Psa 106:15 And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.

Psalm 106 is a psalm to a forgetful people. It contains a gruesome catalogue of the sins of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness. So the psalmist begins by confessing the sins of the fathers: “We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly” (v.6). We may wonder: How is it that a people who witnessed the wonderful works of God in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the food miracles of the quails and manna, could be so ungrateful as to ignore God. The reason is in verse 7: “Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies.” The cause of their sins lies in these four words: understood not, remembered not. They “understood not” the miracles and wonders in the sense they did not consider that those miracles were intended for their conviction and reformation. Yes, they saw the miracles but they did not rightly apprehend the design of them. It’s like when we see a beautiful rainbow and what do we do? Just a beautiful rainbow! We are mesmerized by it. We whip out our phones and take a few photos of it. And that’s it! We fail to see the Person who put that beautiful rainbow up in the sky. It is the same when men look at the universe and see its awesomeness but do not see God. They see without understanding the message the universe is telling them: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1). What happen when men see the wonderful works of God but fail to understand what the universe is telling them? They soon forget; they remember not! Israel in the wilderness saw all the miracles and wonderful works of God but they soon forgot His works, and lost the impressions they had made upon them. The psalmist says they “lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert” (v.14). They were never satisfied and they tried God, whether He could provide for them food and drink: “They said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” (Psalm 78:19).  Yet, God was gracious: “And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (v.15). He gave them their request - By sending great quantities of quails: “He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea” (Psalm 78:27). But sent leanness into their soul – Their bodies were fat but their souls were lean. When wealth grows with many a man, his worldly estate is fatter, but his soul's state is leaner. While the bodies of wicked men are fed and pampered, their souls are starved, and at last eternally lost as the rich man in a parable of Jesus (Luke 16:23). The effect of many who are consumed by their lusts is the wasting away of their souls. Our Lord warns: “He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22). If we pray for temporal prosperity, we should also pray that we may at the same time have grace commensurate with it, that it may be a blessing and not a curse. Material blessings have been proven to be a curse for many once faithful Christians; only few are not injured by it. “Outward prosperity, inward decline” is the message of this psalm. Let us heed the warning of this Scripture: “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them” (Psalm 62:10). You have been warned.