Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Psalm 78

Sermon text today is Psalm 78. We’ll make some major points about the first nine verses or eleven verses, but it is good, I think, to put it in context by reading all of Psalm 78. So, please stand for the reading of God’s word. Psalm 78, a contemplation of Asaph. Give ear, oh my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable and 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. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law on 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, 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.

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. Marvelous things he did in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt in the field of Zoan. He divided the sea and caused them to pass through, and he made the waters stand up like a heap.

In the daytime also he led them with the cloud and all the night with light of fire. He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink in abundance like the depths. He also brought streams out of the rock and caused waters to run down like rivers. But they sinned even more against him by rebelling against the Most High in the wilderness. And they tested God in their hearts by asking for the food of their fancy.

Yes, they spoke against God. They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, he struck the rock so that the waters gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can he provide meat for his people?” Therefore, the Lord heard this and was furious. So, a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation.

Yet, he had commanded the cloud above and opened the doors of heaven, had rained down manna on them to eat and given them of the bread of heaven. Men ate angels’ food. He sent them food to the full. He caused an east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he brought in the south wind. He also rained meat on them like the dust, feathered fowl like the sand of the seas, and he let them fall in the midst of their camp, all around their dwelling.

So they ate and were all well fed, for he gave them their own desire, they were not deprived of their craving. But while their food was still in their mouths, the wrath of God came against them and slew the stoutest of them and struck down the choice men of Israel. In spite of this, they still sinned and did not believe in his wondrous works. Therefore, their days he consumed in futility and their years in fear.

When he slew them, then they sought him, and they returned and sought earnestly for God. Then they remembered that God was their rock and the Most High God their redeemer. Nevertheless, they flattered him with their mouth, and they lied to him with their tongue. For their heart was not steadfast with him, nor were they faithful in his covenant. 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. How often they provoked him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert. 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, when he worked his signs in Egypt and his wonders in the field of Zoan, turned their rivers into blood, their streams that they could not drink, and set swarms of flies among them which devoured them and frogs which destroyed them.

He also gave their crops to the caterpillar and their labor to the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore trees with frost. He also gave up their cattle to the hail and their flocks to fiery hail. He cast on them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble by sending angels of destruction among them. He made a path for his anger. He did not spare their soul from death, but gave their life over to the plague, and destroyed all the firstborn in Egypt, the first of their strength in the tents of Ham.

But he made his own people go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. And he led them on safely so that they did not fear. But the sea overwhelmed their enemies and he brought them to his holy border, this mountain which his right hand had acquired. He also drove out the nations before them, allotted them an inheritance by survey and made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.

Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God and did not keep his testimonies but 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 moved him to jealousy with their carved images. When God heard this, he was furious and greatly abhorred Israel. So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent he had placed among men, and delivered his strength into captivity and his glory into the enemy’s hand.

He also gave his people over to the sword and was furious with his inheritance. The fire consumed their young men and their maidens were not given in marriage. Their priests fell by the sword and their widows made no lamentation. Then the Lord awoke as from sleep like a mighty man who shouts because of wine, and he beat back his enemies. He put them to a perpetual reproach. Moreover, he rejected the tent of Joseph and did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loved.

And he built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth, which he has established forever. He also chose David his servant, and took him from among the sheepfolds, from following the youths, and brought him to shepherd Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for the record of your history, our history, and your involvement in us, Lord God, and in our people. Forgive us for all too often not knowing this history and not seeing your hand in it. We thank you for today, Father, a day to think about you, our heavenly father in heaven, and a day of exhortation to earthly fathers and to children in their relationships of honoring their fathers today.

May they ultimately see this as the Lord’s day, the day that he honored you. And may we honor you today with an understanding of your scriptures. Bless us, Lord God, by your spirit and transform us in Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, this is one of those holidays that I never quite like. The American greeting card industry has done everything to change certain Lord’s days into something else—Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Children’s Day, whatever it is. Although this one is maybe a little less objectionable than most because as I said in my prayer, this is the Lord’s day. It always is the Lord’s day. Never let these celebrations of family relationships or any other focus replace their proper applications of what this day is. But they should never replace it. That’s the danger.

And if we remember that the Lord came and in John’s gospel particularly he came to reveal the Father, we think of the Lord’s day when the Lord comes to be with us and instruct us, chastise us and heal us. He’s really bringing the message of the Father. Jesus is always pointing—particularly in John’s gospel he comes to exegete the Father. And so every Lord’s day is essentially a Father’s day as well. I’m very grateful that he talks about how we have earthly fathers that chastised us as seemed right to them, but God, his blows are always correct, right, and proper. He is always doing the right thing. It gives me great freedom as a father knowing that I will sin, I’ll err, I’ll do different things wrong, not because I’m trying to, but because I’m not the heavenly Father. And yet somehow the Lord God moves in the context of fallible men. He uses sin sinlessly to affect his purposes.

I want to think a little bit today about this generational succession that I have preached on several times from Psalm 78. It seems every four years I come back to it and here we are again. It’s a psalm that, as I’ve mentioned before, was one in the American colonial period at least frequently a subject of memorization. Why would they pick it? We choose the short ones. They chose the long ones, I guess. But of course it’s a text that in the opening verses talks to us about the requirement: we heard these things from our fathers and we’ve got to pass them on to our kids so that they can pass them on to their kids.

And it gives us the importance of family lineage, family instruction, of family units, parents, children. And it tells us some very important things about what that’s all about. I’m going to look at Psalm 78 briefly. I’m also going to look at Psalm 44. We sang that at camp and I noticed as we were singing it, the first line about our fathers have told us. And so the same emphasis at the beginning of 78 is on at the beginning of 44.

They’re also both maskils, which means contemplation. So they’re like puzzling over a difficult thing. And specifically, they’re sort of puzzling over God’s involvement with his people. A maskil is a psalm that’s meant to think through something, think through a hard or a complex matter. And nearly all of them—nearly every one of them—concern the problem of God’s hiding his face.

There’s a song by a group called Muse, and I’m not sure one of these words is right, but this is what I got off the internet and it’s sung in a very dramatic way: “Come ride with me through the veins of history. I’ll show you a God who falls asleep on the job. How can we win when fools can be kings? Don’t waste your time or time will waste you.”

So you hear that kind of a song from the modern rock group. Oh boy—those are God’s asleep on the job, huh? I don’t think so. Well, surprise. That’s what Psalm 78 says. Then at the end of it, God awoke as if from sleep. Now, he’s not sleeping. We just sang the processional song that he doesn’t sleep nor slumber, but he appears to be sleeping. And that’s another thing that Psalm 44 talks about at the end of it. God is asked to be roused from his sleep relative to his people.

So there’s other connections between 44 and 78, but they sort of are addressing the same thing. And as I’ll say when we get to 44 there’s a completely one very important difference, but their maskils are contemplating the when God withdraws his presence, when he’s asleep, when he seems to be asleep on the job, when fools become kings. There’s no doubt that our era is marked by such a thing. And if you waste your time, time will waste you. An excellent message from poets of the modern age in very powerful music, by the way, that I think also meets the power of the admonitions of Psalm 78 and Psalm 44.

So let’s talk a little bit about Psalm 78. And the first nine verses form sort of a prologue. The purpose of the first nine verses, of course, is you’re supposed to meditate on history. You’re supposed to know your history. Think about it, etc. Give ear—shama—open up your ears big to my law. Incline your ears to the word of my mouth. And then he’s going to say things. He’s going to utter dark sayings which we will not hide—which our fathers have told us and will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come, the praises of the Lord, his strength, and his wonderful works.

So an essential part of Christian education is instructing the next generation of the wonderful works of God. It’s a call to meditate on history and to know our history and to know it not just in terms of dates and facts, but to know providentially what the Lord God is doing in the context of history. Our church early on saw the importance of this text and others. And we talked about men like C.H. Merle Rushdoony who wrote the history of the Reformation but from a providential perspective. He was a providential historian. He wrote like this historian writes to us in Psalm 78, not brute facts, not just a series of dates and times or even a pragmatic analysis of why victories came and went, but rather right from the perspective of God blessing and cursing a faithful or a disobedient people.

And so Rushdoony’s history of the Reformation is a great example of the same thing that Psalm 78 does in a short way, drawing out a long way to his particular time. A providential view of history is important for us. Marshall Foster, providential acts of God—every time I think about the homeschooling situation, I remember a first book I ever wanted to write. First book I didn’t write—I have many books I didn’t write, none that I did. The first one I didn’t write was on the sovereignty of God in blessing a small band of Christian men and women who began in this church and changed the laws of the state of Oregon to deliver people out of the bondage of the public school system and allow them to homeschool in freedom.

That was a marvelous act of deliverance. That’s part of our history. It wasn’t just God. It wasn’t just political tactics involved. No, I mean, there were things like that. You do things, but ultimately it was the sovereignty of God.

So, this psalm begins with this with a call to remember your history and specifically to remember it from God’s perspective. Now, dads, you know, kids will probably honor you in some way today. Honor your kids this week. Take this admonition seriously. If you haven’t done much of this, do more of it. Try to understand God’s providence in history or know good books like Rushdoony and others who see that, Marshall Foster, who can help you to explain to your children the mighty works of God in history. A providential view of history is at the core of the generational succession that’s described in Psalm 78.

What’s a Christian dad supposed to do? His dad’s supposed to teach his kids history from a biblical perspective, God’s actions, his mighty works. History is the mighty works of God. You know, if you don’t have that, you end up with the modern historians who history is just one damn thing after another, they say. Which is an interesting statement that I’m sorry if I shocked you just now, but I did that intentionally ’cause I know everybody’s tired after camp.

No, that wasn’t it. It’s because they say that in an attempt to say, you know, it’s just there’s neutral, nothing really, no meaning or purpose, but you have to call it a damn fact which you know brings in the idea of deity and some sort of judgment or curse upon the whole thing. Well, to them it is one damn thing after another. It’s the providence of God damning them temporally for their rejection and rebellion against him who has revealed himself not just in history but in the created order as well.

So we need to teach our kids a providential view of history.

Now he mentions Ephraim here. One of the big picture items going on in Psalm 78 is it’s a transition, as becomes clear in the end, from Ephraim to Judah and from the tabernacle at Shiloh to David’s tabernacle on Mount Zion, which is not the temple. Remember, the temple’s kind of like the tabernacle and the tabernacle at Shiloh and the tabernacle of David combined, but the transition is from tabernacle to David’s tabernacle on Zion.

So there’s a transition. There’s a giving up on one tribe, we could say, from a covenantal perspective—Ephraim. And there’s this citation early on that Ephraim turned back in the day of battle. This is “the children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle.” Well, what day was battle—what day was that referring to there? Well, people don’t really know. Not sure when. Could have been the battle at Shiloh, much later. Could have been all kinds of things. We don’t know. But in general, so it’s a general statement that after this call to meditate on the providential acts of God in history, we’re called to meditate specifically on Ephraim and the specific designation of the sin of Ephraim in the next couple of verses there.

And then at the end there’s this transition from Ephraim—the north, really the northern tribes—to the southern tribes, Ephraim to Judah and then to David. So that’s kind of the big picture going on in Psalm 78—is describing this transition based upon Ephraim’s sins, which involved Eli and his sons. That’s another reference some people think because Shiloh is specifically addressed in God abandoning the tabernacle and going into captivity to the Philistines. They think maybe the Ephraimites’ failure in terms of the battle with the Philistines when God went into captivity for his people might be the other specific reference.

We just don’t know. It’s a general statement and we’ll get in a couple of minutes to the specific designations of how Ephraim sinned and lost—how the family line, you know, I mean in a way you can sort of think as cut off and now something shifts to somebody else. And so it’s very important in this.

And we won’t go through this in any detail, of course, but what a lot of the description that’s happening in the context of this providential history involves both the Exodus—the plagues in Egypt are described for us probably on a seven creation day model we’re not going to take the time to look at, but think about that. And then his sins in the wilderness.

So God’s providential acts of providing food and drink in the wilderness and yet their ungratefulness by asking for a different kind of food. They had angel food and they wanted, you know, flesh to eat and so God gave it to them, but you know, be careful what you pray for—along with it he brought curse to them. So God providentially takes care of his people in the wilderness, eventually bringing them into Canaan. He leads them—you know, pillar of fire at night and cloud in the day. He leads them. He guides. Guidance. He kills their enemies on the way to and on the way into Canaan. He brings them into Canaan. He settles them there in their new home. And so God does all these wondrous things. And yet Ephraim is, you know, dis—Ephraim is in direct contrast to all of that through its ungratefulness. So God’s people are ungra—ungrateful.

This contrast then between verses 8 and 9—Ephraim is armed and it turns back—and the stress also on the first couple of verses. So, our obligation on the basis of this psalm is to equip our children with specific, very specific ways for the battle by arming them. And we’ll talk now about how we’re to arm them.

I’m going to have to take just a pause. However, didn’t have to be. Okay. So, what is it? What’s going on here? What should we look at in these first few verses in terms of how we’re to instruct our children?

You know, it’s interesting that there are these kind of triplet things going on. If you look for instance at verse 4, we didn’t hide them from our children. We will not hide them. Telling to the generations to come what? First, the praises of the Lord. Secondly, his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. So, his strength is second and his wonderful works that he has done, and he establishes this testimony. So there’s these things that we’re exposed to, we’re required to pass on to the end of them doing in verse 7 that these that our children may set their hope in God.

Now that’s going to be important for Psalm 44. One of the most important things we should do as dads to our kids is to have them have hope. We live increasingly in a day and age you know marked by non-hope, by despair, and by meaninglessness. In fact, in the context of this in Psalm 78, he talks about their day, their days were spent in fear and anxiety, the opposite of hope, the rebellious people. So, one of the most important things that we’re supposed to give our kids is a sense of hope. And a providential view of history instills a sense of hope in terms of what God is doing.

So, they’re supposed to have hope and they’re supposed to set their hope in God. And secondly, they’re not to forget the works of God. Again, that is important in this context. And third, but keep his commandments. So, it’s not just an intellectual knowledge of history, but it’s a knowledge of history that causes them to keep the commandments with optimism, you know, and so these things are what’s specifically the result.

May not be like their fathers. What were their fathers like? They were a stubborn and rebellious generation. A generation that did not set its heart aright. Their spirit was not faithful to God. So again, a three-fold description. Stubborn and rebellious. They don’t set their heart right. Their spirit was not faithful to God. And then we have getting into the specific material on Ephraim. Verse 8 or verse 9 rather—we have Ephraim’s sin described.

The children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle. Well, what is it to be armed and carrying bows? Well, we don’t know the specific battle. The specific weaponry doesn’t seem to be the case. But what do they—how do they fail to shoot, to arm, to shoot the bows that they’re carrying and to use the arms God gives them?

Verse 10, again, a three-fold thing. 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. So it seems like we could think in terms of metaphor that the way to arm our children—the way that Ephraimites was armed, they knew the covenant. They knew the commandments. They knew the works of God, but they intellectually turn away from these things. So they can’t turn away if they don’t know them first.

So the way to arm our children is to give them an understanding of the covenant of God, right? I mean, that’s what it says. They didn’t keep his covenant. Secondly, that this covenant has a Torah, a description of how we’re to walk. It has laws. We can say a manner of living your life. We’re to walk in the law of God. And so, covenant is specifically what they violated. Secondly, the law of God. They didn’t walk in it. And third, they forgot his works and his wonders. They might have known the history, maybe not, but they didn’t apply it to themselves. They didn’t trust in God and his providential acts in history to accomplish his purpose in the world.

This is a summary statement of really some of the key founding doctrines of Reformation Covenant Church. And as we raise up kids and now grandkids in this church, we would come back to this Psalm 78 and say, “Here’s the deal. This is what we are trying to pass on to the next generation that you might tell them to your children. What is it? It’s an understanding of the covenant of God. It’s an understanding of the importance of walking in the laws of God. And it’s a remembering the works of God that give us trust and hope for the future.”

Because we found ourselves in the context of evangelicalism that had all but never even talked about the covenant of God, and yet it seems to be absolutely critical and key, whatever it is. Secondly, an evangelical church that says the law is not for Christians anymore, that we’re not supposed to walk in any kind of laws, it’s just love for Jesus. Well, how is love expressed? Jesus says, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.” It doesn’t ignore it, it doesn’t obviate the Ten Commandments. All ten are still there. And so in this church, when we started up, all ten commandments were quite important. I’ve mentioned this before, but it astonishes me that evangelicals want the Ten Commandments posted, but they don’t want to keep them.

All they want to do is bring more judgment on themselves. I shouldn’t say evangelicals—let’s put it more broadly. People that don’t want to keep the Ten Commandments of God, including the fourth commandment, all you’re going to do by promoting the law is to bring judgment upon yourself as a hypocrite of the law, right? So to us early on, well, the commandments are really important. Jesus says, “That’s what we’re supposed to do.” Now, the law wasn’t given to get them out of Egypt. The law wasn’t given to drive them to repentance so they could, you know, get out of Egypt. They got out of Egypt. They were redeemed. And the law was given graciously by God to say, “Here’s the way. Walk in this way. Here’s how you’re supposed to live your lives.” The law was never first and foremost a means of bringing people to repentance. It does that. But the law is primarily something we’re supposed to walk in.

And so at this church, we the guys signed the covenant, you know, keep the law, including the fourth commandment—Lord’s day, Lord’s day, 24 hours. And yet this church, you know, we are in danger in this church of hypocrisy and the Lord God’s judgment coming upon us as a hypocritical people who sign these oaths and covenants and then walk away from them. And God help us. We know that God hates above all things hypocrisy.

So, may the Lord God grant us the renewed commitment. And then the wonderful works of God—they forgot his works. Well, the works of God is about deliverance. It’s not just about getting away from some place in Egypt. It’s about going into some place, Canaan, and bringing about salvation in the context of that land. The works of God are a picture of the victory of God in history. It’s why we always, you know, from the earliest—Rush Dooney’s world history notes again, like Rushdoony, a providential view of history that shows various cultures how they sinned and how God judged them to the end that God might have a people in all the earth to praise his name.

That’s what he’s doing. Now, you can either get with the program or not. You can either join that or not, but that’s what he’s doing. I don’t feel guilty about the Indians. You know, I mean, there were bad things that happened. I didn’t do some of the sinful things that happened. But overall, what was the Lord God doing? He was giving stewardship of the land over to people who would faithfully rule in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If that bothers your political sensibilities, too bad. That’s what he did in Canaan. These people were wicked. God says wicked people don’t have any right to any land. It’s God’s land. He’s going to have his people rule the whole world. And part of the way he’s going to do that is by going into other places and either converting them or driving them out. That’s what it’s like. I was at a church service recently and they did this little, you know, great people, love the people, but they did this thing. They had a couple of American Indians who are converted Christians. Good. Great. It’s real interesting to think about how God converts in the context of that culture and what we can learn from that. But, you know, one of the men representing the pastors asked permission to enter into this domain because this was the Indians’ land before it was our land. And I’m like, what? You know, this isn’t the Indians’ land, you know, and very importantly, it’s not our land either. This is God’s land. And God takes out certain people that won’t come to obedience and removes them. Brings in faithful people. He’ll do the same to us.

Remembering the works of God is a sense of optimism and hope for the future, but it’s a great encouragement to faithfulness in the present because we know, man, if we’re hypocrites, God’s going to take us out. It won’t be our land either. We’re increasingly reaching the time where this land won’t be America. I’m not stuck on America. I’m stuck on a godly people and nation exercising biblical stewardship over land. That’s what God does. That’s what the history is about—is taking some people out and establishing other people who be more faithful to him. So, I don’t know, hope it’s still the United States of America in 100 years, but you know, if it’s the Republic of Rough and Ready or whatever it is, yet it’s okay with me.

So that these are the things—these are the things we’re supposed to instruct our children on. We’re supposed to give them a knowledge of the covenant. And you know, there’s lots of things one can say about the covenant, but let me just say one thing about this, the knowledge of the covenant. In the early days, and we can now talk about this, a Federal Vision ten years ago or so—I don’t know when it was—I was very excited and there were people from disparate elements of the Reconstruction movement or who are influenced by it, didn’t get along much, and they began to coalesce over some of the doctrines of so-called Federal Vision—just means covenantal vision, you know. This special terminology probably gets us in trouble, but federal just means, you know, with a covenant, a covenant. So covenantal vision that’s what we need and we need to have the freedom in the churches in America and the reformed churches in America to talk about what it means because the covenant is absolutely critical.

It’s at the top of the list of what Ephraim didn’t do. They didn’t keep covenant. Covenant breakers in Romans 1 are judged by God. We better know what it means. And Federal Vision is simply an attempt to think through the covenant, signs and seals for instance. What do they do? What don’t they do? How does it work? What does it mean? Seems to me one of the most important things of Federal Vision is what drove our church into existence in the early ’80s and that is that, you know, like Peter Leithart’s book “Against Christianity”—for the church. I may frighten some of you, we’re not talking about some institutionalized church in the sense of running everything, but the idea is that God works by way of covenant and if you’re brought into covenant you’re brought into the family of God, the church, and if you just don’t go to a church, people don’t go to church, you know, for a long time, I don’t count them Christians anymore.

I don’t care if anybody’s excommunicated. Somebody should have, but there’s pretty much a one-for-one relationship between involvement in the local assembly and our involvement in the life of the Trinity. That’s a result of covenantal thinking. You see what the covenant is. It’s a covenant community. The covenant that God makes with his people is corporate as well as individual. And it’s not individual to the exclusion of corporate. And if you think you it’s you and Jesus doing great together, you can’t get along with people in the church. That’s a big problem. He’s got you in the church so that you can get along with him better and to see how poorly you’re doing at times.

So I don’t want to get off into a big deal and I’m not advocating for particular positions that have gone forth in the name of Federal Vision, but what I am advocating for is this is a big issue and topic of conversation that we must attend to. What are the implications of knowing what the covenant of God is? We know we’re delivered in the context of this covenant. We know when we go to the table, it’s the covenant in his blood. We know that. I mean, it’s so important and central to who we are. So, this idea of covenant is importantly being developed and worked on, at least we hope it will be. Instead, we got polarization and we got people not interacting with each other and that diminishes both groups. You lose the loss of an emphasis on covenant and those that are trying to do it would have helped them a lot if you would have helped them think it through and some of the things that might get right in and wrong.

At this church, we’re committed to thinking about covenant for the rest of our existence because it’s so critical that children have to understand what this covenant is and it is a covenant of grace. Of course, it’s not a covenant of works. Never was intended that our works can merit anything. Our works don’t merit anything. It’s a covenant of grace. It’s a covenant of deliverance from the past. And it’s also a covenant of victory. That’s what we see recorded in covenant history—is God’s victory to his people and his intent to disciple the nations.

Well, secondly, that’s where to teach them covenant. And secondly, they didn’t keep his law. So, we’re supposed to give them a knowledge of the law of God, right? Law of God not as a means of salvation, not law of God, not as something we can never keep, just intended to bring us to repentance. No, the law is a way of life graciously given to us on the basis of the deliverance from sin and death—like Egypt—by the Lord Jesus Christ. The law is evidence of our covenant participation. It kind of helps us to understand and the covenant has terms. It has this law of the covenant that is part of it. And this law is our wisdom before God as well. There’s no contrast in the Bible between law and wisdom.

I guess I heard a different translation this morning, but at least in the New King James Version, Psalm 111:10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Well, we like that one and we sort of wonder what does it mean? I’m not sure. But verse 10 goes on to say, a good understanding have all those who do his commandments, his praise endures forever. So it seems like it’s putting in parallel fashion that wisdom and the keeping of the commandments of the Lord. If you fear him properly, you’ll keep commandments. So there’s at least a parallelism if not a direct identity between the wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord and lawkeeping. Lawkeeping is wisdom.

Now you got to be wise to know how to apply the truth of God’s word in various settings. But that’s what you’re supposed to do. And then third, as I said, so there’s the covenant, there’s the law, and there’s a knowledge of the mighty deeds of God. You know, we should be warned by these stories. Our church, you know, what does it say in Corinthians? It says these things were written, these accounts of God’s judgment, Psalm 78 and other places for our admonition, upon whom the ends of ages have come.

The New Testament doesn’t cut off a requirement to understand the past. In fact, it says those things were written for our help, to keep us in the way, to keep us from acting foolishly and sinfully. I got a quote here from Jim Jordan’s commentary on the book of Judges. And I’ll just sort of pick it up. It’s kind of in the middle, but it makes reference to what I’m going to say here, that knowing history gives us hope for the future. It also gives us a reminder, you know, gives us hope that it also helps them to remember that God judges disobedience. So, it’s a warning to them against sinfulness. And it also is a reminder to them that sinfulness comes about through stiff-neckedness and you know being stiff-necked against God, kind of ignoring what he’s done. Practical atheism again that we’ve talked about over and over again the last six months. If God isn’t in your thoughts, these things happen to you.

Well anyway, here’s a quote from Jim Jordan’s commentary on Judges: “God’s mighty works of war in the past, had they been taught them properly, now this is in the context of the book of Judges, would have taught them how desperate the situation really was. You know, here in America, if we understand history and disobedience and idolatry and God’s actions and judgments, that God does, you know, start to wake and he takes judgment against wicked people. We’d know how desperate our situation really is.”

They would have known that God means business, that he kills the wicked. Mighty, remembering the history of God reminds us—he’s not, in the words of Otto Scott, you know, he’s no buttercup. He’s not gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who won’t come with the sword to destroy us if we rebel against him and are ungrateful and unthankful and wicked. God kills the wicked. Providential history records these facts for us. Hypocrisy. God hates hypocrisy. Don’t turn back.

You know, history to us in the ’80s started to become a pretty big deal. So, we took a historical date, October 31st, and thought of it not in terms of Halloween, but in terms of the Protestant Reformation and Luther’s posting of the thesis on the door of Wittenberg. Now, I’m not saying anybody’s wicked for running around in a Halloween costume. I’m saying redeem the time. What are we teaching our kids now? Is it getting back to Halloween? Now, you can see Halloween and Rushdoony—he talks about this as the destruction of the wicked and kind of mocking them. This was the same day that God destroyed the world with flood. I guess there’s some connection to a celebration of that in ancient history. And so you can sort of see it that way. And maybe that’s some of the origins of Halloween, etc.

But if you’re going to do that as some sort of justification for doing Halloween or promoting it, make it clear. Bring God into it. Again, see history in terms of what God is doing, not as some sort of abstracted thing out here that has no reference to God. We can only do that if we forget the historical lessons—that God means business. He kills people that don’t have him in their thoughts. The fool, God is not in his thoughts. The wicked, God is not in his thoughts. God means business, okay? He kills people.

They would have known that the Canaanites and the other nations round about hated them. That peace was impossible. We need that lesson. You can’t coexist. It’s not some kind of neat deal where we kind of hang out with, you know, all have a multicultural worship service or whatever. I mean, maybe there’s reasons to do it, but when we start to lose the understanding of the antithesis between Christianity and every other religion that is a form of idolatry, they’d understand these Canaanites are not your friends, okay? Quit trying to hang out with them and thinking everything’s going to be okay. Either convert them or understand God’s going to, you know, deal with them. And you know that story.

They would have known about the viciousness of Pharaoh and of the Amalekites. Oh, well, we got soft things now and Hitler is a thing of the past. No, no. The world can turn very wicked and in a very militaristic way very quickly. I mean, we don’t got to go back to the Pharaoh. We just got to go back 50 years, 60 years to see what evil men can do. When a country has lost its center, when it lost its root, when it’s lost its covenant and the law of God and hope and his judgments, a knowledge of his judgments tell us about the viciousness of men like Pharaoh and of the Amalekites.

They would have known of the seductiveness of the apostate Midianites and of the craftiness of the Gibeonites. You know, you know that story about those women coming in. That Balaam couldn’t curse Israel, but they could curse themselves by going after, you know, the good-looking gals, the hot gals, right? If we know these stories, it reminds us, no, it’s not okay to be hanging out with a non-Christian or a nominal Christian or whatever it is. Not okay. That’s how our history got messed up was going off in that way.

They would have remembered that Ammon and Moab refused them food. They’d remember who people were. They would have been on their guard against the enemy. Also knowing that God had killed an entire generation of their forefathers in the wilderness, they would have been on their guard to stay close to the Lord. So, you know, not just about how bad the pagans are, but how we’re, you know, get killed off when we’re not faithful to the covenant, the law, and putting our trust in God.

They did not know these things, Jordan writes. “Rather, they grew up at ease, never being impressed with the seriousness of it all. It was easy to compromise to play around with Baal and Ashtaroth.”

Grow you children and grow up in this church. Now you haven’t grown up at ease totally, but you’ve grown up at a great sense of ease. You didn’t have to battle like we had to battle to get things going, we were doing in the church, homeschooling, whatever it was. We had lots of battles. You haven’t known those battles. That’s okay, different thing. God’s given you blessings. But don’t, as a result of that—the way you keep from letting that form your understanding of the world is remembering the history of this church, of your parents, of our culture, our history of the Old Testament. That’s how we keep from that ease that we bless God for, from taking off the edge of seriousness of what we’re about.

So, dads are supposed to pass on to kids today. You want to be honored and glorified at Father’s Day, be this kind of dad that stresses covenant, law, the history seen from God’s perspective. The mighty works, he said, “Seemed almost mythical indeed primeval compared with the sophistication and the sophisticated new views propounded on all sides. Oh, it’s for the ancients, you know, even if it’s we hear it, but you know, it’s kind of mythical sort of legend stuff. And now, you know, we have much more sophisticated people.”

So, giving our children a knowledge of the history of God are discouragements to them, not just of outright disobedience, but of kind of an at ease that doesn’t take seriously the need to put God at the heart of everything that they are and put his law in and to see that their entire life is a life given in the relationship of covenant to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And it’s an encouragement to obedience and praise to God, of course.

So, so Psalm 78 says, “Look, things can get real bad and you should know your history and know that things will get real bad for you when you sin and persecution will come.”

Let’s talk a little bit briefly about Psalm 44. Turn there. Turn to Psalm 44. We’ll read through this. Just make a few comments and then we’ll be done.

Psalm 44, to the chief musician, a contemplation of the sons of Korah. Maskil. See, remember there’s a few of them. Almost all of them have to do with this thing: Well, what’s going on when God doesn’t seem active and involved?

“We had heard with our ears, oh God, our fathers have told us.” There—I think two, I think it’s the only two psalms maybe one other. I think this is it though—these two where it talks about things our fathers have told us—”the deeds you did in their days and days of old.”

So again, our fathers tell us instruction in history. History brings together the idea of law and covenant, right? It comes together in terms of seeing what actually occurs in the history of people. So the fathers have told us. I’m hammering home the same thing over and over again. Dads, this is Father’s Day. He’s reminding you of your history. He wants you to remind your children of a providential view of history.

“The deeds you did in their days and days of old. You drove out the nations with your hand, but them you planted. You afflicted the peoples and cast them out. For they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword.”

Now, this is going back and forth with the text, but understand that he says, “You drove out the nations. Them, that is God’s people, he planted in the land. You afflicted the peoples and cast them out. The Canaanites were cast out. The Indians were cast out, okay? And so God planted Puritans in place of the Indians and that was okay. That’s what you got to remember. They did not gain possession of the land by their own sword. This is God’s people.”

Now there were things that were wrong. But overall, how can you not see it in relationship to Israel and the Canaanites? Anyway, they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword. “Nor did their own arms save them. It was your right hand, your arm, the light of your countenance because you favored them.” So important.

Of course, they did use arms. Not the first battle—the first battle in Jericho, it’s not their arms at all that saved them. It was the worship of God that did it. At Ai, he demanded they use strategy and faint and arms and guns and or weaponry and all that sort of stuff. The psalm doesn’t say those things you just give up and wait for God to deliver you. You’re supposed to use them, but you don’t rely upon them, right? You don’t rely upon your tactics. You don’t rely upon what you’re doing. Ultimately, the only way you can prosper in these matters is the favor of God.

“You favored them. That’s why it all happened the way it did. You favored them.”

And of course, he favors them because they’re a godly generation. The ungodly generation had died out over the previous 40 years before they went in.

Now, so he gives a little bit of history like we had a lot of history in Psalm 78. And then he personalizes it. You know, a lot of our pastoral prayers are personalizing the Psalms. Well, he does that here. He takes the past action of God and then brings it into his day and age.

“You are my King, oh God. Command victories for Jacob. Through you, we will push down our enemies. He’s been talking about them and they in the past. He’s talking in the present now and about us. Through you, we will push down our enemies.”

He learns to be confident and optimistic about the future. “Through your name, we will trample those who rise up against us. We’ll be the same way. You’re our God, too. You just think the God of them. We’re faithful. You’re going to do this for us. I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me. I’ll use them, but I’m not going to ultimately trust in them. You have saved us from our enemies.”

This is a reference, think back to the past. “You have put to shame those who hated us.”

Well, so in a way, he’s saying definitively God has defeated all of our enemies. We’ll see in a moment that things aren’t so good for him. But he can make this claim looking at the past, bringing it into the present. We can already speak about God’s deliverance of us. God has rescued and redeemed his people in America. I don’t know if it’ll be America by the time it’s over, but that’s what God has done already. We could say prophetically speaking, and we can appropriate past victories of God in the present.

“In God, we boast all day long and praise your name forever. See law. So meditate now.”

So he’s looked at the past. He’s brought it into the present. He’s applied it to his situation. But then he tells us what that situation is.

“But you have cast us off and put us to shame. You do not go out with our armies. See, now he went out with, you know, is that he didn’t go out with the armies in Psalm 78 because they were sinful. But it doesn’t say that here. It just says you don’t go out with our armies. You make us turn back from the enemy. You see that? See how it hooks up with 78? The Benjamites turn back in the day of battle. But in this psalm, God has made them turn back in the day of battle. God has providentially overseen this history to bring them defeat.”

They’re—they’ve been willing. They’re are, you know, devoted followers of Yahweh, but God has made them turn back the enemy.

“Those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves. You have given us up like sheep intended for food. So, we’re being plundered. We’re being killed. You have scattered us among the nations, a reference maybe to the coming exile. There’s exile, physical stuff. You sell your people for next to nothing and are not enriched by selling them. You make us a reproach.”

So, he’s talked about the physical difficulties of defeat. God is doing it all. And now he talks about the emotional or psychological difficulties.

“Verse 13, you make us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to all of those around us. You make us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples. My dishonor is continually before me, and the shame of my face has covered me because of the voice of him who reproaches and reviles, because of the enemy and the avenger.”

So is difficulties in the present. At the center of this psalm are the present difficulties, physical difficulties, emotional difficulties, shamefacedness. And now, you know, we may not be in a position of retreat from enemies that are killing us. And you may not be openly mocked, but you can begin to relate to some of these things in your own problems with physical possessions or health or with emotional states, friendlessness, whatever it might be. You can put yourself in this psalm saying, that God hasn’t brought all this neat stuff to play in my life right now. It’s not all there now. I’m on the down tick on this thing. I’m down, not up.

Now look at what he says in verse 17.

Wow. We know why this has happened. He’s a lousy sinner, right? Must be—Psalm 78 says, “Remember the works of God. You’ll remember that God brings judgment upon sinners. But he says, “All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten you, nor have we dealt falsely with your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, both in intent and in actions.”

He says, “Hey, we’re steady followers of you, God. We’re doing the right things, and all this stuff has still come upon us. You’ve severely broken us in the place of jackals, covered us with the shadow of death. If we had forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to a foreign god, would not God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

So you know beginning talks about history. Then he talks about God’s past deliverances. Then he talks about the present difficulties. But he says you know we were faithful like the people you deliver. We’re just as faithful yet it didn’t work out so good for us.

Psalm 78 says teach your kids history to warn them about sinfulness and practical atheism. Psalm 44 says, “Teach your kids history to know that God will move in time to establish you, but in the short term, things can be really bad. Bad things happen to good people.”

The Book of Job, I don’t think there’s any reference to any sin going on in Job. Even the word that says return to God, implying they drifted away, that could be translated turn to God like we do when times are tough. There’s a special call, a turning to God with proclamation of fasting and assembly. But in Joel, it seems like it’s kind of like this song. Bad things happen to good people.

Our children need to know that because the danger of our perspective, the law, blessings and cursings, optimistic in terms of the future, is triumphalism. That all of our lives are marked by blessings and there’s no difficulties. But we know there are. We know that this verse was used by Paul in Romans 8. We quoted from it last week, right? In the final reading. “Your sakes, we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” That was the Christians at the hands of the Jews and Romans. Nothing they were doing wrong. They were being slaughtered for righteousness sake.

“Blessed are you when men persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my name’s sake. Blessed are you.”

So a strange kind of remembering of history bringing comfort in Psalm 44. Obviously we have to see our Savior in this and all those who are united to him.

And then the final stanza, we’re back to Muse. A god who falls asleep on the job. Does he sound offensive to us? But look what he says in verse 23.

“Awake. Why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise. Do not cast us off forever.”

Well, he’s not sleeping. We know we sang that responsibly earlier in the processional rather. But from a covenantal perspective, God goes to sleep and it’s proper for the psalmist to awake Lord God, arise out of your slumber. He’s not sleeping. But he can be roused to activity in terms of us specifically, okay.

The point is your children need to know. We give them all these great things when they’re little. Oh, it’s great and Jesus is King and this and that and they can grow up and then they hit life and it’s like, well, this isn’t what I thought. This is not my beautiful wife. This is not my beautiful car. This isn’t the kind of life I had hoped for. It’s tough and suffering. And this is a reminder that’s okay. That’s part of how God is moving history—is sometimes bad things happen to good people. And kids don’t beat yourselves up. Don’t despair. Don’t think God’s not present. You know, know he is there.

Dads need to teach their kids this. It’s going to catch them by complete unawares otherwise. Then they’ll be tempted to just think God’s not there. But we need to remind them. And then we need to tell them to do what this guy does here, this psalmist does.

“Awake. Why do you sleep, oh Lord? Arise. Don’t cast us off forever. Why do you hide your face? Forget our affliction, our oppression. Our soul is bowed down to the dust. Our body clings to the ground. Arise for our help. Redeem us for your mercy’s sake.”

That’s interesting because you know they you had blessed the fathers because of your favor was upon them. And now he says, “Bless us for your mercy’s sake.” We don’t really deserve it even as faithful as we might be, but God’s mercy to us. We call upon God as the father to have compassion, mercy by the suffering children to bring it to an end. It’s proper to pray that way. And in fact, you should pray that way. And if you’re praying the Psalter, you’re going to come across Psalm 44. You’re going to understand when you’re suffering, first of all, you know, your parents have hopefully prepared you to know it’s okay.

Bad things happen to good people. Remember to check yourself. Covenant law, you know, knowledge of his history from a providential perspective. And if you’re tracking your heart and your actions are right with God, you understand it’s going to happen for a season in your life. And understand that your proper response to that is to cry out, “Lord God, wake up. Don’t you see these guys are giving me a beating here?”

So Psalm 78 and Psalm 44, these contemplations of God’s difficulties. We see sometimes for our sins to bring us to repentance, sometimes not—just to make us steadfast and to fill up as the New Testament talks about the sufferings of our Savior. Our ultimate job, of course, is to point to history interpreted on the cross of Jesus Christ. And there we have it all, right.

So we have Jesus taking upon himself our sin and that suffering that’s described in judgments of Psalm 78. And we have Jesus himself bearing no sin being cast off. God turning his face away as if God is sleeping to Jesus on the cross when he saw sufferers for righteousness sake. And we enter into those same things.

And so ultimately we point our children to the greater Exodus, the greater David, the greater lion of Judah, and point them to be trusting in that mighty work accomplished 2,000 years ago at the cross.

You know, there’s difficulties, multigenerational difficulties, right? It’s always tough, no matter what we do. There’s a song by Dan Fogelberg. Well, I young people that have grown up in this church, understand what I’ve talked about today. That’s what your parents have been trying to do with you. The parents in this church have tried to bring you to an understanding of the covenant. They’ve tried to keep you walking in the law and that’s why they get ticked off at you sometimes or correct you harshly or whatever it is. You know, we may sin in what we’re doing, but this is what we’re trying to do: give you a sense of a, you know, a fullness of Christian life that knows the covenant, keeps the law, remembers the works of God.

We’re getting older, getting a little tired, but that’s what we’ve attempted to.

There’s a song by Dan Fogelberg, leader of the band, and he talks about basically his father and influence on his music. He says, “I thank you for the music and your stories of the road. I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go. I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough and, Pop, I don’t think I said I love you near enough. The leader of the band is tired. His eyes are growing old but his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul. My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man. I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band. I am the living legacy to the leader of the band.”

Children, that’s what your parents want for you. Don’t imitate our sin. Take the directions we pointed you. Be a living legacy to your fathers. Give them a card or gift or something. Fine. But what they want is to see the good that they’ve tried to instill in you shine through even brighter generation to generation. They want to see you be people of the covenant who understand God’s law and have the wisdom to apply it in difficult situations. And they want you to know God’s history in their lives and how God worked with them and how he works for you as well.

There’s another song by Mike and the Mechanics that’s kind of interesting. It says, “Every generation blames the one before and all of their frustrations come beating on your door. I know that I’m a prisoner to all my father held so dear. I know that I’m a hostage to all his hopes and fears. I just wish I could have told him in the living years.” And he talks about the difficulties of community communication when the kids are trying to do things different, better, more for Jesus even than their parents did.

And yet there’s difficulty in that communication. And so there’s an absence of communication. There is communication that just turns into arguments and misunderstandings. And then he has this one in this song, they have this wonderful children’s chorus. You know, sing it loud, say it clear. You can listen as well as you hear. It’s too late when he died, eyes to admit you don’t see eye to eye.

You know, we had this tragic event. Tim Russert, who, you know, had great relationship with his dad. One of his two books was on Big Russ and his and his son, I think I’m not sure, but it’s about his father. He still tells—still told stories about his father. He keeled by John Stewart at the shortness of life at camp. And John didn’t know then, but that very day Tim Russert had keeled over. Born in 1950, the same year I was born. Young man seemingly in great health, probably a heart attack.

And that’s what happens. And young people, that’s what’s going to happen to your parents. They’re all going to die. And it’s good now to have communication. It’s good now to tell your folks you love them. And maybe good to try to discuss with them the things you’re doing that maybe are a little different than what they did as you try to be a more faithful generation than we were in establishing in this church in this community.

May the Lord God bless us today as we continue in the Lord’s day, the Father’s day, and may our relationships of fathers and sons and mothers and daughters see the importance of reminding each other about history. Psalm 78, Psalm 44, that our Father in heaven is providentially overseeing our history, both to bring us to correction and judgment, but also that we might join in and share the sufferings of our Savior and see history advance through that mechanism.

May the Lord God bless us today.

Father, we thank you. We thank you for being a wonderful father to us, present through your word in spirit. Thank you for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to show us what a son’s supposed to be like. Help us to be good sons of you, our Father in heaven. Thank you for the incredible truth that Jesus says he’s our brother, our elder brother as well.

Lord God, I pray that you would bless the fathers and sons and daughters today, particularly as they think about these things, as we try to be more steadfast both as the ones that pass on these truths and those that are trying to learn it so they might pass it on to the next generation. Help us, Father, as a church continue to mature in Jesus name we ask it. Amen.