Bless The Lord - [Psalm 103]

It's been quite a couple of weeks here between all of the graduation parties and back and forth and this and that.

And a week ago yesterday, Dallas and I were privileged to be at West Point for the graduation of the class of 2006.

And both General Ebizade that spoke at the graduation banquet on Friday night and the president who spoke at the actual commencement ceremonies pointed out that this class, the class of 2006 fills a rather unique niche in the history of West Point in that they entered the academy in a time of war and now they are graduating from the academy in a time of war.

And there have been relatively few classes that have done that and these young men and women truly answered the call to arms.

They knew exactly what they were getting into as they came and it was quite an emotional time to sit there and watch these young people cross the stage and salute the president and accept their diploma but also that they are taking the president's commission to go forward and to defend and protect all of you.

Now, they take the oath to defend and protect the constitution of the United States but that essentially means you.

And as I saw that and looked at all these young people entering the ministry as Paul would have it because he tells us in Romans 13 that those that bear the sword are

God's ministers and they are charged with protecting the righteous and bringing

God's wrath upon the unrighteous. And I was thinking there's a real sermon here and you may hear that sermon someday but not tonight.

Tonight's sermon is also I think an illustration of how the spirit of God moves among us because it is of an effect a continuation of Pastor Jeffrey's Sunday school lesson this morning where he talked about how we worship and how we so often just go through the motions.

And completely without any collusion at all as we have not talked about this, I had already decided that I would preach on Psalm 103 which is a psalm in which

David encourages himself to bless the Lord. So turn with me if you will to Psalm 103.

And before we open the word of God, let's open with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we truly would wish to bless you because you tell us that you seek those who will worship you in spirit and in truth and we would indeed be such,

Father. And so tonight, may the Holy Spirit minister to us. May he open our hearts. May he be our teacher.

We would ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Psalm 103, David begins, 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.

Now, this Psalm is David talking to himself. David himself is the subject of the

Psalm. It's who he's addressing. He is stirring himself up. He is reflecting on all that God has done for him over the years of his life, the way

God has protected him, the way that God has taken him from being a merely a young shepherd boy, so unimportant that when the prophet

Samuel showed up and said, bring me your sons, Jesse brings them all except David because,

I mean, who could possibly want David? And so, but Samuel says, these guys, none of these guys are it.

Have you got anybody else? He said, well, yeah, there's the kid who's watching the sheep. And Samuel says, go get him because that's the one that God is going to make king of Israel.

And so, David reflects on this. And as his life goes on, he went out to face

Goliath and God has protected him there. David shielded him,

David, God was shielding David from the wrath of Saul because Saul was aware fairly early that God had withdrawn himself from him and that David was anointed to be king of Israel.

And so, foolish as it seems, Saul says, well, if I can kill

David, I can thwart God's plan. And so, he goes off hunting David. And yet, all of the time,

David flees, David hides, but even when the opportunities present themselves,

David is not going to act independently of God. Even though here's

Saul, Saul's asleep. And David's men are saying, look, the Lord's put him into your hands.

David says, no, I am not going to raise my hand against the Lord's anointed.

God has said what he will do to me, I will trust God and God will take care of Saul. I'm not going to inject myself into what is his prerogative.

And indeed, God has made David king over Israel. And all of these things, all of these things cause

David to break forth in blessing and praise for his God. And we can gather a few principles from what

David has to say and what he's written down. First of all, the Lord is deserving of praise.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. The Lord is deserving of praise. He is the sovereign king of all creation.

And praise is due him. Praise is his right.

It's not something that we do because we're feeling good or because it really strikes us and we really like God.

No, God is the sovereign king. He is due praise. It is his by right.

He made us. As the Psalmist says elsewhere, it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves.

We didn't reach down and grab our bootstraps and haul ourselves up. God made us.

And so therefore, we owe our allegiance to him. We owe him praise. And so he's deserving of praise.

And to not praise him is sin. To not praise him is rebellion. And so the

Bible is full of calls to praise God and full of words of praise to God.

If you have a Strong's Concordance or someone else's concordance, look up words like praise and honor and glory and just see how many entries there are.

The whole book of Psalms, the word praise, praise God, honor

God, glorify God, over and over and over, it's the theme. In the

New Testament, the writer of Hebrew says that praise is a sacrifice that we bring to God.

Praise is a sacrifice that we offer to God. And so praising God is our privilege.

It is our joy. It is our duty. It's a duty for all creation.

Because as we'll see, as we go through this Psalm, there is a universal call to praise

God. There is a universal duty that falls on all men to praise God. But especially there is the call to praise

God if you are his saints, because all kinds of good things come to you if you are one of his saints.

The second thing, he says, "'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.'"

God himself is good. God is the fountain of all good, regardless of the channel by which it might flow to us.

God himself is good. And God is the source of all goodness. James 1, 17, "'Every good and every perfect gift comes,' what?

"'Down from the Father.'" Solomon says the same thing in the book of Ecclesiastes.

We are to look at everything that comes into our life as a gift from the Father's hand. We have a good heavenly

Father. And he knows what is good for us, which might not necessarily be what we think is good for us.

As Dr. Raymond pointed out a couple of weeks ago, he said, we might think, he said,

I might think that it's good that I have a million dollar fortune, but God obviously doesn't think so because I don't have one.

And all of these things that we think, well, life would be so nice if we had. Well, God apparently doesn't agree with you because if he did, you would have it from his grace and from his goodness.

And so God is the source of all good. Every second of every day, all of his creation, he holds it together actively.

All of creation consists because God holds it together. The worst sinner on earth, whoever that might be, the worst sinner on earth owes his existence to God.

The fact that it has been raining and it rains on the just and the unjust, that's

God, that's common grace being poured out upon his creation. If it wasn't for him actively upholding the universe that he has made, all of those little electric bonds, and I've used this word a lot, but all of those little electric bonds that hold the atoms together would all just switch off and we would all just disappear.

Nothing would be here. We would simply cease to exist. And so he goes along and he concludes this first verse, bless his holy name.

It is the name of God that is to be praised. And again, if you look through the Bible, there are injunction after injunction after injunction to praise the name of God.

Now, what does he mean here? Does he, is he talking about just the letters? Because the Tetragrammaton, those of you that have studied anything about the

Old Testament know that the Israelites revered this, they wouldn't say it.

You know, the scribes would wash themselves when they actually wrote it down. But is that what

David has in mind, the actual letters, the ink on paper? I would suggest not.

Because what does it mean? What is someone's name? And this is the concept that sort of slipped away from us in this day and age.

But it used to be particular, your name was something of great value.

Because all that you were, everything that constituted you was wrapped up in your name.

All of your attributes was wrapped up in your name. The family name was something of great value that was to be guarded very carefully.

You know, in a community, someone's name, you know, that's who you were.

That's what you were thought of in the community. And so I think this is what

David has in mind. He's referring to all that God is. All of his attributes, all of his kindnesses, all of his goodness, everything to his children is all wrapped up in this, the name of God.

We are to bless that. We are to praise that. His name is holy. His name is set apart.

It is to be revered. And it is certainly not to be taken in vain or used lightly.

And when we think of someone taking the Lord's name in vain, we normally think of someone cursing and certainly that fits that definition.

But also we can use the Lord's name in vain in ways that we're perhaps really not aware of.

It's when we apply it to something light. We use it in a way that somehow cheapens it.

You know, we're not to do that. We are to praise his name. But he goes on. He says, all that is within me, all that is within me, that the entire being, the soul is to be used in praise.

True praise comes from the heart. True praise comes from the heart. On at least some level, the emotions must be engaged when one is praising.

And I realized that I'm starting to tread on some ground here that can get you into trouble because all too often we think of the emotional experience itself as being praise.

And if we had an emotional experience, then we said, well, I must have praised. And yet you can gin up emotional experiences all sorts of ways, depending upon how your own personality is.

You know, if I know you pretty well, I can find out what trips your emotional buttons and I can play a tune on those and you'll tell me where the gold is buried.

So we can do that. We can work up emotional responses. And that's not what

David has in mind here, but neither on the other side of the coin is praising a dry experience.

You know, our emotions are to be engaged. Emotions, true emotions from the heart are to be engaged when we praise

God. Take, for example, if you read Peter 1 .1. The first chapter of 1

Peter, what does he do? He gets two verses down and then he suddenly breaks off into this hymn of praise because what's happened?

The spark of true praise is when we meditate and think and reflect on what

God has done for us in grace. And Peter gets two verses down on paper and then he said,

I got to stop. I've got to start praising God. And he starts writing this hymn of praise there.

You know, and then he gets back to his subject eventually. But that's what happens when we start to reflect on who we are and our state before God and what

God has done for us, that triggers praise. And that's what

David's talking about. You know, bless the Lord. Oh, my soul, consider what he has done for us.

Consider what he has done for me. And again, remember, this is David talking to himself. He's talking to himself.

He's stirring himself up to praise, to praise. It's supposed to be a heartfelt response.

All of one's being is to be involved in the praise of God. David calls on his own soul to bless the

Lord. It's not something cold and mechanical. David has been reflecting on and enumerating the attributes of God.

David has been doing what your mothers may have told you. If you were raised in a

Christian home, she probably told you or your grandmother, someone told you to count your blessings, right?

Count your blessings. Well, count your blessings really works. There's a hymn, count your blessings, name them one by one.

And what does David say? David has been doing this all his life. Because if you remember the occasion when

David and his men get back and their town has been sacked and all their children and their wives have been hauled off.

And so what do all the men do? Well, they blame David. That makes a lot of sense. But they blame

David. That's very typical human reaction. What does David do? David encourages himself in the

Lord, the Bible says. And then he gets his men together and says, all right, we're gonna go out and we're gonna pursue and we're gonna overtake.

But see, David counts, David thinks back, counts his blessings, reflects on the times that God has delivered him, reflects on the time that God has been good to him, reflects on the times that Saul could have caught up with him and yet God delivered him and over and over and over.

And so often, a couple of things, number one, we presume on God.

We presume on God. And we just expect God to do marvelous things for us.

And when he doesn't, we get very upset with God, don't we?

And so what we're really complaining about, we're complaining, we complain when actually, every now and then,

God says, you know, I'm gonna let you, you did not seek my face before you went off and did whatever it was that you did.

And so I'm gonna let you just experience a little bit of the consequences of your actions. And don't we do this to our own children sometimes?

We should. You know, when we see that it's not going to really damage our child permanently, we let him or her go ahead and do what they wanna do.

Even though we know, we could say, now, son, in my increased, in my greater wisdom, in my greater experience,

I know that what you wanna do, trying to jump this on your skateboard is not a good plan.

Nevertheless, so that you may increase in wisdom, go ahead, but then what's dad also waiting to do?

He knows that the kid is about to smash into something and he's gonna bloody his nose or scrape his knee and whatever.

And so dad is going to be right there to be ready to pick the child up, comfort him and get him, set him on the path that he should go, right?

Well, God does that with us and God does that perfectly. And just every now and then, he says,

I'm gonna let you experience a little bit of the consequences of your action so that you may increase in wisdom. And David is saying, you know,

David is saying, I've thought about all of these things, I'm gonna praise God. I'm gonna praise God for everything that he has done to me.

It's going to, it's producing this strong, emotional reaction in me.

And it's almost like if two old soldiers should happen to meet, you know, after a long absence and one of them happened to have saved the life of the other on the battlefield, do you think their greeting is gonna be a just dry handshake?

Oh, how's it going? Good to see you. How are you doing? It's not gonna be that, is it?

It's gonna be slapping on the back and hugging and all of those things. And David is thinking of the same thing.

It's not going to be something dry. It's not going to be mechanical. Think about what Almighty God has done.

He has elected us. He has drawn us. He sent his son to die for us. He regenerated us.

He saved us. And if you think about that and it doesn't stir up some kind of an emotional reaction in you,

I think you're dead. You know, Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards believed very strongly that true worship, true worship had to involve what he called the affections.

That if your affections, if your emotions were not involved, it wasn't truly worship. But how often are we strangely detached?

We come to church in the morning, we nod to God, we go through the motions and then, man, just as soon, we're out the door.

Because, you know, okay, we punched our clock here with God and now we're out, it's our time. Even though as Pastor Jeffrey said this morning, it's the

Lord's day. And so, you know, we wanna just get this done and then get on with it.

But we go through the motions. But as Isaiah wrote, our hearts are far from him. And that's not what

God wants. Praise is to involve the whole man.

There's not supposed to be anything superficial about it. Neither are we to substitute emotionalism for true worship.

And this is always a danger. Proper worship involves and involves the emotions.

And so, we sometimes mistake the emotion, which is a proper result, with the cause.

But the cause is for us to reflect on God's goodness and mercy and to study his attributes.

What does a couple do when they first start falling in love, right? The first thing the guy notices, he notices the girl and he's attracted by the way she looks.

But very quickly after that, he wants to know everything there is to know about her. And she wants to know everything there is to know about him.

And they begin to learn about each other. And we should approach God the same way.

We should be studying his attributes, learning about him. And this works up this genuine emotion of worship and true worship to him.

And so, the problem is it's too easy to generate a phony emotional response, particularly in certain individuals.

That's by nature if you're a very emotional person. It's all too easy to crank out an emotional response and mistake it for the real thing.

Music is a strong way of doing that. For example, you say, oh,

I just love whatever it is because it produces, it makes me feel good, you know.

And this is why at this church at least, we're very careful that we don't put little sappy little ditties on the wall and have you sing them.

You know, 7 -11 songs, seven words repeated 11 times. We don't do that.

We look for, whether it's a hymn or a praise chorus is okay, but we look for something with content in it, real content in it.

Now, we are also supposed to remember his past mercies and we are to be thankful.

He says, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and what? Forget not all his benefits. David is starting to list off practical steps.

How do we go about praising God? And the first one is don't forget, remember what

God has done for you because what we're not thankful for is not remembered.

We quickly forget what we're not thankful for. And we sometimes we don't remember and we forget things that we ought to be thankful for.

David has an active thing in mind here, actively reminding himself of the things

God has done for him and we should be doing the same thing. You might wanna keep a blessing diary.

I've known people that have actually done that who write down so that they can look back and say, oh, on this date,

God has done this in my life and on that date, God did this in my life. God answered this prayer in this way.

That's one approach and some people have done it. Matthew Henry said this.

He said, oh my soul, to thy shame be it spoken. Thou has forgotten many of his benefits but surely thou will not forget them all for thou should not have forgotten any.

Reminding himself, remember his benefits because it is unjust and unkind not to be thankful for what

God has bestowed. You know, when I was a child and probably when you were children, you were taught to say thank you, right?

For any act of kindness or for gifts or for whatever it is. And when you thank someone, you are acknowledging dependency actually because if it wasn't for the giver, you wouldn't have whatever it was that you'd been given.

So you have been dependent upon them and you're acknowledging that relationship. Thanks are due to the giver of any gift.

And if thanks are due to human givers, well, they are certainly due to God because the fact that you draw breath, you are to thank him for that.

What did Jeremiah say? Your mercies are new every morning. The fact that I woke up this morning is

God's mercy. He watched over me during the night. And all of the things that could have happened, didn't happen.

And all of the bad things that could have occurred, didn't occur. He's watching over us.

And so thanks are due to the giver. And yet today, what have we done?

We've built a society where everything's a right. It's my right for this. And brother, don't you get between me and my rights.

I'll tell you what, you know. Fortunately for us, God does not deal with us according to what is ours by right.

We're all still alive. And so, but Paul in Romans, Romans 121, being unthankful is a characteristic of the wicked.

That's one of the marks of the wicked. They are not thankful. They do not acknowledge God as the source of everything in their lives.

They do not acknowledge God for their very existence, for the breath that they draw, for the health that they have, whatever it is.

They don't thank God for it. And so they don't see him as a source of all things.

They do not see him as their creator. They do not see themselves as created beings that were made in the image of God.

And therefore they owe their allegiance to God. And so David goes on though, he starts to outline reasons to praise, reasons for praise.

He, number one, he forgives all your iniquities. He forgives all your iniquities.

And what greater reason for praise is there than the fact that your sins are forgiven?

Your sins are forgiven. Without having your sins forgiven, nothing else has any value.

Nothing else has any value. For what does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul?

If you lived an absolutely perfect life in human terms, if you lived a life of ease, if you lived a life of wealth, what's happening?

It's doing nothing but postponing the inevitable. If you live to be a hundred years old, what is that compared to eternity?

What does that compare to eternity? So it is the most valuable of all gifts.

And it is a gift because we are incapable of doing anything to merit

God's favor. The gift of forgiveness of sins is available only because God sent his son to die in our place.

The wages of sin is death. If someone sins, someone has to die. If someone sins, blood has to be shed.

And so if we are not to die, someone has to die in our place.

And God sent his son. And if that isn't reason for giving him eternal praise, if that fact alone isn't reason for giving him eternal praise,

I don't know what would be. But David also points out the totality of God's mercy.

All our iniquities are forgiven. Not some of them, not a few, not this category over here is forgiven, but over here, now these are in a special category.

And so to get rid of these, we're gonna have to do something else. You're gonna have to cooperate to get rid of these sins.

Those over there, okay, we'll shove them out. That's not the way it works. David says, all of my iniquities are forgiven.

All of them, every last one. All of our sins, past, the present, and the future were laid on him.

And in our case, don't forget, when Jesus died on the cross, all of our sins were future, right? So he died for all of them.

He died for all of them. There's nothing, there are no sins that we're gonna sneak in that God didn't know about because we have an omniscient

God. So he knew about all of it. They were all laid upon him.

He bore the sins and he put them away, David says, as far as the

East is from the West. And as I pointed out in Sunday school a few weeks ago, that the

East from the West, you cannot go West. You cannot travel West and sometime find yourself traveling

East. You can travel West from now forever and you will never find yourself going

East. It's not like going North and South. If you go North, you cross over the pole and then you're going

South again. But David's got his geography right. He's using a metaphor for an infinite distance.

God has put our sins away. He says, I'll remember them no more. I've blotted out the writing of ordinances, it says in the

New Testament. Our sins are completely removed and he has removed the barrier.

He has removed the barrier that keeps goodness from us because until your sins are forgiven, there is nothing good that can come to you.

The central fact that men must deal with is that there is a thrice holy God in heaven and that we have offended him mightily.

And the issue that we must all face is right out of Job, how shall a man stand before God?

How shall a man be right with God? You have to answer that question.

How can we be made right in the sight of a holy God? It's the key question in the Bible. And so there is nothing that we can do to merit forgiveness or to merit

God's favor. That's the sum total of the doctrine of total depravity. If we are to be forgiven, excuse me, it must be on the merit of someone else.

Someone else has to bear our sins. And so God sent his only son to die in our place.

We have a debt that cannot be paid. We have a debt that we are incapable of paying.

We can't even begin to pay this debt that we owe. And so God sent his son to pay that debt and all good things, all benefits stem from that act.

And so what's happened? First of all, we are restored to God's favor. We were once God's enemies.

Now we are his children. We, our status has changed.

We are now sons and daughters of the king. We are part of the royal family.

And all of the benefits that come from being part of the royal family come to us.

We are now, the king is our father. We are the sons and the daughters of the king.

And all of those benefits come to us, the rights, the privileges, all of it goes with it.

And so David goes on, David goes on. He heals all your diseases.

And he's moving now from the spiritual, which is first, to the physical. Scholars disagree, but James Montgomery Boyce, at least, holds that David here is speaking of real physical illness.

He is talking about real disease. And we don't mean to imply this health and wealth nonsense that gets bandied about, but what

David's focusing on is that whatever degree of health you have been given is a gift from God.

It doesn't mean that you'll never get sick. It doesn't mean that if you do get sick, that you're sinning.

But what it does mean is that the good health that you enjoy, to whatever degree that is, that's a gift from God.

God gave you that. God gave you that. And so he goes on, he goes on.

He heals your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit, he says.

And again, David is talking about the real physical world. And he's an expert on having your life redeemed and having your life rescued, because Goliath, the small matter of Goliath, and then

King Saul chasing him throughout the caves and all of these things, plus the fact that before he became king,

David was a professional soldier. And he went out and fought the Philistines over and over and over again, and very successfully too.

And so God's protecting him through all of that. All of these dangers,

God has delivered him from. And David is acknowledging the fact that it is God that has delivered me.

And sometimes I think we need to more emphasize to our own children that God's hands upon our lives.

You might have an experience, something like you're headed downhill and maybe the brakes in the family car slip or something, but it just so happens that there is a very convenient escape ramp that you're able to hit.

And you don't go over the side, your car just comes to a stop in a cloud of dust. And when things like that happen to us, do we emphasize that that is

God's hand upon our lives? Do we point out to our children, this is a real physical example of God's reaching down and dealing with us and intervening in our life right now.

Because sometimes don't we forget that God intervenes in our lives.

He is not a totally transcendent God. He is transcendent. He is over all, but he is also imminent.

He has a personal concern for each one of his children. And because he is an omniscient and omnipresent God, and because he is over all, he has time to concentrate 100 % of his attention upon each one of his children, all the time.

Consider that. God watches over you all the time. The biblical writer says, not a sparrow.

You can't imagine something of less value than a sparrow, right?

Two sparrows were sold for a penny in the Old Testament days.

And he says, one, Jesus says, one sparrow falls and your heavenly father notes that.

Or to bring it up to modern times, one little squirrel gets hit trying to get across the road and your heavenly father knows that.

He takes note of that. And if your heavenly father is taking note of birds and little squirrels, what is he doing for you?

Who are created in his image? And why are you worried about what am

I gonna eat? What am I gonna wear? What am I, where am I gonna sleep? You know, so many times,

I've said this before, you know, we are willing to trust God with the destiny of our eternal souls, but we are not willing to trust him for lunch.

Now, why is that? David says, bless the Lord, bless the

Lord, because we're crowned. A crown is symbolic, it marks us as royalty.

We are advanced in the love and favor of God. We are the particular objects of his care. We are the particular objects of his mercy.

And he satisfies us with good things. He satisfies you with good things, says verse five, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

God is good, and he gives good gifts to his children. And not only that,

God gives the ability to enjoy what he bestows. Now think about that.

Every one of you, if you don't know somebody personally, you know about someone who has a great deal of this world's goods.

He has a lot of stuff and things, and yet he is totally miserable. All he can think about is getting more stuff and things, because he thinks somehow, if I have more stuff than I already have, that's going to make me happy, and it never does.

Now, why is that? It's because he doesn't have capacity for life. That's a gift of God.

God gives the capacity for life. What does Solomon say, again, in the book of Ecclesiastes?

Godliness, he said, whatever the Lord gives you, that's your portion, and you enjoy it.

Whatever he's given you in this life, you enjoy it. Don't go out and seek for stuff and things, but God's going to give you a certain measure of physical possessions, and whatever he gives you, you enjoy it.

That's what he's given you, and he's given you that to enjoy. He's given you good things. The Bible says that godliness with contentment is great gain.

Godliness with contentment is great gain. Be content with what you have, but enjoy what you have.

Don't go around thinking that anything that might possibly bring any pleasure into your life is to be rejected.

I have known people that actually function from that philosophy, and let me tell you something.

That's a miserable way to live. You know, I can't possibly enjoy this because somehow that makes me less holy.

I'm very holy because I'm living in misery all the time. No, you're not holy because you're living in misery.

You're stupid. You're not enjoying what God has given you to enjoy.

And then he says, David brings out a simile. He says, you're going to be renewed like the eagle. Well, eagles live to be,

I'm told, eagles live to be quite old for birds, and as they go through life, periodically, every year, they molt their feathers, and they get new feathers.

And because of this, they look youthful. You know, they appear youthful, and from time to time, apparently, they lose almost every feather they have and get all new feathers.

And so, and David must know about this because he says, you're going to be renewed like that.

You know, God is going to renew you like an eagle. And so then, in verses six to 18, and we're going to speed up a little bit here, in this section, he talks about what

God is like. What is God, why should we praise God? And so David starts in verses six to 18, what

God is like, and he starts off. First of all, the Lord works righteousness, verse six, and justice for all who are oppressed.

There was a time when David was absolutely sure he was alone in the world, you know?

And yet, very shortly after that, God, God had 400 men ready to rally to David's side.

And so, one day, David's running for the caves, you know, to escape

Saul, but very shortly after that, he's got 400 men around him. He's not alone. God hasn't abandoned him.

The Lord works justice and righteousness for those who are oppressed. And then he says,

God is good to all. His providential mercy extends to the just and the unjust alike, and in a special way, he is good to Israel.

He said he made known his works, his ways to Moses and his acts to the people of Israel. And by extension, we can say that he is good to us because we are his people.

We are his heavenly people. We are part of the church. But he revealed himself to Moses as the great

I am. And now he has revealed himself to us in the person of his son.

He has shown himself to us in the person of his son. He has reached down to his creatures because we can certainly not reach to him.

And so he has reached to us. And that is reason to praise him. And he goes on, he's compassionate and gracious.

Fortunately for mankind, God does not immediately deal with men as they deserve.

He does not deal with us as we deserve. He delays judgment.

In particular, he delays judgment for his elect. Certain of his creation are elect.

And you know what? He's gonna wait for every last one of them to come into the kingdom.

He's gonna draw them to his kingdom. He's not gonna lose a single one. Jesus said, all of the sheep.

Not 99, all 100 are going to be his sheep. Or name the number of the sheep that the father's given to me,

I'm going to have. I'm not gonna lose any of them. They're going to come.

He's slow to anger. He's patient. He abounds in love, says David. And then he goes on talking about things.

Verse nine, he does not always chide. Now that's a good old word. To chide means to constantly scold.

To constantly find fault with someone. Constantly disapproved. Never satisfied.

You know, little child runs home. Look, daddy, I made 90 on my exam.

Why didn't you make 100? You know, that kind of thing. That's chiding. God is not like that.

God doesn't, God's not like that. God deals with us as a loving and patient father, parent.

He does not overlook things. He does not excuse things. But he gently corrects.

He gently disciplines. He gently shows us the right path and puts us on it and keeps us there.

And when we get off the path, he nudges us back onto the path. And he doesn't hold a grudge.

Our sins are put away from God's sight. God doesn't keep a list of the stuff that we have done in the past.

He can't, he's not gonna go, well, you know, back in ought five or whenever it was, you did this or that or the other thing.

God doesn't keep a list. He said, your sins are put away. He says,

I will remember them no more. They're wiped out. And he doesn't give us what our sins deserves, fortunately, because we'd all be dead otherwise.

Instead, his kindness leads us to repentance, says Paul in Romans chapter two, verse four.

His mercy is unimaginably vast and unimaginably high. There is absolutely no proportion between God's mercy and any possible merit that we have.

It's so far exceeds us. As the hymn writer put it, grace that is greater than all our sin.

Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured there where the blood of the lamb was spilled.

Our debt is unimaginably vast beyond any possibility of payment, but God's mercy to his chosen is vaster still.

There is no exceeding the scope of his mercy. And he deals with us as a father deals with his children.

We are weak in knowledge and he instructs. We are weak in self -discipline and he gently disciplines and corrects us.

We are weak in spiritual health and he nurses us and cares for our infirmities. We fall daily and he always picks us up and gently dusts us off and sends us on our way.

You know, try again, try again. And sometimes, sometimes when we're hurt too much, he picks us up and he carries us.

We become discouraged, but he encourages. We slip, but he supports.

We grow weary, but he never tires. What does the

Bible say? The God of Israel never slumbers, never sleeps. He watches over us.

We are changeable, but he is constant. Fear not, you sons of Jacob.

I am the Lord, I change not, he says. We are faithless, but he is faithful.

He knows our weaknesses. He understands that we are only frail dust and he would remind us of that.

We should keep track of that ourselves. We should be reminded of that as well. Our lives are brief, but he is eternal and his mercy is everlasting.

Now, who receives these benefits? Who receives these benefits?

He says in verses 13, verses 17 and verses 18, as a father shows compassion to his children, verse 13, so the

Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Verse 17, but the steadfast love of the

Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children.

Verse 18, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

Those who fear him and those who keep his commandments are the ones on whom these benefits derive.

The Christian life is to be a life of faith and obedience. The Christian life is not a fire escape.

Neither is God a cosmic bellhop that comes and bails us out of whatever situation that we find ourselves in.

It's a life of faith, it's a life of an obedience. We are called to follow him. David knows nothing of easy believism.

We are to take hold of God's commandments and never let go. We are to treat his commandments as a treasure of the greatest imaginable value.

Now, finally, in verses 19 to 22, as he wraps the Psalm up, he has the doctrine of universal providence because God has decreed and ordained all things.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all, he says. So the

Lord has decreed and ordained all things and does all things according to the pleasure of his will.

God has a throne, David says. He has a throne in glory. And what happens from a throne?

The ruler sits on the throne, right? Now, David knows all about this because David has a throne and he's saying by implication, his throne is much higher than my throne.

God has prepared his throne. God's throne is fixed and established. David might be thinking, my throne could be shaky, but God's throne is fixed and established and it's not going to be moved, it can't be shaken.

So he is the sovereign king of the universe. He rules and therefore there is a duty of universal praise.

He goes on, who should praise God? David does not limit the call to praise to just the redeemed.

He includes all of creation. God is so great. God is so wonderful.

Only the universal praise of all creation will do. And so what does he say?

He starts off with the mighty ones, the angels. Bless the Lord, O you his angels. You mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word.

Then bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will.

And then bless the Lord, all his works. He's now down to creation himself and in all places of his dominion, everywhere, everywhere in the universe, everywhere on the world.

We all are to praise him. And finally he gets back down to bless the

Lord, O my soul. He's back down to himself. He's back where he started. You know, verse one.

And so we come at last to the two questions, two questions. First of all,

I would ask you, is there any real praise for God in your heart? And secondly,

I would ask, do you have a share in God's blessings? And as David has pointed out in this

Psalm, there is a universal call on all of creation to praise God, but the blessings are reserved for those who fear him.

And keep his commandments. So ask yourself, have I experienced the forgiveness of sins?

Has God redeemed my life? Has God satisfied me with good things?

Have I been crowned? Can I say from personal experience that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?

If you can answer yes, then give God the praise that he is due.

And pray that he will increase the knowledge of himself in you so that your praise will be greater and more heartfelt as time goes on.

But if you cannot answer that question, yes. If you can't truly say that the

Lord is merciful and gracious and mean it, then the only place you will discover what

David says about God to be true is the cross of Jesus Christ. Because that is the greatest demonstration of God's mercy that there is.

And he calls you to meet him there and to have his mercy poured out upon you.

And then again, you can truly say, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.

Let's pray. Our heavenly father, we would pray with David we would want to bless you.

We would say to ourselves, bless the Lord, oh my soul. Lord, we confess that so often we are presumptuous.

So often we do not thank you. So often we expect good things from you.

And yet when you bestow them upon us, we do not thank you as we should. We do not give you all the glory.

We do not give you the praise to which you are due. You would be due this praise if you had never saved any of us, simply because you are the sovereign king.

And yet Lord, you have reached down to us in grace and in mercy. And you have poured out your abounding love upon us and sent your son to rescue us.

And for this Lord, we thank you and we praise you. In Jesus name, amen.