Tag Archives: Psalms 78-81

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2023 Bible Study — If We Listen to God’s Voice and Follow His Ways, He Will Save Us

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Psalms 78-81.

All four psalms today discuss God’s anger with His people when they rebel against Him.  In the first of today’s psalms the psalmist writes about how time and again the generation which God brought out of Egypt repeatedly saw God’s power displayed.  Yet, again and again they rebelled against Him.  In the next two psalms he writes about God’s people crying out to God for deliverance.  Over the last few years as I have read the Old Testament prophets I have felt like their prophecies of God’s coming judgement applied to us today.  Our society’s have sinned in terrible ways and will soon reap what they have sown.  In the same way, the psalmist writes of the Israelites reaping what they had sown.  Today, many of God’s people are echoing the psalmist’s cry, as they should:

Restore us, God Almighty;
make your face shine on us,
that we may be saved.

Unfortunately, too many of us are failing to follow the guidance God gave us through the psalmist in the next psalm:

If my people would only listen to me,
if only they would only follow my ways,
how quickly I would subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes!

I am convinced that if we, God’s people, would listen to Him more closely, and follow His ways, rather than seeking a politician to save us, or trying to get the “right” laws enacted, we would see a transformation of ourselves, and of our nation.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2022 Bible Study — Let Us Call On Our Neighbors To Join Us As We Repent Of Our Sins

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Psalms 78-81.

I am not sure that the theme I am going to write about today truly flows through all of these psalms.  Nevertheless, it is what I see when I read them in light of what is going on in the world around us: the terrible economy, the war in Ukraine, the violence in the U.S. over recent Supreme Court rulings, etc..  What should our reaction to all of these be?  Well, let us tell the world, especially the next generation, about the praiseworthy deeds of God, about His power and the wonders He has performed.  Our goal should be that this will lead them to put their trust in God and keep His commands.  Let us remind ourselves, and those who will listen, about how our ancestors, and perhaps even ourselves, witnessed God’s power but still put Him to the test by failing to keep His laws.  Our failure to act according to His will has led us to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  Let us call out to God, asking Him to restore us, to make His face shine on us so that we might see His light and be saved.  I am going to paraphrase the psalmist here to say what I believe God is saying to us today:

“If my people would only listen to me,
    if they would only follow my ways,
how quickly I would subdue their enemies
    and turn my hand against their foes!”

If we will listen to God, He will restore us to prosperity, but if we refuse, the problems we see now will soon be eclipsed by even greater disaster.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2021 Bible Study — Teach The Next Generation What God Has Done

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Psalms 78-81.

Teach the next generation the things which God has done, and not just the things recorded in the Bible.  If we teach each generation the ways in which God has worked, both in the depths of history and in our own lifetimes, perhaps the next generation will depart from God as so many have in the past.  As I read these psalms I was struck that we appear to be living in a time when God’s people have forgotten Him and are beginning to see the results of turning away from Him.  And yet these psalms give me hope for the future.   The psalmist reminds us how simple it is to obtain God’s redemption.  We need only listen to Him and follow His ways.  Then He will quickly turn His hands against our foes.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2020 Bible Study Each Generation Must Teach The Next What God Has Done

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 78-81.

It is imperative that we teach the next generation what God has done and what He commands.  It is not enough to teach them history, although that is an important first step.  They must be given context and shown how God’s wondrous love brought about His will.  Each generation must choose for themselves to set their hope in God.  If they are not taught history truly and how God brought it about, they will not believe God when He speaks to them and will not trust Him to care for them.  We see this today where parents delegated teaching their children to someone else and thought they could rely on strangers to teach their children what they needed to know.  However, this is not just an obligation for parents, each one of us must strive to teach the generations which follow after us about what God has done, how He has guided history.

 

 

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2019 Bible Study

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 78-81.

Today’s psalms describe the suffering which the people of Israel experienced because they did not faithfully follow God’s commands.  The first psalm starts by describing how God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, how He provided them with water in the desert.  Yet despite God providing them with water they did not believe He could provide them with food.  How often do we do the same thing?  God miraculously meets one of our needs, then, a short time later, we refuse to trust Him to provide for another one of our needs.  After experiencing His great blessings, we question His power to help us again.

Further on in that first psalm I am reminded of the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.  Each of these psalms reminds us that we will suffer when we turn from God, but that God is prepared to forgive us and rescue us if we turn our hearts once more to Him.  One of the great points in these psalms comes when the psalmist cries out to God requesting that He turn the people back to Him.  Let that be our prayer, that God would fill us with His Spirit and turn us to Him so that we might do His will.

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2018 Bible Study — The Paradox of Faith

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 78-81.

    Each generation must teach the next the wonderful things which God has done and the commands which He has given. Otherwise, the next generation will commit the sins of the previous one. Even if we do teach the next generation, they may repeat the sins. Look at the history of Israel as told in Exodus; God performed great signs for them, yet each time a new challenge arose the people did not believe that God could meet this new challenge. Will we put our trust in God, or will we follow their example and turn from Him when new problems appear?

    If we cry out to God and plead with Him to bring us back to Him, He will do so. He will turn us to him as a vine turns towards the sun. He will teach those who mocked Him because of our unfaithfulness the folly of their ways. AS I read these psalms they remind me of the paradox of our relationship with God: we can only turn to Him if His Spirit takes control of us and turns us to Him, but if we reject Him, He will leave us to our folly. Turning from temptation and sin is a task too heavy for us, God will lift it from our back if we allow Him to do so.

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2017 Bible Study — Telling Our Stories To The Next Generation

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 78-81.

    The first psalm in today’s passage, Psalms 78, tells us the importance of teaching our stories, and the stories of our ancestors, to the next generation. We need to teach the young about the mighty deeds which God has performed in our lives and tell them the stories we were told by those who came before us. Each generation must set their hope in God anew and if they are going to do that they need to hear and understand what God has done in the past. There is a very human tendency to think and act as if history began with our own birth. The only remedy for that is for the elders to teach the young the stories of what went before. We must do more than just teach the next generation God’s commands and our understanding of them, we must teach them why it is important to follow those commands. I will go even further than that. While it is important to teach theology and godly doctrine, it is not possible to truly understand what it means to follow God without learning the stories about what God has done in the past. As a child, my parents and my congregation spent time teaching us the stories from “The Martyr’s Mirror”. In the last few years I have realized that those stories gave me an understanding of what it means to be a Christian which no one who was not so immersed in those stories will ever have.

    Once he made his point about the importance of telling our stories, the psalmist goes on to focus on the stories about how the Israelites had, time and again, failed to obey God and suffered the consequences. He first tells of how the Israelites did not trust God to supply their needs. While they were in the wilderness they craved meat and rather than ask God to provide it, they conspired to return to Egypt to get it. Despite the great miracles which God had already done on their behalf they believed Him unable to give them this thing. God both showed them that He was indeed able to supply their needs and the consequences of not trusting Him. The story reminds us of the danger of not trusting God to supply us with what is best for us. We must learn to ask God for what we want, but to know that perhaps He has not already given it to us because it is better for us not to have it. We must learn to persistently ask God for what we desire, but remain accepting of God’s judgment about what is best for us. If we have been asking God for something that He has not given us, we should re-evaluate our desire to see if perhaps we will not be happier without it. Perhaps the reason we do not have it is because God is teaching us patience and persistence, but perhaps it is because He knows our true needs and desires better than we do.

Daily Bible Study

June 29, 2016 Bible Study

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 78-81.

    The psalmist recounts the history of Exodus, but not just as a repetition of that tale. He recounted it as a parable. So, what shall we take from this parable? We, also, tend to live our lives as the people of Israel did. We cry out to God for rescue when times become too difficult. When He answers our prayer we are faithful for a short time, but, all too often, after a short time we fall back into our sins and stop listening to God. Then our troubles return and we once more cry out to God. The cycle repeats. The psalmist is calling on us to break free of that cycle, to recognize that we cannot be righteous without God’s help. When we cry out to God for rescue let us also ask Him to make us faithful to Him, not just for a short while, but for all eternity.

Turn us again to yourself, O God.
Only then will we be saved.

We will never remain faithful to God for long on our own strength. It is only when we throw ourselves fully on God’s mercy that we will receive from Him the strength to never abandon Him again.