In my recent updates, I mentioned adapting a sermon as part of my ordination exams, but I failed to mention writing a new sermon for my final worship service at Faith Presbyterian Church in Olney, Maryland.

The text is Ps 78.

I chose this text partly because of what I have been learning as I facilitate round-table discussions for an adult Sunday School series on the parables in the Gospel according to Matthew. A few weeks ago we touched on one of the interpretive keys in the central parables discourse: Matthew’s explanation for Jesus’s speaking in parables to the crowds in Matt 13.34–35.

Here are a few things from Matt 13.34–35 that struck me and have drawn me toward further exploration of Ps 78:

1. In Matt 13.35, Matthew quotes Ps 78.2 with a fulfillment formula ὅπως πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ τοῦ προφήτου, “thus was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet.” It is important that Matthew characterizes Asaph, to whom Ps 78 is attributed (see some of my thoughts on the ל of authorship), as a “prophet.” It fits with Jesus’s later statement that David in Ps 110 speaks about the Christ ἐν πνεύματι, “in the Spirit” (Matt 22.43). For Matthew and the rest of the NT writers, there is no hard-and-fast division between the prophets of the section of the (OT) Scriptures called נביאים, the Prophets, and the other writers. All the Scriptures are prophetic (cf. 2 Tim 3.6; 2 Pet 1.20–21).
2. The form of Ps 78.2 in Matt 13.35 is what I would call a “quotation with intensification”: Matthew develops חידות, “riddles” (cf. προβλήματα in Ps 77.2 LXX), as κεκρυμμένα, “hidden things”; and he intensifies מני קדם, “from of old” or “from long ago,” to ἀπὸ καταβολῆς, “from the foundation”—several manuscripts rounding out the idiom with κόσμου, “from the foundation of the world” (cf. ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς in Ps 77.2 LXX). Matthew’s translation does not depart from the sense of the Hebrew of Ps 78.2, but he is narrowing its sense. What’s going on in Ps 78 and in Jesus’s parables discourse is not the posing of classic brain-teasers but unveiling of cosmic mystery. For the prophet to utter a parable and riddle is not about playing the sphinx but conveying divine revelation in its providential context. Why a riddle, then? I suspect that prophetic riddles are especially important when there is a transition period in the covenantal administration, a “new thing” happening in God’s special providence (cf. Matt 13.52). Parables are also helpful for subverting resistance to the prophet’s call to repentance. (More on these things later.)
3. Looking at the whole context of Ps 78—of which Matthew was certainly aware—Asaph’s parable and riddle is not a story he made up to communicate truth. It is not a neat illustration. It is, remarkably, Israel’s history! Psalm 78 retells in cyclical and progressive fashion how Israel rebelled against YHWH despite his mighty acts of deliverance and the gift of Torah. It ends with the climax of the coming of David, whom the divine Shepherd appointed to shepherd his people (vv. 70–71). In narrating this history as a “parable” and “riddle,” Asaph makes a stunning point: Israel’s covenantal history is also symbolic of another history. Paul puts it this way: ταῦτα δὲ τύποι ἡμῶν ἐγενήθησαν, εἰς τὸ μὴ εἶναι ἡμᾶς ἐπιθυμητὰς κακῶν, καθὼς κἀκεῖνοι ἐπεθύμησαν, “And these things [in Israel’s covenantal history] happened as patterns for us, so that we would not be desirous of evil things as those people [who died in the wilderness] desired [them]” (1 Cor 10.6; see also Rom 15.4). In other words, Ps 78 is a justification from the OT Scriptures for typological appropriation—finding patterns that are both unique historical occurrence and symbolic of eternal truth and final reality. For Matthew, what Asaph was doing with Israel’s history “from of old” is what Jesus was doing with all the world “from [its] foundation.” The plan from the beginning—for God’s reign to be on earth, through and with his image-bearers, as it is in heaven—is what Jesus has come to reveal and even to effect. The coming of the kingdom is, in fact, the central content of Jesus’s parables, the content that he calls “the secrets of the kingdom of the heavens” (Matt 13.11).

Thoughts like these led me to further explore Psalm 78.

These thoughts also fit with a presentation on the prophetic character of the OT Psalter that I have planned for the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church’s Family Bible Conference 2025. More on that later.