FBC Morning Light – September 16, 2022

The Danger of Craving What God Has Not Given

Well, a good Friday morning to you. We are at the end of another week already, and we have passed the halfway point in the month of September, and summer is winding down rapidly, isn't it? Well, I hope you're looking forward to the weekend and gathering with God's people on Sunday, and looking forward to that in our study of the Word in the book of Isaiah in our adult Sunday school class.

And then in the morning service, we're focusing on the book of 2 Peter, and then in the Sunday evening service at 6 o 'clock, in the Gospel of Mark. So plenty of opportunities on the Lord's Day to learn, hear from God in His Word, and to grow in grace and knowledge of Him.

Well, today I want to look at a couple of things in Psalm 106 that can challenge us, and I hope they will. This psalm is a psalm that begins by rejoicing in the forgiveness that the Lord has graciously given to His people.

In spite of their sin, He has been forgiving. But then it moves into sort of like hitting the highlights, or maybe I should say the low points of Israel's history, starting from the deliverance from Egypt, and then through the wilderness, and just different ways in which they sinned against the Lord, and put Him to the test, and so forth.

And there's two of these areas that I want us to contemplate this morning, and maybe meditate on through the course of the day. One of them is in verses 13 through 15, where it says, even though the Lord delivered them through the Red Sea, remember that miraculous deliverance, and the Egyptians perished in the Red Sea, it says in verse 13 that they soon forgot His works, and they did not wait for His counsel, but they lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tested God in the desert.

They lusted exceedingly. They had an intense craving and desire in the wilderness. And then verse 15 says, He gave them their request. He gave them what they wanted, what they were craving, but sent leanness into their soul.

There's a lesson for us in that, isn't there? That we need to be careful what it is we're longing for, because the Lord might very well give it to us. And if it's not something we ought to be having, then what's going to accompany that is a leanness to the soul.

Have you found that to be true in your own life, that there was something you really desperately wanted? You just wanted it. You just had such a desire for it. Even though there really wasn't a basis biblically for desiring it or for having it, you couldn't claim that this was God's will for you to have this thing.

You just wanted it. You just wanted it, and probably didn't even pray about it. You just wanted it. And you took steps to get what you wanted, and you got it, but you weren't happy with.

It.

You weren't satisfied with it. Instead it left a sort of empty feeling after you had it in your possession, like you knew something wasn't right with it. That's what happens here. When we crave that which we should not have, and we crave it apart from seeking the Lord and His will in the matter, and then we do what we have to do or do what we can do to.

Get it.

Faith in God's Promised Place

The Lord may give us what we want, but we may be very sorry for it in the end. The other thing that we want to consider is in verses 24 and 25. The context is when the people were on the threshold of going into the land of Canaan, the promised land.

Remember the spies sent out, 10 came back, said, oh, we can't go in and do this. Joshua and Caleb said, yes, we can, because the Lord promised it to us. The people responded and said, we can't do it. We can't go in after that.

We're not going to go in after that. We just can't. We can't do it. We can't do it. We can't do it. The Lord said, okay, okay. They turned their back on the promised land. Verse 24 says, then they despised the pleasant land.

They did not believe His word. God said, you can have that land. You can take it. They didn't believe it, but they complained in their tents and did not heed the voice.

Of the Lord.

The way this challenges me is I don't have any promise of inheriting a big tract of property in this world. I don't have that. But I do have the promise of a place prepared for me. You know, Jesus said, I'm going to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you to myself, that where I am there you may be also.

He's given that promise to His people, to His followers. But here's the question. Here's the question. Do I count on with faith, count on and trust in that place that the Lord has prepared for me and promised to me, or do I just languish in my tent in self-despair and self-pity?

Point being that we go through difficult times in life, trials and difficulties and challenges, and sometimes it's really, you know, we despair of these things and we can kind of languish in them. But if we languish in those and forget about that which our Lord has prepared for us and promised to us, then we'll continue languishing.

When we begin to feel ourselves falling into that pit of despair, then where do we turn.

Our eyes?

To what do we look? To the celestial city or to the slew around us? You see, let's not be like Israel, languishing in their tents after they have despised the promised land that the Lord has given to them.

Instead, no, let's realize that the things that cause us pain and difficulty and despair are very real and we're not going to minimize or do away with those things. But we're not going to focus on them, we're not going to languish in them, instead we're going to keep our eyes fixed on the celestial city.

I hope that encourages us to have a perspective on where to look in times of difficulty. Our Father and our God, we do thank you for Psalm 106, the challenge that it is to us in our day. And I pray, Father, that we would be careful in what we long for and I pray that we would be careful in what we languish over, keeping our eyes instead on the celestial city.

This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well have a good Friday, a wonderful weekend, and I hope we see you on the Lord's.

Day.

Have a good day.