Psalm Seventy-Eight

Four months before Joe met KatieLyn, it had become apparent that the timing was ripe to step up in prayer for his future. God was ready to move Joe into a new season of life: finding a wife. So when he did meet her, it was natural to look for confirmation, to look for what was right. And over the next six months, there was plenty to find that was right, far too many thing to list here. I doubt that I could even remember them all. Almost daily there was another new delight. But the Biggie, and the one that Joe tends to return to is "The List."

"The List" is a list, written by KatieLyn before she met Joe, of things that she was looking and praying for in a husband. There were 15 specific items on her "must have in a husband list", and another 10 that were on a "nice to have" list.
I realize that a few free-spirited readers will see this and think, 'now that's a bit obsessive/compulsive,' but I understand her list-making tendency, and more importantly, Joe was able to appreciate the forethought that went into it. Being overly impulsive in love is not his nature either. Joe met all 25 points on KatieLyn's list.

Since we'd spent months looking for confirmation of God's will and were repeatedly seeing how things were going right, we were stunned when KatieLyn ran off in the middle of the night. From my perspective, I knew her mother had claimed to be for the marriage originally, then seemed to get fretful when she'd realized that, in her words, she was "losing" KatieLyn, but she had appeared to come back around in the past few days. I did not know the extent to which the mother's fears had undermined KatieLyn's faith. I did not know that KatieLyn had started focusing on what might, perhaps, maybe, possibly go wrong.

But when KatieLyn turned into a faithless runaway bride, I certainly asked God, "What Went Wrong?" He eventually led me to Psalm 78.

Mark my teaching, Oh my people,
Listen to the words I am to speak.
I will tell you a story with meaning,
I will expound the riddle of things past,
Things that we have heard and know… (v 1-3)

Psalm 78 turns out to be an in-depth explanation of how God's people ran amuck, got out of His will, and rebelled against His plan for their lives. Even though it tells the story through events that happened in the ancient past, the underlying principles are applicable and explain where KatieLyn went wrong. Big Hint: She did NOT go wrong by loving the idea of marriage more than she loved Joe. As you will see, she went wrong by not trusting God.

He charged them to put their trust in God
to hold His great acts ever in mind,
and to keep all His commandments; not to do as their fathers did,
a disobedient and rebellious race,
a generation with no firm purpose,
with hearts not fixed steadfastly on God.  (v. 7, 8)

God expected KatieLyn to trust Him. He had answered all 25 points in her prayers, and she ought to have kept that in her mind. I don't know about KatieLyn's father, but her mother's heart was not "fixed steadfastly." Her mother's heart was wandering here and there with misgivings from worldly thoughts. She was fretting over dog hair, for crying out loud!  When you are more concerned about your child coming in contact with dog fur than you are about whether or not she is obeying God's call on her life, then you have a problem. 

They forgot all that He had done
And the wonderful acts which He had shown them. (v. 11)

This concept is repeated over and over in Psalm 78. I would encourage my readers to go look it up and read the psalm in its entirety in the version of your choice. Whether you use a literal translation or a contemporary language paraphrase, they all make the point that God's people forgot what He had already shown them.

But they sinned against Him yet again,
in the desert they defied the Most High
they tried God's patience willfully,
demanding food to satisfy their hunger.
They vented their grievance against God and said,
"Can God spread a table in the wilderness?"  (v. 17-19)

Joe never thought of the engagement as a desert, (me neither!) but I will concede that this was foreign territory for KatieLyn's family. I will grant them a bit of grace on that point, nevertheless, they actively and willfully chose to keep questioning God even after He had told them what His plan was. Metaphorically, KatieLyn and her mother were demanding to see that food on the table. The mother first, and then eventually KatieLyn herself, had complaints about God's faithfulness to satisfy them. 

When He heard this, the Lord was filled with fury,
fire raged against Jacob,
anger blazed up against Israel,
because they put no trust in God
and had no faith in His power to save.  (v. 21, 22)

God was furious at this lack of trust. The next stanza in this psalm tells of how, even though they were faithless, God was faithful. They'd been fussing in fear over not having their needs met, but God gave them "the grain of heaven" and "the bread of angels." (v. 24) He sent them food to their heart's desire. But…

Yet they did not abandon their complaints
even while the food was in their mouths.
Then the anger of God blazed up against them… (v. 30, 31)
In spite of all, they persisted in their sin
And had not faith in His wonderful acts. (v. 32)

The "sin" was being faithless. The faithlessness manifest as complaining. At this point, God begins allowing some of the men to die. The next run of verses in this psalm tell how when they were being struck, they began to seek God. In verse 36 they are making all sorts of promises in impressive language, but verse 37 reveals that they did not keep them, "they were not loyal to Him in their hearts."

How often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness
and grieved Him in the desert! (v. 40)

Two things need pointed out here.  First, only those who truly love can truly grieve. It is a proportional thing. If you don't love, then you won't care. But, there can be a fake grief too. That happens when there is a fake love. The person will start out "feeling bad," but over time can rationalize it by saying, "It was all for the best." They have no lasting remorse that they feel a need to repent for.
God really loved His people. They really hurt Him. He was really grieved. God never went on to say, "This was all for the best. Their faithlessness was My plan after all so that I could teach them!" He never said, "They only thought they knew My plan, but actually I wanted to show them that they didn't really hear me after all."

Secondly, even though God continued to send "food" and bless them, they were running out of reset buttons. There is a limit on how much grief God will take, and there is a time limit that will someday run out. People began dying. God's master plan had to be transferred to the next generation. The pattern continued, and it was still going on sixteen verses later.

Yet they tried God's patience and rebelled against Him;
they did not keep the commands of the Most High;
they were renegades like their fathers;
they changed, went slack like a bow. ( v. 56, 57)

KatieLyn told Joe that one of her big fears was that she would become like her parents. Joe was seeing her fear play out up close and personal.  KatieLyn had become like her mother, full of doubt, questioning what God had told her to do. She went slack like a bow, not able to to release her faith.

The psalm continues for another fifteen verses. God rejects the people because of their faithlessness, and it gets really rough. On through the generations the pattern is repeated. Eventually, we see that God so despised the clan of Joseph for their chronic lack of trust that He did not choose to go through his descendant Ephraim, but would choose the tribe of Judah to bring forth the Messiah instead.

Anyone who says, "Well, see there! It all worked out in the end. That is how we got King David from the tribe of Judah!" is woefully missing the point. Yes, it will "work out in the end" because this is God watching over His plan. But the players are interchangeable if and when they refuse to walk in faith. We see this in the life of Esther too, when Mordecai warns he that if she does not step up and act in faith now, "relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father's house will perish." Esther 4:14

Psalm 78 does end on an upbeat note. God did find someone who had "singleness of heart," who would not wibble-wobble with misgivings and no faith. But failure to trust God resulted in a tremendous amount of loss, in battlefield defeats, and in forfeiture of blessings before that happened.

My next post will look further into how acting in faith can put one in the right place at the right time, but for now, let's review —  

The Lesson
God will bring His master Plan to pass one way or another. However, the players are interchangeable. If they refuse to trust, if they cannot walk by faith, then God will go and look for someone who can. The victory is not yours to earn; for the victory is won by the Lord. But the victory is yours to lose if you choose not to hang on to God in faith.