Psalm 106: The People Who Kept Forgetting
If Psalm 105 tells the story of God's faithfulness, Psalm 106 tells the story of ours — and it is not a flattering portrait. "We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly." The psalmist is not pointing fingers at ancient Israelites from a safe distance; he includes himself in the indictment. And then the catalogue unfolds: they forgot God's works in Egypt, they lusted in the wilderness, they made a golden calf at the very foot of the mountain where God had just spoken, they despised the promised land, they murmured in their tents. The repetition is almost comical in its relentlessness — they forgot, they provoked, they forgot again. And yet threaded through every failure is the stubborn refrain of mercy: "Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake." "He remembered for them his covenant." "He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives." This is the psalm that dares to say the truest and most uncomfortable thing about the human condition: we are not people who occasionally stumble but people who chronically forget. And God is not a God who occasionally forgives but one who cannot seem to stop.
00:00 We Have Sinned with Our Fathers
01:00 Nevertheless He Saved Them
02:00 The Calf at Horeb
03:00 Scattered Among the Nations
04:00 He Remembered His Covenant
05:00 From Everlasting to Everlasting