Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 32 from the Spiral Gospel Hymns
Hymnal, number 32. Let's all stand together. All children of wrath In bondage
and sin We helplessly lay Condemned and unclean God's law in its
infinite Justice and wrath Demanded we suffer An eternal death But
long before time had ever begun, One stood in our place, God's
glorious Son. He offered himself to go live
among men, And give his own life to atone for our sin. The great substitute, behold
he has come. The price has been paid, the
work is all done. Christ took on himself the great
load of our sin. He poured out his blood and he
put away sin. God's justice and law are now
satisfied, and all who believe have been justified. Through faith in the blood of
the Lamb, we are free from sin's condemnation, eternally free. Please be seated. What great hope we have in the.
Freedom the Lord's given us in Christ. Let's open our Bibles together
to Psalm 78 Psalm 78. Good morning. Where the Spirit of God is, there
is liberty. And how hopeful we are that the
Spirit of God will meet with us this morning. Most of you know that Trisha's
stepfather passed away last Sunday. And Trisha's mom is with us,
Maxine, this morning. So very glad to have you here,
Maxine. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on our time together. Our Heavenly Father. How hopeful we are in knowing
that. Our Lord and Savior, thy dear son. The Lord Jesus Christ
has satisfied. All the demands of thy holy law. That we have. Liberty. From the. From the rigors of
the law from the wrath that is to come. Knowing that we have
a righteousness before the. In him. And Lord, how we do hope
that you would be pleased now this hour to send your spirit
in power. Pray that you would open our
hearts. Pray you'd be pleased Lord to make your word Living. Active like a two edged sword.
Able to divide us under the thoughts and intents of the heart. Lord,
that you would. Expose us and encourage us. Lord, as we. Have already been
reminded this morning. Our prayer is that you would.
Turn us. And cause us Lord to. look unto
thee. We know, Lord, that if you're
pleased to do that, that we shall be saved. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. The Lord likens Christ to a narrow
highway that leads to heaven and He makes it clear that most
people are on a broad road that leads to destruction. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
is that road. He said, I am the way. And yet all throughout the scriptures,
the Lord fences that road with guardrails to keep his children
on the road. The guardrail on one side of
that road is the guardrail of warning, lest we become presumptuous. And the guardrail on the other
side of that road is promise, lest we become discouraged. And all throughout the scriptures,
the Lord warns us, And then he shows us his precious promises. And we find ourselves oftentimes
bouncing between those two guardrails, don't we? But the Lord is faithful. The Lord is faithful to keep
his children on that road. They will not fall off the precipice
into destruction. Once the Lord puts you on that
narrow road, Once the Lord puts you in Christ and gives you hope
in Christ, he continues to direct you down that road with those
two things. We would, if there were no warnings
in scriptures, become presumptuous about God's grace and about our
salvation. But these warnings cause us to
hold ourselves suspect, don't they? They cause us to say, Oh
Lord, keep me, keep me. Psalm 78 is a rendition, it's
a recount of the life of Israel in the wilderness and coming
out of Egypt. And in 1 Corinthians chapter
10 and in Hebrews chapter 10, the Lord uses the example of
the children of Israel and their unfaithfulness to say to us,
don't be like that. They're given to us, the scripture
says, as an example. And I'm so thankful that the
admonitions that are given to us in Hebrews chapter 10 finish
with... Well, turn with me to Hebrews
chapter 10. I can't... Verse 39, the last verse of Hebrews
chapter 10. But we are not of them who draw
back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of
our soul. So, the Lord gives us the example
of these unbelieving Israelites. to hold us in check whether we
be less we become presumptuous about God's grace and about our
salvation. And then he concludes that warning
by saying, you're not going to be that way. You're not going
to be that way. You're not going to draw back.
You're not going to fall off into perdition. This guardrail
of warning will keep you from that. And God's people hear it,
and they respond by saying, Amen, Lord. I'm like that in my heart.
Lord, if you don't keep me, I'll do exactly what they did. And
then on the other side are the precious promises. Lest we become
so consumed with our own failures and our own sin, the Lord finishes
Psalm 78. Turn with me to the end of Psalm
78. We begin reading at verse 67.
Moreover, he refused the tabernacle of Joseph and chose not the tribe
of Ephraim. The Lord rejected the Old Testament
Israelites. The scripture says that he divorced
them. He put them away. But, He chose the tribe of Judah
and Mount Zion which he loved. Now who's from the tribe of Judah?
The Lord Jesus Christ, he's the lion from the tribe of Judah. And when John saw the angel holding
the Lamb's Book of Life, he wept because no man was able to unlock
the seals of this book. And he said, weep not, John,
the lion of the tribe of Judah. He's prevailed. He's prevailed. There's our hope. Our hope is
that the Lord has chosen Christ and all those who are in Christ.
He chose the tribe of Judah and Mount Zion. Not the mountain of the law,
but the mountain of promise. The Israelites were not faithful
to keep the law. You and I cannot be faithful
to keep the law, but we have a faithful Savior who is the
end of the law Himself for righteousness to everyone that believeth. He
was faithful to His Father to keep the law in heart, in attitude,
in character, in action all the time. and the Lord the Father
saw him and was satisfied." Now the Lord is saying, yeah, I rejected
them because they didn't keep the law. But the hope of your
salvation is not dependent upon you keeping the law because I've
chosen the tribe of Judah. The hope of your salvation is
in that my son has kept the law. And Mount Zion, and he built his sanctuary He,
the Lord Jesus Christ, built His sanctuary like high places,
like the earth which He established forever. You see, this is the
guardrail on the other side of the highway. We've been warned,
but now we've been given this great, precious promise that
the Lord Jesus Christ, lest we become so discouraged about our
failures. The Lord's telling us that He's
kept the promise. He's built His sanctuary, His
holy place, His tabernacle. He chose David. He's not talking
about King David. He's talking about the sweet
psalmist of Israel. He's talking about the son of
David, our King. the great shepherd of the sheep. And the Lord says, He chose David. Here's the promise. Here's the
promise. He chose David, also his servant,
and took him from the sheepfold. From following the ewes, great
with young, He brought him to feed Jacob, his people, and Israel,
his inheritance. There's the promise. The Lord
said, I'll feed my sheep. I'll take them by rivers of living
water. I'll take them to green pastures
that I prepared for them. And I'll feed them with the bread
of life. And so He fed them. And so He
fed them. That's our hope this morning.
Lord, feed me. Lord, I can't find anything in
this world to feed my soul. I can feed my flesh with plenty.
Lord, I've got a need to have my soul filled. You've got to
feed me with the body of Christ. You've got to give me drink with
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ so He fed them according to the
integrity of His heart. Oh, how our hearts lack integrity
so often, don't they? particularly in our promises
and commitments to God. We're just like the Israelites,
we are. And we're gonna see that in the
rest of Psalm 78. The Lord blesses them and they
become presumptuous and they sin and God chastises them and
they repent and then they just go right back through the same
old cycle again. And their integrity was lacking. Is that your life? You know,
I had one brother tell me one time, he said, Pastor, he said,
I was so encouraged with that message. And he walked out the
door saying, I'm just so fooled right now. And I figured it'll
last me about as long as it takes me to get out here on the highway
and run into somebody that cuts me off the road. Isn't that the
way we are? You know, we can just go from
one place to the next so quickly. We're just like the Israelites
in our hearts. And here's the promise. He feeds
His children the bread of life, the Lord Jesus Christ, His body,
His perfect righteousness, His life, and His shed blood on Calvary's
cross, which He placed on the mercy seat in that tabernacle
that's not built with hands. And the Lord said, here I will
meet with you. And he did it according to the
integrity of his heart. And guided them by the skillfulness
of his hands. The Lord guides his children.
Oh, we're prone to wander, aren't we? We're just like dumb sheep. And we're prone to find ourselves
on the edge of the flock and wandering away. And the faithful
shepherd leaves the ninety and nine and he goes out into the
wilderness and he gets every one of them. Hooks them, brings
them. Sometimes he's got to break their
legs and put them on his shoulders to carry them back. But he's
not going to lose one sheep. He's not going to lose a single
one. every single one that God chose in the covenant of grace
before time ever began, everyone that the Lord Jesus Christ redeemed
by His shed blood on Calvary's cross, here's the promise, child
of God, He's gonna keep them. He's gonna keep them. By His
skillful hands, every Every circle, I hear believers
say, well, sometimes, well, you know, that was just providential. Everything's providential. Everything's
providential. You know what that word providential
comes from, don't you? Pro means before and video means
to see. And God sees before it happens
everything that's going to happen. With his skillful hands, he has
ordered everything according to his purpose to bring glory
to himself and to bring about the salvation of every one of
his elect, every single one. Now there's the warning and there's
the promise. And God uses those as guardrails,
if you will, to keep us on that narrow path, looking unto Jesus,
the author and the finisher of our faith. Go back with me. We looked at the first 10 verses
or so in Psalm 78, Wednesday night, if you'd like to go back
and listen to those. But look at, we'll begin in verse
11. And they forgot his works and
his wonders that he had showed them. How easy. I've titled this message, Mercy
for the Forgetful. Mercy for the forgetful. They
forgot what he had done for them. They get in the wilderness, they
start murmuring. God brings them water out of
a rock and they say, well, can he bring us meat also? And they
forgot their passageway through the Red Sea and they forgot the
plagues that the Lord had inflicted upon the Egyptians. How we get in the midst of the
wilderness and the trials and troubles that the Lord has sent,
and what do we do? We forget. We're just like them. And here's the warning. Here's
the warning. Go back and read 1 Corinthians
10 or Hebrews 10 when you have time. The Lord's telling us,
don't be like these Israelites. And yet we see in our hearts
that we so often are. Verse 12, marvelous things did
he in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt in the field
of Zoan. Now the field of Zoan is modern-day
Cairo. That's where Pharaoh would have
been during the Egyptian bondage, during the sojourning of the
Israelites in Egypt. And he's speaking of those plagues
that God sent turning the water into blood and the death angel
that came through and all the plagues between those things. Marvelous things did he in the
sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt and the land of
Zoan. He divided the sea and caused them to pass through and
he made the waters to stand as a heap. In the daytime also, he led them
with a cloud and the night, the light of fire. Now that cloud
and that fire is Christ. Now the Lord has shaded us from
the heat of troubles in this life. And
we forget, don't we? And how he's, in the times of
darkness, he's lit the way with the light of the gospel and showed
us his way. He claved the rocks in the wilderness
and gave them drink as out of the great depths. He brought
streams also out of the rock and caused the waters to run
down like rivers. The Lord makes it clear that
that rock which followed the children of Israel is Christ.
He's the rock of ages. He's the rock that never changes.
He's the one on whom we stand. And he's the one that was smitten
with the rod of Moses. Now what does Moses represent?
Moses represents the law. God told Moses when they got
in the wilderness and they were dying of thirst, God told Moses,
you take that rod and you strike the rock. What's that picture
of? It's a picture of the law of
God's justice striking the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. And out from that rock flowed
rivers of living water. Now from then on, From then on,
Moses was to speak to the rock, not strike it with a rod. The
Lord Jesus Christ was struck with the rod of the law one time,
one time only. Now what do we do? We cry out
to the rock. Moses struck the rock again. and in frustration over the unbelief
of the children of Israel and was forbidden to enter into the
promised land. Joshua was all part of God's
purpose. The law can't lead you into glory. You've got to have Joshua to
lead you into glory. You've got to have the Lord Jesus
Christ to divide the river, the Jordan River. So the law was
satisfied in the wilderness and now Christ leads his people into
the promised land. But these unbelieving Israelites,
they saw the streams of water coming out of the rock, verse
17, and they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the
Most High in the wilderness. Now, if it wasn't for the Lord
Jesus Christ standing in our stead, you and I would be constantly
provoking God. We'd be provoking Him. How often times we lose sight
of his promises. How often times we presume upon
his warnings and in our hearts we sin against him. But all the wrath of God was
poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's the precious promise. They tempted God in their hearts
by asking meat for their lust. You know, they got the water.
And then they said, well, God can bring. Look at the next verse. Yea, they spake against God.
They said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he
smote the rock, and the waters washed out, and the streams overflowed. But can he give bread also? Can
he provide flesh for his people? Let me give you an example that
you and I fall into that fits this. If God can do the greater, He
can certainly do the lesser. How often times we doubt God
in His ability to provide for us in this temporal world. And yet, He has already provided
for us in salvation. If He can save your soul, He
can certainly provide for our bodies. If He can satisfy the demands
of the law, if He can be made flesh and dwelt among us, if
he can, if he can shed his precious blood and then send his spirit
in power and make a rebel willing in the day of his power, that's
the, that's, that's the hard part. If God can do that, and we, and
we often say, well I know he's done that, I know he's done that,
but is he gonna, is he gonna provide for my needs in this
world? Is he gonna, Isn't that what we do? He smote
the rock. Yeah, waters came forth. We drank.
We're alive. But can He give flesh? Can He give bread to eat? How much like the children of
Israel we are. Yes, He can. Yes, He can. And He will. He will. I've never
seen the righteous forsaken, David said. I've never seen their
children begging for bread. Your Heavenly Father knows what
you have need of. If He's able to provide for your
salvation, He's certainly able to provide the little things,
the little things. And how little they, you know,
the big things to us are little to God. Sometimes we look at
our salvation as the little things and look at our circumstances
as the big things. And it's just the opposite, isn't
it? Hope for the forgetful. Therefore,
the Lord heard this and was wroth, so a fire was kindled against
Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel. Now that fire
came against these unbelieving Israelites. And I'm glad we read
the end of this Psalm first, because that fire has been quenched.
That fire has been quenched. It fell from heaven 2,000 years
ago. and the sacrifice the one who bore the sins of God's people
in his body upon that cross quenched that fire here the Lord's the
Lord's sending judgment against Israel because they believe not
in God and trusted not in his salvation now brethren there's
the warning Because you see the unbelief that's in your own heart,
don't you? You see how oftentimes you fail to trust God as you
ought. Well, we never trust God as we
ought. That's what makes the Lord Jesus Christ so unique. He believed God with all of his
heart and all of his soul and all of his mind all of the time. What hope we have. There's the
promise. You see, we just bounce between the guardrails, don't
we? The Lord just keeps us on that narrow path. Yes, Lord,
I'm like that. But oh, how thankful I am to
know that the fire's been put out. Verse 23, though he had
commanded the clouds from above and opened the doors of heaven
and had rained down man upon them to eat and had given them
the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels food. He sent
them meat to the full. We've eaten angels food. I pray
we're eating it right now. The Lord Jesus Christ said, Moses
didn't send you that manna from heaven, my father sent you that
manna from heaven. I am the bread of life. If any
man eat of my body and drink of my blood, my life shall be in him. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
sweet manna. How many times we've eaten from,
we've eaten of him and had our souls filled. And then we walk
right around after having feasted on angels food and forget the
promises of God. So he caused an east wind to
blow in heaven and by his power he brought in the south wind.
He rained flesh also upon them as dust and feathered fowls like
as the sand of the sea. And he let it fall in the midst
of their camp round about their habitation. Now out in the wilderness
they're begging for meat. So God said, all right, I'll
give you what you're asking for. Be careful what you ask God for.
Be careful. So they did eat and were filled,
for He gave them their own desire. And they were not estranged from
their lust, but while their meat was yet in their mouths, the
wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them,
and smote down the chosen men of Israel." How many times the
Lord... The scripture tells us in the
Old Testament account of this that they vomited up the meat
that they had been given, that the Lord had sent them. How many
times the Lord's had to make us sick on our own sin and in
order to keep us looking unto Jesus the author and the finisher
of our faith. Verse 32, for all this they sin
still and believe not for his wondrous works therefore their
days did they consume in vanity and their years in trouble. It's the cause of the troubles
and the vanities that we experience. It's our sin, isn't it? It's
our sin. There's going to come a day when
nothing we're going to look at is going to be vain and there's
not going to be any trouble. Right now we live in a sinful
world and we are sinners and we often suffer the consequences
of our own unbelief. Verse 34, and when he slew them,
then they sought him and they returned and inquired early after
God. Aren't we that way? The Lord
puts his heavy hand on us. We're quick to return. You know,
my experience in my own life and my experience in dealing
with people and my experience from Scripture is that If repentance
comes as a result of the heavy hand of God, usually when that
hand is taken away, we end up going right back to where we
were. But when repentance comes as
a result of seeing the heavy hand of God on the Lord Jesus
Christ, When God in his spirit enables us to look upon him whom
we have pierced and to mourn after him as one mourneth for
his only son, then the Lord gives us grace to know something about repentance. They remembered that God was
their rock, and the high God their Redeemer. Nevertheless,
they did flatter Him with their mouths, and they lied unto Him
with their tongues. For their heart was not right
with Him, neither were they steadfast in His covenant." Now I'm not saying that when God shows us Christ and
brings us to true repentance that we don't lose sight of Him
again and go back. Well, we do. We do. What I'm
saying is that when repentance comes just as a result of the
heavy hand of God, it's usually not right from the heart. It's
just wanting our circumstances changed. See what I'm saying? Just like the children of Israel.
Now, here's the promise. Look, here's the other side of
the, here's the other side of the road. Verse 38, but he being full of
compassion forgave their iniquity and destroyed them. Not yet.
Many a time turn he is anger away and did not stir up all
of his wrath for he remembered that they were but flesh, a wind
that passeth away and cometh not again. How often did they
provoke Him in the wilderness and grieve Him in the desert?
Yea, yea, they turned back and tempted God and limited the Holy
One of Israel. Know what we do? We limit the
Holy One of Israel. Oh God, forgive us. Forgive us. And thank you. Thank you that
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous
one. My little children, I write these
things unto you that you send not. Oh Lord, I don't want to
send. Don't want to don't want to forsake
you. But as often as we do. We have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. There's the promise. The Lord's
not going to allow any of His children to get off that road. And He will use warnings lest
we become presumptuous. And He will speak promises to
our hearts lest we become overwhelmed with discouragement. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful
Thankful for your word and Lord how truthful. These words are
to our own experience and Lord we thank you for your mercy. Thank you for. The finished work
of thy dear son and for the hope of salvation that we have in
him. Thank you Lord for pouring out your fire wrath of justice.
Lord, we pray that you would. Keep us. Looking unto him. The author and the finisher of
our faith. We ask it in Christ name. Amen. Oh my god.