Psalm 79

Psalms 79

1  O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance;

thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

 

they oppose our faith in Gods Love, life, light

 

unexpressed faith is selfishness, sin

 

expression of faith that does not glorify God is a sin

 

true expression of faith will be opposed

 

True and faithful expression of faith will be rewarded.  

 

v.6,12  vengeance, jealousy

 

We have the right and the responsibility to protest warn and restrain man from sin.

 

A very sad case but true

1. They mocked the messengers of God

2. They despised his words,

3. They misused his prophets

4. The wrath of the LORD arose against his people

5. till [there was] no remedy.

 

2 Kgs. 25.8-10 · 2 Chr. 36.17-19 · Jer. 52.12-14  Micah 3:12

 

Jer. 9:11

ps 79:3; Jer.14:16

17:3

22:6

26:18

35:17

44:2

Lam. 5:18

Micah 1:6

4:1

Therefore shall Zion for your sake - for your sake shall Zion

Be plowed as a field - They thought to be its builders; they were its destroyers.

They imagined to advance or secure its temporal prosperity by bloods; they (as men ever do first or last,) ruined it. Zion might have stood, but for these its acute, far-sighted politicians, who scorned the warnings of the prophets, as well-meant ignorance of the world or of the necessities of the state. They taught, perhaps they thought, that "for Zion's sake" they, (act as they might,) were secure. Practical Antinomians! God says, that, "for their sake," Zion, defiled by their deeds, should be destroyed. The fulfillment of the prophecy was delayed by the repentance under Hezekiah. Did he not, the elders ask Jeremiah 26:19, fear the Lord and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them? But the prophecy remained, like that of Jonah against Nineveh, and, when man undid and in act repented of his repentanee, it found its fulfillment.

Jerusalem shall become heaps - (Literally, of ruins) and "the mountain of the house," Mount Moriah, on which the house of God stood, "as the high places of the forest," literally "as high places of a forest." It should return wholly to what it had been, before Abraham offered up the typical sacrifice of his son, a wild and desolate place covered with tangled thickets Genesis 22:13.

The prophecy had a first fulfillment at its first capture by Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah mourns over it; "Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, foxes walk" Lamentations 5:18 (habitually upon it. Nehemiah said, "Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste" Nehemiah 2:17; and Sanballat mocked at the attempts to rebuild it, as a thing impossible; "Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of dust, and these too, burned?" (Nehemiah 4:2, (3:34, Hebrew)), and the builders complained; "The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed (literally, sinketh under them), and there is much dust, and we are not able to build the wall" (Nehemiah 4:10, (Nehemiah 4:4, Hebrew)). In the desolation under Antiochus again it is related; "they saw the sanctuary desolate, and the altar profaned, and the gates burned up, and shrubs growing in the courts, as in a forest or in one of the mountains" (1 Macc. 4:38). When, by the shedding of the Blood of the Lord, they "filled up the measure of their fathers" Matthew 23:32, and called the curse upon themselves, "His Blood be upon us and upon our children" Matthew 27:25, destruction came upon them to the uttermost.

For the Glory of thy Name

Psalm 79:9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake.

 

The greatest, the heaviest anchor is let out when the storm rages

 

Ex. 33:19

34:5

23:21

Jn.17:4-6

 

 

[24] O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Wretched man that I am — The struggle is now come to the height; and the man, finding there is no help in himself, begins almost unawares to pray, Who shall deliver me? He then seeks and looks for deliverance, till God in Christ appears to answer his question. The word which we translate deliver, implies force. And indeed without this there can be no deliverance.

The body of this death — That is, this body of death; this mass of sin, leading to death eternal, and cleaving as close to me as my body to my soul. We may observe, the deliverance is not wrought yet.

Identify the body of sin as the body of death