do, sins against God, sins against you, breaks your dictate for how this child should behave.
Let's say that he does that and that hurts enough as it is, but then let's say that that same child says, you know what, I'll go find me a different father, runs up to any other adult on the playground, sticks up their hand to hold it. That's what the people of Israel were doing.
It wasn't just they're breaking God's law, is that they were looking for a different father. They would go chase anything, anything carved out of rock. A guy could have carved it on Tuesday and they'd look to worship it on Wednesday. They would lift their hearts and gaze and arms and hands to anything or anybody except Him.
And you'll wonder why these verses say He was provoked. You'll wonder why His verse even says moved to jealousy with their carved images. Why? Because He loved him as a father, but they didn't want Him as a father.
They would take an inanimate object made of stone as a father rather than Him. It's no wonder He was moved to jealousy. This, to the degree in which the heart of God can be impacted and moved, which is what we see in this passage, this is something that moves it. This sort of rejection.
That's what we see in verses 56 through 58. The people were slipping their hand into the hands of gods of stone and marble.
God Faithful When We Are Faithless: The Good Shepherd
Now, if God loves His people, He's not going to let them do that. If you love your child, you're not going to let them abandon you, abandon good common sense, abandon what's right. You're not going to let them do that. If you love your child, you'll be faithful even if your child's faithless.
Well, that's the way that God works. God is faithful even when we're faithless. His people had given Him all manner of reasons to cut and run long ago, and yet He didn't. He was faithful when they were faithless.
And that's what the rest of Psalm 78 describes. If you look at the very last verses, it says that even in spite of the people's obstinance and stubbornness and thick-headedness and provoking Him to anger and jealousy and all these things, in verse 70-72 we see a reference to a shepherd. They say this, that God chose David His servant, took him from the sheepfolds, from following the ewes that He brought to him, to shepherd Jacob His people and Israel His inheritance.
Even though His people had rebelled against them, God still loved them. And so He sent them prophets. He sent them shepherds like David. And ultimately, He sent them the good shepherd, Jesus Christ Himself, in order to bring them back to Himself.
Remembering God's Faithfulness to the Church and to You
All right, let's look to wrap up here. If you and I, if we stand back from this text and we say, okay, so we're supposed to remember God. We're supposed to remember God, remember His words and laws and the like. My suggestion is that you have to remember Him in two ways.
The first way is that we have to remember His faithfulness to us as a church. You should look corporately. The people in the Old Testament were called to remember what God had done to the corporate body, how He had preserved and protected the Israelites in the face of all manner of terrible things.
So we need to remember corporately how God has preserved the church. At one time, the church was very small. At one time, you could fit the church roughly into the upper room, so to speak. At one time, the church was very small, and now it reaches across the entirety of the globe.
God knows what He's doing. He preserves and protects His own. He builds His church in the face of all manner of weirdness and oddness and evil in the world around us. Beyond that, it's helpful sometimes to remember His faithfulness to you.
To remember that one point, if you are a believer today, if you are a regenerate, born-again, blood-bought son or daughter of God today, that's good, but at one point you weren't. Remember at one point God changed your heart. Remember at one point God sought you out when you weren't seeking Him. Remember at one point you were a lost, a lost ball in the high weeds, as Professor Mon used to put it.
And yet God sought you out. His faithfulness to you as an individual and His faithfulness to the greater church is something to remember. In the context of this church, has God been faithful to him, to this church? Absolutely.
God has been faithful to this church. How old is this church? Anyone know? 1899, which makes it, what, 122 years old?
This church, do you know how much this church has been through? You go back to 1899, this church has been through World War I, it's been through World War II, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, 9-11, plagues, pandemics, more than just the current one, and yet here we are. Why? Because God is faithful.
God has sustained this work. Hurricanes, I'd be remiss if I didn't miss Camille or Katrina. God has brought this church safely through the desert, so to speak, safely through the wilderness, safely through the storms. Not because we're great, but because He's great.
God has been faithful to this church, and if you think He's been faithful to this church in times past, why would you worry about the future? Why would you say, I don't know, next year looks kind of crazy. You know, inflation's doing this and COVID's doing that. That may be so, and yet God's in charge.
He has a good plan for this church and for the future. He's got a good plan for the global church in the midst of whatever crisis the world might throw at us. That will not change. That will not change.
Remember that when there's clouds on the horizon or the newsprint looks kind of scary. Now, finally, again, if it's true for us as a church, it's true for you this morning. If God has preserved and protected this church for 120 years old, no one in this room goes back that far. However, many of us have some gray in our hair and we can look back and say, you know what?
God has been faithful to me. God has been faithful to me. He's brought me safe thus far. I think the actual lyric from Amazing Grace goes something like this.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come is grace that has brought me safe thus far. Grace will lead me home. If you're a believer of any years, if you're a believer, you can look back and say, you know what? God has been at work.
At one point, I was over here in my faith and my walk and my practice, but in time, God has advanced me. In time, He's made me more like His son, and I'm still not perfect, and there's a long way to go, but He was faithful in the past, so I have confidence in the future.
God is at work in heart of His church, both globally and here in this congregation. He's also at work in your heart and in your life and your circumstances. And He has ordained everything that you might face for His glory and for your good. Sometimes it's hard to believe it, and yet it is the manifest teaching of Scripture.
This morning, the invitation is to remember that, to remember this. When the next stories and the headlines are scary, or when you get a diagnosis that you don't want, or there's some hardship that comes on your radar, remember God is good. God is faithful. He has seen His people through.
He'll see you and I through whatever storms might come on our radar. Trust in Him. He will not let you down. Let's pray.
More in The Book of Psalms
Continue the verse-by-verse series.
