Psalms 78:17

And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness.

Sin multiplying with mercies

The more copiously the showers of mercies fell upon the Jew in the wilderness, the more abounding his sins.

I. This is a lamentably common character. Seeds of sin innumerable are imbedded in every depraved heart; and the sunbeams and showers of mercy often develop them into harvests, whose ripened grains fall down into the soul to be multiplied again, etc.

II. This is a monstrously unnatural character. The eternal design and the essential tendency of Divine goodness are to quicken all intelligent spirits into gratitude and virtue, to waken them into hallelujahs. “The goodness of God should lead to repentance.” Man is somehow denaturalized, dehumanized; he pursues a course hostile to the constitution of things.

III. This is a tremendously guilty character. It is “treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath.” (Homilist.)