Psalm 78:40-72

Psalm 78:40-72 - Daily Devotion - 31 January 2026 St Barnabas Anglican Church Fairfield & Bossley Park Today we will finish the epic story of Psalm 78. The writer has been telling the story of Israel’s beginnings as a nation, and how from the start they kept forgetting the Lord and rebelling against him.Now the writer goes back even further in the story, to the plagues of Egypt, when the Lord judged the Egyptians and brought his enslaved people out to safety. This was the event, above all, that Israel should never have forgotten, which should have kept them trusting in the Lord. But in the northern tribes of Israel, the pattern of forgetful rebellion persisted all through their later history.At the end, you will hear the one bright point, the one place where hope was to be found: not in the northern tribes, but in Judah in the south, where God raised up King David as the shepherd of his people and chose Jerusalem as the place of his presence.As you read, keep in mind our two questions:What things in this Psalm can I relate to?Is there anything in the Psalm that makes me think of Jesus?40 How often they disobeyed Him in the wildernessand grieved Him in the desert!41 Again and again they tested Godand provoked the Holy One of Israel.42 They did not remember His power —the day He redeemed them from the adversary,43 when He performed His signs in Egyptand His wonders in the fields of Zoan.44 He turned their rivers to blood,and from their streams they could not drink.45 He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,and frogs that devastated them.46 He gave their crops to the grasshopper,the fruit of their labor to the locust.47 He killed their vines with hailstonesand their sycamore-figs with sleet.48 He abandoned their cattle to the hailand their livestock to bolts of lightning.49 He unleashed His fury against them,wrath, indignation, and calamity—a band of destroying angels.50 He cleared a path for His anger;He did not spare them from deathbut delivered their lives to the plague.51 He struck all the firstborn of Egypt,the virility in the tents of Ham.52 He led out His people like sheepand guided them like a flock in the wilderness.53 He led them safely, so they did not fear,but the sea engulfed their enemies.54 He brought them to His holy land,to the mountain His right hand had acquired.55 He drove out nations before themand apportioned their inheritance;He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.56 But they tested and disobeyed God Most High,for they did not keep His decrees.57 They turned back and were faithless like their fathers,twisted like a faulty bow.58 They enraged Him with their high placesand provoked His jealousy with their idols.59 On hearing it, God was furiousand rejected Israel completely.60 He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh,the tent He had pitched among men.61 He delivered His strength to captivity,and His splendor to the hand of the adversary.62 He surrendered His people to the swordbecause He was enraged by His heritage.63 Fire consumed His young men,and their maidens were left without wedding songs.64 His priests fell by the sword,but their widows could not lament.65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,like a mighty warrior overcome by wine.66 He beat back His foes;He put them to everlasting shame.67 He rejected the tent of Josephand refused the tribe of Ephraim.68 But He chose the tribe of Judah,Mount Zion, which He loved.69 He built His sanctuary like the heights,like the earth He has established forever.70 He chose David His servantand took him from the sheepfolds;71 from tending the ewes He brought himto be shepherd of His people Jacob,of Israel His inheritance.72 So David shepherded them with integrity of heartand guided them with skillful hands.REFLECTIONSNow think about the two questions:What things in this Psalm can I relate to?Is there anything in the Psalm that makes me think of Jesus?Then pray, seeking to delight in God or to depend on God.