There is a psalm in the middle of the Bible that pulls back the curtain on why one generation walks with God and the next walks away. It is Psalm 78.
Asaph wrote it as a teaching psalm, a song meant to be passed down so the children would learn from what the fathers got wrong.
The whole psalm walks through the history of Israel. Egypt, the Red Sea, the wilderness, the manna, the water from the rock, the giants, the kings, the failures, and the mercy of God through all of it. Asaph is laying it all out so the next generation would not repeat the cycle.
Right in the heart of the psalm, he tells us why he is writing it.
Psalm 78:7 “That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:”
Psalm 78:8 “And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.”
His goal was simple. Teach the children so they would set their hope in God. Teach them so they would not turn out like the wilderness generation that saw miracles with their own eyes and still would not stay with God.
What Hope Is?
Hope in the Bible is not wishful thinking or crossing your fingers. It is not hoping the weather holds or hoping a check clears. Biblical hope is a confident expectation in God based on who He is and what He has said.
Hebrews 6:19 “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;”
Hope is an anchor that does not float on the surface. It sinks down and holds the boat in place when the waves come.
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Faith gives substance to what we hope for. Hope gives faith something to aim at.
Romans 15:13 “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”
Notice what hope does for us. Joy, peace, and power. A Christian who has his hope set right is a Christian who has joy when life is hard, peace when the news is bad, and power to keep going when others quit.
If we are Christians without hope, we will not be able to stand long. The first storm that comes will move us. That is why setting our hope is one of the most important things we will ever do.
Asaph gives us four marks of a generation that failed to set their hope, and the opposite of each one is how we set ours.
1. We Have to Be Teachable
The first mark of the failed generation was that they were stubborn. Stubborn means hard-necked, unwilling to bend, unwilling to be led.
They had seen God do things no other generation had ever seen, and they still would not be taught.
They watched the plagues fall on Egypt, walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, and saw the cloud by day and the fire by night. They ate manna that fell from heaven every morning for forty years and drank water that came out of a rock.
And every time something hard came, they wanted to go back to Egypt.
Exodus 14:11-12 “And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.”
They had just walked through a sea God split open for them, and they were already wishing they were back in slavery. Their heart refused to be taught faith no matter what God did.
The opposite of stubbornness is being teachable. A teachable Christian listens to God. He listens to the preaching of the word, watches the example of the godly, and listens to the Holy Ghost when conviction comes. He does not lean on his own past experiences, his own opinions, or his own feelings.
Proverbs 1:5 “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:”
If we want to set our hope in God, the first step is to soften our heart and let Him teach us.
2. We Have to Be Submissive
The second mark of the failed generation was that they were rebellious. Rebellion is more than stubbornness. Stubbornness refuses to be led. Rebellion actively pushes back and says no to God.
When Israel stood at the edge of the Promised Land, God told them to go in. The giants, walled cities and enemies were stronger than them on paper. But God had already told them the land was theirs.
Caleb and Joshua understood the mission.
Numbers 14:9 “Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.”
The ten spies looked at the giants and rebelled. Caleb and Joshua looked at God and submitted.
A submissive Christian does what God says even when the giants are real.
1 Samuel 15:22 “And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”
We cannot say we trust God while walking in disobedience to His word.
3. We Have to Set Our Heart Aright
The third mark of the failed generation was that they “set not their heart aright.”
The heart comes first, and the hope follows. A heart that is fixed on God produces hope in God.
A heart that drifts produces hope that drifts.
Psalm 112:7 “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.”
The heart is fixed first, and then comes the trust. The fixed heart is the foundation.
Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Our heart goes where we put our treasure. If we treasure God, our heart will set itself on Him, and our hope will follow. If we treasure money, comfort, or success, our heart will set itself there, and our hope will land there too.
The wilderness generation had their hearts set on Egypt. That is why their hope kept drifting. Every time something got hard, their hearts ran back to leeks, onions and slavery. We cannot set our hope in God while our heart is still in Egypt.
Setting our heart aright is a daily decision. Every morning, every prayer, every choice either fixes our heart more firmly on God or pulls it further away. There is no neutral ground.
Colossians 3:1-2 “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Paul gives a command. Set your affection, which is something we do on purpose. We do not drift into a fixed heart. We set it.
4. We Have to Be Stedfast in Spirit
The fourth mark of the failed generation was that their spirit was “not stedfast with God.” Stedfast means firm, fixed, unmoving, settled. A steadfast spirit does not waver based on circumstances. A steadfast spirit keeps moving forward with God no matter what comes.
1 Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
The wilderness generation was anything but steadfast. They were up one day and down the next. They worshipped God one day and built a golden calf the next. They believed God at the Red Sea and doubted Him three days later when the water was bitter.
The opposite of that kind of spirit is what we see in the three Hebrew boys.
Daniel 3:16-18 “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”
Our God is able to deliver us. He will deliver us. But if not, we will still not bow.
They had decided ahead of time that they were moving forward with God no matter what came. Furnace or freedom, life or death, they were not going to bow.
A stedfast Christian decides ahead of time how he is going to respond before the fire ever comes.
He does not wait until the trial hits to figure out what he believes. He has already set it.
That is how we set our hope. We decide today, while the sun is shining and the bills are paid and the family is healthy, that no matter what comes tomorrow, we are going to stay with God.
The Whole Picture
Asaph wanted the next generation to set their hope in God. He told us how to do it by showing us how the last generation failed.
• They were stubborn, so we have to be teachable.
• They were rebellious, so we have to be submissive.
• They did not set their heart right, so we have to fix our heart on God.
• Their spirit was not steadfast, so we have to settle our spirit on Him and refuse to move.
When all four of those are in place, our hope will be set, and it will stay set when the storms come.
But none of this matters if we do not know the God we are setting our hope on. Hope set on anyone but Jesus Christ is hope that will perish.
The wilderness generation had religion, Moses, and the law. What they did not have was a yielded heart that trusted the living God.
Set your hope on Jesus Christ today. Then teach your heart to stay set on Him for the rest of your days. That is how we become the generation that does not repeat the cycle.
