Can a person limit God? We would immediately answer with a resounding NO! But there is also a certain YES! You ask, “How is that possible?” In one sense it is impossible for the creature to limit the Creator. Certainly, no mere human being can limit the Almighty God. However, when God ties His work to man’s faith and/or obedience, there is a sense in which man can and does limit God. The psalmist is saying that God wanted to do so much more for Israel, but the choices in life they made limited the Lord from doing more for them. God will not bless our disobedience. God will not underwrite our sin. He will not help us sin -- James 1:13: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:” If you are tempted, it is coming from YOU -- James 1:14-15: “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. (15) Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” LIMIT is from a root word that means “to scratch; to imprint; to make a mark.” Some suggest the meaning of “grieved.” When we, in our hearts and minds, limit the power of God it grieves the Almighty. Adam Clarke says, “Here it most obviously means an insult offered to God.” Albert Barnes: “The idea in the word would seem to be that of making a mark for any purpose; and then it means to delineate; to scrawl; or to set a mark for a limit or boundary. Thus it might be applied to God - as if, in estimating his character or his power, they set limits or bounds to it, as one does in marking out a farm or a house - lot in a city or town. There was a limit, in their estimation, to the power of God, beyond which he could not act; or, in other words, his power was defined and bounded, so that beyond a certain point he could not aid them.” The Scripture says of Jesus when He was in Nazareth: Matthew 13:58 -- “. . . he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Mark 6:5-6 - “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. (6) And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.” You know what they were doing? They were limiting Jesus, limiting God! For just a few minutes I want us to look at this psalm and see why Israel limited and grieved God and then consider how we might limit Him.

I. HOW ISRAEL LIMITED GOD -- PSALM 78:1-72.

II. HOW WE LIMIT GOD TODAY.