Friends, in this psalm, the writer gathers up a wealth of historical evidence to show that despite the folly, despite the constant disloyalty and unfaithfulness, and the dissatisfaction and the disaffection of God's ancient people, the Lord still loved them and patiently watched over and provided for them. We were just reading that portion, but he, in verse 38, but he being full of compassion forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not. but many a time turned his anger away and did not stir up all his wrath. And friends, as we think about in these midweeks of our pursuit of heaven in these devotional messages, I want us to think this evening about the point of limiting God. Can we limit God? Can God be limited? This historical account is recorded for us here for our benefit and particularly for our warning. If you were to read, if we were to read the whole of this psalm, it would be very helpful for us. But if you were to read verses four through to eight, you would see for yourself that it's a warning for us. The sins of God's own people were very numerous. And it is listed here. Again, this shows to us that the Bible is the Word of God. What kind of a people would write so much against themselves and show their own weaknesses and their own follies? But here it is recorded. verse 8, verse 11, verse 17, verse 18, verse 22, and you go down, you see that it's highlighted their failings. Perhaps the most astounding statement appears in verse 41, and it might confuse us as well, especially as we are convinced that our God is sovereign and God does according to his own pleasure. And yet it says here in verse 41 and the latter part of verse 41 that they limited the Holy One of Israel. It's the same by their sins, by their follies. God's people actually limited the Holy One of Israel. But can man limit God? Can we stop the work of God? No, we cannot. Well, what does this mean then? What does it mean when it says they limited God? Well, the answer is this. They missed out the blessing of God. They missed out the blessing of the Lord. It was in that sense they limited God. We cannot limit the intentions of God. We cannot stop the counsels of God. No, the Lord does according to his good pleasure. But within the context of this Psalm, we see that these people limited him in that they set bounds to his power and goodness. They set bound in their own heart and mind, they limited him. God wasn't limited. but they had limited view of him and that affected them. They didn't give glory to God and they were left unblessed. That was the point. So they were saying, see, this he could do, this other thing he could do, but these things that we are going through he can't do. Look at verse 19 as an example. Verse 19, this is what they were saying. Yea, they speak against God. They said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? It was in this sense that they limited God. Then verse... Verse 19, verse 20, they keep saying these things. Yeah, verse 19, they speak against God. They said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock that water gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Yes, we know he's done this thing, but can he give bread? The answer in their mind, no, he can't do that. So in their own mind, they limited God. That's what it means. Can he provide flesh for his people? And of course, as you read through the Psalms, the Psalm itself, the Lord did provide bread. They ate angel's food, it says. He provided meat for them. But in their heart, he was limited. So they were saying, no, he cannot do this thing. And they were saying, there are things in life God cannot do. And so in this way, they limited God. And my friends, you and I can so easily do the same and we have done the same. When we have said, I don't think this thing will happen. And we might have even prayed prayers. And then somehow right at the end thought, I have prayed this, but will God do this? Will the Lord turn things around? Because it's so impossible. And we can pray without faith. And that's why the scripture commands us to pray with faith. People can limit the Lord in their own mind and heart. When we fix and when we limit, to a blessing that we want. We say, this is what I want. This is the kind of blessing that I want. And I limit the time of it to such and such a time. I want it now. I want this now. So you're limiting God in that sense. We are saying, this is the blessing I want. And we forget the fact that God will do his own will. And it is better to say, thy will be done rather than mine. I don't want God to be limited to my will, my time, or to say, God must bless me in this, but not that one. I don't want this other thing that seems to be happening. He's bringing this other thing into my life, but I don't want that, I want this other thing. You see, that's the way the Psalm is talking about. And so we say this is the measure of it. This is the time of it. But the blessing itself, the answer to the prayer itself, the time that God should give the blessing should be all left to the Lord, friends. We should be content in that. Trust the Lord in that. He knows best about those things. And when we pray selfish prayers, when we pray those kinds of prayers that we limit the Lord, then God is provoked. And we read passages like this in Numbers chapter 14 and verse 22, the Lord says himself, they have tempted me these 10 times. He says, instead of wanting my will, They have 10 times asked for the things they want. They've limited me. They don't want my blessing. They want their own thing. And yet, he treats them as his children. He says, Israel is my son, my firstborn. And yet, they disrespected him. They didn't fear him. They didn't have the behavior that children ought to have. They grieved him to anger even though he is such a tender father to us. They presumed. They presumed on him. We can easily do that too. We can presume to limit the Holy One of Israel. and forget that He does things for His own glory. And we should desire His glory too. And even when we ask in our own mind and heart as we are searching things and earnestly praying about certain situations, But we should always have the attitude, but the will of the Lord is the best. I'm praying this prayer and it's limited. I don't see everything in this situation, but I want the Lord's will. I want the Lord's timing. I don't want the Lord to be put in my mind in a box because he cannot be condemned. Because then I will be disappointed too. When the Lord does his own thing, then say, why did the Lord not answer me? He was answering me, but I was putting him in a box in my mind. And the Lord is sovereign. He does according to his good pleasure. Are we content with that? As we think about this, and so it is an amazing phrase. I don't know how you would interpret it. Before this time, when you read this, would you think God could be limited? In your mind, He could be limited. And also in receiving His blessings. We can miss out with the Lord. And so I want us in just looking at this psalm very quickly to think about ways that they limited God and they missed out the blessing of the Lord. And you see my friends in our pursuit of heaven, as we are going towards heaven, we must have these things on our minds or it will be a very hard journey. But when we are content, to know and to want to have the will of God, even when the things we desire don't happen. We are still happy in Jesus Christ. So the first thing is this, to consider that the people who are guilty of this great sin of limiting and the power of God, think about the people. It says that they were Israelites. They were not ungodly people. It says in, in the first part of this, that it was the Lord's people. Oh, my people, he says. It was Israel. So it was then Israel, and today it could be the professing Christians. Friends, in this passage, note that God's problem wasn't with the world. It's with his own people. And so we are wrong in thinking that the fault and the deficiency today is outside the church, outside of my life. If only we could get other people to do these other things. If only other people could get their mind and heart right, then we would have a better circumstance. No, it's saying it's inside. The problem is with me. And so I have to, we are going back to the point that the Lord Jesus Christ made about taking out the big plank out of our own eyes first. So my friends, these are the days of spiritual indifference. You go and try to talk to someone and people are not interested. They don't want to know. There is apathy and there is apostasy, but that's within the church. And God says, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land. That's the Lord says to me, to you. So revival begins within. God's problem is not with the atheists of this world. It's not with diagnostics. It's not with the governments of this world. It's not with the infidels. It's not with the religious people of other religions. God's problem is not with political movements. No, God's problem is with his own people. So he says in verse one, give ear all my people to my law, incline your ears to the words of my mouth. So that's the first thing is the Lord's people. The second thing is consider whom we are limiting. We are limiting God, the creator, the sustainer, the redeemer of mankind, the sovereign God. And we limit him in all manner of ways. And we'll look at that. We are limiting the one with whom all things are possible. We thought about that last time, didn't we? The Lord Jesus Christ says, with men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And with whom nothing is too hard. Is there anything too hard for the Lord? We saw that in Genesis 18 and verse 14. It's the Lord who has done great things. And this whole Psalm explains this, that in verse 13, He talks about the dividing of the waters of the Red Sea. He talks about in verse 20, of a smiting of the rock and the water gushed out. In verse 43 onwards, it talks about the way He sent the plagues into Egypt. The tragedy of limiting this loving, this Almighty God, For His power is just the same today as it was yesterday. And yet, we can miss out with the blessing. Yes, He's very gracious, but we can miss out with Him. So let us not limit Him in our own minds. Let us realize He's the Almighty. He's sovereign. He can do anything He wants. The issue is for us to become in tune with Him. to understand His will, to desire His will, to be content with His will. So how do we limit God? From this psalmist, notice all the ways in which the Israelites sinned against God and displeased Him. We could go through a whole list of them, but let me just highlight a few in the time that we have. First, they limited God by their disobedience. They disobeyed Him, meaning they thought, I don't have to obey Him in everything. Look at verse 10. They kept not the covenant of God and refused to walk in His law. They refused it. You think, why would people do that? And we can have it in our own day and age as well of people refusing, of following the Lord, even those who name the name of the Lord. So one of the fundamental conditions of the blessing in the lives of God's people is obedience. Obedience. It's not about my feelings. It's not about if I have a nice feeling about these things. No, oftentimes we don't have nice feelings about things because we are living in a sinful body and a sinful world. And yet, We are called to obey the Lord. We are called to fight a good fight of faith, not be on a cruise ship and go down a wonderful, peaceful ocean. No, no, fight a good fight of faith. It's oftentimes uphill. You remember the Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, the hill difficulty? And yet, As we obey the Lord, He sends us His peace. He sends us His blessings. And as I obey Him, I must obey Him gladly, cheerfully. I should obey Him unquestionably, doing what God says, knowing He knows best. Isn't it true? Isn't it frustrating sometimes, parents, with your children? You don't have time maybe to talk to them about explaining all the details about something. You just need to say, just get into the car. That's all you want. Nothing else, just get into the car. You don't have time to explain all the things that you're going to be late to this or that. I'm explaining some of our difficulties. But you don't have time to explain that. But if only the child knows, my mother, my father knows best. I don't need to ask all of these questions. I just do what he says. And we would all be happy. But what do I do as a Christian? I say, well, the Lord doesn't mean that. He can't mean that when he says this. But the Lord says this, this is what our Savior said in John 15. These are just three verses, I've just picked out of that as a sample. In John 15 and verse seven, he says, if ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. And then verse 10, it says this, if ye keep my covenant or commandments, ye shall abide in my love. even as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love." So he's speaking about the love of God, but in our response to his love, it's to be one of obedience, obeying his commandments. In verse 14, this is what we read. He are my friends. So he's calling them his friends. If ye do whatsoever I command you. You heard the condition? If ye do whatsoever I command you. In John 14 and verse 15, it says, if ye love me, keep my commandments. We could go on quoting other passages, but disobedience can limit God's blessings in and through us. But also we can limit God by our forgetfulness. By our forgetfulness. You again go to Psalm 78 and you look at verses 11 onwards. It says this, "...and forget his works and his wonders that he had showed them." Imagine if you had memories. Some of you, you have very good memories of what other people have done. but you forget your own things. And we are all like that. And one of the things we forget, the blessings of the Lord. The blessings, how blessed we have been. The answers to our prayers and all of these things. And then when other problems come, we limit God in our own mind and we forget, God, I was in this situation 20 years ago and the Lord saved me out of it. The Lord answered prayer, the Lord helped me. That's why I am where I am because he led me out of those things. And yet I forget. And then I worry. And I think, well, He won't answer me now. And yet He has said that He will deliver us in verse 12. He says He will guard us. He would guide us in verse 14. He says that He answers our prayers. All of these things are rehearsed in this psalm, and yet they forgot Him. And when we are forgetful of God's blessings, it is in that sense that we limit Him. He's not limited Himself. But we, in our own hearts, limit Him. We don't give Him the glory that is due to Him. So forgetfulness limits God's blessings. But also, we limit God by our unbelief, and that's a key thing. It's by our unbelief. And that's why they were questioning this. In verse 19, when they say, yea, they speak against God, they said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? So they're questioning. They don't trust the Lord as they ought to. They say in verse 20, behold, he smote the rock that the waters gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can he provide flesh for his people? Do you see? In verse 22, it says, because they believed not in God. They didn't believe in the Lord and trusted not in his salvation, though he had commanded the clouds from above and opened the doors of heaven. You see? So we can easily commit the same sins. And yet this is an encouragement to us. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. That's what the Lord says. But in the New Testament, we read similarly. In Matthew 13 and verse 58, you're familiar with that. We read of this, of our Lord Jesus Christ. And He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. They didn't trust him. They miss that with God. That's the issue. They miss that with God. So our gathering together for prayer is an act of faith. We are trusting in the Lord. Our gathering together, when we assemble together, we are trusting in the Lord and we are calling upon him. We are saying, we are depending on thee, Lord. We have nowhere else to turn to. We must come together. We must pray. We must seek thee. And in Mark 6 and verse 5, it says, Similarly, they didn't trust him. So they missed out. Yes friends, this is true. In Matthew 17, we have these references. I'll just read them out to you. In verse 19, And 20, Matthew 17 and verse 19, we read this, Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said, Why could not we cast him out? That is the demon-possessed girl. Why couldn't we cast out the demon out of her? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief. For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Do you see? Unbelief is a paralyzing sin. It not only paralyzes us, but it limits the work of God in the sense of the blessings that we should have or we could have. The Lord said, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. So unbelief in that sense limits God's blessings in us and through us. Yes, God will do his own work. God doesn't need us, but we miss out the blessing. But also worldliness, Very quickly in verse 33 of Psalm 78, you have these words, And surely a modern word for this could well be worldliness. We can be so worldly and we miss out the blessing of the Lord. We are so much consumed by this and that and the other thing, And we miss out God's blessing. We fail to realize that our citizenship, our conversation, as the Apostle Paul puts it in Philippians 3.20, is in heaven. And I could have the nearness and the blessing of the Lord, and yet my heart could be filled with all other concerns. We can limit the Lord in his blessings of us in our insincerity. Look at verses 36 and 37. This is what they were charged and it's a serious charge. Nevertheless, they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with him, neither were they steadfast in his covenant. We can be guilty of this. It's so easy to sing our favorite hymns. A.W. Tozer once said, Christians tell lies oftentimes in their singing. They sing one thing, but they haven't felt it. Do we mean what we sing? This is what the Lord says of the heathen in Matthew 15 and verse 8. So the Lord Jesus says earlier in that passage in Matthew 15, he says, ye hypocrites. He calls them hypocrites. So insincerity means inconsistency in our life and testimony before the world. And we can flatter the Lord with our words. We can say nice things in our prayers. We can say long prayers as well. And yet we can limit the blessing of God. And we could talk about ingratitude when we are not really thankful. When we don't notice the love of the Lord, when we don't notice the patience of the Lord, when we don't notice the compassion of the Lord, in spite of our sins, in spite of our follies, how ingratitude and how unappreciative they were of his hand. Verse 42 says that. They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. They didn't remember the signs that he gave, the interventions in their life, his guidance, his provision, his chastening. They forgot all about these things. They didn't thank God for these things. So they missed out with the Lord again. And then also, finally, they provoke him to anger in verse 58 because of their idolatry. Things that they wanted for themselves in the place of God. And so he says, for they provoked him to anger with their high places and moved him to jealousy with their graven image. And idols can be anything, anything we replace God with. Anything that we put our hopes in, it can be some habits, it can be some friends, it can be some possessions, it could be a hobby, a sport, whatever it is, it can become an idolatry. Anything could become an idol in our lives. And all of those things limits the Lord's blessing us. We are the ones who miss out. The Lord isn't missing out. So what should we do in these things? These are all good things for us to remember. The Lord is worthy of all our praise. The Lord is worthy of all glory that we should give to Him. But for ourselves, we should pray like David. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Let us not limit God. Because He is not limited. He can't be contained in a temple. He can't be contained in anything, any box of our making. He is eternal. He is unsearchable. He is past finding out. His thoughts are not your thoughts or my thoughts. His ways are not my ways or your ways. He is great and almighty. What should we do? We should say, Lord, I will accept thy timing. I will accept thy wisdom. I will accept thy power. I don't want to do anything my way, Lord. I will give thee thanks and praise thee for the smallest crumb. I will praise thee and thank thee for all the benefits that you give me in my daily life. You have given me eternity. You've given me eternal life and your son who is with me. Yet, yes, I go up the hill difficulty, but I am not like the Christian who was alone. I have the Lord with me. He will be at my side. He will help me. He will strengthen me. I don't have to go through these things that Israelites went through. Because you see, these, the apostles were for our learning. They were written for our learning. That means we can learn from them and not do them again. May the Lord then bless us. May the Lord display his great power and display his glory in our midst. Amen.