Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Give Thanks to the LORD | The Writings | Psalm 106

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Do you give thanks for the gifts God has given you? Do you make excuses for your sins? Are you guilty of grumbling? In today's episode, Keith reads through Psalm 106, encouraging us to be grateful toward God for rescuing us from our sin. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 106

Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. We're going through the Old Testament writings in 2025, and we're a little over halfway through. Today we're ready for Psalm 106. It's so good that I couldn't pick just one thing out of it to talk about. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to read the Psalm and stop along the way to help us think about how it applies to our life.

Sound good to you? Here we go. Verse 1. Praise the Lord. give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. You and I have so much to be thankful for. If you're alive today, be thankful. If you have friends or good health or had any fun this past weekend, be thankful. If you have a job and a roof over your head, be thankful. If you're a Christian, you have even more to be thankful for. Your sins are forgiven. God hears your prayers. He knows you and loves you.

He's promised to never leave you or fail you. One of the things we're going to see in the Psalm that we tend to forget is God's goodness and all the ways he's blessed us. Verse two, who can proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord or fully declare his praise? God is so wonderful, so powerful, so beautiful that no matter how many years I live, I could never fully declare his praise. In eternity, we will always be discovering new things to praise God for. Verse three, blessed are those who act justly, who always do what is right. Blessed is the person who obeys God. Jesus said, I have come that they might, have life and have it abundantly, the abundant, joyful life, the blessed life, is found in obeying Jesus. Verse 4. Remember me, Lord, when you show favor to your people. Come to my aid when you save

them, that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may share in the joy of your nation and join your inheritance in giving praise. Lord, remember us in our time of need. We are lost without you. In Second Chronicles, King Jehoshaphat is surrounded by his enemies. It looks as if there is no hope for him or for the nation. And he prays this very simple yet powerful prayer. He says, Our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. That's how I always want to feel. God, I need you to show up in my life. I can't do life on my own. own. I need you. Now the Psalm goes through a long stretch of confession. Verse 6 says,

We have sinned even as our ancestors did. We have done wrong and acted wickedly. Do you notice how they don't make excuses? There's no blame shifting. It's we have sinned. They own how they have disobeyed God. Verse 7. When our ancestors were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles. They did not remember your many kindnesses and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea. This phrase, they did not remember? Well, it's going to be repeated over and over again in this Psalm. The Israelites have forgotten all the ways that God had been good to them. And that happens to us, too.

We sit and rebel against God when we don't remember His kindness, his grace, his forgiveness, his mercy. Because the Israelites forgot how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt, they doubted God's power to save them from the Egyptians when they were blocked by the Red Sea. Now, not that much time had elapsed between deliverance from Egypt and facing that Red Sea. It didn't take long for them to forget what God had done and who he was. And unfortunately, it doesn't take us long either to forget God.

Verse 8, yet he saved them for his own namesake to make his mighty power known. He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up. He led them through the depths as through a desert. He saved them from the hand of the foe, from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them. The waters covered their adversaries, and not one of them survived. Then they believed his promises and sang his praise. See, the Israelites had forgotten God, but God hadn't forgotten his promise. Even in their rebellion, God rescued them by leading them through the sea.

Verse 8 says he did it for his name's sake and to make his power known. When God saves us, we magnify his name. We are trophies of his grace. We show off his goodness, his forgiveness, and mercy. The next verse is sad and unfortunate, but it's also typical of us. verse 13 but they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold we forget god one minute we're singing his praises and the next were going our own way refusing to wait on his plan for our life verse 14 in the desert they gave into their craving in the wilderness they put god to the test so he gave them what they asked for but sent a wasting disease among them this psalm is retelling some of the ways throughout their history that god's people had rebelled Here it says that God gave them what they asked for. Now, that verse scares me because I'm afraid he will give me what I ask for.

And the truth is, I don't know what's best for me. I demand God give me what I want, but the truth is that I think I know what's best for me, but I don't. How many times have you ever thanked God that he didn't give you what you thought you wanted at the time? Verse 16, in the camp they grew envious of Moses and of Aaron, who was consecrated to the Lord. The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan, which is a city. It buried the company of Abiram. Fire blazed among their followers. A flame consumed the wicked.

When we sin against God, we face his discipline and judgment. God wouldn't be good if he didn't punish sin and evil. At Horeb, they made a calf and worshipped an idle cast from metal. They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things. in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So he said he would destroy them, had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them. There's so much there in those verses. They, of course, refer to the story in Exodus where

Moses is on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, and the people clamor for Aaron, Moses' co-leader and brother, to make a god out of gold. Aaron eventually says, okay, and they make the golden calf, and they say, this is the God, this golden calf is the God who delivered them from Egypt. So as verse 20 says, they exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull which eats grass. That's not a good exchange. That's a very foolish trade. But unfortunately, one we make all the time. We exchange worshiping Jesus for the God of money or the God of self or the God of control or the God of sports. We do this because it says we forget God. Verse 24.

Then they despised the pleasant land. They did not believe his promise. They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the Lord. So he swore to them with uplifted hand that he would make them fall in the wilderness, make their descendants fall among the nations. One of the more serious sins in the Bible is the sin of grumbling. Here the people grumble and God says that because of their grumbling, instead of entering into the promised land, they'll die in the wilderness.

Now, that sounds weird to us because we think of grumbling or complaining as a respectable sin, we don't think it's that big of a deal, but to God it is. And unfortunately, we do it all the time. We complain about everything. We complain about weather. We complain about food, prices, politics, family, friends, airline travel, our finances. We complain about other drivers on the road. The Bible says that our complaining is really against God. He's the one who has given us everything. So when we grumble and complain, we are saying, God, you messed up. We deserve better than you've given us. We'll skip down to verse 43. It says many times he delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their

sin. Yet he took note of their distress when he heard their cry. For their sake, he remembered his covenant and out of his great love he relented. He caused all who held them captive to show them mercy. This says they wasted away in their sin. Sin never it fulfills. It never does what it promises, it always leaves you feeling empty. Sin promises you happiness, but it always leaves you miserable. But no matter how much they sinned, God had told them that if they would call out to him, he would save them. No matter how far away you are from God, no matter what you've done, call on God, trust in His grace, ask for His mercy, turn from your sin, he stands ready to forgive you. Here's how the Psalm ends. Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations that we may give thanks to your

holy name and glory in your praise. Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, let all the people say amen. Praise the Lord.