Slices
Prepare
Over the past week, which of the parables has challenged you most? Ask God to help you apply its teaching to your life.
Bible passage
A maskil of Asaph.
1 My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old –
3 things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
5 He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach their children,
6 so that the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
7 Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.
8 They would not be like their ancestors –
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
whose hearts were not loyal to God,
whose spirits were not faithful to him.
9 The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows,
turned back on the day of battle;
10 they did not keep God’s covenant
and refused to live by his law.
11 They forgot what he had done,
the wonders he had shown them.
12 He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors
in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea and led them through;
he made the water stand up like a wall.
14 He guided them with the cloud by day
and with light from the fire all night.
15 He split the rocks in the wilderness
and gave them water as abundant as the seas;
16 he brought streams out of a rocky crag
and made water flow down like rivers.
17 But they continued to sin against him,
rebelling in the wilderness against the Most High.
18 They wilfully put God to the test
by demanding the food they craved.
19 They spoke against God;
they said, ‘Can God really
spread a table in the wilderness?
20 True, he struck the rock,
and water gushed out,
streams flowed abundantly,
but can he also give us bread?
Can he supply meat for his people?’
21 When the Lord heard them, he was furious;
his fire broke out against Jacob,
and his wrath rose against Israel,
22 for they did not believe in God
or trust in his deliverance.
23 Yet he gave a command to the skies above
and opened the doors of the heavens;
24 he rained down manna for the people to eat,
he gave them the grain of heaven.
25 Human beings ate the bread of angels;
he sent them all the food they could eat.
26 He let loose the east wind from the heavens
and by his power made the south wind blow.
27 He rained meat down on them like dust,
birds like sand on the seashore.
28 He made them come down inside their camp,
all around their tents.
29 They ate till they were gorged –
he had given them what they craved.
30 But before they turned from what they craved,
even while the food was still in their mouths,
31 God’s anger rose against them;
he put to death the sturdiest among them,
cutting down the young men of Israel.
32 In spite of all this, they kept on sinning;
in spite of his wonders, they did not believe.
33 So he ended their days in futility
and their years in terror.
34 Whenever God slew them, they would seek him;
they eagerly turned to him again.
35 They remembered that God was their Rock,
that God Most High was their Redeemer.
36 But then they would flatter him with their mouths,
lying to him with their tongues;
37 their hearts were not loyal to him,
they were not faithful to his covenant.
38 Yet he was merciful;
he forgave their iniquities
and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger
and did not stir up his full wrath.
39 He remembered that they were but flesh,
a passing breeze that does not return.
40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved him in the wasteland!
41 Again and again they put God to the test;
they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
42 They did not remember his power –
the day he redeemed them from the oppressor,
43 the day he displayed his signs in Egypt,
his wonders in the region of Zoan.
44 He turned their river into blood;
they could not drink from their streams.
45 He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,
and frogs that devastated them.
46 He gave their crops to the grasshopper,
their produce to the locust.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail
and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
48 He gave over their cattle to the hail,
their livestock to bolts of lightning.
49 He unleashed against them his hot anger,
his wrath, indignation and hostility –
a band of destroying angels.
50 He prepared a path for his anger;
he did not spare them from death
but gave them over to the plague.
51 He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt,
the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham.
52 But he brought his people out like a flock;
he led them like sheep through the wilderness.
53 He guided them safely, so they were unafraid;
but the sea engulfed their enemies.
54 And so he brought them to the border of his holy land,
to the hill country his right hand had taken.
55 He drove out nations before them
and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance;
he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.
56 But they put God to the test
and rebelled against the Most High;
they did not keep his statutes.
57 Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless,
as unreliable as a faulty bow.
58 They angered him with their high places;
they aroused his jealousy with their idols.
59 When God heard them, he was furious;
he rejected Israel completely.
60 He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh,
the tent he had set up among humans.
61 He sent the ark of his might into captivity,
his splendour into the hands of the enemy.
62 He gave his people over to the sword;
he was furious with his inheritance.
63 Fire consumed their young men,
and their young women had no wedding songs;
64 their priests were put to the sword,
and their widows could not weep.
65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
as a warrior wakes from the stupor of wine.
66 He beat back his enemies;
he put them to everlasting shame.
67 Then he rejected the tents of Joseph,
he did not choose 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 that he established for ever.
70 He chose David his servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
71 from tending the sheep he brought him
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel his inheritance.
72 And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
with skilful hands he led them.
Explore
This psalm is very relevant to our readings over the past seven days. In verses 1–3, David’s prophetic words remind us how important it is to take note of Jesus’ teaching and put it into practice.
‘We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord’ (v 4) is a hugely significant verse for Scripture Union, whose primary mission is to reach the majority of children and young people who are not in church (95 per cent of children and young people in England and Wales, for example). We aim to create opportunities for ‘the 95’ to explore the Bible, respond to Jesus and grow in faith. We long to see a new generation who have a vibrant and personal Christian faith, because they have met with God through his Word.
As we read through this psalm, with its reminders of God’s dealings with his people in the Old Testament, our prayer is that contacts we make and relationships we build with neighbours, friends and colleagues will have the outcome of verse 7, ‘… they would put their trust in God’.
Along with Jesus’ parables, these verses are testimony to God’s unfailing love, his faithfulness, his patience, his forgiveness and his grace. Praise him!
Respond
Read verse 4 again. Pray for Scripture Union staff, associates and volunteers as they reach out with the gospel to children and young people who have no knowledge of him.
Deeper Bible study
Paul tells us to present our requests to God with thanksgiving.1 Spend time thanking God, perhaps writing those thanksgivings down or posting them where they can be seen.
Split over two Sundays, this psalm is unusual because, though written for public performance (vs 1,2), it is neither prayer nor praise. Its purpose is to instruct one generation so that it can pass on its faith to the next (vs 3–6). Of course, each of us has had the story of faith handed down to us by others, but here the purpose goes beyond learning to warning: to help future generations not just to remember past mistakes but to learn from them. Yes, future generations need to know ‘the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done’ (v 4), but they also need to learn not to become ‘like their ancestors – a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God’ (v 8). The psalmist wrote to help God’s people break this repeating pattern (v 1).
During the national days of prayer called in the UK at the height of the Dunkirk crisis and the Battle of Britain, churches across the nation were full as people prayed for deliverance.2 The six days after the first day of prayer saw unusually calm seas and 334,000 troops were rescued while Hitler unaccountably hesitated. I was ashamed that I knew nothing of this remarkable move of prayer and its results. After a pandemic in which the church initially locked its doors in the UK and in which our nation has not significantly turned to intercession, I feel rebuked that we have not learned from the past. The ‘riddle’ (v 2)3 is: why do we behave as we do, knowing God to be as he is? And why does God behave as he does, knowing his people to be persistent in going their own way? Still he abounds in love and has to be driven to anger.
As your own purposeful remembering, record the past times and seasons when you’ve been particularly conscious of God’s presence and his power at work.
1 Phil 4:6 2 RT Kendall, Thanking God, Hodder & Stoughton, 2003 3 Eg New American Standard Bible; TNIV has ‘lessons from the past’, NIV has ‘hidden things, things from of old’.
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Genesis 16,17; Matthew 6
Pray for Scripture Union
Give thanks to God for transforming Mick’s life, through the Christians that sent him to Wales and those at the rehab centre who helped him to conquer addiction and to discover Jesus. (This week's prayers all relate to this story. )
