Remember Your History

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. What is Psalm 78 about?

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.

2. Who wrote Psalm 78?

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.

3. What does Dr. Holt mean by “the definition of insanity”?

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.”

4. Why is it important to remember what God has done?

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.

5. What does Psalm 78 say about teaching the next generation?

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.

6. What happened to the children of Ephraim in Psalm 78:9?

“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.

7. What does Ichabod mean and how does it relate to this sermon?

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.

8. Why did Israel ask, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness”?

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).

9. Why was God moved to jealousy in Psalm 78?

“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.

10. How does Psalm 78 point to Jesus Christ?

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.