Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 78:7
That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:
7. their hope ] Or, their confidence, as Pro 3:26.
and not forget ] “Lest thou forget” is the constantly recurring warning in Deuteronomy (Deu 4:9, &c.).
the works of God ] Or, as R.V. in Psa 77:11, the deeds of God.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
That they might set their hope in God – That they might place confidence in God; that they might maintain their allegiance to him. The object was to give such exhibitions of his character and government as to inspire just confidence in him, or to lead people to trust in him; and not to trust in idols and false gods. All the laws which God has ordained are such as are suited to inspire confidence in him as a just and righteous ruler; and all his dealings with mankind, when they are properly – that is, really – understood, will be found to be adapted to the same end.
And not forget the works of God – His doings. The word here does not refer to his works considered as the works of creation, or the material universe, but to his acts – to what he has done in administering his government over mankind.
But keep his commandments – That by contemplating his doings, by understanding the design of his administration, they might be led to keep his commandments. The purpose was that they might see such wisdom, justice, equity, and goodness in his administration, that they would be led to keep laws so suited to promote the welfare of mankind. If people saw all the reasons of the divine dealings, or fully understood them, nothing more would be necessary to secure universal confidence in God and in his government.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 78:7-8
That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.
On the deceitfulness of the heart, in disregarding providential dispensations in general
I. Show what is implied in a diligent observation of providential dispensations.
1. A close investigation of the various steps of Providence towards us.
2. Attention to the temper of our hearts, to the dictates of conscience, and to the motions of the Holy Spirit, which concur with these dispensations.
3. An accurate trial of the meaning of all dispensations by the infallible standard of revelation.
4. An earnest desire of perceiving Gods design as of a loving nature.
5. A faithful recording of these dispensations.
II. Illustrate some of the deceits practised by the heart, in order to prevent a diligent observation of providential dispensations.
1. It entices us to indifference about practical religion.
2. It represents them as uncertain.
3. It represents many events as trifling and unworthy of attention.
4. It opposes this exercise, as if it unavoidably tended to enthusiasm.
5. It is represented as a great bondage to ourselves.
6. The heart may perhaps plead that this course is neglected by many who are as good Christians as we.
III. Advert to the designs of the deceitful heart in dissuading us from observing Divine dispensations.
1. It wishes to deprive God of the glory resulting from this exercise.
2. By this inexcusable negligence the delusive heart designs to deprive believers of much real comfort. There are two channels in which the Lord communicates consolation to His people. These are His Word and Providence. But we lose much of our comfort if we keep these separate.
(1) Diligent observation would eminently open up the mystery of Providence.
(2) It tends to increase a holy fear of God.
(3) It is an illustrious means of discovering Divine love.
(4) It tends greatly to strengthen faith.
(5) It is a great inducement to live closely with God.
(6) This practice must throw great light on the evil of sin, by discovering providential frowns and chastisements for those parts of our conduct that might otherwise appear trivial.
IV. Suggest some motives for encouraging Christians to this exercise.
1. The command of God (Deu 4:9).
2. God has pledged His faithfulness for the success of this work.
3. The example of the saints.
4. The consideration of Gods constant and tender remembrance of you may encourage you to this exercise.
5. The recollection of former mercies will afford you an argument with God for renewed instances of His love.
V. Concluding cautions.
1. Beware of making Providence the rule of your conduct. This would be to put it in the place of the world, which is not merely the principal, but the only rule.
2. Judge not of providential dispensations by their outward aspect.
3. In all your observation of Divine providence, still remember that the ways of God are unsearchable. His judgments are a great deep.
4. Beware of forming a rash judgment with respect to Gods designs. He that believeth h shall not make haste.
5. Be especially on your guard against harsh and uncharitable judgment. (J. Jamieson, M. A.)
Memory, hope and effort
My text tells us how past, present and future–memory, hope and effort,–may be ennobled and blessed. In brief, it is by associating them all with God. It is as the field of His working that our past is best remembered. It is on Him that our hopes may most wisely be set. It is keeping His commandments which is the consecration of the present.
I. Associate God with memory by thankful remembrance. We can see His presence more clearly when we look back over a long connected stretch of days, and when the excitement of feeling the agony or rapture have passed, than we could whilst they were hot, and life was all hurry and bustle.
II. Live in the future by hope in Him. Hope owes to Memory the pigments with which it paints, the canvas on which it paints, and the objects which it portrays there. But in all our earthly hopes there is a feeling of uncertainty which brings alarm as well as expectation. And he whose forward vision runs only along the low levels of earth, and is fed only by experience and remembrance, will never be able to say, I hope with certitude and I know that my hope shall be fulfilled. But they whose hopes are set on God have a certain hope, a sufficient one, and one that fills all the future.
III. Live in the present by strenuous obedience. After all, memory and hope are meant to fit us for work in the flying moment. Both should impel us to this keeping of the commandments of God; for both yield motives which should incline us thereto. A past full of blessing demands the sacrifice of loving hearts and of earnest hands. A future so fair, so far, so certain, so sovereign; and a hope that grasps it, and brings some of its sweet fragrance into the else scentless air of the poor present, ought to impel to service, vigorous and continual. Both should yield motives; both should impel to such service. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
That they might set their hope in God; that by the consideration of Gods gracious promises, and wonderful works wrought by God for his. people, they might be encouraged to trust in him.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
That they might set their hope in God,…. And not in the creature, nor in any creature enjoyment; see Job 31:24, the Lord is the only proper object of hope and confidence; Christ, who is truly God, is the hope of his people, and in him they place it, as they have great reason to do; since with him there is mercy, the mercy of God is proclaimed in him; and with him there is redemption, which includes the blessings of peace, pardon, and righteousness; and a plenteous one, a redemption from all sin; and it is the Gospel which points out these things in Christ, and encourages a firm and settled hope and trust in him: and this shows that that is meant by the law and testimony; since the law of Moses gives no encouragement to hope in God; it convinces of sin, but does not direct to a Saviour, and so leaves without hope; it works wrath, terror, and despair; it is in the Gospel only Christ is set before men, as the object of hope to lay hold on, and which is as an anchor sure and steadfast, where they may securely place it:
and not forget the works of God; which the Gospel declares; not only the miracles of Christ recorded by the evangelists, but the works of grace, redemption, and salvation; the remembrance of which is kept up by the ministry of the word, and the administration of ordinances:
but keep his commandments; the commandments of Christ, and which are peculiar to the Gospel dispensation; and are to be kept in faith, from a principle of love, through the grace and strength of Christ, and to the glory of God by him; see Joh 14:15.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
7. That they might set their hope in God. Here the Psalmist points out the use to which the doctrine which he had stated should be applied. In the first place, the fathers, when they find that on the one hand they are instrumental in maintaining the pure worship of God, and that on the other, they are the means of providing for the salvation of their children, should, by such a precious result of their labors, be the more powerfully stirred up to instruct their children. In the second place, the children on their part, being inflamed with greater zeal, should eagerly press forward in the acquisition of divine knowledge, and not suffer their minds to wander in vain speculations, but should aim at, or keep their eyes directed to, the right mark. It is unhappy and wretched toil to be
“
ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” (2Ti 3:7.)
When, therefore, we hear for what purpose the law was given, we may easily learn what is the true and most successful method of deriving benefit from it. The inspired writer places trust first, assigning it the highest rank. He then requires the observance of the holy commandments of God; and he puts in the middle the remembrance of the works of God, which serves to confirm and strengthen faith. In short, what he means is, that the sum of heavenly wisdom consists in this, that men, having their hearts fixed on God by a true and unfeigned faith, call upon him, and that, for the purpose of maintaining and cherishing their confidence in him, they exercise themselves in meditating in good earnest upon his benefits; and that then they yield to him an unfeigned and devoted obedience. We may learn from this, that the true service of God begins with faith. If we transfer our trust and confidence to any other object, we defraud him of the chief part of his honor.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
Psa 78:7 That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:
Ver. 7. That they might set their hope in God ] Summa legis divinae et scopus, this is a brief of the Bible, viz. to believe in God and obey his law; both which men shall the better do, if they forget not his works.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
MEMORY, HOPE, AND EFFORT
Psa 78:7
In its original application this verse is simply a statement of God’s purpose in giving to Israel the Law, and such a history of deliverance. The intention was that all future generations might remember what He had done, and be encouraged by the remembrance to hope in Him for the future; and by both memory and hope, be impelled to the discharge of present duty.
So, then, the words may permissibly bear the application which I purpose to make of them in this sermon, re-echoing only and aspiring to nothing more the thoughts which the season has already, I suppose, more or less, suggested to most of us. Smooth motion is imperceptible; it is the jolts that tell us that we are advancing. Though every day be a New Year’s Day, still the alteration in our dates and our calendars should set us all thinking of that continual lapse of the mysterious thing-the creature of our own minds-which we call time, and which is bearing us all so steadily and silently onwards.
My text tells us how past, present, and future-memory, hope, and effort may be ennobled and blessed. In brief, it is by associating them all with God. It is as the field of His working that our past is best remembered. It is on Him that our hopes may most wisely be set. It is keeping His commandments which is the consecration of the present. Let us, then, take the three thoughts of our text and cast them into New Year’s recommendations.
I. First, then, let us associate God with memory by thankful remembrance.
We can see His presence more clearly when we look back over a long-connected stretch of days, and when the excitement of feeling the agony or rapture have passed, than we could whilst they were hot, and life was all hurry and bustle. The men on the deck of a ship see the beauty of the city that they have left behind, better than when they were pressing through its narrow streets. And though the view of the receding houses from the far-off waters may be an illusion, our view of the past, if we see God brooding over it all, and working in it all, is no illusion. The meannesses are hidden, the narrow places are invisible, all the pain and suffering is quieted, and we are able to behold more truly than when we were in the midst of them, the bearing, the purpose, and the blessedness alike of our sorrows and of our joys.
Not a few of us are old enough to have had a great many mysteries of our early days cleared up. We have seen at least the beginnings of the harvest which the ploughshare of sorrow and the winter winds were preparing for us, and for the rest we can trust. Brethren! remember your mercies; remember your losses; and ‘for all the way by which the Lord our God has led us these many years in the wilderness,’ let us try to be thankful, including in our praises the darkness and the storm as well as the light and the calm. Some of us are like people who, when they get better of their sicknesses, grudge the doctor’s bill. We forget the mercies as soon as they are past, because we only enjoyed the sensuous sweetness of them whilst it tickled our palate, and did not think, in the enjoyment of them, whose love it was that they spoke of to us. Sorrows and joys, bring them all in your thanksgivings, and ‘forget not the works of God.’
Such a habit of cultivating the remembrance of God’s hand as moving in all our past, will not, in the slightest degree, interfere with lower and yet precious exercises of that same faculty. We shall still be able to look back, and learn our limitations, mark our weaknesses, gather counsels of prudence from our failures, tame our ambitions by remembering where we broke down. And such an exercise of grateful God-recognising remembrance will deliver us from the abuses of that great power, by which so many of us turn our memories into a cause of weakness, if not of sin. There are people, and we are all tempted to be of the number, who look back upon the past and see nothing there but themselves, their own cleverness, their own success; ‘burning incense to their own net, and sacrificing to their own drag.’ Another mood leads us to look back into the past dolefully and disappointedly, to say, ‘I have broken down so often; my resolutions have all gone to water so quickly; I have tried and failed over and over again. I may as well give it all up, and accept the inevitable, and grope on as well as I can without hope of self-advancement or of victory.’ Never! If only we will look back to God we shall be able to look forward to a perfect self. To-morrow need never be determined by the failures that have been. We may still conquer where we have often been defeated. There is no worse use of the power of remembrance than when we use it to bind upon ourselves, as the permanent limitations of our progress, the failures and faults of the past. ‘Forget the things that are behind.’ Your old fragmentary goodness, your old foiled aspirations, your old frequent failures-cast them all behind you!
And there are others to whom remembrance is mainly a gloating over old sins, and a doing again of these-ruminating upon them; bringing up the chewed food once more to be masticated. Some of us gather only poisonous weeds, and carry them about in the hortus siccus of our memories. Alas! for the man whose memory is but the paler portraiture of past sins. Some of us, I am sure, have our former evils holding us so tight in their cords that when we look back memory is defiled by the things which defiled the unforgettable past. Brethren! you may find a refuge from that curse of remembrance in remembering God.
And some of us, unwisely and ungratefully, live in the light of departed blessings, so as to have no hearts either for present mercies or for present duties. There is no more weakening and foolish misdirection of that great gift of remembrance than when we employ it to tear down the tender greenery with which healing time has draped the ruins; or to turn again in the wound which is beginning to heal the sharp and poisoned point of the sorrow which once pierced it. For all these abuses-the memory that gloats upon sin; the memory that is proud of success; the memory that is despondent because of failures; the memory that is tearful and broken-hearted over losses-for all these the remedy is that we should not forget the works of God, but see Him everywhere filling the past.
II. Again, let us live in the future by hope in Him.
But if, according to my text, we set our hopes on God, then we shall have a certainty absolute. What a blessing it is to be able to look forward to a future as fixed and sure, as solid and as real, as much our possession, as the irrevocable past! The Christian man’s hope, if it be set on God, is not a ‘may be,’ but a ‘will be’; and he can be as sure of to-morrow as he is of yesterday.
They whose hopes are set on God have a certain hope, a sufficient one, and one that fills all the future. All other expectations are fulfilled, or disappointed, as the case may be, but are left behind and outgrown. This one only never palls, and is never accomplished, and yet is never disappointed. So if we set our hopes on Him, we can face very quietly the darkness that lies ahead of us. Earthly hopes are only the mirrors in which the past reflects itself, as in some king’s palace you will find a lighted chamber, with a great sheet of glass at each end, which perpetuates in shining rows the lights behind the spectator. A curtain veils the future, and earthly hope can only put a mirror in front of it that reflects what has been. But the hope that is set on God draws back the curtain, and lets us see enough of a fixed, eternal future to make our lives bright and our hearts calm. The darkness remains; what of that, if
‘I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care’?
III. Lastly, let us live in the present by strenuous obedience.
If my memory weakens me for present work, either because it depresses my hope of success, or because it saddens me with the remembrance of departed blessings, then it is a curse and not a good. And if I dream myself away in any future, and forget the exigencies of the imperative and swiftly-passing moment, then the faculty of hope, too, is a curse and a weakening. But both are delivered from their possible abuses, if both are made into means of helping us to fill the present with loving obedience. These two faculties are like the two wings that may lift us to God, like the two paddles, one on either side of the ship, that may drive us steadily forward, through all the surges and the tempest. They find their highest field in fitting us for the grinding tasks and the heavy burdens that the moment lays upon us.
So, dear friends! we are very different in our circumstances and positions. For some of us Hope’s basket is nearly empty, and Memory’s sack is very full. For us older men the past is long, the earthly future is short. For you younger people the converse is the case. It is Hope whose hands are laden with treasures for you, Memory carries but a little store. Your past is brief; your future is probably long. The grains of sand in some of our hour-glasses are very heaped and high in the lower half, and running very low in the upper. But whichever category we stand in, one thing remains the same for us all, and that is duty, keeping God’s commandments. That is permanent, and that is the one thing worth living for. ‘Whether we live we live unto the Lord; or whether we die we die unto the Lord.’
So let us front this New Year, with all its hidden possibilities, with quiet, brave hearts, resolved on present duty, as those ought who have such a past to remember and such a future to hope for. It will probably be the last on earth for some of us. It will probably contain great sorrows for some of us, and great joys for others. It will probably be comparatively uneventful for others. It may make great outward changes for us, or it may leave us much as it found us. But, at all events, God will be in it, and work for Him should be in it. Well for us if, when its hours have slidden away into the grey past, they continue to witness to us of His love, even as, while they were wrapped in the mists of the future, they called on us to hope in Him! Well for us if we fill the passing moment with deeds of loving obedience! Then a present of keeping His commandments will glide into a past to be thankfully remembered, and will bring us nearer to a future in which hope shall not be put to shame. To him who sees God in all the divisions and particles of his days, and makes Him the object of memory, hope, and effort, past, present, and future are but successive calm ripples of that mighty river of Time which bears him on the great ocean of Eternity, from which the drops that make its waters rose, and to which its ceaseless flow returns.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
God. Hebrew. Elohim. App-4.
GOD. Hebrew El. App-4.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
set: Psa 40:4, Psa 62:5, Psa 91:14, Psa 130:6, Psa 130:7, Psa 146:5, Jer 17:7, Jer 17:8, 1Pe 1:21
not forget: Psa 77:10-12, Psa 103:2, Psa 105:5, Exo 12:24-27, Deu 4:9, Deu 7:18, Deu 7:19, Deu 8:2, Deu 8:11, Est 9:27, Est 9:28, 1Co 11:24
keep: Deu 5:29, Joh 14:21-24, 1Jo 3:22-24, 1Jo 5:3, Rev 14:12
Reciprocal: Psa 78:11 – General Psa 78:35 – remembered
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 78:7-8. That they might set their hope in God That by the consideration of Gods gracious promises, and his wonderful works wrought for his people, they might be encouraged to adhere to him, and trust in him alone. And might not be as their fathers Who, though they were the seed of Abraham, the father of the faithful, taken into covenant with God, and, it appears, the only professing people he had then in the world, yet were stubborn and rebellious, walking contrary to God, and in direct opposition to his will. A generation that set not their heart aright Who, when they outwardly and seemingly complied with the forms of worship which God had prescribed, yet did not direct or prepare their hearts to the obedience and service of God; and whose spirit was not steadfast with God Who quickly discovered their hypocrisy by their apostacy from God, and from the religion which they professed, falling off from him even to the worship of idols, presently after they came out of Egypt.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
78:7 That they might {f} set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:
(f) He shows where the use of this doctrine exists: in faith, in the meditation of God’s benefits, and in obedience.