Remember What God Has Done For You!! - Psalms 78-80

 Psalms 80:8-13 (ESV)

You brought a vine out of Egypt;

you drove out the nations and planted it.

You cleared the ground for it;

it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade,

the mighty cedars with its branches.

It sent out its branches to the sea

and its shoots to the River.

Why then have you broken down its walls,

so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?

The boar from the forest ravages it,

and all that move in the field feed on it.

Aspah wrote the above lines from Psalm 80.   In this section we have many of his songs.   He was a significant song master for Israel.  He often wrote about the relationship between God and the nation of Israel.  In the above passage we read him writing about God’s choice for Israel, but not Israel’s choice for God.  That is a theme of much of his songs.  He outlines how God took Israel out of Egypt.  He calls them a vine.  He pulls them out of Egypt and sets them in a place of fertile soil.  He covered them with shade (sometimes that shade was a cloud of His divine glory).   He allowed the nation to have roots wide and far and drink from the sea and the river.  He is referring to how he expanded their territories and gave them both room to grow and sustenance to grow.   But, they he asks the key question, “Why then have you (God) broken down the walls of the nation?”  

In this particular song, he doesn’t explicitly answer the question.   He is rather, in these lines, complaining about the wicked nations around him that are destroying the nation God so marvelously planted.   We know the reason God is allowing, as does Asaph.  Note what he wrote in a previous song:

Psalms 78:56-59 (ESV)

Yet they tested and rebelled against the Most High God

and did not keep his testimonies,

but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers;

they twisted like a deceitful bow.

For they provoked him to anger with their high places;

they moved him to jealousy with their idols.

When God heard, he was full of wrath,

and he utterly rejected Israel.

Because they rejected God, God would reject them and bring wicked nations to punish them.   They were given much and would be held accountable for much.    God took a sapling and made it into a giant tree.  But, the tree, full of pride, rejected the one who made it.  That is why God punished them.   God takes us from the depths of sin and causes us to grow in power and strength.  We ought to be very careful to turn away from that Grace and that power.   God is a jealous God and demands and deserves our unfettered love for Him.  When we turn to other sources for strength, pleasure and/or satisfaction, we become like that little vine that God pulled out of Egypt.   When we do that God must send a wild boar to ravages us to persuade us to turn back to the one who saved us.