Let's take our Bibles and turn
with me to the book of Psalms, chapter 106. Psalm, chapter 106. Let's thank the Lord. come before you this evening
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you and bless
you. Lord, you're in the heavens,
we're in the earth. Lord, you're holy, we're dust.
Lord, I ask you this evening, have mercy. Forgive us where
we failed you. Teach us, help us to worship
for Christ's sake. Amen. This psalm begins with an exhortation to the people of God to give
the Lord the honor that is due unto His name. Verse 1 says,
Praise ye the Lord. have a margin, my margin says
where it says praise ye the Lord, it says hallelujah. Praise ye the Lord, oh give thanks
unto the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Now what I'm going to do is I'm
going to look very, very quickly at each of these verses And I
want to, I'm going to start in verse 6 and then we'll come back
at the end of the message back to those verses, especially 4
and 5. But what I want to do is I want
to set forth in verse 1 that we owe the Lord praise. We owe Him. He is due honor. He is due our thankfulness. Here's the reason. Verse 6, we
have sinned with our fathers and have committed iniquity.
We have done wickedly. We have sinned as imitators. When it says we've sinned with
our fathers, that's what it means. What they've done, we've done. Verse 7 says, our fathers understood
not thy wonders in Egypt. They remembered not the multitude
of thy mercies, but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red
Sea. They saw all of the plagues that the Lord
poured out in Egypt. And they witnessed the deliverance
of the Lord on the night in which the Lord Himself came through.
The night of the Passover, He told the people, put the blood
on the lentil, on the doorpost, and He said, when I pass through,
when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. And the people saw
that. And the Scripture says they remembered
not the multitude of thy mercies. But after they had come out of
Egypt, they provoked Him at the Red Sea. They got to the Red
Sea and they were between the Red Sea and the wilderness. And here comes Pharaoh and all
of the army. And here's what they say to Moses.
Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us
away to die in the wilderness? They saw God's mercy. Look at verse 8. Nevertheless,
He saved them for His name's sake. that He might make His
mighty power to be known. As we look through these verses,
I want you to remember the Lord delivered His people three reasons. Here was the first one. We'll
see the second and third, but I want to just tell you in advance
what we're looking for. He saved them, first of all,
because of His reputation. It says His namesake. He had
promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, I'm going to have mercy. He told
Moses that. I'll have mercy on whom I'll
have mercy. And so God, for His namesake,
for His reputation, He saved them that He might make His mighty
power to be known. Almighty God has mercy. He's due praise, verses 9 to
11. He rebuked the Red Sea also,
and it was dried up. So He led them through the depths
as through the wilderness. And He saved them from the hand
of Him that hated them and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
And the waters covered their enemies. There was not one of
them left. He spoke to the Red Sea. He rebuked it. It's what he says
in verse 9. He rebuked, he spoke to the Red
Sea, and the Red Sea heard his voice and obeyed. Israel was delivered for his
namesake, for his reputation. And Egypt perished. Why? Because God has mercy on his
people, on whomsoever he will. Verse 12. Then believed they
His words, and they sang His praise." They sang Moses' song
of the deliverance of the Lord. And for a moment, they did as
the world does. Whenever something happens and
they get out of a jam, they get out of a bad predicament, they
all, you know, thought, well, the Lord delivered me. Everybody
is delivered by the Lord. In the moment that a plague or
something has taken away, but they forget. Verse 13, they soon
forgot his works. They waited not for his counsel. They hasted to be ungrateful. They were eager to not trust
the Lord. They were eager to not do that.
Verse 14, but they lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tempted
God in the desert when the Lord gave them bread, gave them manna. Every morning they would go out
except on the morning of the Sabbath and they would gather
the manna. And the Lord provided manna all
of the days that they were in the wilderness until the day
that they went into the promised land. God provided 40 years, but the
scripture says that they lusted, verse 14, exceedingly. They desired
exceedingly. What did they desire? We loathe
this light bread. Can you imagine God providing? You go out every morning and
you pick up manna just for the nation of Israel. You know what
we want? We want some meat. We want meat. Turn to Numbers. Numbers chapter
11. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Numbers 11. Numbers 11 verses
31 to 33. They lusted in the wilderness. Numbers 11.31, and there went
forth a wind from the Lord, and brought forth quails from the
sea. And let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey
on this side, as it were a day's journey on the other side, round
about the camp, about a day's journey. And the scripture says,
and it were two cubits, two cubits, three feet high upon the face
of the earth, quail, all directions, three feet high, a day's journey
in all directions. And the people stood up all that
day, all that night, all the next day, and they gathered the
quails. He that gathered least gathered
ten homers. And they spread them all abroad
for themselves, round about the camp. And while the flesh was
yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the
Lord was kindled against the people. And the Lord smoked the
people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that
place Kibrohathtovah, because there they buried the people
that lost it. Man is not enough for us. God's
provision is not enough. Back in Psalm 106 verses 16 to
18, they envied Moses also in the camp. And Aaron, the saint
of the Lord, and the earth opened and swallowed up Dathan and covered
the company of Abiram. And a fire was kindled in their
company, and the flame burned up the wicked. Many rebelled,
Korah, Nathan, and Abiram. And the scripture says that they
asked Moses, they said, you take too much upon yourself. Who are
you to tell us? We're the Lord's anointed. And
you remember Moses told them, he said, I tell you what, do.
He said, you get your censer and show up here tomorrow. And
if you die a common death, then I wasn't called of God. I'm paraphrasing. And so they showed up. And the
scripture says that the earth opened up. And those that rebelled
against the Lord, rebelled against God's man, the earth, verse 17,
opened and swallowed up Dathan and covered the company of Abiram. And Korah was with them. And
they went to hell alive. And the earth closed up. All of those that rebelled against
God, God killed. 19 to 20, thus they changed their
glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. I'm sorry, verse 19, 20. They
made a calf in Horeb and worshipped the molten image. Thus they changed
their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. Let
me tell you what they did. You remember when they got the
priest Aaron. He said, make us a calf. Make
us an idol. He said, well give me all your
gold and earrings. And so he took them and he made
this golden calf. And the people were worshipping
it. And Moses was coming down and
he saw that they were out there dancing and everything. And he
threw the tablets, you remember, and broke them on that golden
calf. And Aaron said, Moses asked him,
what are you doing? And Moses said, I don't know
what happened. I had all this gold in my hand.
I threw it in a fire and out came this calf. The scripture
says what they did was they made a calf in Horeb and worshipped
the molten image, thus they changed their glory into the similitude
of an ox that eateth grass. What they did, they said, what
we're doing is we're really worshipping God but we're just exhibiting
his strength and his power They change the similitude. They change
the image. We want to see an ox. ox was the gods that they had
been worshipping, the Egyptians had been worshipping, so they
made that idol. You know, I remember growing
up, I remember we'd have, when I'd go, we'd go to Mama, we'd
go to the Roman Catholic Church, and there was images there, and
I always remember, they would tell us, we're not really worshipping
that image. It just helps us. It gives us
a visual. They changed the similitude.
That's what He's talking about. They changed their glory. Their
only glory was God. He is their glory. They changed
their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. We just want to see something. Scripture says in verse 21, Verse
22, but they forgot God. This is what they did. They forgot
God their Savior, which had done great things in Egypt, wondrous
works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. And if not for the intercession
of Moses at that time, who was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God would have destroyed them even right then. Look at verse
23. Therefore he said that he would
destroy them had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the
breach to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them.
Here's another reason. I told you there was different
reasons. Here's another one right here.
Why did the Lord not destroy? Number one, for his namesake.
for His reputation, for His Word. Here's the second one. The Lord
Jesus Christ would come through the lineage of people. He didn't
destroy them for the sake of the Savior, for the sake of His
elect. I'm going to tell you right now,
that was the third one. We'll get to it in a minute. It's because
God has an elect in this world and He's long-suffering, not
willing that any should perish. I don't know. Gene knows a whole
lot more than I do about lineage. But I guarantee you, you could
probably start tracing lineage back and somewhere along the
line, through somebody, even in the wilderness, there probably
was some lineage of God's people. Why did God not destroy them? Because He's long-suffering.
He's gentle. He's meek. He's kind. Look at
verse 24. Yea, they despised the pleasant
land. They believed not His Word. They
saw no beauty in God's heritage. They didn't believe His Word
and therefore they couldn't enter in. Men, we do by nature, men
do the same thing. We've sinned with our fathers
as imitators. You can tell anyone born in Adam. of the heritage of the Lord,
of the glory of the Lord, of the promise of the Lord, to be
with the Lord Jesus Christ wherever He is until God gives them a
new heart. That doesn't mean anything to
them. Scripture says they despised
the pleasant land. They didn't believe God. They
believed not His Word. Look at verse 25, but they murmured
in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord. In their tents, could God not
hear them? They murmured in their tents
like the Lord was unable to catch the murmuring. Job 21.27, the
Lord says, I know your thoughts. your devices that you wrongfully
imagined against me." They were in their tents. Mr. Spurgeon
said this, he said, it's just a small step between not believing
God and it evidencing itself in murmuring. Numbers 11.5. They said concerning they had
no pleasure in the promised land. Here's what they had desires
for. Numbers 11.5, they said back
in Egypt there were leeks and fish and cucumbers and melons
and onions and garlic. Why can't we go back there? Why
do we have to go where God wants to go? Verse 26 and 27, Therefore
He lifted up His hand against them, to overthrow them in the
wilderness, to overthrow their seed also among the nations,
and to scatter them in the lands. If Almighty God removes His hand
of restraint from any of us, there is no depth to what we
plunge. If Almighty God does not keep
us, if we're not kept by the power of God, there is no end
that we would go, that we would not go in rebellion against God.
Look at verse 28. They joined themselves also unto
Baal, Peor. Anytime you see Baal, it just
means a god. Balaam means many gods. So when you see Balaam, that's
not one, that's just a plethora of gods. Baal is a particular
god. So this is Baal Peor is just
one of the gods. So they joined themselves under
Baal Peor and ate the sacrifices of the dead. What they did was
they committed whoredom with the daughters of Moab. They joined in worship of that
false god. And almighty God concerning this
particular, Baal Peor, I ran the reference for the sake of
time, if you want to look it up, it's found in Numbers chapter
25. But what they're talking about
right here. They joined themselves to Baal
Peor and ate the sacrifices of the dead. And here's what God
told them. I'll just read it for you, Numbers
25, 3. When they did that, the Lord says, take all the heads
of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the sun. Worshippers of the sun, you hang
them against the sun. and let them see that the Son
is not going to deliver them. They joined themselves, and God
killed them. Verse 29, the Scripture says,
Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions, and the
plague break in upon them. So evil, again, Running the references
here, so evil were their minds. The scripture says that they
studied for new avenues. New avenues of rebellion. It says they provoked him to
anger with their inventions, studying to find new avenues
to rebel against God. And one such invention It was
found in Numbers again, Numbers 25 and verse 7. It was about an Israelite man. And he had taken a Midianitish
woman, a harlot, and he entered into a tent with her. And the Scripture says that Phinehas,
and we'll read that just right here in verse 30 and 31. Phinehas,
he saw them go into a tent. And he went in and he took a
spear. Verse 30 and 31. Then stood up Phinehas and executed
judgment. And so the plague was stayed.
And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations
forevermore. Phinehas took a spear and slew
both of them in their uncleanness, the scripture reveals. And the
plague was stayed in Numbers 25. It sets forth that over 23,000
people were killed because they had joined themselves under Baal
Peor. Verses 32 and 33, they angered
him also at the waters of strife so that it went ill with Moses
for their sakes. because they provoked his spirit
so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips. Now, this was
the second time that they had complained about not having any
water. The first time that they had complained, they were at
a place called Rephidim. It's in Exodus 17.1. And the
Lord told Moses, you take your rod, and I want you to take your
rod, and I'm going to stand upon this rock. And as I stand upon
the rock that I tell you, you strike the rock. And I'm standing
on it. And Moses struck the rock, and
you know the water came out of the rock. And the scripture says
that the second time that the people had no water, they were
at a place called Marah. And they angered the Lord also
at the waters of strife. And it went ill with Moses for
their sakes. Because of them it didn't go
well with Moses, is what it's saying. Because they, the people,
provoked his spirit, Moses' spirit, that Moses spake unadvisedly
with his lips. Now here's what Moses said. This is found in Numbers 20 and
verse 10. The Lord told Moses, He said, I want you to go back
now to the rock and you speak to the rock. And Moses went to the people
before the rock. And here's what Numbers 20 and
verse 10 says when he spoke unadvisedly. He didn't say exactly what God
said to say is what He's doing. And it didn't go well with Moses
for their sake. Because what Moses is about to
do right now, for this reason, he's not going into the promised
land. God told him, you speak to the rock. And Moses said,
in Numbers 20 verse 10, Hear ye now, you rebels, must we fetch
you water out of this rock? And he struck the rock twice. And the scripture says it didn't
go well for him that day because he spoke unadvisedly. That's not what God said to say.
God said, you speak to the rock and the water will come out.
And Moses said, do we? What do you mean, we? Do we? Must we fetch you water
out of this rock? Verse 34 to 45. They did not destroy the nations
concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among
the heathen and learned their works. And they served their
idols, which were a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed their
sons and their daughters unto devils, They shed innocent blood,
even the blood of their sons and their daughters whom they
sacrificed under the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted
with blood. Thus were they defiled with their
own works. and went a-whoring with their
own inventions. Therefore was the wrath of the
Lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abhorred his
own inheritance. And he gave them into the hand
of the heathen, and they that hated them ruled over them. Their
enemies also oppressed them. and they were brought into subjection
under their hand. Many times did he deliver them,
but they provoked him with their counsel and were brought low
for their iniquity. Nevertheless, he regarded their
affliction when he heard their cry, and he remembered for them
his covenant and repented according to the multitude of His mercies. He had a people. I want you to
just turn back with me. Now, let's read verse 6 again. We have sinned with our fathers
and have committed iniquity and we have done wickedly. There's not a believer in this
room this evening that will not be truthful and say, You may
not have seen it outwardly, but in my heart I know that there
dwells no good thing. In my flesh there dwells no good
thing. I've got an old man that's still
with me. I know that sin is ever before me. I know that there's
nothing good in me, that I'm an imitator of these people right
here. But for the grace of God, we
would have all been doing the same thing. Look at verse 4. As the Lord said here in verse
45, and He remembered for them His covenant and repented according
to the multitude of His mercies. Look at verse 4. Remember me.
O Lord, with the favor that Thou bearest unto Thy people, God's
got a people to elect, O visit me with Thy salvation. Remember me, think upon me in
kindness. Lord, I know, I admit, there's
a me that born in Adam, that does the very things that
we've read. There's nothing that I can say
as far as being found in Adam that's any good. Nothing. Remember me. Think upon me. I cannot ask for more. And I
dare not ask for less. Lord, remember me as you remembered
that thief on the cross. Remember me, O Lord, capital
L, capital O, capital R, capital T. Remember me, Father, you who
chose me. Remember me in that electing
grace. Remember me, Lord Jesus, you
who redeemed me, you who shed your blood. We're going to, Lord
willing, take the Lord's table here in just a moment. Remember
me. Remember me, Holy Spirit, who
called me. taught me, sealed me. Remember
me, O Lord, with the favor that Thou bearest unto Thy people. Remember me with the delight,
when it says the favor, the delight, the pleasure that You bear unto
Your people. And visit me with Thy salvation,
when it says visit I looked up that word, visit, and it's a
word that it means either with delight or with wrath. It's just
whatsoever is the will of the Lord. I'll have mercy on whom
I'll have mercy, but visit me. Visit me, Lord, with delight. Visit me friendly. That's another word that was
there. Visit me, Lord, in compassion. In verse 5, that I may see the
good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy
nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance, that I may
see the good, the favor of your elect, that I might experience,
Lord, the mercy and compassion that you said to Moses that you
would show to whomsoever you would. Lord, may I see that? Lord, I know you're going to
have compassion on whom you will. Lord, would you show that to
me? I confess before you, this is what I am by nature. Lord,
remember me. Lord, may I see the good, that
I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation. Lord of your kingdom,
of your people, may I be a partaker of their joy. I've read that
there's coming a day when God Almighty, the Lord Jesus Christ
is going to stand, we're all going to stand before Him and
He'll separate the sheep and the goats. Lord, may I rejoice
in the gladness of thy nation. To the ones that you say enter
in, beloved of my Father, enter into the kingdom prepared for
you from before the foundation of the world, that I may rejoice
in the gladness of thy nation. Remember me, that I may glory
with thine inheritance, that I might have a part when the
Lord Jesus Christ said, Father, I will that those that thou hast
given me be with me. where I am. Let's turn back to
the last couple of verses in this William 47-48. Here's the cry of a believer
that knows himself for what he is and knows that but for the
grace of God I would be cast out of his sight if he judged
me on my own merit. I know. Lord look upon me. Lord remember me. Look at 47
and 48. Save us, O Lord, our God, and
gather us from among the heathen to give thanks unto thy holy
name and to triumph in thy praise. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
from everlasting to everlasting. And let all the people say, Amen. Hallelujah. Praise you, the Lord. I'm going to ask the men if they'll
come at this time. Let's remember our Lord.