Tag: Asaph the poet

The Legacy of Asaph

1 Chronicles 16-17

Psalm 73

Ephesians 1

~ Devotion by Cayce Fletcher (SC)

Cayce Fletcher is a wife and homeschool mom of three. She writes and podcasts at amorebeautifullifecollective.com where she helps women grow in grace, build with purpose, and live beautifully. Read the latest post in the Systematic Theology series here. 

We’ve talked about legacy this week as the sum total of our life and our work. Another way we describe legacy is the way that work, skills, and even ministry are passed down through generations. 

My family was not a sports family (I don’t think I can emphasize that enough). Even though my dad was about 6’3” and played basketball in high school, none of my siblings really inherited the sports gene. My husband, however, is a football (and golf) fan, and I have learned more than I ever really wanted to know watching Sunday Ticket on lazy fall afternoons. 

Football and sports are a skill legacy passed down, with the Mannings a notable example. In the world of Golf, I remember watching one pre-Masters tournament when Jack Nicklaus’ grandson shot a hole-in-one during the pre-tournament ‘family’ round. It’s a legacy.

I did not inherit the ‘sports’ gene from my father, but I did inherit – and was encouraged to pursue – the music gene. We took piano lessons from a young age from Miss Alma Carter, who served up Cokes in the bottle and let us watch SpongeBob in her sun porch as we waited for the lessons to start. We were in every church program and cantata. And, we learned the VBS songs before anyone else so that our mom could lead the music when it started each summer. 

The legacy that started with my grandmother singing folksy Appalachian hymns on the local radio has continued to me singing harmony on Sunday mornings during worship. 

We often think of spiritual disciplines in terms of words. We read the Bible, we pray, and we journal. But a crucial spiritual discipline is worship. Worship gets us out of our heads and gets us focused on God. It is something that we do on our own, but we love to do in a group. There is such a special moment when you pause and listen to everyone singing in a song. The sound is a picture of the church – individual notes combined together to meld into something beautiful and transcendent. 

Music has always been a central part of how we interact with God. When we learn more about God, we are moved to worship him. When the ark returned to Jerusalem, David was immediately moved to celebrate. He offered sacrifices and then called some Levites “to be ministers before the ark of the Lord, to celebrate the Lord God of Israel, and to give thanks and praise to him” (1 Chronicles 16:4). 

The chief minister of musicians was named Asaph. He was a Levite who was a skilled musician and also described as a seer (or prophet) (2 Chron. 29:30). 1 Chronicles 9:33-34 describes how these musicians “stayed in the temple chambers and were exempt from other tasks because they were on duty day and night.” 

What may seem like a trivial detail about the daily routines of temple life actually speaks to something incredibly important: Worship was so important to the Jewish people that they had a dedicated team of people whose only duty was to sing to God. It wasn’t just something tacked onto a worship service to ‘spice it up.’ It was crucial. Someone was on duty day and night, worshipping before God. 

GotQuestions makes an important point: “The church musicians of our day can be considered spiritual ‘children of Asaph.’” Anyone who sings psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (which should be all of us) is part of the legacy of Asaph. We walk in his footsteps as we minister before the Lord. Worship is not just ‘filler’ to add to a service; it is how we glorify God and testify to who he is. 

As you read through Psalm 73, you are walking in the footsteps of your spiritual great(+)-grandfather worshipping our great God and singing of the good he has done for us. 

Reflection Questions

  1. Have you ever thought about how important worship is for our spiritual life? Why is it important? How does worship change our hearts? 
  2. Why do you think one of David’s first acts when the ark arrived was to worship with singing? 
  3. Some of us may not feel musically inclined. Why should we still make a point to participate in worship? 

Prayer

Lord, 

Thank you for the gift of worship. Thank you for the gift of music, songs, and harmony. Lord, we praise you!

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

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Asaph’s Prayer List

Psalm 83

How often are your prayers only requests for God? How many times, if those requests were fulfilled, would they help others come to know God? In Psalm 83, Asaph thought about how his requests would help others to come to know the one true God.

At the beginning of Psalm 83, Asaph asks God to intervene on Israel’s behalf in the face of their enemies. Asaph continues by listing many grievances against their enemies as to why God should deliver Israel from their enemies. After listing all the problems that Israel is having with their enemies and listing who those enemies are, Asaph asks God to completely destroy their enemies.

Asaph asks God to destroy their enemies as He did in the past during the times of Gideon and Deborah and Barak. He continues to ask God to destroy them to the point that they are like whirling dust or chaff in the wind. In Psalm 83:16-18, his list goes on to ask that God would make their enemies humiliated, ashamed, and dismayed. He says,

“16 Fill their faces with dishonor,

That they may seek Your name, O Lord.

17 Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever,

And let them be humiliated and perish,

18 That they may know that You alone, whose name is the Lord,

Are the Most High over all the earth.”

In these verses, Asaph not only asks for their enemies to be ashamed, dismayed, and humiliated, he also explains why he asks for this. Everything Asaph asked God to do to their enemies, he asked so that they would seek God and know that He alone is Most High over all the earth.

Asaph could have just asked God to destroy their enemies because Israel was God’s chosen people. He could have just asked for protection from their enemies because Israel knows God is all-powerful. He could have just asked for deliverance from their enemies because Israel worships God. But Asaph didn’t. He asked for deliverance so that God would be praised by their enemies and that they would come to know God.

In the same way, we need to be a light in this world that would bring others to glorify God. Matthew 5:14-16 says, “‘You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all that are in the house.  Let your light shine before men in such a way that they might see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”  Israel was created to be a nation that would worship God, even when the nations around them didn’t.  Through this, they had an opportunity to spread the truth about God.  Asaph knew this and wanted Israel’s light to shine before their enemies so that they would come to know God and glorify Him.  Similarly, we also are surrounded by people who do not know the truth about God.  We were called to be a light to the world so that we could spread the good news with others and to shine our light before the world so that God would be praised and that others around us would come to know God.

-Kaitlyn Hamilton

Today’s Bible reading passages can be read or listened to at BibleGateway here – Job 35-36 and Psalm 83-84

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