Psalm 79:8














I. THIS A CONDITION VERY COMMON. Sometimes it is through:

1. Mental distress, helplessness, sorrow, despair.

2. Or sickness of body, as Hezekiah.

3. Or outward disaster, as in this psalm.

II. ITS CAUSES GENERALLY TRACEABLE:

1. To ourselves - our own sin or folly.

2. To others with whom we are associated.

See this verse, where "former iniquities" mean the iniquities of people who have lived before us. Parents, ancestors. We all are members one of another, and if one suffer, all others suffer with him. Hence it may be their sin or folly rather than our own.

3. To God. He, as with Job, may see fit to let us be brought very low.

III. ITS REASONS VARIOUS.

1. Punishment.

2. Discipline.

3. For the drawing of the soul nearer God.

4. For opportunity of testifying to God's sustaining grace.

5. To teach sympathy.

IV. BESET WITH PERIL. The devil loves to hit a man when he is down. Hence he assails the mind with thoughts hard, bitter, unbelieving, desperate. Shipwreck of faith and good conscience lies near at hand.

V. BUT MAY BECOME THE MEANS OF GREAT SPIRITUAL ATTAINMENT. Even our Lord "learned obedience" so. - S.C.

O remember not against us former iniquities.
Homilist.
The proper translation of this would be, "Remember not to us the iniquities of former men." The text recognizes the fact that men suffer for the iniquities of their fathers and their forefathers. This is an undoubted fact. We may just state five practical purposes which this principle of the Divine government serves to answer.

I. It serves to show the RIGHT WHICH EVERY PHILANTHROPIST HAS TO PROTEST AGAINST THE SINS OF INDIVIDUALS. If evil is handed down from sire to son, the sinner has no right to say, How does my sin concern you? To such we may say, You have no right to do that which injures your brethren; and, in the name of humanity, every man has a right to protest against your sine and to endeavour to restrain you by all moral means from their commission.

II. It serves to show the SOLEMN RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PARENTAL CHARACTER. As our dispositions will be reproduced, and our deeds re-transacted, our actions will vibrate on the hearts of unborn men and women. Man lives, thinks, and throbs in the life of posterity.

III. It serves to show that THE BEST WAY TO ELEVATE THE RACE IS TO TRAIN THE YOUNG. As one generation so forms another, the best way to serve the whole race is to make a generation, physically, intellectually, and morally, what it ought to be. But there is no chance of thus forming a generation, except in the first stages of its life. Concentrate your efforts on the young.

IV. It serves to THROW SOME LIGHT UPON WHAT IS CALLED "ORIGINAL SIN."

V. It serves to INDICATE THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRIST'S INCARNATION. "To destroy sin in the flesh." To do this, not merely in theories, books, or speech, but in actual human life, is the grand condition of the world's salvation. But inasmuch as sin, by this hereditary principle, is transmitted through physical relationship and social influences, it seems necessary that He who would destroy it, should become a link in the' great chain of humanity, identify Himself with the race, and originate the counteracting influences of truth and righteousness. Hence the world's great Deliverer became the Son of Man.

(Homilist.)

People
Asaph, Jacob, Psalmist
Places
Jerusalem
Topics
Compassion, Compassions, Desperate, Fathers, Forefathers, Former, Haste, Hold, Iniquities, Low, Meet, Mercies, Mercy, Mind, O, Prevent, Quickly, Remember, Sins, Speedily, Succor, Tender, Weak
Outline
1. The psalmist complains of the desolation of Jerusalem
8. He prays for deliverance
13. and promises thankfulness

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Psalm 79:8

     6688   mercy, demonstration of God's

Psalm 79:8-9

     6648   expiation
     8610   prayer, asking God

Library
The Attack on the Scriptures
[Illustration: (drop cap B) A Greek Warrior] But troubled times came again to Jerusalem. The great empires of Babylon and Assyria had passed away for ever, exactly as the prophets of Israel had foretold; but new powers had arisen in the world, and the great nations fought together so constantly that all the smaller countries, and with them the Kingdom of Judah, changed hands very often. At last Alexander the Great managed to make himself master of all the countries of the then-known world. Alexander
Mildred Duff—The Bible in its Making

How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Period ii. The Church from the Permanent Division of the Empire Until the Collapse of the Western Empire and the First Schism Between the East and the West, or Until About A. D. 500
In the second period of the history of the Church under the Christian Empire, the Church, although existing in two divisions of the Empire and experiencing very different political fortunes, may still be regarded as forming a whole. The theological controversies distracting the Church, although different in the two halves of the Graeco-Roman world, were felt to some extent in both divisions of the Empire and not merely in the one in which they were principally fought out; and in the condemnation
Joseph Cullen Ayer Jr., Ph.D.—A Source Book for Ancient Church History

The Formation of the Old Testament Canon
[Sidenote: Israel's literature at the beginning of the fourth century before Christ] Could we have studied the scriptures of the Israelitish race about 400 B.C., we should have classified them under four great divisions: (1) The prophetic writings, represented by the combined early Judean, Ephraimite, and late prophetic or Deuteronomic narratives, and their continuation in Samuel and Kings, together with the earlier and exilic prophecies; (2) the legal, represented by the majority of the Old Testament
Charles Foster Kent—The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament

A Summary of the Christian Life. Of Self-Denial.
The divisions of the chapter are,--I. The rule which permits us not to go astray in the study of righteousness, requires two things, viz., that man, abandoning his own will, devote himself entirely to the service of God; whence it follows, that we must seek not our own things, but the things of God, sec. 1, 2. II. A description of this renovation or Christian life taken from the Epistle to Titus, and accurately explained under certain special heads, sec. 3 to end. 1. ALTHOUGH the Law of God contains
Archpriest John Iliytch Sergieff—On the Christian Life

Psalms
The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or, rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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