February 15--Morning
February 15—Morning "With God all things are possible."
Psalms 78:13-32 Upon this occasion we shall read a part of the outline of Israel's history contained in Psalms 78:13-32.
Psalms 78:13 This recapitulation begins at the Red Sea even as our spiritual liberty begins at the drowning of all our sins in Jesus blood.
Thanks be to God for providential guidance. We are not wanderers who have lost their way amid a trackless waste, but we follow where the unerring wisdom of Jehovah leads.
Here were abounding and extraordinary supplies; apt symbols of the streams of grace which flow to us from the great deeps of electing love and covenant faithfulness.
What a change from grace to sin! It is enough to make us weep to see how good God is, and how base a return man makes. It would seem as if the more the Lord blessed man the less man blessed his God.
Psalms 78:18 To desire God to aid us in gratifying unholy appetites, is to tempt the Lord; but his holiness will not yield to our solicitations, for God cannot be tempted.
Psalms 78:20 To question the Lord's power is to speak against him. Unbelief is essentially a slandering of the Omnipotent and gracious God.
Psalms 78:21-22 Nothing so angers God as unbelief. O for grace to be kept from it.
Psalms 78:23-24 This made unbelief so much the worse. Mercies received aggravate the criminality of distrust. It is so much the worse to doubt when we have received already such great favours from our gracious Father.
Psalms 78:25-28 God gives plenteously when he gives.
No. Gratification does not kill the passion. Man can be satiated with evil, but he is not nauseated with it. He changes the form of the sin, but sins on. Note here that God's bounties in this case were not pledges of love, but rather tokens of anger.
Psalms 78:13 God often smites the mighty when he has pity on the poor and weak.
Psalms 78:32 As mercy did not soften, so chastisement did not humble them. Lord, what is man!
God of eternal love, How fickle are our ways! And yet how oft did Israel prove Thy constancy of grace!
Now they believe his word, While rocks with rivers flow;
Now with their lusts provoke the Lord, And he reduced them low.
Yet when they mourn'd their faults, He hearken'd to their groans;
Brought his own covenant to his thoughts, And call'd them still his sons.