A psalm of Asaph
1 Oh, give ear, Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock; You who are enthroned {above} the cherubim, shine forth!
2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Your power And come to save us!
3 O God, restore us And cause Your face to shine {upon us,} and we will be saved.
4 O LORD God {of} hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears, And You have made them to drink tears in large measure.
6 You make us an object of contention to our neighbors, And our enemies laugh among themselves.
7 O God {of} hosts, restore us And cause Your face to shine {upon us,} and we will be saved.
8 You removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared {the ground} before it, And it took deep root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shadow, And the cedars of God with its boughs.
11 It was sending out its branches to the sea And its shoots to the River.
12 Why have You broken down its hedges, So that all who pass {that} way pick its {fruit?}
13 A boar from the forest eats it away And whatever moves in the field feeds on it.
14 O God {of} hosts, turn again now, we beseech You; Look down from heaven and see, and take care of this vine,
15 Even the shoot which Your right hand has planted, And on the son whom You have strengthened for Yourself.
16 It is burned with fire, it is cut down; They perish at the rebuke of Your countenance.
17 Let Your hand be upon the man of Your right hand, Upon the son of man whom You made strong for Yourself.
18 Then we shall not turn back from You; Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.
This psalm is attributed to Asaph, which may be a family name for it is associated with many other psalms written at different times in Israel’s history. But it is very clear that this man wanted his hearers to know that God blesses only those who repent and return to Him with their whole hearts.
We may assume it was written in a very dark time in Israel’s history, perhaps just before the Assyrian king conquered the kingdom of Israel, the northern tribes, and even Judah was rejecting the ways of God. If we read the first chapters of Jeremiah to get the setting we can understand how sad and worked up the psalmist was. He like Jeremiah wanted the people to return to God all the while knowing that unless they did they would be defeated, their cities destroyed and they and their families would go into captivity.
And yet as a poet-singer-prophet he sang and taught them this psalm. The central part is a poetic illustration comparing Israel to a vine planted in the promised land which grew great and luxuriantly spread over the whole country but was now in ruins and would be rooted out of the land unless they repented. The allegory teaches a very clear message that God wanted to do even much more for them if they would not rebel.
And then in the second last verse we see Asaph’s appeal and prayer to God in a prophetic style. He knows that the present weak ungodly king cannot ever save them so He calls on God to send His strong man, yes a son of man, but the anointed one. We see this as foretelling the coming of our Lord Jesus but the psalmist lived hundreds of years before Jesus came. He must have wondered much about God’s strong son of man, but he knew that God had inspired him to use those words, and he believed. Do we who have so much more in the New Testament and history, are we as he was, sure that repentance and belief are the only road to blessing?
1 Peter 1:8-12
Him you love, though your eyes have never looked on Him. In Him, though at present you cannot see Him, you nevertheless trust, and triumph with a joy which is unspeakable and is crowned with glory, while you are securing as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. There were Prophets who earnestly inquired about that salvation, and closely searched into it--even those who spoke beforehand of the grace which was to come to you. They were eager to know the time which the Spirit of Christ within them kept indicating, or the characteristics of that time, when they solemnly made known beforehand the sufferings that were to come upon Christ and the glories which would follow. To them it was revealed that they were serving not themselves but you, when they foretold the very things which have now been openly declared to you.
Jesus saves from sin.