《The Biblical Illustrator – Psalms (Ch.78~88)》(A Compilation)
78 Chapter 78
Verse 1
Psalms 78:1
Give ear, O My people, to My law; incline your ears to the words of My mouth.
The obligation to obey God’s law
I. It is the law of your nature. The foundation of morality is laid deep in human nature; its principles result from the constitution of our frame; and its authority will be supreme, while there is a mind to discern, or a heart to feel, or a conscience to judge.
II. It is the law of heaven.
III. It is the law of society. Public depravity paves the way for public ruin.
IV. It is the Law of happiness. What does it forbid? Desires, passions, and vices, from which for our own sakes we should abstain, though there was no such prohibition. It forbids the gratification of desires which would lead us to ruin; the commission of vices which waken remorse, and deliver us up to the tormentors. What does the law of the Lord command? What is lovely, and pure, and praiseworthy; what tends to make men peaceable, gentle, humane, merciful, benevolent, and happy. (John Rogan.)
Verses 1-72
Verse 2
Psalms 78:2
I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old.
The nature and design of parabolic teaching
The word here translated parable did not probably convey to the mind of the psalmist the signification which we ordinarily attach to it. It might mean nothing more than a sublime, figurative, and sententious manner of stating facts or imparting moral lessons; or nothing more than a poem in which this style should prevail.
I. The nature of parabolic teaching. It is that which discerns most deeply and employs most judiciously these manifold analogies and comparisons, more or less partaking of what we understand by a continued metaphor. And he who has the greatest moral perfection will assuredly be the best adapted to the discernment of the lessons they imply. The Lord Jesus Christ, then, must be, from His very character and offices, best acquainted with this method of instruction. He who made all things and without whom not anything was made that was made, He is not only the Word, but the Wisdom of God--pronouncing His dark sayings and forming His secret things in the progress of the world and the Church, so that Egypt is still the type of bondage, and Israel’s journey through the wilderness to the land of promise one long parable, as Asaph saw darkly, of God’s dealings with His saints in the latter day. Every hour we behold Him illustrating the nature of this varying and marvellous instruction; aiding us to its definition; supplying the materials of which its innumerable comparisons are formed.
II. The adaptation of parabolic teaching to the condition of mankind upon earth. The human mind is so constituted, as to be unable to comprehend essences, properly speaking. The principles of causation are a sealed book to us. The progress of language, the manner in which we give names to objects, are of themselves sufficient proofs of this view. In everything pertaining to our moral conduct and choice, we follow another kind of evidence, and are influenced by another kind of reasoning. We determine what shall be our preference, not because we know absolutely the best course, but because our minds remark that what we are about to do bears a likeness to some other event or circumstance, which on another occasion, we have observed, came to pass. The rule and measure of our hopes and fears concerning the success of our pursuits; our expectation that others will act so and so under such circumstances; and our judgment that such actions proceed from such principles--all these rely upon our having observed the like to what we hope, fear, expect, judge; we say, upon our having observed the like, either with respect to others or ourselves. Our very life, then, is guided by a sort of parable, and hence the adaptation of its formal development to our circumstances and condition. But that propriety is illustrated not only by the connection of reasoning on probabilities, or likelihoods, or parallel courses of events, with the teaching by parables. We prove it also by the shortness of human life. A moral question comes before us; we make a parable to ourselves; we compare the subject on which we want to learn with another, where the decision and propriety is obvious. We do this involuntarily, because our time is so short; it is now or never. Here is another ground of arguing the adaptation of parabolical teaching to the necessities of mankind. We have said, what must the case be with the masses of which the world is constituted! Engaged as they are from morning to night in obtaining a scant supply for the wants of their bodies, they have no time or opportunity to rise, were the rising possible, above the range of this kind of information. But to them it seems strangely forcible. It strikes a chord in their understanding and heart. Metaphors are ever popular with the multitude. Children (and the mass of mankind are but children of a larger growth) love to be instructed by a similitude. It casts them on a new field of discovery; it opens their mind to a fresh series of glorious thoughts and feelings. And is it presumptuous to suppose that all this was part of ancient and venerable design on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ the Creator, and by creating the Teacher, as well as the Redeemer of our species? (T. Jackson, M. A.)
Verse 4
Psalms 78:4
We will not hide them from their children.
Children
I. The interesting objects of our solicitude mentioned. Consider--
1. The love which welcomes them.
2. The evils which surround them.
3. The possibilities which await them.
II. The sacred duties which we owe to them.
1. They are weak; we must protect them (Genesis 33:1-20.).
2. They are helpless; we must provide for them.
3. They are ignorant; we must instruct them.
III. The object which we hope shall be realized.
1. The knowledge of truth shall be perpetuated.
2. Our children will put their hope in God.
3. They shall be better than their fathers. (The Study.)
The knowledge of national benefits and deliverances transmitted to the rising generation
I. Point out a few of those things which we have heard and known, or which our fathers have told us, and which we, with the psalmist, may style “The praises of the Lord, and His strength, and the wonderful works that He hath done.”
II. Recommend and enforce the resolution in my text. The great Gad may justly expect that we acquaint ourselves with His ways and works; that we endeavour to trace Him in the natural, providential, and civil world, and in the world of grace; and that we treasure up in our hearts each signal deliverance He hath wrought. But a genuine disciple of Jesus, and a child of God, will neither wish to live nor to die unto himself. What we have known of the wonderful works of God in favour of our fathers, of ourselves, or of ages to come, we should transmit to the rising generation. I am apprehensive that one cause of the languishing state of public spirit, and of pious zeal, in this age, is the want of knowledge. Had the minds of persons in the present day been early and deeply impressed with the conduct of God to this highly favoured country, the privileges they enjoy would be more dear and important in their esteem, and patriotism would not be that empty boast which we have too much reason to apprehend it now is. With the knowledge of those “things we have heard, and known, and which our fathers have told us,” transmit, as far as possible, the things themselves. On our part let nothing be left untried, that they who are soon to fill our places in civil and religious life, and that their descendants, even to the world’s last period, may stand forth, under God, the guardians of each important and sacred right, and approve themselves the unshaken friends of their country, of Jesus, and of the Gospel. (N. Hill.)
The transmission of Scriptural truth to posterity
The text presents four grand arguments why we should zealously devote ourselves to this duty.
I. The peculiar character of scriptural truth. Consider it--
1. As a revelation of God.
2. As a law of duty.
3. As a history of God’s conduct.
II. The manner in which we have been put into its possession. As we have received the knowledge of God and the way of happiness from our fathers, who showed us by their lips and their lives the way of happiness, we are bound, by every consideration of gratitude, to give to others what has been so freely given to us.
III. The divine arrangements as to its transmission. Fathers are commanded to make known the commands and the character of Gad to their children. Various powerful reasons might be assigned for this infinitely wise arrangement. The young come into our world with an awfully strong bias to evil, and it is unspeakably important to check the workings of their depravity by presenting the most powerful considerations which tend to the accomplishment of such an end. Nor must it be forgotten here, that, as immortal creatures, the character of man is usually formed in youth for eternity.
IV. The great results which it is intended to accomplish. Every individual who receives the knowledge of God, in the love of it, becomes a moral sun, diffusing light and warmth around him, the glorious effects of which shall be felt through all the changes of time, and in eternity itself. (J. Belcher.)
The true method by which generation helps generation
I. True religious knowledge is a thing imparted to man. It is that “which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.” It is not inbred nor discovered. Without denying that man has a capacity to discover God as the Creator, all history shows that he has never done so; and as to His redeeming capacity, that, in the nature of the case, transcends all human conceptions. As sinners, this is the knowledge of God we require, and it involves the former. And we have it, not by intuition or discovery, but by impartation. It has been transmitted to us through many generations.
1. They have handed it down to us by inspired documents.
2. They have handed it down to us by their own teaching.
II. True religious knowledge is imparted to us, not to monopolize, but to transmit (Psalms 78:5-8). The transmittory arrangement implies--
1. That the children of every generation have a capacity for receiving this knowledge. There is no danger of teaching religion boo soon.
2. That the children of every generation will require this knowledge. Coming generations may not require our philosophies, poetries, and governments; they may out-grow our sciences, and despise our civilization, but they will require our religion. Though they may not require our lamps, they will need our sun.
3. The eternal harmony of all God’s operations. The Eternal does not contradict Himself. The first Divine act on earth’s theatre will harmonize with the last. The whole will form one great anthem filling eternity with music.
III. True religious knowledge is to be thus transmitted in order to elevate posterity.
1. The grand result aimed at is threefold--
2. It is coming slowly but surely. Humanity is rising, and every true thought arid virtuous act helps it on. (Homilist.)
Verses 5-8
Psalms 78:5-8
For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel . . . that they should make them known to their children.
The parents’ prerogative: how is it used
Dr. Adam Clarke reminds us that there are no less than five generations specified in these verses. God has blessed no age for its own sake only. There is a chain of Divine purposes in the history of God’s dealings with men, one link of which joins another in continuous progression until all, in their united and related capacity, present one completed purpose which is all-embracing and Godlike. This truth was repeatedly emphasized in the earliest days of God’s special dealings with the Jewish people. Moreover, the duty of handing down to succeeding generations the truth which they had received was specially enforced in the case of parents, the natural guardians of the rising race, and, therefore, according to the law of Moses, the first special custodians of Divine truth. It is important to notice how tenaciously the Jewish people clung to the title “the Children of Israel,” and how frequently in later days, when the title “Children of Israel” had fallen into comparative disuse, they nevertheless clung to the memory of their “fathers,” especially the three great primitive fathers of the race--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All this shows what a large place the family and its associations and relationships occupied in the life of the nation. There can be no doubt that it is God’s will that the parent should be the first teacher and guide of the family, and if this is neglected by the parent no one else can fully compensate for that neglect. Hence the repeated emphasis placed in the Old Testament on the duties of parents. I say “parents” because the law demanded filial honour alike to “father and mother.” Now, in the household of the Jew there were certain religious duties to be performed by the mother. For instance, the lighting of the Sabbath lamp, as also the preparation of the Sabbath meal, and the fastening of the scroll of parchment upon the door-post, was done, not by the father, but the mother. Thus Jewish children from their earliest age learnt to associate certain religious acts commemorative of great facts in the history of God’s dealings with the nation with some of the mother’s duties. The child would ask, “Mother, what are you doing?” She would reply, “Kindling the Sabbath lamp,” or “Preparing the Sabbath meal,” or “Fastening the parchment upon the door-post so that all may know we love and serve the Lord God of Israel.” She would also tell the child the spiritual significance of all these customs. Thus the mother was a mighty power in Israel in forming the character, and determining the destiny, of the rising race. Moreover, the mother was the privileged teacher of the child during the earliest and most impressionable period of his life, and, oh, how wonderfully the Jewish mother availed herself of this opportunity! We find a striking instance of the mother’s influence, even in a home, far away from any synagogue, where, moreover, the father was a heathen man, in Paul’s allusion to Timothy, who from a child had known the Holy Scriptures. Now, parents, will you relinquish that vantage ground upon which God has placed you? Will you give it up instead of availing yourself of your prerogative to the fully Are you willing to send your children forth to the world without the advantage of your unique influence? Is it your will that, though you have the power placed in your hands so to influence your children that they shall find it exceptionally difficult to forget you and your teaching, they shall yet go forth into this fashionable, giddy, sinful world without the advantage of any such training as God calls upon you to give them, and all this because you idly trust that somehow or other some self-denying teacher may compensate for your neglect? Oh, parents, to have a conscience void of offence, and our hands clean so that not a spot of their blood shall remain upon us! (D. Davies.)