Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

• God is Strong- “You have redeemed your people by your STRENGTH, the descendants of Jacob and of Joseph by your MIGHT. Interlude” (15) All the heroes of faith in the Bible had to overcome the negative circumstances of their past to grasp the great destiny ahead of them. Asaph remembers this and begins to re-ignite his trust in the ability of his God. “When the Red Sea saw you, O god, its waters looked and trembled! The sea quaked to its very depths. The clouds poured down their rain; the thunder rolled and crackled in the sky. Your arrows of lightning flashed. Your thunder roared from the whirlwind; the lightning lit up the world! The earth trem- bled and shook.” (16-18) The crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites was the greatest display of God’s strength in the Old Testament. His amazing deliverance of the nation from Egypt becomes a pillar of our faith that helps us as we face personal difficulties. Asaph describes in poetry what happened in reality: there were sub- terranean earthquakes, torrential downpours of rain, thunder, lightning and tornadoes as God opened the sea for his people to pass over! “Your road led through the sea, your pathway through the mighty waters- a pathway no one knew was there! You led your people along that road like a flock of sheep, with Moses and Aaron as their shep- herds.”(18-20) God used his chosen leaders to open a way that was previously unknown to the people. That is why God has shepherds, they can see and lead his people in miraculous ways as they obey him: “Tell the people to get moving! Use your shepherd’s staff-hold it out over the water, and a path will open up before you through the sea…Then Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind.”(Exodus 14:15,16,21) Jesus proved to the disciples that he was the Lord of creation and greater than Moses when he walked upon the water. The disciples had not even considered that Jesus, the Lord of the waves would make a pathway through the sea and come and still the storm. “About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came to them, walking on the water.”(Mt. 14:25) The obvious response to the miracle was to worship him; “Then the disciples worshiped him. ‘You really are the Son of God!’ they exclaimed.” (Mt. 14:33) When it seems that there is no way out of our difficulties we must remember God’s secret pathway through the sea. We cannot experience it until we ‘remember’ the great deeds of old, unlocking the door to his power and deliverance. We can join Asaph as he discovers the pathway that no one even knew was there! IV THE PATHWAY THROUGH THE WATERS - 16-20

1 Boyce 2 Keil & Delitzsch

PSALM 78: LISTEN TO MY TEACHING Avoiding the Sins of the Past

Psalm 78 is the longest of 4 ‘Historical Psalms’ (105, 106, 135) in the Bible and it recounts the many sins of the nation from the time of the Exodus from Egypt until the reign of David. It begins with an im- passioned plea from the Lord through his prophet Asaph to teach the children of the next generation to be faithful to God so they can avoid the sins of their ancestors. Christ is seen in this psalm as the one who speaks in parables (2), the rock that gave waters to Israel (15, 16), the bread of heaven (24) and the Holy One of Israel (41). There are seven major sections that do not follow the chronological history but emphasize the spiritual failure of the people:

I MY PEOPLE - 1-8 Teaching the Next Generation II MIRACLES IN EGYPT - 9-16 Tragedy of Forgetting III MANNA AND MEAT - 17-33- Testing God in the Wilderness

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