Psalm 78

What’s Happening?

The psalmist Asaph encourages his readers to listen as he tells them stories about God’s power from the past (Psalm 78:1-4). Asaph reminds parents to teach their children these stories as well so that future generations of God’s people won’t repeat the rebellion of Israel’s past (Psalm 78:5-11).

Like a loving spiritual parent, Asaph points out a destructive pattern in their national story. God guided them with clouds and fire. He split rocks open to provide water (Psalm 78:14–16). God made bread rain down from heaven and never missed a day (Psalm 78:24–25). But then their forefathers rebelled. Providing water and bread was not enough for them, so they tested God’s commitment to provide by implying God sent bread because he was too weak to send meat (Psalm 78:17-22). As a punishment God gave them exactly what they wanted. They ungratefully gorged themselves on miracle meat and died with the meat still in their mouths (Psalm 78:26-31). This is Israel’s destructive pattern and national story: God provides, God’s people rebel, God disciplines. Sometimes discipline produces repentance from God’s people, but it was generally half-hearted and short-lived. And this pattern is centuries old (Psalm 78:32-38). 

God also saved his people from Egypt and split the Red Sea (Psalm 78:41-43). God then returned his people to their ancestral home, only for them to test God by worshiping gods that played no role in their national success (Psalm 78:55-58). But through all this God’s mercy never ran out. No matter how many times his people tested him, God always remembered his people were only human (Psalm 78:39-41). And he always provided another way to be saved. 

The psalm ends with Asaph hopeful that God’s current means of salvation might be the one that finally breaks Israel’s generational pattern. God has chosen an unlikely king, a shepherd-boy named David, to lead God's people out of their ingratitude and idolatry and into true salvation (Psalm 78:70–72).

Where’s the Gospel?

Even though David is the hope of Psalm 78, he failed just like his forefathers. David too rebelled and tested God, succumbed to his cravings, murdered a man, and was disciplined by God (2 Samuel 12:1-27). David’s failures prove no leader in Israel’s history has ever been strong enough to restrain his people’s hearts from testing God by following their appetites. But God’s mercy still didn’t run out. 

God’s son, Jesus, showed himself to be a true and better Israel. When Jesus' belly growled after 40 days without food in another wilderness, he didn’t test God. Where Israel and her leaders repeatedly failed and forgot, he succeeded and remembered, never breaking any of God’s laws (1 Peter 2:22). Breaking the generational pattern of God’s people, Jesus emerged from that wilderness and introduced himself as the true bread from heaven (John 6:35). He was the leader who finally restrained God’s people’s insatiable craving for rebellion by allowing his people to feed on his body (John 6:51).

Jesus was also a true and better King David. David did not shepherd his people away from rebellion. But God raised up Jesus to be a better shepherd and king than his forefather (John 10:11-14). Instead of killing a man to satisfy his appetites, Jesus was killed to remake the appetites of his people. In his death, he erased the old national story of his people. And in his resurrection, he rewrote the story of God’s infinite mercy on his people’s hearts (Hebrews 10:16). Our shepherd and King Jesus is so merciful he makes it so his people no longer want to rebel. Add one day soon Jesus will make it so his people won’t even remember how to rebel. 

See For Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God whose mercy does not run out. And may you see Jesus as the true David, and the true bread of life.