CHAPTER 78

WRITTEN BY ASAPH: GODS DEALINGS WITH HIS PEOPLE ISRAEL

¹Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. (Jesus called Asaph a Prophet [Mat. 13:35]. In fact, all who wrote the Psalms must be placed in that category.

This Verse presents an Old Testament command to obey the Law of Moses. In fact, the statement, Give ear to my law, is found some 32 times in the Old Testament, but not once in the New. The reason is simple:

Jesus fulfilled all the Law, and Faith in Him and what He has done at the Cross makes Believers dead to the Law [Rom. 7:4].)

²I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old (this was quoted by Matthew concerning Christ [Mat. 13:35]. The puzzle here is not in the expression of mystery or in words hard to understand, but in great wonderment of how these many miraculous things happened to Israel. This Verse refers strictly to Christ):

³Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us (these great happenings, which God performed from the very beginning, were remembered, and then began to be written down by Moses [Lk. 24:27]).

⁴We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His Strength, and His wonderful Works that He has done (the Holy Spirit is saying here that it is extremely important for parents to recount the wonderful works of God to their children).

⁵For 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 children should be taught the Word of God by the fathers was not a suggestion; it was a command. The Testimony in Jacob was the Lords Personal dealings with the Patriarch; He would change him from Jacob, the schemer, to Israel, the Prince with God.

The Law in Israel was that which was given by God to Moses.

Concerning these two things, Israel was to constantly relate them to their children. Incidentally, it was not a suggestion, but rather a command.)

⁶That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children (a Move of God is actually limited to the present generation unless that generation proclaims the Truth to the coming generation):

⁷That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the Works of God, but keep His Commandments (this is the only way to a successful life and living):

⁸And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God (the idea is, if the children arent properly taught, everything will be lost).

⁹The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle (he is probably speaking of the northern kingdom of Israel, which sometime went under the name of Ephraim).

¹⁰They kept not the Covenant of God, and refused to walk in His Law (this is the reason for the lack of victory regarding Ephraim, and it is the reason for the lack of victory now);

¹¹And forgot His Works, and His Wonders that He had shown them (these works and wonders were not properly shown and related to the children).

¹²Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.

¹³He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and He made the waters to stand as an heap (the miracle of the Red Sea crossing).

¹⁴In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.

¹⁵He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths (the water out of the Rock).

¹⁶He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers (this means that this was no slight trickle that came out of the Rock, but rather a small river enough to slake the thirst of some three million people, plus all of the animals).

¹⁷And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness. (Miracles do not produce Faith; only the Word of God can produce Faith [Rom. 10:17]. During the time of Christ, Israel had the greatest array of miracles the world had ever known, but to no avail. They crucified their Lord!)

¹⁸And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust (in other words, they were not satisfied with the Manna).

¹⁹Yes, they spoke against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? (He could, and He did!)

²⁰Behold, He smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can He give bread also? can He provide flesh for His People? (Even though these people saw the miracle of bringing water out of the Rock, which was actually a Type of the great Eternal Life that Christ would provide for the whole world, still, these faithless people not only did not understand its meaning, but also held it with contempt.)

²¹Therefore the LORD heard this, and was wroth: so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel (let it ever be understood that God cannot condone sin in His Chosen any more than He can in those who do not profess His Name);

²²Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in His Salvation (their sin was unbelief. It is, as well, the sin of the modern Church. I speak of a lack of Faith in Christ and the Cross):

²³Though He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of Heaven,

²⁴And had rained down Manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of Heaven.

²⁵Man did eat Angels food: He sent them meat to the full (we are told here that the Manna was Angels food).

²⁶He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven: and by His Power He brought in the south wind.

²⁷He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea (the quail [Num. 11:20]):

²⁸And He let it fall (the quail) in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations.

²⁹So they did eat, and were well filled: for He gave them their own desire (if it is to be noticed, it was their desire and not Gods);

³⁰They were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat was yet in their mouths,

³¹The wrath of God came upon them, and killed the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel. (Israels lust and complaints angered God, so His wrath fell on them. We should allow this to be a lesson to us, as well.)

³²For all this they sinned still, and believed not for His wondrous Works. (Ultimately, they died in this wilderness, and never did see the Promised Land; all of this was because of unbelief.)

³³Therefore their days did He consume in vanity, and their years in trouble. (And unbelief was the reason!)

³⁴When He killed them, then they sought Him: and they returned and enquired early after God. (Sometimes it takes the Judgment of God to get people to repent.)

³⁵And they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer. (Still, their attitude was to use God rather than to serve God.)

³⁶Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. (What a foolish thing to do, considering that God knows the thoughts and hearts of men!)

³⁷For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they stedfast in His Covenant. (This was the problem. It was a heart problem. It was not a question of understanding or of knowledge. It was a question of an evil heart of unbelief.)

³⁸But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yes, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath. (In this Passage, we are given a most beautiful description of the Love of God.)

³⁹For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passes away, and comes not again. (In other words, the Lord knows the frailty of the flesh and, due to the fall of man, the constant pressure of the sin nature.)

⁴⁰How oft did they provoke Him in the wilderness, and grieve Him in the desert! (Actually, they provoked Him some ten times in approximately two years [Num. 14:22].)

⁴¹Yes, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. (We limit God when we fail to take Him at His Word.)

⁴²They remembered not His Hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy. (The Holy Spirit is telling us that Israel had no faith, because they forgot the great miracles the Lord had performed for them in the past. Over and over again, the Holy Spirit admonishes us to constantly meditate and talk about the things He has done in the past. This is His Word; it builds faith [Ps. 77:1012].)

⁴³How He had wrought His Signs in Egypt, and His Wonders in the field of Zoan (Verses 43 through 58 proclaim the great miracles and wonders of God performed in Egypt, as well as in the Promised Land):

⁴⁴And had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that they could not drink.

⁴⁵He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them.

⁴⁶He gave also their increase unto the caterpillar, and their labour unto the locust. (This is what the Lord did to Egypt, because they refused to let Gods People go.)

⁴⁷He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost.

⁴⁸He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.

⁴⁹He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them. (These were probably righteous Angels who carried out the intended results of Gods anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, referred to as evil.)

⁵⁰He made a way to His anger; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;

⁵¹And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham:

⁵²But made His own People to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. (The Holy Spirit, through Asaph, outlines the tender leading of Israel by Jehovah. In fact, He became their Shepherd.)

⁵³And He led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies (the Red Sea).

⁵⁴And He brought them to the border of His Sanctuary, even to this mountain, which His Right Hand had purchased (the Land of Israel).

⁵⁵He cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the Tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents (this Passage means that the Holy Spirit drew the boundaries in this Land for each particular Tribe).

⁵⁶Yet they tempted and provoked the Most High God, and kept not His Testimonies:

⁵⁷But turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned aside like a deceitful bow (this is a bow which flips back and harms the person trying to shoot it).

⁵⁸For they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images (upon arriving in the Promised Land, Israel quickly took upon herself the practices of the heathen round about her).

⁵⁹When God heard this, He was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel (because of their sin):

⁶⁰So that He forsook the Tabernacle of Shiloh, the Tent which He placed among men (the Lord could no longer live among Israel);

⁶¹And delivered His Strength into captivity, and His Glory into the enemys hand (the Ark of God, for a period of time, was taken by the Philistines [I Sam. 4:11]).

⁶²He gave His People over also unto the sword; and was wroth with His inheritance.

⁶³The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given to marriage.

⁶⁴Their Priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no lamentation (Hophni and Phinehas fell by the sword and their widows made no lamentation; Phinehas wife, when dying, bewailed the loss of the Ark more than the loss of her husband [I Sam. 4:1718]).

⁶⁵Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man who shouts by reason of wine (this refers to the defeat of the Philistines by Israel [I Sam. 7:714]).

⁶⁶And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts: He put them to a perpetual reproach.

⁶⁷Moreover He refused the Tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the Tribe of Ephraim (the Tabernacle of Joseph is the Sanctuary at Shiloh, which was north of Bethel, and thus within the limits of the Tribe of Ephraim):

⁶⁸But chose the Tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which He loved. (When a permanent site was to be assigned to the Tabernacle and the Ark, God did not choose for them the position of Shiloh, but rather that of Jerusalem. The choice was made when David was, by Gods command, anointed to be king [I Sam. 16:112].)

⁶⁹And He build His Sanctuary like high palaces, like the Earth which He has established forever. (This was the place where the great Temple was ultimately built, with the plans given to David, but with Davids son, Solomon, actually building the structure.)

⁷⁰He chose David also His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds (Saul was mans choice, while David was Gods choice; He took David from humble beginnings; David started out by feeding sheep; he was promoted to feeding Gods People):

⁷¹From following the ewes great with young He brought him to feed Jacob His People, and Israel His Inheritance.

⁷²So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. (The Lord, through David, fed Israel, because David had integrity of heart. However, the integrity that David had was Gods integrity, and not mans.

Let it ever be known that only those who have Gods integrity will be the shepherds that God desires, guiding Gods sheep by the skillfulness of His hands the Holy Spirit.)