CHAPTER 106

AUTHOR UNKNOWN: ISRAELS SINS AND GODS MERCY

¹Praise you the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good: for His Mercy endures forever. (This is the last Psalm of that which is commonly called The Numbers Book, or Book No. 4 Psalms 90 through 106.

This Psalm predicts with confidence that Christ will establish a just understanding and a gracious government over man, and that He will change the Earth, at present a wilderness, into a paradise.

In view of this, the Psalm begins with Hallelujah [Praise].)

²Who can utter the mighty acts of the LORD? who can show forth all His praise? (The answer is that no one can exhaustively analyze, understand, or show the meaning and purpose of Divine actions, or adequately praise such actions. But the Messiah can, and He will show forth all Gods praises.)

³Blessed are they who keep judgment, and he who does righteousness at all times. (This Passage shows us that spiritual intelligence will always recognize Divine actions and bow and worship because of such actions. Spiritual intelligence also results only from subjection of the mind to the Scriptures and from an unvarying life of righteous conduct. Only Christ could fit this description!)

⁴Remember me, O LORD, with the favour that You bear unto Your People: O visit me with Your Salvation (the author requests two things, favor, and Salvation);

⁵That I may see the good of Your chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, that I may glory with Your inheritance. (Love delights in possession, hence the terms Your people, Your chosen, Your nation, Your inheritance.)

⁶We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. (The nature of evil is seen in the terms sin, iniquity, and wickedness.)

⁷Our fathers understood not Your wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of Your mercies; but provoked Him at the sea, even at the Red Sea. (Israel did not wish to understand, nor take the trouble to study the ten plagues, nor wish to remember the countless mercies of their Great Shepherd. Forty hours took Israel out of Egypt, but forty years did not take Egypt out of Israel.)

⁸Nevertheless He saved them for His Names sake, that He might make His mighty power to be known. (If one will notice, God did not save Israel because of their righteousness or morality, but for His Names sake.)

⁹He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up: so He led them through the depths, as through the wilderness. (The waters that stood up like two walls on both sides of the Children of Israel were symbolic of the great weight of sin binding the sinner. When Jesus Christ died on Calvary, He opened a path through that great depth of sin, so that all who will may come. The sinner little knows how lost he is, and the Christian little knows how saved he is.)

¹⁰And He saved them from the hand of him who hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. (The enemy in this case was Egypt, whose sponsor was Satan. Israel could have only been extricated by God. No military force in the world could have carried this out; only God could and did.)

¹¹And the waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them left. (As every Egyptian in that army drowned, from their mightiest generals to their lowliest foot soldiers, likewise, every single enemy of our soul has been defeated at Calvary.)

¹²Then believed they His Words; they sang His praise. (When the Believer truly knows the Lord, he will sing His praise. When he begins to drift, the song will drift as well.)

¹³They soon forgot His Works; they waited not for His counsel (unfortunately, this fits the modern Church, as well):

¹⁴But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert (doubt can never see God, even when He is in the very midst; Faith always sees God).

¹⁵And He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. (Israel wanted things, but not Christ. The modern Church wants things, but not Christ. Everything but Christ brings leanness.)

¹⁶They envied Moses also in the camp, and Aaron the Saint of the LORD. (The example is found in Num., Chpts. 12, 1617.)

¹⁷The Earth opened and swallowed up Dathan and covered the company of Abiram. (Num., Chpt. 16, gives the account of this episode. The warning is clear.)

¹⁸And a fire was kindled in their company; the flame burned up the wicked. (Men will have Holy Ghost fire, or else they will have the fire of Gods judgment.)

¹⁹They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image. (The sacred name of Horeb is given to Sinai so as to heighten the sin of representing the God of Glory by a beast that eats grass.)

²⁰Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eats grass. (This Passage portrays the fact that the idol worship of Egypt was still ingrained in the Israelites.)

²¹They forgot God their Saviour Who had done great things in Egypt (this is speaking of the mighty plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians; Israel forgot that He was their Saviour, not man!);

²²Wondrous Works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. (Egypt is referred to here as the descendants of Noahs son, Ham. These Passages show the incurable evil of the human heart.)

²³Therefore 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. (None of us would be here, irrespective of past experiences in the Lord, were it not for our Heavenly Moses, the Lord Jesus Christ. He turns away the wrath of God from us.)

²⁴Yes, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not His Word (the cause of all error, sin, failure, wrong direction, incorrect leading, and straying from God is because of failure to believe the Bible):

²⁵But murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the Voice of the LORD. (Murmuring and complaining has to be one of the greatest sins in the life of any Believer. Such action always marks faithlessness.)

²⁶Therefore He lifted up His hand against them, to overthrow them in the wilderness (the Lord considered the unbelief of the Children of Israel at least as great a sin as the making of the golden calf):

²⁷To overthrow their seed also among the nations, and to scatter them in the lands. (This was done twice: 1. The dispersion into Babylon; and 2. The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70.)

²⁸They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. (The Baal cults affected and challenged the worship of the Lord throughout Israelite history. Little by little, Israel switched her allegiance from the God of Heaven, Who was her Master and Husband, to Baal, by referring to him by the same names.

The sacrifices of the dead have to do with communicating with the dead. This cannot be done, and all such efforts are in the realm of witchcraft.)

²⁹Thus they provoked Him to anger with their inventions: and the plague broke in upon them. (The word inventions has to do with new ways of committing sin. All sin ultimately invites, and will entertain, plague. America and Canada are today plagued because of sin. These plagues consist of alcoholism, drug addiction, AIDS, homosexuality, etc., all resulting in untold heartache, suffering, and sorrow for the people.)

³⁰Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed. (Men are ever seeking to stop the plague by human means. It is not possible to do so. Only one thing can stop the plague, Fidelity to the Bible.)

³¹And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations forevermore. (Phinehas became the third High Priest. God gave him an everlasting Priesthood because of his zeal for righteousness in slaying the rebels. He will be an everlasting Priest like all the Redeemed, who are made Kings and Priests to reign on Earth [Rev. 1:56; 5:10; 20:46; 22:45].)

³²They angered Him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes (the Children of Israel who did this thing comprised the group who were to go into the Promised Land. The old unbelieving generation had now died off. So, in fact, the evil heart of unbelief that resided in their fathers resided in them as well. They complained, they murmured, they blamed their plight on Moses. Mans complaints, like these, are usually senseless):

³³Because they provoked his spirit, so that he spoke unadvisedly with his lips. (The sin that Moses committed was in striking the Rock the second time, when God had told him just to speak to it. The Rock was a Type of Christ [I Cor. 10:4]. It had already been previously smitten once, which was a Type of Christs dying at Calvary [Ex. 17:57].

When Moses smote the Rock the second time, in effect, and by symbolism, he was saying that the first smiting of the Rock, symbolizing Jesus dying on Calvary, did not suffice for the sins of man, so Christ needed to be crucified again. This was a grievous sin in the mind of God.)

³⁴They did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the LORD commanded them (this speaks of the Jebusites, the Hivites, and others [Deut. 7:2; Judg. 1:21; 2:2]):

³⁵But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. (As Israel did not come to terms with these idol worshippers, likewise, we cannot come to terms with hindrances within our lives. If we do not defeat them, they will defeat us. As well, we can only defeat them by looking exclusively to Christ and what He did for us at the Cross [Judg. 3:56].)

³⁶And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. (These heathen people did not become acclimated to Israels God, but, rather, Israel became acclimated to their gods [idols]. This is the law of regression. If one rotten apple is placed in a barrel of good apples, the rotten apple does not become healthy as the good apples. The opposite happens.)

³⁷Yes, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,

³⁸And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood. (Israel sank to the lowest depths of sinful bondage. They actually began to engage in human sacrifice, offering their sons and daughters to these idol gods.)

³⁹Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions. (They went ever deeper into sin, actually inventing new ways to sin.)

⁴⁰Therefore was the wrath of the LORD kindled against His People, insomuch that He abhorred His own inheritance (because of their deep, deep sin, and their refusing to turn to Him, despite the many warnings; Jesus addressed this as well [Mat. 23:37]).

⁴¹And He gave them into the hand of the heathen; and they who hated them ruled over them. (He did not do so until all avenues of Mercy and Grace were exhausted [Jer. 7:2526].)

⁴²Their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection under their hand. (When Israel was living for God, her enemies made no headway whatsoever against her; however, when Israel turned away from God, then God allowed her enemies to oppress them.)

⁴³Many times did He deliver them; but they provoked Him with their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity. (All because of sin!)

⁴⁴Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their cry (the Lord answered this, as it regards His answer to Solomon [II Chron. 7:14]):

⁴⁵And He remembered for them His Covenant, and repented according to the multitude of His mercies. (The Lord was always ready to forgive Israel and deliver them, if they would only meet His righteous terms of the Covenant.)

⁴⁶He made them also to be pitied of all those who carried them captives. (In other words, God gave Israel favor in the eyes of their captors [II Ki., Chpt. 25; Dan. 1:19; 6:2].)

⁴⁷Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto Your Holy Name, and to triumph in Your praise. (This request and prayer were answered in regards to the dispersion at Babylon. It has not been answered concerning their dispersion in A.D. 70, because Israel, since the Crucifixion of Christ, has not truly repented. They will at the Second Coming.)

⁴⁸Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting: and let all the people say, Amen. Praise you the LORD. (This fourth Book closes with the expected Amen, but the repeated Amen is changed to Hallelujah here. This harmonizes with the theme of the Book. Amen expresses the desire that the wilderness journey should end and the Kingdom should be established. Hallelujah joyfully announces the gratification of both desires.)