Blazing the Trail That Leads to Christ (Psalm 78)

Psalm 78 calls us to consider the legacy of our lives. How are you blazing a trail that others can walk behind to find Christ? Pastor Chris unpacks how remembered stories, faithful examples, and godly leadership can leave a lasting spiritual path. This message blends Scripture with personal stories and practical next steps for passing on faith to the next generation.

Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/17803872

Key Points:

1. Blazing the trail through a remembered story (Psalm 78:1–8; Deuteronomy 32:7; Deuteronomy 6:6–7)
2. Blazing the trail through a faithful example (Psalm 78:9–39; Psalm 78:36–38)
3. Blazing the trail through godly leadership (Psalm 78:70–72; David’s shepherd heart and skillful hands)

Personal Stories from Pastor Chris:
 Reflections on Grandparents Day and the joy of a granddaughter’s birthday choice. A roadwork illustration about seeing new paths form. A fat bike ride on an overgrown trail that pictured the cost of neglect. Memorial services that remind us how testimonies live on even after someone is gone.

Notable Quotes:
 • Your faith is intended to be passed on from generation to generation.
 • Do not sugarcoat your story, but do not glorify sin either. Share enough to point people to Jesus.
 • Care for people with a true heart and lead them with skillful hands (Psalm 78:72).

Actionable Takeaways:
 • Heart reflection: Who first handed you the gospel story, and who are you handing it to this week?
 • Daily-life application: Use your dinner table and car rides to talk about God’s works (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).
 • Spiritual step: Record a three-minute testimony video or write one page about how Jesus met you in a hard season.
 • Practical next step: Read Psalm 78 with a child or grandchild, then pray together for a lasting legacy.

Scripture References:
 Psalm 78:1–8, 9, 36–38, 70–72; Deuteronomy 6:6–7; Deuteronomy 32:7; Psalm 145:4; Proverbs 1:6; Matthew 13:34.

Keywords:
 Psalm 78, legacy, family faith, testimony, discipleship, Asaph, David, faithful example, godly leadership, next generation

Challenge:
 Tell one person your God story this week, then invite them to take a step of faith with you.

The WELL Faith Podcast offers encouraging, Bible-based messages from Pastor Chris Teien and guests. New sermons are released every Sunday. Replay episodes are marked with an asterisk. Find us online at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.Church in Virginia, MN. Email comments to wellfaith24@gmail.com

Transcript

Chris T 0:00

Now I would like to talk to you about one of the longest psalms in the Bible. I'm going to talk about the first eight or nine verses, and then I'll skim through the middle part and then come to the end. But I had this thought with Grandparents' Day. And so I don't, as far as I remember, I don't have an official grandparents' day message. And if you're not a grandparent, this is totally for you anyway. But if you are a grandparent, it's a pretty cool thing. I was blessed to become a young grandparent. And if I become a young great-grandparent too, that would be pretty cool. Because my oldest granddaughter just turned 18, and I was so blessed that she chose to have her birthday dinner at my house. There's all these other places she could have gone. But she came to our house, and I thought that was pretty cool. But what, no matter how old you are, your age or whatever, what is the road that you are paving, the trail that you are blazing, the path that you are making so that others can find the way. Yesterday, when I came up to check the latest road construction, which I do every Saturday afternoon, I actually drove on the first third of the frontage road because it's all done, it's packed, it's not paved. But you can see where the sidewalk's gonna go, you can see where the road goes, and like a third of it's done, and it's all packed and it's drivable. And I did it. I don't know if I was supposed to, but I did it. And if anybody said anything, I'll say legally, it's still the church's land, so there's that. But nonetheless, it's pretty cool to see stuff like that happen. What's even better is to see that in your life, you maybe you had some hard times, maybe you had some good times, maybe you were poor than rich, or rich than poor, or maybe you just got through from the day-to-day. But there's a path in your life that leads to Jesus. And a trail is marked that your grandchildren and other people can see, people can read about, people can know that whoever you are, insert your name, whether you're grandpa, grandma, whether you're a teenager, that you're blazing a trail. You're blazing a trail to Jesus. And in the picture that I have here, somebody laid out with railroad ties and boards a trail through the woods. And I can guarantee that trail is going to be there for a long time. It's not going to get easily grown with the weeds the way that it was made. I mean, it might the weeds might grow up around it, but there'll be a trail there. It's easy once you quit traveling the trail, or the person that made the trail disappears, it's easy for the trail to become overgrown. And then people don't even know where the trail is anymore. During the COVID days, they didn't do a whole lot to take care of the state parks. And I had rented a fat bike, a bicycle with really fat tires, and I rented it from the bike store for a couple days, and I was going down this trail, and but the trail was all overgrown because there weren't any workers to take care of the weeds in the grass, and it was all overgrown, and you couldn't even really get through it. But what about the trail that you are blazing? Will it be there for a long time? Will it be one that people know? Have you written anything? Have you made any videos of yourself? Have you shared anything that people can look back on your life and hear your story? We, if people want, will put people's memorial service or funeral services online on video, and people do watch those. We've done some memorial service, funeral services for people a year, two years ago, three years ago, and I can see that people are still every now and then watching them. And our faith isn't just about today, it's not just about our faith and our personal experience today. Our faith and personal experience in Christ, what we're learning, our discipleship journey and everything needs to be passed on from generation to generation. And somehow we need to do that. We need to start that. We need to do everything that we can for parents, young parents, to do everything we can to start reading them Bible stories, to start teaching them about Jesus early on. So, number one, the first point is blazing the trail through a remembered story, through a remembered story. I've heard from grandparents and older people stories that have guided and directed my life. Different things different people have said have made a big impact in my life. And so I hope the same is said of you. If people are at your house, your kids or whoever is at your house for dinner, Thanksgiving dinner or whatever, you are the king or queen of the table, and you can say anything you want about Jesus and your faith because it is your domain, it is your place. Now, if you go to someone else's house, you might not have that same opportunity. But if it's your house, if it's your place, you can say whatever you want to try to point people to Jesus, and it can be a really good thing when you take that up. Sometimes people are too afraid. But let's look at the scripture. Psalm chapter 78 was written by Asaph. And so he wrote probably Psalm 50 and Psalm 73 to 83. And so he was a musician that David had put in place. And this guy he liked to do psalms that taught lessons. He liked to do teaching psalms that taught wisdom. He liked to include more than just the recounting of the story, but he liked to also insert some of the things that maybe you went put in a happy note or happy letter. And this is what he did here in Psalm 78. Oh my people, listen to my instructions. Open your ears to what I am saying. So he's literally saying, listen up. This is important. I have something for you. You need to listen to it. You need to listen. You need to apply this. This is a good thing. Have you ever done that? Did you ever say, hey, listen up? I want you to, I want you to hear something. Listen up. I want to tell you something. I want to tell you something about what Jesus did in my life, or how I was going through a hard time and how God got me through, or how I had this sickness and how I prayed for help and God got me through, and maybe you were healed or you weren't. To share the story, to know that your faith is intended to be passed on from generation to generation. Some people say that God created people because he loves stories. And he loves it when you tell the story about not just you, but about you and how Jesus worked in your life, how the Holy Spirit prompted you, how God worked in your life, how God was a heavenly father like no other is a heavenly father like no other. And those things are all good. So then he says, I will speak to you in a parable. I will teach you hidden lessons from our past, stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. I think I might have mentioned this before, but my stepgrandparents treated me like I was their very own grandson. And I'm not sure how old I was, maybe 11 or so. They bought me a really expensive leather, pure, like genuine leather Bible. It was King James Version, but and gave it to me because they knew that was important. They knew it was important for me to have a good Bible. I don't know why you'd give an 11-year-old an expensive Bible like that. And I don't think they probably had any idea I would turn out to be a pastor, nor maybe they, I don't know if they had any idea that I would read that Bible through and through. Yes, I do speak King James. It's interesting that Psalm 78, verse 2, in the King James Version, says, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old. Dark sayings of old. Now, when I first looked at that, I'm like, oh, dark sayings of old. I think what that means is don't sugarcoat it. When you're telling the story, don't just make yourself look like a hero and say everything that's good. Don't sugarcoat it. On the other hand, though, if you are telling the story, you do not have to give your grandkids or anybody else all of the details of your sin or depravity or mistake or whatever. You can definitely filter that. You don't want the kid to flip around and say and not hear what you're trying to say and say, Grandma did that, so I'm going to do that too. And you're like, no, wait, that was the mistake part. Don't do that. But dark sayings of old, that is not what I was thinking that it was. As I looked into it, I found that dark sayings of old was actually a riddle, something that you have to think about it to totally grasp it. So as I thought about it some more, I thought, okay, so what we're talking about here is something that you wouldn't see at the surface level, but maybe because all scripture is God breathed and from the Holy Spirit, maybe it's something that the Holy Spirit has to shine light on for you to understand it. So the dark sayings of old are things that there's more to it. Jesus spoke in parables. Proverbs 1.6 says understand the Proverbs are for understanding Proverbs and Parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise. And in Matthew 13, 34 it says, Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. So is fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet, I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world. So Jesus is directly quoting this passage right here with what he did and the way he did it. Have you ever, when you look into scripture and you're trying to figure things out, you have those aha moments where it's like, oh, I get it. I get it. I understand what this means now. And that can be a good thing. But stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. Do you have stories like that have been handed down to you? Stories that define maybe who you are, your family legacy, something about faith. Deuteronomy 32, 7 says, Remember the days of old, consider the generations long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. So the Christian faith isn't meant to end with us. We are to tell others our story, but more than our story, we're to tell people's God's story and how it affected us, the gospel story and how it affected us, how it changed us. Verse 4. We will not hide these truths from our children. We will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and mighty wonders. Why do people, why would anybody hide it from their children? Some people hide it from their children because they think, I'm just gonna let my kid grow to be an adult and then they can choose what they want to believe. That's really a dumb thing. Would you do that with anything else? I'm not really gonna tell my kid about fire. I'm just gonna let them choose what they believe about fire and do whatever they want. No. Or electricity or anything else. The best thing you can do is to guide them and direct them and to teach them the important things as early as possible. You want to teach them before they hear the opposite from the world, from the evil, wicked world that wants to lead them astray. Verse five, for he issued his laws to Jacob, he gave his instructions to Israel, he commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children. So the next generation might know them, even the children not yet born, for they in turn will teach their own children. What a great thing if we can teach our kids something that they would teach to their kids, that they would teach to their kids, a family legacy, a family heritage of faith, so important and such a blessing. Verse 7, then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds, but would keep his commands. Doesn't that bring you joy and delight? Doesn't that bring you joy and delight, especially as a grandparent when you have raised children that know how to raise children, and the grandkids come to your house and they're a joy and a delight because they're behaved, they're polite, they're kind, they love Jesus, they're interested in what you have to say, they get excited when you read the Bible to them, those types of things. Pretty awesome. Verse 8. Then they would not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him. So much of what comes next in verses 10 through 69 are all sorts of cautionary tales about the things that the Israelites did that dishonored God, that angered God, that made it so they weren't able to live the blessed life that God had for them, if they would have just obeyed. Not to be like that. You know, the Shema Deuteronomy 6, 6, you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you're at home and when you're on the road, and when you're going to bed, and when you're getting up, and when you're driving the car down the road, and when you're for a walk, going for a walk, and when you're doing yard work and whatever else. Next week we're going to talk about meeting the spiritual needs of children. Whether you have children or not, we all have an opportunity, we all have an obligation to tell people about Christ and to help them to find true faith. Psalm 145, 4 Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts, let them proclaim your power. So then section two gets into blazing the trail through a faithful example. And I will let you basically read through that because I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on that right now. But if you look at Psalm 78, the section here, you will find that when God helped them to cross the Red Sea, that they did that, they remembered that miracle, but then they continued to be unfaithful. Verse 9 actually says, the warriors of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned their backs and fled on the day of battle. They had this opportunity to fight for God, with God, to do God's will, and instead they chose not to. They chose cowardice. So instead of the line of David, the line of Jesus, the Messiah, coming through Joseph's kids, the tribe of Ephraim was known for being short-tempered and angry. God said, But you didn't show up when I said show up. You didn't trust me when you're supposed to go into battle, and said, You turned your back, you didn't do what was right. Verse 10, they did not keep God's covenant and refused to live by instructions. They forgot what he had done, the great wonders he had shown, and then it lists a bunch of stuff, and like water from the rock, and how God provided manna and quail for them to eat, and all these different things, and how unfaithful they were. But anyway, God chose to have the Messiah's line come through Judah. And Judah had an imperfect life too. His life was messy, but yet he was faithful, the lion of Judah, he was a big deal in God's eyes, and God chose to use him for his faithfulness. One other thing I want to point out in this section too, without reading all the verses that go with it, is that if you get to verse 36, it says, They'll gave him all they gave him was lip service. They lied to him with their tongues, their hearts were not loyal to him, they did not keep his covenant, yet he was merciful and forgave their sins and did not destroy them all. Many times he held back his anger and did not unleash his fury. So there are people, many people, that have the right things to say. They can talk the Christian talk, and they're like really good at saying the right stuff, but their hearts are far from it, and God knows. We don't always know, but God knows your heart. God knows your heart condition, he can forgive you for your sinfulness, he can forgive you for your pride, he can forgive you for, you know, saying all the right stuff but not living it, not believing it with your heart. But to blaze the trail through a faithful example is a huge thing. And just real quick two faithful examples that I can think of that really helped me as a pastor and helped me to grow in the Christian life. You might even know one of them. But George Kallb was an associate pastor when I was at the church in Forest City, and he basically mentored me as a social as an associate pastor, and he like spoke all these wise things into my life and taught me how to be doing the right stuff the right way, and it was really great. And the next one you might know him, Roger Johnson, the things that he said and the way that he said it, and how he taught me about RG Laterno, the philanthropist, the guy who invented a bunch of machinery, especially around World War II, and how he was faithful to give to God. It wasn't he just decided to give 10% to God, he decided to reverse tithe and give 90% to God and keep 10% for himself and how God blessed him and how faithful he was, and and just the fact that Roger is full of a lot of wise sayings. I want to be that kind of example. Maybe I don't know. Hopefully I am now. But as I grow old, I want to be that old guy that's just full of helpful examples and wisdom. And what a great thing, what a great way to live. And then number three, blazing the trail through godly leadership. Blazing the trail through godly leadership. So God in this Psalm too, God chose David. God chose David, his servant David, and he was an unlikely candidate to be chosen. He had to suffer a time of waiting and preparation as he waited for Saul to get off the throne. But if you get to verse 70, it says he chose his servant David, calling him from the sheep pens. You would think that you would get a leader from the temple or a leader from the palace or something more than the sheep pens. It says he took David from tending the ewes and lambs and made him the shepherd of Jacob's descendants, God's own people of Israel. He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands. If you have an opportunity to be a leader, if you have an opportunity to speak into people's lives, do those two things. Care for them with a true heart and lead them as skillfully as you can. Even learn leadership skills so you can be a better leader. Those are all good things. So I'm going to pray. We're going to show you a video clip about scars. So sometimes God uses the hard things in your life to make you better at sharing your story, to make you even better at having compassion for others, to make you even better at living a Christian life that transforms other people because you've been without, or you've had that terrible experience, or you've been through that pain, or you had that sickness, or whatever it was, God can use that. And sometimes those scars are the things that make you most qualified for it. But I'm going to pray. Jesus, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the Psalms. I thank you for the examples of the people that have gone through before us. I thank you for all the biographies that have been written about Christian men and women and missionaries and people that made mistakes, but you still use them, did things that weren't always perfect, but you still helped to restore them, redirect, just help them. Lord, I thank you for your word that is inspired. But Jesus, I thank you so much that we have this opportunity to take you seriously, to live this life, to tell our story, and to make a difference with the days and hours that you give us. Let us do that with the power of your Holy Spirit. We just thank you in Jesus' name.