WWUTT 1149 As Far As the East is from the West?

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In Psalm 103 it says that God takes our sins, throws them as far as the east is from the west and he remembers them no more.

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Now that doesn't mean that God forgets our sins, it means he remembers his promises to us when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the

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Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our

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Q &A on Friday. Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you Becky. Well being Thursday we have been in the

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Psalms and picking up where we left off last week that would put us in Psalm 102.

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If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there. This is a prayer of one afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the

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Lord. Let's begin here in verse 1. Hear my prayer, O Lord, let my cry come to you.

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Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me, answer me speedily in the day when

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I call. For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace.

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My heart is struck down like grass and has withered. I forget to eat my bread.

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Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my flesh. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places.

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I lie awake, I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. All the day my enemies taunt me.

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Those who deride me use my name for a curse. For I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink because of your indignation and anger.

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For you have taken me up and thrown me down. My days are like an evening shadow.

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I wither away like grass. But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever.

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You are remembered throughout all generations. You will arise and have pity on Zion.

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It is the time to favor her. The appointed time has come. For your servants hold her stones dear and have pity on her dust.

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Nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory.

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For the Lord builds up Zion. He appears in his glory. He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.

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Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the

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Lord, that he looked down from his holy height. From heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the

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Lord and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together and kingdoms to worship the

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Lord. He has broken my strength in midcourse. He has shortened my days.

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O my God, I say, take me not away in the midst of my days, you whose years endure throughout all generations.

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Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

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They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away.

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But you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure.

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Their offspring shall be established before you. Now, I'm not going to go back through this verse by verse like I typically do, but I do want to draw out a few points.

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So in the very beginning through the first 11 verses, this is clearly mourning.

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And we get to verses 9 and 10 where it says, for I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink.

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Why? Because of your indignation and anger. For you have taken me up and thrown me down.

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One of the things that we see that's very thematic in these first 11 verses is the psalmist understanding that their days are brief.

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They're like a shadow. They're like nothing. They're like dust. They go up like smoke. They're here today and gone tomorrow.

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So the brevity of life is very much in view here. But the person is also being tormented.

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And in their torment, it is the Lord who has done this to them. So they shift in verse 12.

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We shift in our prayer in verse 12 from mourning to praising God. But you,

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O Lord, are enthroned forever. You are remembered throughout all generations. My life is brief and will come to nothing.

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But the Lord is forever. So even though this person is tormented and they know in their prayer that it is the

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Lord who has done this to me, I will praise God for what have

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I. I mean, anything else in life is not going to save me. I'm not going to be sustained by anything else in this world.

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It is the Lord who will sustain me. So how is it that the psalmist, when they are being afflicted by God, will go from mourning to praising

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God when God is the one who is afflicting them? Well, it's because, as we have come to know, as is said in Proverbs, and we hear it again in the book of Hebrews, the

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Lord disciplines those he loves. If he was not disciplining us, then we would be illegitimate children and we would not be the children of God.

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Here you have a discipline that has come upon a person as a chastening. We all deserve judgment.

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That's what we all deserve. All of us have sinned. We have rebelled against God. We deserve the judgment of God.

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God does not owe us anything. We don't deserve anything from God but his judgment. That's all that we deserve.

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And yet he shows us mercy and grace and love through his son, Jesus Christ, whom he sent to die on the cross for our sins so that whoever believes in him is forgiven their sins and has everlasting life.

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We have the resurrection of Christ and will dwell with him forever in glory. God's love clearly demonstrated.

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Romans 5, 8, he shows his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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So he alone is worthy of our worship. Just because we know we are being afflicted by God doesn't mean that God is no longer worthy of our worship.

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He absolutely is. When a person is convicted in the struggle that they go through to repent of their sin and worship

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God, then the struggle or the affliction that they are experiencing at God's hand is a chastening.

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But if that person does not repent, then the affliction that they are experiencing at God's hand is not chastening.

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It is judgment, and it eventually will lead to death and eternal damnation. I was listening to RefNet just yesterday, as a matter of fact, and John Gerstner was on.

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John Gerstner was like R .C. Sproul's mentor, and he was talking about he was giving this example.

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He was talking about a man who gets AIDS, and this is a man who has contracted AIDS because maybe he was a drug user, and it was through sharing of needles, dirty needles that he contracted

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AIDS. Maybe he was very sexually promiscuous. Maybe he was a homosexual, and then it was through these things that he contracted this disease, this disease that God has poured out on the wicked as a judgment.

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Now, if that man who has in his filthy lifestyle contracted AIDS, if his eyes are opened and he realizes his sin and he begs

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God for forgiveness, then that disease that he has contracted, which he's still going to suffer the effects of just because he asked forgiveness doesn't mean that he's not going to have that disease anymore.

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But he has the disease as a consequence of his sin, but it's also a chastening, something that has turned his heart from his sin that would eventually have led to his destruction, and now he has turned to Christ.

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And so he would even be thankful for the disease in that sense, that if it were not for this,

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I would have continued in the way that I was in, and God would have destroyed me in his wrath. But he has used this disease to chasten me and convict me of my sin that I would turn from it and turn to Christ and so live.

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So in that way, then the person is thanking God for that affliction because it turned their heart to him.

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There are some who will contract a disease like AIDS, and they contracted that disease not because they were being punished for a particular sin.

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Maybe they just, you know, they happen to have contracted the disease because they got the blood of somebody who was infected with that disease.

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And so now they have it, even though they were not living that sinful lifestyle that led to them contracting the disease.

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So what is the disease to them? Well, it's still a judgment because all of us deserve the wrath of God.

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All of us have sinned against God. And so what we deserve for our sin is to perish and die.

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So even a person who has not lived life in a certain way that would have led to in their destructive behavior, contracting such a deadly disease, even if they contracted it, you know, just minding their own business and somehow something happened to them, getting contaminated blood or something like that.

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And they contract AIDS that could still be used in the life of that person to convict their heart of sin and to turn that person to the

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Lord. Now, granted, the gospel has to be in there through all of this. Somebody has to come to them with the gospel.

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It's not just they contracted a disease and they go, oh, well, I repent and follow God. They have heard the gospel that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

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But we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ is forgiven their sins and no longer under the wrath of God, but will live with him forever.

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So this is just kind of some examples. I don't want to keep going on with with John Kirshner's example here.

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But these are some of the ways that God uses those things that we're afflicted with to turn us toward him.

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And this person does that here in this song. We don't know exactly why the person is being afflicted, whether it is whether it's something they did and therefore deserved the judgment or the punishment that they were receiving or if if it's just, you know, the general struggles of life that they're going through and mourning over the fact that life is so brief and there's nothing that I can do to get me out of this.

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But the Lord is enthroned forever. You are remembered throughout all generations. You will arise and have pity on Zion.

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It is the time to favor her. The appointed time has come. So the favor of God upon his people that they might turn to him and live and and we have here the mention of the nations.

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Let this be recorded for a generation to come so that a people yet to be created may praise the

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Lord that he looked down from his holy height from heaven. The Lord looked at the earth to hear the groans of the prisoners to set free those who were doomed to die that they may declare in Zion the name of the

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Lord and in Jerusalem his praise when peoples gather together and kingdoms to worship the

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Lord. Praising the Lord becomes a testimony to another people who have yet to be created.

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Now, that may not just mean another generation that is to come that hasn't even been born yet, but it may even mean a group of persons who has yet to experience that conversion and regeneration being created in Christ through the

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Holy Spirit to have gone from rebellious against God to being the children of God.

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They are created to be the children of God by the redeeming power of the blood of Christ.

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And the psalmist comes to learn a valuable lesson and we see in verse 23. He has broken my strength in midcourse.

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He has shortened my days. Oh my God, I say take not take me not away in the midst of my days you whose years endure throughout all generations.

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Why is it that God has shortened our lives so that we would depend upon him in the

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Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had sinned against God by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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God said, let us also take away from them the tree of life so they would not eat from that tree and live forever.

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God has shortened our days again as a chastening that we would see our mortality, our limitedness, our inability to save ourselves so we might turn to the

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Lord and live. Once again, God doing these things to us to discipline his children whom he loves that we might turn to him so he may lavish upon us his very great and precious promises.

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Let's go to Psalm 103, this one of David. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me.

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Bless his holy name. How many of you had Andre Crouch going through your head when

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I read that? Verse 2. 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.

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Once again, I had the person from the previous Psalm, Psalm 102, who is struggling with their circumstance, they're struggling with their mortality.

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They know that God has afflicted them, and yet that person turns to the Lord and praises his name.

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Well, if they were to continue to mourn in self -pity without turning to the Lord, that's very prideful.

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They're still relying upon themselves rather than relying upon God, and God will destroy them for their wickedness.

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That's rebellion against God. It's thinking of yourself as being God, still thinking that you can manage your problem on your own, though you may be aware and know that your days are limited and you will not live forever.

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But this person here, the psalmist in Psalm 103, it's like continuing the praise of God that he deserves.

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God forgives iniquity. He heals diseases. So turn to the Lord and you will live.

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This life will be taken from us. It is limited, but we will live forever with God if we believe on his name and have faith in his son,

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Jesus Christ, who has died for us. Look at verse 6, the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

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And I must remind you here, we may not see justice in this lifetime, but we will certainly receive justice at the end, our enemies being destroyed, and we will be upheld by the

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Lord in glory. But even as this works for us right now, the Lord works righteousness.

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The righteousness that we have is not ours. It comes from Christ. It has been given to us and justice for all who are oppressed.

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We were oppressed in the chains of bondage that we wore, enslaved to our sin, and Christ has broken those chains and set us free by his death on the cross, taking our penalty upon himself and satisfying, appeasing the wrath of God.

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So even in this, by faith in Christ, in his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave, the

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Lord has worked righteousness and justice for those who are oppressed. Verse 7, he made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.

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The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

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That, of course, was said to Moses. It is also something that was said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

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I have mercy and compassion on whom I have compassion. Verse 9, he will not always chide.

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So remember the previous psalm we were reading about the Lord chastening. Well, he will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

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He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

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What do we deserve for our sins and our iniquities? Death and destruction. But how does the

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Lord repay us? He gives us everlasting life in Christ. That's that's his grace.

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I mean, it's it's demerited favor. What we deserve is death. But what God gives us is life through his son and eternal life in his kingdom above.

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Verse 11, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.

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As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

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Now, that doesn't mean that God forgets our sins. God doesn't have a faulty memory.

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He doesn't even willingly say, you know, like willfully say, I'm just going to forget about it so that when you go back to God later and you say, hey,

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God, remember that thing that I just did? God goes, what thing? I don't know what you're talking about. God doesn't blank things out of his mind.

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These are metaphorical. This is all poetry that we're reading here in the psalm. So when we read as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us?

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What that means is God doesn't hold our sins against us. That's the blessing. That's the great thing to know that we have sinned and we have done such evil.

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And yet God has forgiven us in his son. As it says in Romans three, he even looked past our sins to the righteousness of Christ that was being dealt for us so that in him we might receive the righteousness of God.

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So once again, it's not about God being forgetful, that there's some sort of heavenly registry out there and he marks out all our sins and therefore heaven no longer has any record of the wrong things that we've done.

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There is a record of the wrong things that we've done. But there's a stamp on that record that says paid in full, as Jesus proclaimed from the cross, it is finished.

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Our sins and our transgressions are forgiven by faith in him. Verse 13, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the

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Lord shows compassion to those who fear him for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.

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In the previous psalm, the psalmist is remembering that he is dust. Here it is. It is said of us, the

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Lord remembers that we are dust and he shows us mercy and grace. As for man, all his days are like grass.

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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.

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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.

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The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules overall.

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Bless the Lord. Oh, you, his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obey the voice of his word.

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Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will. Bless the

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Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion. Bless the

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Lord. Oh, my soul. It is true that we are saved by grace through faith.

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Our salvation is by faith in Christ alone comes in no other way. It is not by our works, lest anyone should boast.

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We read in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, but there is still a work for us to do and we demonstrate that we have received the righteousness of Christ when we do what

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Christ has commanded us to do. Remember that Jesus said he not only gave us this great commission in Matthew chapter 28 verses 19 and 20, but part of that commission is that you teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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There are commands for us to follow. It's not just by faith and then we can go live however it is that we want it because otherwise we're demonstrating we don't actually believe by faith.

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Believing by faith entails that we also live by obedience. And so bless the

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Lord. Oh, you, his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of the

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Lord. Let it be so. Fear him. Obey him. Walk in his ways because he loves you and has dealt bountifully with you.

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Amen. This is when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great

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Bible teaching programs on the web and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

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Find a good gospel teaching Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again tomorrow as we continue our