Psalm 103 (Worthy of All)

A Call to Bless the Lord and Hear His Word

God, You do work in mysterious ways, Your wonders to perform. We thank You, God, this morning that we could come into Your presence and we pray that You would open our eyes to see wonders in Your Word, to behold the glory, that every word would speak to us, Lord.

Open our eyes to see, give us hearts that are listening. Here we are, God, Your servants are listening. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. I had the opportunity to go to Cambridge about 20 years ago when my brother was a student there and I didn't notice a lot of Christianity on the campus.

In fact, much of England has departed away from the evangelical roots that it had just a century ago. Sad to see. But there was a man named David Livingston who spoke at Cambridge in the year 1857. The speech that he gave there includes some of the words that I would like you to remember and for me to remember.

Just five words that just ring so powerfully true to me, fit with the text we're studying today and hopefully will stick in your mind and heart as well. David Livingston speaking to Cambridge University said, I never made a sacrifice.

I never made a sacrifice. Why are those words so profound? Because David Livingston was a missionary sent out by the London Missionary Society to go to Africa, to parts of Africa that had never been penetrated before by any missionary and even by any explorer from Europe.

He went and he went all about Africa, made it, looking for the source of the Nile as an explorer. But his mission there was to preach the name of Christ, to make Christ known. When he got to one village, he decided that because this particular town was overrun by lions, if he were able to kill one lion, then perhaps all of the others that were attacking that village and killing their cattle, that those lions might disperse for fear of man.

So Livingston went out with his shotgun and confronted a lion. And in that battle, he shot the lion, but the lion was not killed by it, ended up pouncing on Livingston, clinging to his arm. Livingston escaped by just a thread, his arm, where he would never be able to lift his arm above shoulder height for the rest of his life.

He survived that fight with the lion. This is the man who said, I never made a sacrifice. The rest of his life was spent in Africa. He only saw one convert, Setchel was his name, but he gave his life to the gospel.

There came a point of time where he was so deep in the interior, he was lost for six years. No communication. Finally, a reporter from New York, from the New York Herald, went looking for Livingston. And after searching the jungles in these particular towns with his, his guides, he eventually found him.

And the famous words that you've probably heard, Mr. Livingston, I presume, that came from this Henry Morton Stanley when he finally, finally found him deep in the jungle. Livingston would die in the jungle, laying down his life for the gospel.

And yet, when he was visiting Cambridge in 1857, he wrote these words, for my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa.

Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter?

Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought, it is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather, it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with the foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink.

But let this only be for a moment, and all these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. Immortal words from David Livingston, who laid down his life for the gospel and said, I never made a sacrifice.

There is one who made a sacrifice, his name is Jesus. And anything we give back to him is nothing but a debt owed that we could never repay. And indeed, he doesn't ask us to because he paid it all. When Spurgeon commented on Psalm 103, which is where we'll turn now, he said, Psalm 103 is so filled with grace and glory that it is a whole Bible.

What we're about to turn to in Psalm 103, written a thousand years before Jesus, is the story of a sacrifice so great, so good, so amazing, it overwhelms us. It is a whole Bible written in advance. Someone once said, in fact it was Spurgeon, we write our blessings in sand and we engrave our complaints in concrete.

We write our blessings in sand, meaning we forget. We forget how blessed we are and we engrave our complaints in concrete. We're very quick to remember the things that we suffer and that go wrong. Psalm 103 turns our hearts back to the source.

It reminds us of the simple things that are so good they should never grow old for us. The love of God, his benefits toward us. Things like forgiveness, healing, redemption, a crown, satisfaction. This is nothing but straight gospel truth in Psalm 103.

So the main idea, the Lord is worthy of all blessing from us. Because he is so good, he delivers us completely and he keeps covenants in an everlasting kingdom. Those are the three movements. The goodness of God to us, the way he benefits us, number one.

Number two, what he doesn't give us, what he spares us from and rescues us from. And number three, his covenant keeping. Those three sections as we move through. Let's begin, Psalm 103, one to five. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit. Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.

Who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Well to begin, exegetically as we exposit this text. I think it's very important that we make note of the comparison in verse five.

When the psalmist wants to underscore strength, youthfulness, he uses the eagle. He does not use the cowboy or the giant or the redskin. He draws the comparison to the eagle. That's repayment to a giant fan.

But in more seriousness, notice the repetition of words. First of all, the word all. All will appear throughout this psalm nine times. So when I bless the Lord, I'm to do it with all my soul. Everything that's in me, my mind, my heart, my strength.

Everything I have should be given to this task. All of me given to the task. Why? Because of all his benefits. All that he's done for me. So that word all is important. Notice also the repetition of Lord 11 times.

This is a God-centered psalm. When you see that capital L-O-R-D, that's Yahweh. The tetragrammatron Y-H-W-H, which means Jehovah, transliterated. Yahweh is the covenant-keeping name of God. The covenant name of God.

His personal name by which he reveals himself to his people in his steadfast love. The covenant name of God repeated 11 times. Bless seven times. Three here in the beginning, then four at the end. This is what we're to do.

Bless him. In other words, adore him, praise him, worship him. This is what the psalm is calling us to do. Bless the Lord. Oh my soul and all that is within me. So we're told we get benefits from knowing the covenant-keeping God.

What are the benefits of knowing God? Why should we bless him? Five things. Number one, bless him because he forgives all your iniquity. He forgives your iniquity. You and I each owed a debt to God that was so big.

Could never repay it. I remember making the last payment in 2018 on our car. You take out a five-year plan to buy a car and after five years you make that last payment. How good does it feel when you make that last payment and it's done?

How much better to tell us that when you recognize that the debt that you owed God on account of your sin, though they are compounding daily with interest, for the course of your life are completely forgiven and you are set free.

Forgiveness is a reason to celebrate. Forgiveness, number one. Jesus said on the cross, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Benefit number two, who heals all your diseases. He heals us of our spiritual affliction, but also of our bodily affliction.

You say, wait a minute, does God heal all our diseases? Because our verse here says all of your diseases. Some teachers would say that in fact he does and I would agree with them. He heals all our diseases.

The question is when? Sometimes he will say wait, but wait does not mean no. If you hear him saying no to a healing that you've been praying for, it is only not yet. There's coming a day when all of our diseases will be gone, done away with.

Jesus was healing left and right in the book of Matthew chapter 8 verse 14 to 17. He healed and the author Matthew applies Isaiah 53 saying that by his stripes we are healed. Is there healing in the atonement?

Not necessarily in this life, but the promise is sure that in the coming day, the eschaton, when Christ comes back or we're separated from body and the resurrection of the dead, all of our afflictions will be healed.

Completely gone. That means cancer, stomach cancer that killed Nabil Qureshi, it didn't kill him forever. He's in glory right now in the presence of God and there's coming a day when his body will be resurrected to meet with the spirit in the air.

Cancer will bow the knee to Jesus Christ. So will Alzheimer and dementia and Parkinson's and every affliction, every autoimmune disease, every painful lower back spasm that we get as we age. All of these will bow the knee to Jesus.

All of our diseases are healed according to Psalm 110 verse 3. Verse 4, he redeems your life from the pit. Joseph was thrown in a pit, sold as a slave, bought and raised up into Potiphar's home. How much more when we are bought at a price, 1 Corinthians 6 20.

We are no longer our own and yet we are bought by a Lord, by a master who pays for us with his own blood and then makes us a part of his family. No longer calling us slaves, John 15 15, but friends and welcoming us into his home and giving us an inheritance with the saints.

Redeemed out of the slave market of sin, we were bound. We were not free, we were bound in sin and Christ interposed his precious blood and redeemed our lives from the pit. Like Jeremiah, we were sinking in the mud, thrown in a pit, held as slaves.

But Christ has redeemed us and paid our ransom and the price he paid was his own blood. He crowns us. Verse 4, this the fourth benefit. He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. I want to get a crown when I make it to heaven.

I want to wear a crown for this reason. So that like the elders of Revelation 4 10, when I see Jesus, I can take it off and I'll have something to throw at his feet. And say, worthy are you of all glory and honor and power.

I want a crown to say who it belongs to. Because nothing I've ever done or you've ever done is worthy of all praise and glory and honor. But the glory belongs to Jesus. And that's what our crowns are for.

They're for casting at his feet. He crowns us. He esteems us. He honors us. He welcomes us. And we turn and worship him. Verse 5, who satisfies you with good. So that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

Philippians 3 8. Paul says, I count everything, all other things, as rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. Paul is saying, I'm satisfied having come to know Christ.

Having been redeemed and forgiven and crowned and healed and ransomed, redeemed. He says, I am satisfied. This is the benefit of God. The benefit of God. He satisfies us in him. Can we say that with Paul?

Are you satisfied in him? If he gives you nothing else. No big screen TV, no sports car, no retirement, no vacation. If he gives you nothing else but he gave you the blood of his one and only son to redeem your life from the pit.

And he brought you into his home. And you have an eternal evidence, eternal home in heaven waiting for you. If he gives you only that, are you satisfied? I'm satisfied. He's all I need. That's what Paul is saying.

And that's our understanding that comes with the gospel. So we would move on. But I was listening to a song this morning that I just love the words of it. It's a new song by Chris McClerny. And it's called, I'm Listening.

He says, when you speak, confusion fades. Just a word and suddenly I'm not afraid. Because you speak and freedom reigns. There is hope in every single word you say. I don't want to miss one word you speak.

Because everything you say is life to me. I don't want to miss one word you speak. Quiet, my heart. I'm listening. When we come to the scripture, every word, 2 Timothy 3 .16, every graphe, every writing, every last word is God breathed.

Every one is powerful. Look at verse 3 and the repetition of the word who. That word matters. Look at the word your. That word matters. Who is the your in verse 3? The you, your diseases, your life crowns you.

Answer, it's me. It's verse 1 and 2 when David is saying, bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. He turns and he is preaching the gospel to himself. He's saying self bless God because look what he's done for you.

Notice that brothers and sisters, we need to learn to do this. To preach the gospel to ourselves. To turn and say he forgives all your iniquities on account of the blood of Jesus. Preach the gospel to yourself.

The word who matters because it modifies what went before. Who is the who? You see this repetition, who, who, who? So you ask the question, who, who, who? Who does this refer to? It refers to the covenant keeping God, the Lord of verse 1 and 2.

The Lord. And so in the text, the active verbs forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies. All of these are the action of who? God. It's God alone who saves you. What do I bring to the table to help him save me?

Nothing. Nothing. Don't I have some righteousness to contribute? No. Because it's all him. He does this. This is the point of the psalm. The emphasis, the glory, the power and the honor, the spotlight is put on Yahweh.

It's put on him. So the who points us again. He is the one who does this. Him and him alone. Now we move on to verse 6 to 14 for the second section. So we've said in the first section, we have benefits from God that we must not forget.

Forget not his benefits lest you drift away. We're prone to wander. But not only does he give us things, we should delight in what he doesn't give us. What he takes away from us. Verse 6, the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. You had oppression. You had slavery. We hear a lot about oppression and victimization in this culture these days. But notice the oppression spoken of here in verse 8 and following is the oppression of personal sinfulness.

Your own sinfulness. Your own responsibility. Verse 8 and following, the Lord is merciful and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. Forget not his benefits and remember what the Lord has taken away.

There's three analogies given here to help us. Two of them are infinite. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high is God and his thoughts. Look, if you will, in verse 11. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him.

That phrase, those who fear him, will appear three times. Nine and then it'll get in, I think, verse 11 and then 13 and then 17. His love toward those who fear him. The song, The Love of God has a line that's probably one of my all-time favorites.

It says, could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade. To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. When you look up at the sky and you see how far out those stars are, and how far away the sun is, and the moon, and just the great expanse above.

Or even better, look at the pictures online that come from the Hubble telescope. How much higher and bigger are these things than this little ball of dust? And we are dust on this earth. How big is the love of God?

As big as that is, it's only a pointer to his love for you. As big as the expanse is, and the heavens are, so great is his love for you. And his is greater far. His love for you, amazing. That's infinite.

His love for you is infinite. And if you doubt it, consider what he did with your sin. When Jesus took that sin on the cross, paid for it in his blood, what became of it? It was as far as the east is from the west.

Now watch this. East and west never meet. If you begin traveling east, you'll go east forever around this globe. You try to go west, you'll keep going west. They never meet. Not so with north and south.

If you head north, you'll hit the north pole and you'll round it and you'll be heading south. So the farthest you can possibly travel north or south on this globe is 12 ,500 miles. If you start at one pole and go around half the circumference of the earth, 12 ,500 miles, that's how far your sin is removed from you.

Now, the Bible, knowing these things before science discovered it, before they understood polarity, that there would be a north pole and a south pole, uses the language of east and west. Travel east and you'll go forever.

Travel west, you'll go forever. Never the two shall meet. How far has God removed your sin from you? You think, wait a minute, my sin is staining. Yes, but one of the benefits of the blood of Christ, it not only turns away God's wrath in heaven, he propitiates that wrath.

He also expiates that sin from you. He takes it off of you and removes it. And when he does that, when he expiates your sin, what becomes of it? He throws it as far as the east is from the west. Never to be remembered.

It's gone. It's covered. So great a love demonstrated in what he did with your sin. That's infinite. Now, if that hasn't gotten your mind stirred up, take heart. The last analogy is not infinite. It brings it down to something we understand, something we see and feel.

The love of a father for a son or a daughter. I remember when my daughter had an earache one night. And it was everything in me seeing her in that pain, just howling with pain. Wanted to take that off of her and put it on me.

And every father knows what that feels like. When you see your child suffering, you would do anything to take that pain off of them and put it on yourself, but you can't. If you read the last analogy here, verse 12 is the east and west 13.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame and he remembers that we are dust. The father did take our suffering and bore our sin.

He took it to Calvary, sending his son to be that sin bearer on our behalf. When my daughter had that earache, she was really little at the time, I began to sing into her ear late in the night. And I said, Jesus is taking the pain away.

I sang it over and over and boom, she fell asleep. And I thank God for that. And in the morning, we took her to the doctor to make sure that there was nothing wrong. The doctor could find no trace of anything.

No infection, no sign of any earache whatsoever. And I think the Lord healed her in that singing. He's able to do that from time to time. He can do it whenever he wants. He does it from time to time as a token of what he'll finally do in our final healing.

But fathers in the room and mothers, it's the same analogy. And all of you who love a niece or a nephew or a parent, the human compassion, the deepest feeling of compassion that you've ever felt in your heart for someone that you saw suffering, that is a token and a sign that points you to the kind of love that God feels for you.

Somebody needs to hear that today. He's compassionate. His love is so deep, deeper than any father. Makes our love look like hate compared to his. This is his love for us. Reason to praise. Lastly, last major section, verse 15 to 19.

As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field. For the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all. The NASB at that point has his sovereignty rules over all. He is sovereign. He's in control. He is ruling over all. But notice in verse 18, he keeps his covenant.

What covenant does David have in view here? Probably the Mosaic covenant, the covenant at Sinai. For those who keep commandments, there'll be blessings. For those who disobey, there will be the curses of the law.

God is so much bigger than us. The first two blessings as you think about it, the benefits of God on my life. The second one, what he's taken away from me. Now the psalmist wants to turn us and remind us that we are just dust.

120 years if we have the strength compared to the thousands of all the generations that will come. 120 people compared to the 8 billion or 7 point something billion that are walking this planet right now.

We're just small and we come and go like grass and like the flower of the field. The wind passes over and is no more. I think what the psalmist is doing, he's told us what he's done for us and then he's taken the spotlight off of us.

Comparing how short our lives are. It's good for us to contemplate this by the way. Ecclesiastes talks about this, to think about how our life is just a vapor and gone. Compare that with God who is from everlasting to everlasting.

Think about this God. He covenants with his people way back with Adam and Eve. Making a plan with them, telling them the parameters whereby they live under his rule. They fall into sin and then the Adamic covenant, there'll be pain in childbirth, sorry ladies.

But there'll be thorns for the men working the ground. All of these curses and yet coming a redeemer, the seed of the woman. This promise from everlasting to everlasting, God is steadfast in his love.

He covenants with Adam. Then with Noah after destroying the earth with water. He covenants to never do that again and puts a rainbow in the sky as a sign of the covenant. Then with Abraham, he makes a covenant with Abraham.

That Abraham and his descendants would be blessed. They'd have a land and the seed of the woman would come through him. This promise is from everlasting to everlasting. And notice in Genesis 15, when God covenants with Abraham, it's unilateral.

It's unconditional. In a vision, Abraham falls asleep and he sees a smoking fire pot and a torch pass between the pieces of the sacrifice that Abraham had made. That fire, God is a consuming fire, represents God.

In the way that covenants were made, both parties would pass through the pieces of the sacrifice to indicate that they were in covenant. But in the story of Abraham, Genesis 15, read it later. In that story, God alone passes through the sacrifice.

Meaning God is promising to do this unconditionally. The promise to Abraham is unconditional. And then he gives another unconditional promise in 2 Samuel 7, verse 13, that a descendant of David would always sit on the throne.

David received that covenant promise. And as he writes these words, he's thinking of the promises of God. The faithfulness of God. Where do we sit at this point in time? Under the new covenant. Under the new covenant.

The last night before Jesus was killed, he took bread and he broke it. And he passed it out saying, this is my body. And he passed the cup and he said, drink from it. This is my blood of the covenant which is given for you.

It's a sure and steadfast sign, unconditionally, that he has bought your redemption in his blood and he secures you for himself and you're safe in him. He, from everlasting to everlasting, is controlling this.

And you say, wait a minute, you're taking that a step far. Are you saying that his sovereignty is total? Absolute sovereignty? You're not trying to say that he's sovereign over all. Look back again at verse 19.

His, N-A-S-B, sovereignty rules over all. He is steadfast. He is reliable. He has accomplished everything from first to last. And so he closes the psalm with these four blessings again. Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of the Lord.

I think that's a parallel with those who fear him, obeying his voice. Why talk about angels at this particular point in time? The angels here are the ones who never fell. They worship him because he's God.

But how much more, we who have been forgiven and we've been healed and we've been ransomed and crowned and satisfied, how much more should we praise even than angels? So he says, verse 21, bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers.

That means that I should bless the Lord, right? Because I'm a minister. But first Peter 2, 5 says that we, the body of Christ, are a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. All of us are ministers in that sense.

All of us should bless the Lord. And it makes it very personal in verse 22. Bless the Lord, all his works in all places. That word, all of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. He makes it personal again.

He turns it back to you and to me. And so what do we do with all this? In closing, we bless the Lord. If you are not one who's ever feared the Lord, fear first of all, respect and hold in awe to the point where you come to him trembling for forgiveness.

Do that now. Make sure that you are those who fear him. And if you've come to him for salvation, be glad. Put off all grumbling and complaining and rejoice in what God has already done for you. This psalm, if it does nothing else, should set you to praising.

That's why I quoted a lot of songs today. I wanted to remind you that there is a fountain filled with blood. Be singing your heart out day in and day out. As David Livingston said, and also another missionary, Hudson Taylor, I never made a sacrifice.

Never made a sacrifice. He has done it all. He's accomplished all this for us. So worship team, come on up. We're going to close by putting into practice the things that we've heard.