Psalms 78

They will never suffer for the truth, but be as a soldier that leaves his colors, and runs over to the enemy's side; he will fight on the Devil's side for pay. 4. Not to be settled in the faith is highly provoking to God: To espouse the truth and then fall away, brings an ill re…

Adore then where you cannot fathom. If God be infinite in all places, then let us not go to limit God (Psalm 78:41). They limited the holy one of Israel.

Take away a king's power and we un-king him; take away the Lord's power and we un-God him: yet how guilty of this are we. Did not Israel question God's power? Can he prepare a table in the wilderness? (Psalm 78:19) they thought the wilderness was a fitter place for making of gra…

Secondly, Take heed of hypocrisy. Judas was first a sly hypocrite, and then a traitor (Psalm 78:37). Their heart was not right with God, neither were they steadfast in his covenant.

He can create strength in weakness; he can create a supply of our wants. What a foolish question was that (Psalm 78:19): Can he prepare a table in the wilderness? Cannot he that made the world do much more?

Their sorrows shall be multiplied, that hasten after another God. Psalm 78:58-59: They moved him to jealousy with their graven images. When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel (verse 60), so that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh.

Let us avoid all sin, especially this sin of idolatry or image worship: It is heinous, after we have entered into a marriage covenant with God, now to prostitute ourselves to an image. Idolatry is spiritual adultery, and God is a jealous God, he will avenge it: Image worship mak…

He shall bless your bread and your water. Esau had the venison, but Jacob got the blessing: while the wicked have their meat sauced with God's wrath (Psalm 78:30-31), believers have their comforts seasoned with a blessing. It was a secret blessing from God made Daniel's pulse no…

A man has a high distrust of God's Providence. Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? (Psalm 78:19). So says the unbeliever, Can God spread a table for me?

If when God's wrath is kindled but a little, and a spark of it flies into a wicked man's conscience in this life, it is so terrible; what will it be when God stirs up all his wrath? (Psalm 78:38.) How sad is it with a soul in desertion! Now God dips his pen in gall, and writes b…

2. From unbelief (Hebrews 3:12): An evil heart of unbelief, departing from the living God. (Psalm 78:22): They believed not in God. Verse 41, they turned back — sinners have hard thoughts of God, they think they may pray and hear, yet never the better (Malachi 3:14): they questi…

This may make us submit to God, and say, your will be done; there's kindness in affliction, it is for our spiritual profit. 5. There's kindness in affliction, in that there is no condition so bad but it might be worse; when it is duskish it might be darker; God does not make our…

6th Counterfeit. One may have trouble for sin; yet not be a New Creature. Trouble of spirit may appear, while God's judgments lie upon men; but when these are removed, their trouble ceases (Psalm 78:34): When he slew them, then they sought him, nevertheless they did flatter him…

It is a fearful sin, for a man to go back from that calling, in which God has placed him. When the Israelites abode not patiently, and constantly, with God in the wilderness, but desired to shake off the calling of God, and to return to Egypt, there to sit by the flesh-pots agai…

Secondly, he hears men's prayers in his wrath. Thus he gave the Israelites Quails according to their desire (Psalm 78:29-31). Thus often men curse themselves, and wish that they were hanged or dead: and accordingly they have their wish.

Where we see that to believe in God, is to believe God to be our God. And (Psalm 78:22) to believe in God and to put trust in him are all one: They believed not in God, and trusted not in his help. And the articles concerning Remission of sins and Life everlasting, do include, a…

There is a twofold distraction or wandering of the heart in duty. (1) Voluntary and habitual (Psalm 78:8): 'They set not their hearts aright, and their spirit was not steadfast with God.' This is the case of formalists, and it proceeds from the lack of a holy bent and inclinatio…

Thus all the ground of your faith is but temporal favors or deliveries, which is even as if Israel should have made their receiving of temporal deliveries and their acknowledging of them, and having some sort of faith of them, to be ground enough to prove their receiving of Jesu…

Satan smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot to his crown; and so devils have power over the senses, and bodily organs; and so of necessity over the blood, to cause rottenness in it, which must be in boils, and to alter and infect the humors. Psalm 78:49: Evil ange…

Your faith toward God (1 Peter 1:21; Deuteronomy 1:32; John 3:12; Genesis 15:6; Daniel 6:23; Romans 4:3; Galatians 2:16; 2 Timothy 1:12). The word, promises, and Prophets and Apostles, are all creatures, and but media fidei, the means of saving faith: they are objectum quo (John…

But then the question is, whether these means be the preaching of the Gospel, or of the same God revealed as Creator, by the Sun, Moon, and Stars, who is revealed in the Gospel, and salvation by him. Now the Sun, and Stars, and heaven declare the glory of God, and sound forth hi…

As if those sudden darts of venom by which we are stricken in the plague, came from Satan. Certainly evil angels may have a great hand in our diseases (Psalm 78:49): He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation and trouble, by sending evil angels among t…

Two ways of tempting him as to his providence the Scripture mentions. 1 One was their setting God a task of satisfying their conceits and carnal affections (Psalm 78:18): And they tempted God in their hearts, by asking meat for their lusts. Of this sin they are guilty that must…

Therefore till God's power be wasted, there is no room for despair. We must not limit the Holy One of Israel to our ways and means, as they did (Psalm 78:41): They turned back, and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.

And never so much as lightly considered his own sins, which Paul here would have us to consider, and therefore he is reproved. Paul would have us consider ourselves, because the serious consideration of our own weakness, will move us to practice this duty of meekness: for as we…

For this was an extraordinary matter as I said before, that the Prophet was charged to defame his own nation by so solemn an edict, for which cause it is added, that it should be for the last day, that so they might be had in detestation forever; or, because that when the great…

This manner of speech is found often in other places, as when it is said, that God went forth for the salvation of his people, even for the salvation with his anointed (Habakkuk 3:13). Also that he went through Egypt, and led them in the wilderness like a flock (Exodus 11:4; Psa…

Man is like to grass, he flourishes as a flower of the field. In (Psalm 78:38-39) it is said in the same sense; But he being merciful, forgave their iniquities, and destroyed them not. He often called back his anger, and suffered not his whole displeasure to arise: for he rememb…

35. That it might be fulfilled Matthew does not mean, that the psalm, which he quotes, is a prediction which relates peculiarly to Christ, but that, as the majesty of the Spirit was displayed in the discourse of the Prophet, in the same manner was his power manifested in the dis…

Lord, I have hoped in thy Salvation, and done thy Commandments. Psalm 78:7. That they might set their Hope in God, and not forget the Works of the Lord, but keep his Commandments.

Yes, as we hope, to turn not a few from sin to God in a thorough conversion. But when the bitterness of death was past, much the greater part of those whom God's terrors frightened gave sad occasion to remember those words in Psalm 78:34-36: 'When he slew them, then they sought…

Now there be two things that unbelief stumbles at in God: One is his Power, the other his Willingness to help. (1.) Unbelief objects the impossibility of relief in deep distresses, Psalm 78:19 Can God furnish a Table in the Wilderness? can be give bread also? can be provide fles…

Amos was very meanly employed at first, but God designed him for a more honourable and comfortable Calling, Amos 7. 14, 15. David followed the Ewes, and likely never raised his thoughts to higher things in the days of his youth; but God made him the Royal Shepherd of a better fl…

A fool's mouth (as Solomon tells us (Proverbs 15:2)) pours out foolishness: Their mouths are always open; and therefore they cannot be said to open their mouths: A fool has not a door to his mouth (therefore also he cannot be said to open his mouth) much less has he a lock and a…

2. Many difficulties in the way. 3. An efficacious work overcoming all these, and effectually bringing her over all, as the same word is used (Psalm 78:71), where God's bringing David from the fold to be King, over so many difficulties, is spoken of. The last thing in the verse…

Sin kindles hell. If when a spark of God's wrath flies into a man's conscience, it is so terrible, what is it then when God stirs up all his wrath (Psalm 78:39)? The meditation of this would fright us out of our sins.

Thus did God fulfill his word to David. He took him from the sheepcote, and made him king over his people Israel, Psalm 78:70-71. And now the throne of Israel was established in that family in which it was to continue for ever, even for ever and ever.

This was common among that People; God declares them to be an hypocritical Nation, Isaiah 10:6. And 'tis certain, this was the Case with them in the Wilderness; they there professed that Respect to God which they had not; as is evident by Psalms 78:36, 37. They did flatter him w…

And therefore doubtless seasonable and gracious revivings will come. He will not stir up all his wrath, for he remembers you are but flesh; a wind that passes away, and comes not again (Psalm 78:38-39). He has ways enough to do it; if he does but unveil his blessed face and make…

Hear reason, keep passion silent, and then you will not find it difficult to bear the provocation. It is said of the Holy One of Israel, when the Egyptians provoked him, that he weighed a path to his anger: so the margin reads it from the Hebrew (Psalm 78:50): Libravit semitam i…

The God of heaven gives this as a reason of his patience towards a provoking world, that it is in their nature to be provoking (Genesis 8:21): I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and therefore bett…

And he that says there is no God wishes there were none, and if he could help it there should be none. Others blaspheme the attributes of God, that charge the all-seeing eye with blindness, saying, the Lord shall not see (Psalm 94:7), that charge the eternal mind with forgetfuln…

Accordingly sin is quiet, stirs not, seems to be mortified; not indeed that it has received any one wound, but merely because the soul has possessed its faculties, whereby it should exert itself, with thoughts inconsistent with the motions thereof; which when they are laid aside…

If we consider what it is to be flesh, the naming of that were sufficient to the purpose. All man is flesh, but it is plainer thus, all flesh is grass, thus in the Psalm, he remembered that they were but flesh, that speaks their frailty enough, but it is added to make the vanity…

It is not altogether unprofitable, indeed it is much wisdom in Christians to be arming themselves against such temptations as may befall them hereafter, though they have not as yet met with them, to labor to overcome them before hand, to suppose the hardest things that may be in…

2. In a way of sin. Many ways we are said to tempt God: When we set God a task, in satisfying our conceits, and carnal affections (Psalm 78:18). They tempted God in their hearts, by asking meat for their lusts: And when we will not believe in him, but upon conditions of our own…

This is sensible in case of sickness, when our lives and comforts slide from us, when there is but a step between us and death, when the old covenant comes to be put in suit, and God seems to be executing the sentence of the law. And that is the reason why the temporal deliveran…

But when men set God a task, and he must maintain them at such a rate; that ends in mischief and distrust. (Psalm 78:19) Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? etc. 5. Contentment is one of God's gifts that we ask in this Prayer, [Give us this day our daily Bread,] that is,…

If a piece of Timber begin to bend, it is because it is not sound. Why do any bend and comply against their Conscience, but because their hearts are not sound, Psalm 78:37. Their hearts were not right with him, neither were they stedfast.

Jehu had good Thoughts came into his Mind, to destroy the Baal-worshippers, but his intent was to advance himself into the Throne. Bad aims Fly-blow good Actions. 2. A man may have Good Thoughts but they are forced,—Virtus nolentium nulla est— When one bleeds under Gods afflicti…