Psalm 106:15

It is an awful circumstance, and yet it is true, that our mercies may be our curses; that our desire may prove our ruin. The man, you will say, who has obtained the object of his desire, whether through prayer or toil, ought to be happy. He sows, and reaps abundantly; he casts his nets into the sea, and brings them up full of fish; all his bargains end in gain: he might have in his possession the philosopher's stone, which turns all it touches into gold. But there is a dark set-off against all this. When you come to look down through the man's circumstances into himself, you find what the psalmist here terms leanness; and by leanness he means waste, emaciation, loss of strength and beauty. What is this leanness? How shall we discover its presence in ourselves or others?

I. By its trust in outward things. You hardly need to be told that one of the dangers which always beset us is that of placing our confidence in things that are in our sight and within the reach of our hand. And the more these things multiply around us, the greater our danger becomes. Grace is needed by every man, but great grace is needed by the man who gets his request. The eclipsing power of success is fearful.

II. Another symptom of spiritual leanness, and one of the results of having our request, is self-pleasing. We do not live in a heroic age. Like men under the influence of a Southern climate, our stamina is becoming deteriorated. We covet rest rather than labour, enjoyment rather than self-sacrifice for our own real good or that of others. It is no calumny to say that pleasure is the god of our times, and that men are shrinking more and more from everything which involves self-oblivion and self-sacrifice. But this spirit defeats itself. Pleasure sought for its own sake is difficult to find, more difficult still to retain, and becomes more coy and unattainable the more the pursuit of it becomes the aim and the business of life.

III. Loss of sympathy with all that helps to build up the spiritual life. There is no life save that of God Himself which possesses a self-perpetuating power; and though the life which is begotten in us by faith is the highest on earth, even that is not immortal if it be denied the food which has been provided for it. Our text speaks to us as with the voice of a trumpet, and rings out the great and impressive truth that we cannot be too guarded in our petitions or in our desires for merely temporal things. Beyond necessaries all else should be sought in very humble and willing subordination to the will of God. For who of us knows what beyond these is good for us?

E. Mellor, In the Footsteps of Heroes, p. 106.

The principle of the text applies:—

I. To the man who starts life with an idea that to be rich is the highest result of labour.

II. To all who would escape from painful duty in order that they may indulge love of ease and quiet.

III. To men who make all their arrangements with a view to the comfort of their physical tastes exclusively.

IV. The judgment of God falls on the highest nature; it falls on the soul. The man on whom God's disapprobation rests withers at his very root. His mental power declines; his moral nature shrivels; he goes down in the volume and quality of his being.

V. The great lesson from this text is to say from the heart, with trembling yet earnest love, "Not our will, but Thine, be done." The school in which this great lesson can be learned is called the Cross.

Parker, City Temple, 1870, p. 147.

Psalm 106:19I. The mixture of infirmity and strength, of earnest aim and second motive, among the people of God, is, and must ever be, a matter of anxious question; and it is for that, among many other things, that the people of God cry out for the great Resurrection, and look with love to His appearing. The very grace and virtue with which a man strives is paled by vice directly its contradictory, and the very point which seems to be a man's strong point becomes his weak one. In a general view Aaron appears before us as the first high-priest, the elaborator with Moses of the great ceremonial of the early Church. Yet Aaron could worship an idol; and with the mind which had been inspired to celebrate the sacred worship, and with the hand which had been aiding in its construction, he could devise and work the golden calf.

II. The conflicts of Aaron with Moses are very remarkable. There is a mixture of respect and jealousy in the conduct of the high-priest which excites our surprise. We find Aaron and Miriam conspiring against the authority of Moses, and that from a manifest feeling of jealousy. With a heaven-sent commission to respect the elevated position of Moses, Aaron nevertheless in the most singular way opposed the authority and assailed the office of the lawgiver.

III. These contradictions are not uncommon among the people of God; but the singular circumstance is that it is not simply the inconsistency which we are struck with, but the actual contradiction given to the leading virtue by the contrary vice appearing in the same character. There is more than one way of accounting for this. (1) The presence of a leading tendency to good throws many men off their guard with respect to some virtue; and unfenced on the side of the correlative vice, they the more easily fall. (2) The fact of official position and responsibility is the real cause of our high expectations and estimate of the character. (3) When the mind is steadily and almost exclusively directed to one great object, there is always a tendency to err on the side of neglect of duty in respect of that very object. Few objects of human contemplation or study will bear such close investigation as to appear the more true and certain by deeper investigation. We live on a surface. The ripple reflects light and brilliance, and the belt of waters below moves in a dull and sullen mass. A deeper insight disappoints. So it is that the man whose vocation is clear and definite will err in indefiniteness in that very vocation, and inconsistency will constantly run in a parallel line with the fulfilment of the daily vocation.

E. Monro, Practical Sermons, vol. i., p. 519.

Psalm 106:24I. Without the promised land, what was the life of Moses? What was the life of the people? In reading the Scripture account, the general impression is of a very weary, hard-worked life for Moses; much disappointment, vexation, and trouble; hard work and little thanks for it. And it is true. His martyrdom when he lost his throne, his forty years of daily self-abasement in the wilderness, did end for him in this fierce, patient penalty of leading a mean people on the way to greatness, with all the present pain and nothing to compensate for the pain, saving only the feeling within of stronger life day by day for himself, clearer sight of God, a calmer heart, a greater self-mastery, with the sweetness of such liberty in his soul; and, next, the certainty of working with God, which made all the labour, all the suffering, the joy of the champion for the King he loved; and, lastly, the promised land, the blessing of Abraham coming true, the sweet conviction of victory and peace.

II. The promised land first and the Messiah, the King, who was to reign over them in the promised land—these two thoughts were the daily joy and hope of every Israelite who was not a traitor. And the bitter accusation of treason brought against them by the psalmist was, "Yea, they thought scorn of that pleasant land." The Israelite in the wilderness looked on the promised land with exactly the same present feeling that a man now looks forward to success in his profession. There was to be no change whatever in them, only change in their circumstances. We shall never live life truly till we have got our going home into the same practical, true groove that they had.

E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. ii., p. 424.

References: Psalm 106:24.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons, 2nd series, p. 193. Psalm 106:44, Psalm 106:45.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1886.

Psalm 106:48I. "Amen" is a word of which all the associations are, or ought to be, interesting. (1) With this word did our Lord Jesus Christ Himself introduce most of His most impressive revelations. By this term, expressing certainty, faithfulness, unchangeable truth, He embodied in daily utterance that which on one occasion at least He expanded into a doctrine—"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen"—with a positiveness of intuition and insight belonging to Him, and to Him only, who is at once He that came down from heaven and the Son of man who is in heaven. (2) In this word does St. Paul gather up the whole sum of the revelations of Christ and say, "All the promises of God in Him are Yea, and in Him Amen." (3) By this same word does the beloved disciple St. John actually designate the very person of his Master: "These things saith the Amen," etc.

II. The force and significance of the word must vary: (1) with the place in which it occurs in our services; (2) according to the mind of the worshipper by whom it is used.

III. The conditions of joining rightly in this particular part of our service are the same with those which we know to be the conditions of public worship in general. You must be desirous of meeting God. You must be desirous of finding God. You must come with that desire and stay with that desire.

C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays, p. 150.

References: Psalm 106:48.—J. Percival, Some Helps for School Life, p. 177. Psalm 107:4-7.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xx., p. 86.