HOPE FOR GENERATIONS - PART 3

We'll be continuing in Psalm seventy eight. That's where we'll be in just a

second Psalm seventy eight. As we're continuing to get a little settled in this

is it's a great opportunity for me to finally get to finish Psalm seventy eight.

I've tried to preach Psalm seventy eight a bunch of times, but seventy

two verses is just too much for one sermon. And I keep people keep

telling me that a three hour sermon is just not something that people are going

to sit through. So praise the Lord, by God's grace, we get

to finish, finish this sermon, that with this Psalm that we've been looking

through the last the last few weeks. And so I just say again,

Pastor Josh is he's doing well, and he loves you very much, and

he will continue. He will come back very soon. This week you have

me, and then next week you have Pastor Seth, and then the following

week, by God's grace, we should have Pastor Josh back in the pulpit

again. He's doing a preaching intensive in Chicago. He sends his love again.

He is where he needs to be but he also misses you and looking

forward to being back here again. You might be aware of you might have

taken maybe a psychology course in college or something like that, where you may

have come across this experiment that was once done with very young children, where

there was a researcher and then they would take one child and put them in

a room and put a little marshmallow in front of them, and they would

say. The researcher would then say to the child, now listen, if

you I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna be gone for a few minutes. Usually

wouldn't tell them exactly how long it was going to be gone. I'm gonna

leave for a few minutes. And if you will just not eat the marshmallow,

then when I come back, you can eat it. And then he

did this with small children. Now, how do you think that the small

children generally tended to do with that? How many small children do you know

that you'd leave in a room for ten minutes along with the marshmallow and not

come back and find the marshmallow gone. I don't know many. I've met

a lot of kids in my life. I don't know that I could do

that as a growl. No, I don't even know that I could have

done it when they up the ante, When they up the ante and said,

I'll tell you what if you will you just don't eat the marshmallow.

When I come back, I'll give you two marshmallows. Right. Do you

think you could have stood the test for that? Maybe for ten what about?

What about twenty minutes? Do you think you could have sat there for

twenty minutes not eating the marshmallow in front of you, in the hopes that

maybe there would be in two marshmallows in your future. We're not very good

at that. We're not very good at waiting and foregoing the thing that's right

in front of us for the thing that's unseen. We're not real good at

trusting. Especially. I don't know. Maybe these these researchers, I don't

know if I could have trusted these researchers. I don't know who they were.

I don't know if I would be inclined to believe that they're going to

give me anything when they come back. But I know that I, as

a human being, struggle to look past the things that are right in front

of me, the things that I can see, to the things that are

unseen? Am I the only one that no? Okay, thank you,

thank you for being, and so with me. I appreciate that this morning

we do that we struggle, and so did Israel, and so has humanity

from the very beginning. If you look, and you see, if you

look back at Genesis chapter three, as soon as she started looking at the

fruit and started thinking about the thing that was right in front of her,

it wasn't very long before she gave in. And we struggle with the similar

things even now, just slightly different ways. But in this passage here we

see again Israel continues in the same pattern of rebellion because she's paying attention only

to the things that she can see, rather than to the God whom she

cannot. I want to show you in Psalm seventy eight, as this psalm

wraps up here that the crescendo, the end point of this is that we

as Christians would look to the shepherd King Jesus as the hope of generations.

The hope of generations is what this whole psalm has been about. At the

very beginning, he's saying, you should teach these things to your children and

to your father. There's children so that generations yet unborn would know that they

can put their hope in God. You teach them his works, you teach

them his word, and let them know, show them, tell them that

they can hope in God. And for us we know that's ultimately Christ.

And I want to convince you today that you can and you should look to

the to Christ alone as the one who can bear the weight of your hope.

Let's look together at this text, Psalm sap Chapter seventy eight. We're

just going to pick it up in verse fifty six. We'll do a little

bit of context work and some other places in some other books. But in

Psalm seventy eight, verse fifty six, I'm reading from the English Standard version.

We're going to read through the end of this chapter. The word the

Lord says. Yet they tested and rebelled against the most High God, and

did not keep his testimonies, but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers.

They twisted like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with

their high places. They moved him to jail pelle with their idols. When

God heard, he was full of wrath, and he utterly rejected Israel.

He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among mankind,

and delivered his power to captivity, his glory to the hand of the foe.

He gave his people over to the sword and vented his wrath on his

heritage. Fire devoured their young men, and their young women had no marriage

song. Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.

Then the Lord awoke as from sleep like a strong man, shouting because

of wine, and he put his adversaries to rout. He put them to

everlasting shame. He rejected the tent of Joseph. He did not choose the

tribe of Ephraim, but he chose the tribe of Judah Mount Zion, which

he loves. He built a sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth,

which he has founded forever. He chose David his servant, and took

him from the sheep folds, from following the nursing ews. He brought him

to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel, his inheritance. With an upright heart.

He shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand. This is the

word of the Lord. Amen, I want to show you this in basically

roughly three ways today that we are to look to the shepherd King Jesus.

Look to the shepherd King Jesus first, in verse fifty six to fifty eight.

Look to Jesus, not to the gods that you see. Israel finally,

was, as you see in verse fifty five, settled in the land

of Promise, his holy land. As he says in verse fifty four,

God brought them and settled them in their tents, despite the fact that they

were unfaithful, despite the fact that they turned back away from Him time and

time again. And yet we know that with Ephraeum at her head, that

they followed their father's lead, just like their fathers verse fifty seven in worshiping

idols and in sacrificing at the high place, just as the Canaanites had done.

Their grandfathers did not pass on the works and the hope worthiness of Yahweh.

And if you just are taking notes, just put Judges too in the

side there, if you want to spend some time in there this week to

sort of look and judges too. You see some of these things that he

discusses here where he talks about that they're arose another generation after them. The

people followed God, they followed Yahweh all the days of Joshua. But there

arose a generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that

he had done for Israel. How would that have been because they didn't tell

them. There was a generation of people who did not take seriously the responsibility

to pass on the works and the word of the Lord. They they arose

and they did not know Yahweh. And so when they come into this place,

they come into this land, even though they'd been given specific instructions to

break down the high places and to take the idols and to grind them down

into dust, they did not do it. They didn't break down the altars

of the people. God told them specifically, you are too. And here's

when we come to passages like this and the Old Testament, we struggle because

we're like wait. He told them to kill them all. And the reason

why was because he knew. God knew if they did not wipe them out

completely and completely destroy all of the idols and break down the high places,

those things were going to continue. He said, the people will be as

barbs in your eyes and as thorns in your side, that their gods are

going to be a snare for you. And verse fifty six seven and eight

say, that's exactly what happened. Like a deceitful bow, he says,

here, like a deceitful bow. They acted treacherously like their fathers. Now,

bo, if I'm picking up a bow, a bow that I know,

a bow that I can trust, I should be able to pick it

up and pull back and aim and it should hit the mark that I'm aiming

at. It should be trustworthy, as in this cat. And they say

us here, just like a just like a spouse should be to their to

their beloved. If you're not around, they should still be faithful to you.

Now, this is a fairly low bar, right, that's a fairly

low bar. We want to, as I say in my house all the

time, let's aim higher than that. But at the very least they would

remember the covenant that they just made. God had every right to be their

god. What more could he have done to care for them, to provide

for them, to do mighty works to save them. The affectionate worship of

their heart belonged to Yahweh alone. Yet Israel couldn't be trusted when there were

other gods around. She had covenanted with Yahweh, but she refused to be

satisfied with him. Instead, she offered worship at the high places, which,

if you're just thinking in terms of like an ancient Near Eastern mindset,

those places would seem to look like the place's highest up closest to the god

or God's It makes sense, and so they would often place altars there.

They would place their astraoth and their idols at those high places, and they

would go and they would make their sacrifices at those high places. But just

because it makes good logical sense doesn't make it right. The people of Israel

again from Judges two eleven to thirteen, they did what was evil on the

side of the Lord. After they rose the generation that did not know Yahweh,

they abandon the Lord and they served the bales and the ashtaroth. Understandably,

you can understand God was provoked verse fifty eight. And not only was

God provoked, they provoked him. The activity in verse fifty eight is them

They provoked him to anger, poking him as though they were saying, well,

what are you gonna do about this? Israel rejected Yahweh as God,

and turned aside to those little g go odds that they could see, that

they could touch, and the ones that they thought they could manipulate to get

what they really wanted, which for their sake was fertility, fertility of womb

and field, and hedonistic pleasure. God had warned them that they should not

make any covenants with the people of Canaan, which at the very least would

have also included not making any covenants or worshiping their gods, but to put

the people to the sword, to grind down their idols and to break down

their high places. But the people who remained did lead them astray, exactly

as God said. Behold God's warning, come to fruition. Because God is

jealous for the heart level affection and worship of his people. He was then

he is now. He wants desires your affection, and he deserves it.

Find it incredibly ironic that in our culture, which is so obsessed with subjective

emotions and their totalitarian sovereignties, that we rarely consider the emotional life of the

God who created emotions. We don't think much about how he would have felt.

In this context. It's God to the point where Some theologians even believe

that God has no emotions. I don't know how you read the Bible and

come across a God who is angry, God who is jealous, A God

who grieves doctor grudom. What have us? Remember? He rejoices, he's

grieved. His wrath burns hot against his enemies, He pities his children,

He loves with an everlasting love. He's a God who's passions we are to

imitate for all eternity. As we, like our creator, learn to hate

sin and delight in righteousness. It doesn't seem like a God who's impassive when

it comes to emotions. So here's the question. Do we delight in what

he delights in? Do we hate what he hates? Act actually have an

affective heart level love for this God? Or are we more prone to just

sort of wantonly wonder let about by whatever our sinful, self centered passions and

fleshly desires happened to show us right in front of us at the moment.

The summer that Danielen and I got married, we had it was a season

there lots of people getting married, We had lots of friends, We had

weddings that we were in weddings that we were traveling to weddings. They just

lots of that. Some of you are in those seasons now, I know

summers are like that. I get it. We got married one week,

and we came back from our honeymoon on a Friday, and then we were

there on late for late Friday night, and on Saturday, we attended the

wedding of another friend of mine, same same place, friend of mine.

I grew up with this guy through middle school. They get married, we're

celebrating with them, we throw the whatever we were throwing, and they run

off and they get in the car and they go off on their honeymoon.

We come back to church the next Sunday in the parking lot. As I'm

walking from the back of the parking lot in his bride is there in the

parking lot, completely and utterly distraught, crying her eyes out. I'm like,

what has happened? I didn't hear anything that had happened. I didn't

understand what was going on, Like, what what has happened? And it

turns out on their honeymoon, she walked into the room where they were staying

there on the boat and found him with another woman on his honeymoon. Now

you responded, I noticed you, like me, probably would have loved to

get your hands around his neck and just ask him, dude, you just

made a commitment to this woman who was entrusting herself to you. How in

the world could you do that? Make that commitment, and then and then

have her make that commitment to you, and then all of a sudden you

see some skirt running by, and you're gonna go and do that that?

How dare you? And yet I can read verse fifty eight. They provoked

him to anger with their high places, and they moved him to jealousy with

their idols, And I'm completely unmoved by that. Oh he's God. I

mean, surely it can't matter. Of course it matters to him. Of

course, his heart is grieved over his people who he just covenanted with.

He brought them out of Egypt, he gave them his law. He has

set up this covenantal system and structure whereby they could draw near to him,

gave him the specific ways that walk in this way and you will find life.

And they trade it for sticks and stones, gods that have to be

carved and carried. Do we have similar zeal? Do we have any idols

that we're just sort of letting lurk around us. Are we similarly zealous for

pure worship of God? I'll admit that I'm probably even as I read this,

I'm more likely to look at the question and like, wait, he's

jealous and try to get through that theological question and answer that where does his

jealousy come from? Instead of thinking, wait, that must have really hurt.

And it's not that God needs my pity, but it is to say

that he does grief, and that that should matter to those who love him.

He had gone to such links to rescue them from Egypt, to keep

his word of faithfulness to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and they

just traded him for statues made of stumps and stones. We passively and foolishly

leave in place the idols and even yes, some of the people that God

warned us to turn that He says, these things are going to turn your

hearts away from me. As long as we are flesh, than the gods

that we can see and taste and touch and feel are always going to be

easier to worship than the Yahweh, whom we cannot see with eyes of flesh.

So I ask you what idols are you leaving around that you need to

break down and grind into dust lest you yourself have your heart turned away and

treachery against the Lord? Are you playing at relationships that you know you need

to cut off because you know God isn't pleased with who you are when you're

in them? Owtherre patterns of your life that they are placing you in temptations

path that you know you need to change. You need to go to bed

with your spouse when they do you take a different way home. You need

to leave your phone downstairs and your computer in a common area. You need

to take control over your scrolling instead of just letting the algorithm run amok and

tell you what it thinks is important. Share these with your small group people.

You're not doing this alone. You're not supposed to do this alone.

Tell them, Tell somebody, fine, help and break these patterns. Grind

the idols to dust. Does God need to do more for you than he

has done to show you that His way for your holiness and your good is

the best way? How would you foolishly aim the affections of your heart at

stumps and stones? Idols made of glass. Look to Jesus, not the

gods that you can see. Secondly, verse fifty nine to sixty six,

look to Jesus, not your pedigree, not your heritage, your family line,

not those to whom you are related. God here, filled with righteous

anger, vented his wrath on Israel, utterly rejecting them Israel. But in

the end he still dealt with his adversaries time and in turn, this is

exactly what he said would happen if you are still taking notes and writing down

on things on the side. Deuteronomy twenty eight is a good example of what

he said would happen if they turned away from him, the curses that would

come when Israel rejected him as God and they did not keep his commandments.

God poured out curses in wrath on her. Surely she should have seen this

coming. And yet Joshua, Joshua was the one who followed Moses as the

leader of Israel. Moses was the one who brought them out of Egypt.

Moses died, Joshua was the one who picked up his mantle and moved it

forward while Joshua was still alive. After much of the land had been conquered.

But yet not cleaned out. And Joshua chapter eighteen, you see that

the place of worship, the center of worship, the tent of meeting was

in Shilah. Where the tent was, so also was the arc. And

so when you pick up the story, just track with me here. When

you pick up the story in First Samuel, what you see is they haven't

yet set up a king, and the of the Lord's meeting with his people

is still in Shiloh. You see these stories of these guys, this one

particular, there's an Eli who's a priest and his two sons, Hopney and

Phineas, who were in charge. Right, you think, oh, priests,

this is gonna go well, But we learned that they are blaspheming the

name of the Lord, that they're treating the offering of the Lord with contempt,

and that they're sleeping with the women who were serving at the entrance to

the tent of meeting. With priests like that there were in the Holy Spirit

inspired. These men were, according to the Holy Spirit, worthless men who

did not know the Lord. And their father Eli, who was aware of

all this, didn't even restrain them. And that was the priests. So

no wonder you see, Israel had no king, as even in the Book

of Judges, everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. So

what you see here in verse fifty nine, God heard, He was full

of wrath. He rejected Israel, who forsook his dwelling at Shiloh. He

wasn't going to keep his place there. He wasn't going to continue to show

his people his blessing in that place. In that way, he rejected.

So when the Philistines come up against against Israel in battle, and the Israelites

think, here's a great idea. Let's go get the Ark of the Covenant.

Surely it can save us. Not him, not the god who brought

them out, but maybe this really cool box with some angels on top that

can save us. They bring that into battle, and the Philistines freak out.

They're super They're like, there's a god who's come into the camp,

because surely this god who defeated Israel, I'm defeated Egypt. This god who

committed who did all these mighty work, surely he can help them to win

a battle. And yet what happens is the Philistines killed thirty thousand of the

Israelites. The Israelites turntail and run back, and they take the Ark of

the Covenant into their land. How can this be? It can be because

he forsook his dwelling. He delivered his power to captivity. The backstory of

that first section of First Samuel is right here in Psalm chapter seventy eight.

God is not less powerful than the God of the Philistines. As you continue

to read the story, I don't want to give you a spoiler alert,

but yeah, Yahueh is pouring out his wrath on his treacherous people. This

is not the Philistines suddenly became more powerful than Yahweh. But when we have

the Lord who appears after that had happened, a period of time passes,

and they're like, the Glory has departed from Israel. If the Glory has

departed, and if God, if Yahweh is no longer with Israel, then

what gives. And it appears verse sixty five that the Lord has been sleeping

during this time, and that's the best case scenario. But the Lord who

appears to have been sleeping, if you're paying attention to what's been happening to

his heritage, fire devours the young women priests fell by the sword. Widows

made no lamentation. If you're paying attention to what's happening to his heritage,

he like a strong man shouting because of wine in essence saying you thought he

was asleep, but he finally just said enough, I'm done. He wakes

up. He puts his adversaries to route, and he puts them to everlasting

shame. God's discipline is always precise. When he says enough, it is

enough. Praise God. He doesn't always chide, nor keep his anger forever.

God's faithfulness to provide for and to protect you, just as for Israel.

It's not based on your bloodline or your family heritage, but based on

your faith. Your faith. When he is your hope, you'll never be

put to shame. He is your hope. You'll never be put to shame.

And that's actually gonna be born out in the way that you live.

Your hope will always be revealed by the way you live your life. Living

again outside of God's good ways puts you at risk of his wrath. If

you were here last week, surely we've learned this. Being his heritage was

not enough to shield them from his anger. He vented his Wrath verse sixty

two on his heritage. They thought that they were going to be able to

test him and depress it, and he said, fine, the true people,

his true people are not so because of blood, but ultimately because of

faith. His heritage actually hopes in him. You would hopefully be surprised at

the kinds of things. The number of things that people point to is the

foundation of their hope or of their being in Christ. I've been around in

churches for a long time where the membership role, for instance, was like

three or four times the amount of people who were coming on a regular basis.

But you'd be surprised how difficult it is to clear that role out.

It doesn't matter that Joe and Mary and Steve haven't been to church in seventeen

years, because their name is on that role. You would think you were

blotting people out from the Lamb's Book of Life, because their hope in being

in Christ is being on that role. And sometimes you'll talk to people who

are just We're just happy to tell you their uncle. Their uncle priests the

gospel for thirty years, their grandma she started seventeen. There's seventeen. There's

that number again, seventeen WMU chapters, and for thirty years she was the

president of this and that and the other thing. Like cool, that's great,

I mean, honest goodness, right, praise the Lord for faithful servants.

We want to praise the Lord for faithful servants. But you have to

understand, everybody, please listen to me. You will stand on your own

two feet of faith before the Lord. You can't look to Oh, my

family believed, or my dad did this, or I had a pastor in

my family, like that doesn't matter. It matters not at all. God's

people are related to him by faith that is born out in faithfulness, not

by blood or any other heritage. So truly hoping in Christ looks like actually

walking in Him, not relying on your pedigree, not relying on your family,

not and relying on that name. If you're hoping God rests on the

faith faithfulness of anyone other than Jesus, it's misplaced. Israel was his heritage,

they were his inheritance, and he still vented his wrath on them because

they were walking in ways that were not his. And so what of you?

What of you? Are you likely to hold out the name of Jesus

as a talisman to ward off the bad things that you don't want to happen

in your life. You think, well, this is old covenant. Ask

the seven Sons of Skiva from Acts chapter nineteen how that worked out for them.

It didn't work out. You can't just say Jesus and then all of

a sudden everything's fine. It's are you trusting in him? Those who trust

in Him will never be put to shame. Look to Jesus, not to

your pedigree. Finally, look, hope, I messed that up. Look

to Jesus, not mere human beings. God here makes a regime change.

Who rejects the tent of Joseph, and he puts in place the trube of

Judah. He rejects Shiloh. He puts his presence in Jerusalem, and he

chooses David, his servant, taking him from the sheep folds following the nursing

ews, and he sets him up to be the leader, the shepherd king

of Israel. Now the ark was in the Philistine country for another seven months,

they send it back to Israel. The ark stayed in the place after

it was out of the Philistine territory for twenty more years, and as soon

as David is anointed king. He wants to bring the Ark into the city

of the City of David, the stronghold of Jebis into Jerusalem as soon as

he's coronated. He wants to bring the Ark of the Covenant in. Yes,

Israel rebelled, and Yes, God utterly rejected her for a time,

but he still steadfastly loved and was committed to providing for her. He rescued

his people on the fields of Zoon in Egypt and settled her in Zion,

promising to build her in her King David a house forever. And so as

an Israelite, I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, yay, David is

here. But if you know the rest of that story, you know that

wasn't all of it. David was king for forty years, and that wasn't

perfect. His son after him, Solomon, was the wisest man that ever

lived. He was king roughly another forty so you got eighty years between those

two times. And even at the end of Solomon's reign, his heart was

turned away from the Lord because his wives turned his heart away from the Lord

to the idols that they had and that they were believing in. No merely

human leader. Not even David, the son of Jesse can be relied on

to bear the weight of people's hope. Not David, not Solomon, not

Abraham, not Moses, not Peter, not any so called pope who came

after him, not any pastor elder, not a president or a governor.

No mere human being can bear the weight of your hope. You have to

look to them, yes, trust what God is doing, but look beyond

them to their king, the shepherd King Jesus of Nazareth. That's exactly what

this is pointing for us. For us, David is teaching us to look

forward to Shepherd King Jesus of Nazareth for that. For in Israelite David would

have been the zenith, but we know that didn't last long during this time

of huge upheaval. Knowing that you can trust, you can still trust in

the son of David, who still sits on the throne, no matter who's

behind the oval office desk. That's the kind of encouragement that we need in

a time like this that you guys know it was an election year. I

don't know if you. Even the goldeness of ages on this earth does not

allow us to put our hope merely in human leaders under their own power,

and this is going to impact If this is true for us, We're not

merely putting our hope in these human leaders. It's going to impact us in

a number of ways. First, it's going to impact our judgment. This

is not on your notes, but this is just for free. This is

going to impact your judgment. You're gonna seek to compare your leaders to Jesus,

not just to each other. You're not just comparing to men, men

against men, but against against Christ. You're gonna you're gonna your inner life

is gonna change because you're gonna you're gonna accurately right size your expectations. I'm

not expecting a human being to be the Messiah. There's going to be a

second coming. He hasn't come yet. When he does, you will know

we're not surprised when human beings are actually human. If our expectations are right

sized, it's going to impact our devotion because when we think about these things,

and when we're tempted to have anxiety about these things, as we all

are, we will pray for our leaders and those in authority over us,

as though we know that they need help from the one who's an authority over

them, will pray like it matters that he helped them to do their job.

It's also going to impact the way we lead. Our leadership will be

impacted. Each of us are going to have spheres of influence in which we

want to intentionally emulate not just the humility of David, but of the one

he was pointing to, his greater son, Jesus, who came not to

be served, but to serve and to give his life for those that he

has authority over. So it's going to impact the way that we teach.

We teach God's word, we teach God's works, we warn those in peril

from the default dangers of their own hearts. Through passages like Psalm seventy eight,

we will exemplify in our leadership that our hope is not in our own

wisdom or power or self, but in God, in Christ, in the

power of the Holy Spirit. This Psalm commanded us, has commanded us,

and we feel like it's been about a month since we started, but it

commands us not to hide the words and the works of the Lord from the

coming generation. So that back up at verse seven, so that they should

set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but

keep his commandments. Would it be true for us that we are a people

who are constantly pointing back, saying, look, look to God. Look

to his son Jesus as the hope of generations, not mankind, not the

God's in front of you. Look to Jesus,