A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on March 10, 2024.
O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple;
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
They have given the bodies of your servants
to the birds of the heavens for food,
the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth.
They have poured out their blood like water
all around Jerusalem,
and there was no one to bury them.
We have become a taunt to our neighbors,
mocked and derided by those around us.
How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire?
Pour out your anger on the nations
that do not know you,
and on the kingdoms
that do not call upon your name!
For they have devoured Jacob
and laid waste his habitation.
Do not remember against us our former iniquities;
let your compassion come speedily to meet us,
for we are brought very low.
Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of your name;
deliver us, and atone for our sins,
for your name’s sake!
Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants
be known among the nations before our eyes!
Let the groans of the prisoners come before you;
according to your great power, preserve those doomed to die!
Return sevenfold into the lap of our neighbors
the taunts with which they have taunted you, O Lord!
But we your people, the sheep of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
from generation to generation we will recount your praise (Psalm 79).[1]
In parenting our children, the word “discipline” is often equated with punishment. If my child misbehaves at church, I discipline him when we get home. But within the use of the word, we may distinguish between preventive discipline and corrective discipline. For example, the apostle Paul instructs fathers not to “provoke [their] children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). In this sense, discipline connotes a nurturing that encourages obedience rather than a corrective discipline that punishes disobedience. And while we as parents desire to appropriately apply both preventive and corrective discipline, we don’t, and we won’t always. But our heavenly Father does and will.
Explaining our heavenly Father’s discipline, the writer of Hebrews quotes from Proverbs,
‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives’ (Heb. 12:5b-6).
The writer then goes on to explain that God only disciplines his true children and always with purpose: “he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (12:7-8, 10). This is encouragement indeed when we consider that there is purpose in our trials, knowing that God works all things for our good and his glory. And how great is the good of sharing in his holiness!
That God disciplines both preventively and correctively is certain. How he does it, from our perspective, is not. For example, the second time the Lord appeared to Solomon, he described the blessings due king and kingdom for obedience as well as the corrective discipline due disobedience. The Lord said,
“… if you will walk before me, … doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever … But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight …” (1 Kgs. 9:4-9).
And we know the rest of the story, how Solomon’s kingdom flourished and then subsequently fell, due to his idolatry and the sins of his descendants. And so God disciplined the children of Israel, as he said he would, generation after generation as they sinned against him, until the kingdom finally fell to the pagan king of Babylon, which is where the seventy-ninth psalm begins.
The Mysterious Means of God’s Discipline
The psalmist describes their situation in his cry:
O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple;
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins (1).
The psalm begins as a kind of communal lament of those left in the land after Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem. The historical account in 2 Kings reveals the tragic downfall of the capital city. The walls were torn down, the temple ransacked, the city set on fire (2 Kgs. 25:1-12). The little that was left of Israel’s glory was desecrated, even the dead were left as carrion for the carnivorous “birds of the heavens” and “beasts of the earth” (2).
In contrast, during Solomon’s reign and the pinnacle of Israel’s glory, Scripture says that the nation of Israel “lived in safety … every man under his vine and under his fig tree” (1 Kgs. 4:25). It was a time when “all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon” (2 Chron. 9:23a), and the queen of Sheba was left breathless (1 Kgs. 10:5). Such was the radiant glory of Israel, but now, the psalmist laments,
We have become a taunt to our neighbors,
mocked and derided by those around us (4).
What God said he would do he did, disaster indeed (1 Kgs. 9:9).
Despite their circumstances, the psalmist understands them for what they are. He need only recall the Lord’s warning. He need only look back at Israel’s repeated disobedience. As the psalmist looks around at the consequences of Israel’s disobedience, he does not ask why. He asks how long?
How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire? (5)
The question is seemingly rhetorical, pointing not to duration but devotion, the Lord’s burning jealousy for his beloved.
Unlike our sinful jealousy (Gal. 5:20), the jealousy of God is righteous. His steadfast love for us and faithfulness to us is everlasting. For this reason, our sin is sometimes referred to in Scripture as spiritual adultery or prostitution (Jer. 3:20; Jas. 4:4-5). J.I. Packer says that God’s jealousy is “a praiseworthy zeal on his part to preserve something supremely precious.”[2] That which is supremely precious to God is certainly his honor, glory, and holiness, but also his love. Just as a husband is rightly jealous for the love of his wife, so the Lord is jealous for the love of his people.[3]
This is not the case for those who are not his people, which is why the psalmist prays to the Lord,
Pour out your anger on the nations
that do not know you,
and on the kingdoms
that do not call upon your name! (6)
It is a cry for vindication, to be sure, but also distinction. A pagan nation has attacked and laid waste to God’s people and place (7). And so, the psalmist pleas for God’s justice, which begins first with the repentance of God’s people.
The Faithful Justice of God’s Forgiveness
Life is not lived in a vacuum. Though we live in the present, we are not divorced from the past, including the attitudes and actions of those who have gone before us. We may inherit their chipped china and silverware but the consequences of their lives too. For example, at the time this psalm was written, there was a popular saying circulating,
‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge’ (Jer. 31:29).
It’s a poetic way of saying that the tribulations of our day are a gift from our parents. Though jaded with cynicism, there is truth in it. The Second Commandment warns that the consequences of idolatry visit “the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate [God]” (Ex. 20:5). There are generational consequences to sin that transcend one’s lifetime, just as there are blessings of righteousness that flow from one to thousands (Ex. 20:6).
But the “sour grapes” saying was popular because it shifted blame from us to them. It’s far easier to blame someone else’s sin than deal with my own. The psalmist accepts blame for both, neither denying the sins of the past nor justifying sins in the present. Rightly, he petitions the Lord, “Do not remember against us our former iniquities … deliver us, and atone for our sins” (8a, 9b). It is a confession of sin, past and present, that accepts responsibility and desires forgiveness.
But accepting responsibility for sin will not atone for it. Rightly then, does the psalmist cry to God for mercy and salvation, praying, “deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!” We can neither atone for our sins nor merit our salvation, which is why the psalmist asks God to do both, and so he has: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:9). The salvation and atonement that the psalmist looks toward we look to in the righteous life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are justified as righteous but also adopted into the family of God, having a right to all the privileges of the children of God. Like Christ, we too can cry, “Abba! Father!” (Mark 14:36; Gal. 4:6).
As his children, if we sin, we do not run away from God fearing his wrath but run to him, confessing our sins, for “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Nor do we fear his fatherly discipline, because, as Jerry Bridges clarifies,
God relates to us no longer as a sovereign judge but now as our heavenly Father. A judge punishes to satisfy justice, but Jesus has already satisfied God’s justice on our behalf. A father disciplines through love to grow his children’s character, and this is the way God relates to us as His adopted children.[4]
Come what may, day to day, as children of God we know that our heavenly Father is working in and through all things for our good and his glory, even discipline, yielding “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11).
The Vindicative Deliverance of God’s Provision
Amidst the ashes, the smoldering rubble and ransacked ruin of city and place of worship, it would be hard to “count it all joy” (Jas. 1:2). It would be difficult to see your circumstances as loving discipline. And yet, the psalmist does not wallow in self-pity but thinks of the testimony of God’s glory to the nations. Does a desecrated Jerusalem lead the nations to say, “Where is their God?” (10). Perhaps, but it should lead God’s people to ask, where is our obedience?
But the means of the Lord’s discipline does not negate his justice: He may carry out his righteous purpose through the means of sinful men. The psalmist has witnessed the slaughter of the godly, he hears the groans of the dying, and he cries out for God’s justice. His prayer is not vindictive but vindicative, that God would avenge for the glory of his name, for his name’s sake: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19). And so he shall, for God is jealous for his glory but also for our love and devotion.
In his Confessions, Augustine prays, “you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[5] Since our “chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever,”[6] he has redeemed us that we may. Sin distorts this purpose and pleasure, leaving us restless in our sin. But as we are his people, the sheep of his pasture, he graciously restores our sin-contaminated soul and leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Ps. 23:2-3).
The right response to God’s grace is gratitude and praise, as the psalmist leads the remnant profess:
But we your people, the sheep of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
from generation to generation we will recount your praise (13).
The purpose of God’s discipline is not alienation but reconciliation, that our restless hearts may find contentment not in our circumstances but his presence. And in his presence, our hearts are kindled in grateful praise of the One who loves us most. And so, as we gather to worship the Lord in spirit and truth (John 4:24), as the children of God, we trust the loving discipline of our Father, because “the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Heb. 12:6a).
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] J. I. Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), 189.
[3] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-jealousy-of-god/
[4] Jerry Bridges, The Transforming Power of the Gospel, (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2012), 93.
[5] Saint Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.i, Trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3.
[6] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 1, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 355.
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