Spiritual Amnesia

Psalm 103, please stand for the reading of God's word. Psalm 103, bless the

Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O 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 and crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

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.

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 towards those who fear him.

As far as 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.

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 his 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. Bless the

Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his work, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the

Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will. Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. You may be seated. Let's again pray and ask

God's blessing upon the proclamation and the hearing of his word. Most gracious heavenly Father, again we come before you, and now as your word is to be proclaimed,

I pray that you would bless the work of my hands as imperfect as it is,

Father, that you would bring it in your good and perfect word to bear upon the people who will hear.

We thank you for this word that you've given us. We pray that the words of my mouth, the meditations of my heart would be acceptable and pleasing to you,

Father, and that all would be edified by you, by the power of your spirit this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

You know, the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, he wrote that this psalm, number 103, might alone almost suffice for a hymn book for the church.

He saw a beauty in this psalm and a fullness of theology and doctrine and a rising up of Jesus Christ like few other psalms.

This psalm calls upon us to bless the Lord, to give praise to the Lord, and as we do so, praise the

Lord in remembrance of his benefits to us. And those will be listed in these crisp, brief phrases that we have.

We'll read again in a few moments. These crisp phrases, as short as they are, they're dense with meaning, dense with thought -provoking and life -changing meaning.

And it's just a short psalm, and these are short little phrases, but it reminds me of that little gun in Men in Black.

You know, the one Agent J, he was so disappointed. He said, I want a big gun that does a lot. And it turned out that that little gun was the most powerful thing in the

Men in Black's arsenal. Well, this psalm was like that because short as it is and short as the phrases are, they do pack a mighty punch for us.

And the psalm begins and ends, the first couple of verses and the last three verses with this, bless the

Lord, bless the Lord, O my soul, bless the Lord with all that is within me. And that first summons, bless the

Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. It gives us that cause for calling out these praises to God.

Will you praise God? Can you praise God by remembering his benefits? We're gonna speak this morning about the difference between remembering and simply not forgetting.

Here we're told, bless the Lord, forget not all his benefits, and those benefits will then come forth and they'll be listed out in the psalm for us to remember.

And once we have that down, and the psalm is trusting us to have understood it and to grasp onto it and said,

I'm going to bless the Lord, I'm going to remember his benefits, calls everybody again to bless the

Lord, you his angels who do his will, you who, excuse me, bless the

Lord all his hosts, bless the Lord all his dominion, everything that exists, everything he has made, which is everything, blessing the

Lord. So we begin with this blessing, with this calling out praise.

And I tried to get an acrostic going, not an acrostic, an alliteration going.

Last week I was at another church in the morning, I came here in the afternoon, and both preachers, Conley here in the afternoon and the preacher in the morning, both had these nice alliterations.

I said, well, I should be able to do that. I've never been any good at it, but I call this, we have three

Ps here, and the first P is praise, is bless the Lord, bless the Lord by praising him. And the second

P would be then the person of the Lord that's remembered. We're blessing the

Lord because of his person, because of who he is, and then the performances, the actions that the

Lord has taken. So we bless the Lord because of what he has done for us, remembering the person that he is, and so we call out his praises.

The first call to call out blessing upon the Lord is bless the

Lord, oh my soul, and then it tells us how to bless him. What is required, what are we to invest of ourselves into this blessing of the

Lord, to bless his holy name? All that is within me, bless his holy name.

All that we have, heart, soul, and mind. Heart, soul, mind, and strength, as Jesus puts it.

All this invested and issuing forth into calling out praises to the

Lord. Now this is an enthusiastic manner of worship. This is not some stoic singing the hymns and straining them out, singing them as loud as we can, just to prove that we have a big voice.

I mean, you heard me in that first psalm, those higher notes, I don't have it. And yet, it can still be all within me.

My heart, soul, and mind. Blessing the Lord and praising him.

He says, all that is within me. I ask, immediately ask, in this call to praise the

Lord, call to bless his holy name, is all that is within us, within you, invested and given forth into blessing the

Lord? Here in our worship, especially on Sundays as we gather together on the Lord's day, in your life, as you go through the circumstances, the day -to -day activities that we have, bless the

Lord, and all that is within me, all that we have, all the talents and all the things that God has given you, they're all means to bless the

Lord. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, all that we are, blessing his name.

He says, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Now, his benefits to us, who could number them all?

He sends the rain on the just and the unjust alike, as Jesus told us. And we have this phrase here, he says, forget not all his benefits.

The psalmist cannot possibly mean, the Holy Spirit could not have possibly meant for the psalmist to tell us, you must remember each and every one of them, because who could count them?

What do we have that is not from the Lord? What do you have, the apostle Paul asks, that was not given to you by God?

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, and that verb, coming down, is a continuous verb.

It's not just God saying, I'm gonna give you a bit here, and this person over here, well, you need a little bit of blessing, okay, so I'm gonna bless you with that, and you're gonna get a couple weeks of employment, and no, no, it's showering down, it's coming down constantly.

As Malachi says, test me in this, says the Lord, and see if I do not pour such blessings on you that your lap cannot contain it.

Jesus said that God does not give the Spirit by measure. Excuse me, that was John the Baptist. Jesus said, how much more will

God give the Spirit to those who ask him? Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all his benefits.

Let's stop for a minute, and I wanna talk about this word forget, because it's a

Hebrew word behind it that is not the same as simply to remember something. It's not the same as just remembering.

The word behind here means something like don't mislay something, don't undervalue this thing that you're being told to not forget.

To remember is to use mental capacity. I know there's a lot of programmers out here, so is it RAM, to use your random access memory, to simply go back, and I can get the facts coming out, and to remember something more like someone my age, you stop in denial, you say, okay, why did

I come to this store? I don't remember. I don't see anything in this aisle that jogs my memory. I'll go to the next aisle, and maybe

I'll see the peanut butter. I'll finally remember, oh yes, I came for peanut butter, or I came for a clove of garlic, or something like that, and I'll remember something.

I'll remember the fact. I'll remember the reason I got up out of the chair, walked to the car, drove to the store, and what

I'm doing there in the store. You remember your birthday. You men, if you're smart, you remember your anniversary.

Remember things, remember facts, but to not forget is different. To not forget is different. It's more than a lapse in memory.

It has distinct theological and moral dimensions. To forget here would be to willingly ignore something.

Now, I wanna bring out the difference between remember and not forgetting. I'm gonna ask a question here.

I'm gonna ask for a raise of hands. I really do mean raise your hand if you can. No smartphones, there's a closed book test, there's a closed neighbor test.

Got it? How many of you know the day the Civil War started? Show of hands. Cool. None of you.

Let me show you how to remember this. It started April 12th, 1861. April 12th, that's four.

April's the fourth month. 12th, that's a 12. Four plus 12 equals 16.

Got it? Four plus 12 equals 16, so 4 -12, April 12th. Four plus 12 equals 16.

It started in 1861, so 1661. 16, reverse the digits, 61, it's 1661.

So when you need to remember when the Civil War started, remember this. 1661, 16 is four plus 12.

4 -12 is April 12th, 1861. How many think you can remember it now? I bet you if Conley asks next week, and I'm gonna ask him too.

I'll bet you I'll get the same number of hands. You won't forget now. Most of you won't. But to not forget, to not forget in the context we have in bless the

Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits. To not forget is to know something about the

Civil War. Why did over half a million men give their lives to fight in the

Civil War? About 360 ,000 of them, those numbers are not exact, on the

Union side. Was it to end slavery? Was it to preserve the

Union? How did it start? Why did it start? Why did that many men go there?

To forget not the Civil War is to understand what was behind it, to understand what the result of it was, to realize why so many men were willing to fight to the death over what they thought was a principle.

To remember the Civil War is to remember the day it started and the facts behind it. And you remember this,

April 12th, 1861, right? Y 'all got that? But to not forget is to look at the groundwork behind it.

To not forget the Civil War would be to remember that the Democrat, excuse me, the

Democrat Party began as the party of slavery. I kind of wish they'd remember that today.

And the Republican Party was hated by the Democrat Party, and the Southerners, they were called the Black Republicans because they were mostly abolitionists.

I wish they would teach that a little bit more today. But that's what it is to not forget.

To remember is the facts. To not forget is to know something behind it. And so the psalmist says, bless the

Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Hold of value to the benefits.

Remember that these benefits are graces showered down upon you by God and none other. Again, every good and perfect gift is from above, from the

Father of Lights, coming down from the Father of Lights in his constant shower. So when you receive a job promotion, or even get a job, at Thanksgiving we had tables full of food, did we not?

Forgetting not means to thank God for every benefit we enjoy.

Be it something we have in this life, like a nice car, a warm home, a full table, a loving wife or husband.

These things we have in this life, forget not all his benefits to you. And forget not his benefits that cannot be seen except between you and God.

Things like your growth in the Lord, your spiritual development, your maturation towards the image of Jesus Christ.

That's a benefit from God. It's only by the power of the Spirit that we can be molded into his image.

What benefits we have. Don't just remember, I got converted on this day.

I hold July 25th, 1992 as my day when I openly and verbally confessed

Jesus Christ. I remember that, but I forget not the

Lord whose Spirit came upon me and shattered my resistance to him. You see the difference?

Not just remember, not just recall the facts, a computer can do that, but forget not the

Lord, only God's people through faith in Jesus Christ can do that.

Forget not all his benefits. He forgives all your iniquity, heals all your diseases, 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 I wanna think of this idea here of healing and forgiving in the context of the times in which this was written.

God healed all their diseases. Doesn't mean each and every one. It means all types of diseases, all species of diseases.

He healed Naaman through the prophet Elijah, healed Naaman of his leprosy. He healed through the prophecy he gave to Isaiah, Hezekiah from some boil that was going to kill him.

And we could go on and on with the list. He heals all your diseases. Did not Jesus Christ touch lepers and cure leprosy?

Did he not speak to lame legs and broken feet and immobile bodies?

As they stand and walk, take up your mat and go. Blindness, death.

Jesus healed all diseases. Not each and every one, all diseases.

He forgives all your iniquity. Now what would the psalmist have thought way back then, centuries before Christ came, when he says heals or forgives all your iniquity?

He's thinking in terms of the temple. He's thinking in terms of I'm gonna go to the temple and receive forgiveness for this discreet sin.

So you bring your sacrifice, you lay your hand on the head of the goat or the lamb or whatever you're going to sacrifice, and by faith you believe that God forgives that sin, that iniquity.

But back then, I would argue that the forgiveness was more, you don't have to pay the consequence in this life, excuse me.

It's a removal of the consequences of your iniquity in the then and there. Just the example

I'll think of here for us is David, towards the end of his reign, when he counted the fighting men, that was a great sin to have not trusted

God, but to need to see the count. I need to know how many men I have. It's a lack of trust in God, it was a great sin.

And so a plague came upon Israel, and the people were dying. And when David brought the sacrifice to God, confessed his sin, asked for forgiveness, the plague stopped, the consequences were taken away in the then and there.

How much more do we today look at the verse like this?

We say he forgives all our iniquity, forgives all our sin. Well then, it was the consequences in that life that was in view.

They were looking forward to Jesus Christ. David, the author of this psalm, he's in Christ now, I believe, and he saw the promises, but they were shaded.

They're hard to see, it was like looking through a dark glass, as the Apostle Paul puts it. But we today, are you in the

Lord Jesus Christ? I should make it clear when it's not a rhetorical question,

I'd love to hear, are you in the Lord Jesus Christ? Yes, so when it says, all your iniquity, now we have a

Savior, who is not just one lamb we take in, who we put our hand on the head to say, forgive me for this one iniquity against your law,

Father, and I forgive him. We, in the Lord Jesus Christ, are forgiven all.

Jesus Christ paid for all our sin. When Jesus Christ said, it is finished from the cross, that the wrath of God had been exhausted upon him, those three words, it is finished, is something that the saints of old could only hope for, could only look forward to.

Those who were given by the Holy Spirit such knowledge as I think David might have had. Not a full picture, but look at us today.

Knowing that when Jesus Christ said it is finished, he meant it is finished, all God's wrath has been expended, but he also meant that in the individual way.

If you remember a few months ago, when I preached from Galatians 2 .20, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

So when he said it is finished, we could have put a parenthetical there. It is finished for me, Joshua Sheldon.

It is finished for me, Mary Jones, whatever. Bless the

Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Remember that it is God who gave you the benefit.

Think not just of this benefit I received. This is the day I started this job that I had been hoping for.

Or found this husband or wife that I had been praying for. Oh, remember the day, but forget not the

God who gave you the benefit. And then we're in line with the psalm. And then we can finally move on and say he redeems your life from the pit, draws you up from the pit of hell, being a seed of the serpent, a seed of the devil as we spoke of this morning.

He redeemed you from that. He crowned you with steadfast love because God says I will never leave you or forsake you.

He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

Have you not been satisfied with the good of Christ? The good that God gives you in Christ Jesus our

Lord? If you're in Jesus Christ and you cannot affirm that loudly and enthusiastically, we need to go back to are you remembering or are you forgetting not?

And you probably need to go from remembering to forget not the Lord behind all the satisfactions that you have.

Your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Let me tell you, when you get on the far side of life where I happen to be, almost 70 years old, that has a different meaning than it's gonna have for some of you younger folk.

But let me tell you that by the Spirit of God, there's a renewal that happens. There's a new life that's given.

There's a forgiveness of the old and you no longer have to be that way. You can move forward in a better and other direction towards Jesus Christ, towards his image.

Youth renewed like the eagle's. Well, that's the person of God.

And God in his works shows forth his person. We know from Psalm 19 that the heavens show the handiwork of God, the firmament shows his handiwork.

And that's repeated mostly in Romans chapter one which says God has laid out a tapestry of himself in what he's created.

So we can see who and what he is. So all his works reflect his person.

We're blessing his holy name, his works are holy. And what God does is always consistent with his very nature.

What does he do? He works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.

Now that's referring back, of course, to the whole exodus event. He made known himself to Moses through his acts, through the law that he gave from Sinai, through his response to the people's sin.

He made known his ways to Moses. He's revealed himself. He revealed himself then to those people.

The author of the Psalm, probably David, knew of God in his revelation to him, his defeat of Goliath would be counted to God's mercy.

His defeat of the Ammonites and the Philistines and the Moabites and the Edomites were all

God showing him his ways. But importantly here, God making known his ways, as we said before, that when

God does something, it's consistent with his nature. So whatever he does is a revelation of himself, whether it's creating everything that is, whether it's bringing a people to himself, whether it's judging sin, forgiving sin, whatever he does is a reflection of his very person.

He made known his ways to Moses. You know, he's a revealing God. We can't see him.

We can't touch him. By faith we know he is as a rewarder of those who seek him.

That's in Hebrews chapter 11. And even that, even at that, what does he do?

He reveals himself. He reveals himself. It says in the Psalms, I think it's 139, that he humbles himself to even look down upon us.

He's so far above us, and we're gonna come to that in a few moments, he's so far above us that it's a humbling, as it were, to even notice us.

And yet, what does he do? Reveals. He reveals himself to Moses through the exodus, through the destruction of Egypt, the salvation of Israel and bringing them out of there, giving of the law.

And for us today, did not Jesus Christ come to reveal

God? It says in John chapter one, verse 18. Jesus, the son of God, he has revealed him.

He has made him known. The word behind there is exegete. He exegeted God. To exegete is to draw a meaning out of something.

Your pastors exegete the text of scripture. We draw out the meaning and try and give you, in words that we can understand in our own language, what the scripture is saying.

Not reading in, but drawing out. So Jesus Christ came to reveal

God. He made known his ways to Moses, but more importantly, he made known Jesus to us.

And Jesus, what did he make known? He made known God the Father. We come to the

Father in the name of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is the revelation of God the Father.

Think of the mercy. Think of the wonder. Think of the beauty of a God like that who would bother to reveal himself.

And why would he? Because he's a holy God, a just God, a good

God, a loving God, a caring God. And therefore, when he sent Jesus Christ to reveal him to us, it's simply a reflection of his nature.

Is God obligated to shower down blessings upon us, to make himself known to us?

Slow down. Yes. He's not obligated to us by any stretch of the imagination.

He's obligated by his own self. See, everything he does is according to his nature.

He must do what his nature is. That's what God does. Everything he does is a reflection of himself.

So no, he's not obligated to me, or to you, or to any human who ever existed. It's a self -imposed obligation.

It's because of God who he is. It's what Jesus says in chapter eight of John as we were talking, or as I read earlier this morning.

What did the Pharisees do? What did Jesus say? You do as your Father does, their

Father being the devil. He says, if you were of God, you would do the things that God would have you to do.

In the same way, God does what is in accordance with his nature. He can and only can do what is in accordance with his nature.

Shall not the judge of the earth, Genesis 19, shall not the judge of the earth do what is right?

Yes. Is he obligated? Not to Abraham who was there then.

Not to you or to me, to himself. Obligated to do what's right, because that's his nature. He works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed he made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel, the

Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love as he showed again and again and again with Israel as he brought them out of Egypt.

That he is slow to anger, that he holds back his anger, he abounds in steadfast love which is seen in his patience with us.

He will not always chide, it says, he will not always chide nor will he keep his anger forever. To chide means he will not always strive against us as he works to bring us into a holier way of life, a clearer view of Christ.

He will not always be there chiding us, working with or striving with us.

There's gonna come an end to it. Lord willing that end will be simply when the

Lord Jesus Christ comes and brings us back to himself. He does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities.

I think most of you know where we're gonna go with that one. He does not treat us according to our sins, he does not repay us according to our iniquities and what would happen if he did?

Do you remember that Korah rebellion that was a few weeks ago in the reading? The earth would open and swallow us up or fire would come down from heaven and consume us or we'd simply be allowed to pass on without Jesus Christ to an eternity without him, an eternity in hell of suffering, gnashing of teeth as Jesus puts it.

If I were to be treated in accordance with my sin, if it were one sin, of course it's not just one sin, that would be my fate and yours.

But it's all in the plural, is it not? And God in his steadfast love and his mercy and his patience for us, he does not treat us that way.

He doesn't repay us that way. That'd be like repaying evil for evil, would it not?

But God in his justice, he works justice, he works righteousness. How can he not repay me for my iniquities?

How can you not pay for your sins and yet call it justice? When we violated

God's law, we impugned his name to his very face. How can we get away with that?

It's Jesus who didn't get away with that. It's Jesus who became sin, 2

Corinthians 5, 21. For he made him, Jesus, who knew no sin, tempted in all ways as we are yet without sin to be sin for us, that in him, in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God.

Where's the justice? Where's the justice? The justice was foisted upon Christ. Now, he can't treat me according to even one of my sins, even one of my iniquities, because I could never pay for it.

In all eternity, I or you could not pay for it. Only Christ, treated according to our iniquities.

Only he, as I said before, could call out it is finished. What a

God we serve. Think of the benefits he showers down upon us.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, forget not all his benefits. The benefits they had then, which is a stable land, a victorious king, warrior in David, things like that.

And today, we, forgiveness of sin, a

Jesus who went to the cross to be treated as our iniquities deserve.

What a gospel we live by. What a savior we love and cherish, who paid him according to what

I deserve. And why did he do this? This is verse 11. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.

How high are heavens above earth? Where's heaven? There.

It's just there. It's just far, but he's talking qualitatively here, not quantitative. We're not supposed to try and measure it out, of course.

Nobody would, but it's a qualitative difference. As much as the quality of how heaven is compared to here, what's that difference?

Let your imagination run wild with that one. That's the difference. That's how high his steadfast love towards us who love him and fear him is.

Whatever that is. Is it infinite? I think that works.

For as far as east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. Again, removed our transgressions from us, taken from us and put on Christ.

How far is east from the west? I don't think he was thinking geometry. We're going to raise and stuff like that.

And if we think of it in terms of the earth and the globe, then the east has to come this way and the west has to go that way, and eventually the two lines are gonna meet.

No, these will never meet. This, again, is infinite distance. How far have your sins been removed from you?

Completely. Again, I say to you,

Jesus said, it is finished. I don't think he just said it. I don't think he squeaked out with the last breath in his lungs as he finished his crucifixion, which is an awful way to die, we all know that.

I think it was a victory bellow. I think he shouted out, it is finished.

So how far have your sins been removed from you? Look to Jesus Christ, who said it is finished.

Your sins are finished, all of them taken upon him. So this is our merciful

God. I think this is one of the reasons that Spurgeon said that this psalm would suffice for a psalm book for the entire church.

There's so much gospel in here. Heaven versus earth, qualitatively.

East from west, quantitatively. What a savior.

What a person of God we serve. What a nature of God that we have. As a father shows compassion to his children, verse 13, so the

Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. What is it to fear

God? Well, it's to forget not all his benefits. To remember your benefits, to think of them in terms of what

God has given you. To think of them in terms of the God and the nature of the

God who has given them to you. And certainly, his compassion for us is shown in what he put upon his son,

Jesus Christ, on the cross. Christ went to the cross according to the father's will.

Compassion for us. The prodigal son parable. The compassion of the father who came running.

You can almost hear the tears coming out of his eyes as he ran to his son. The prodigal who's returning to him.

Open arms. That's the compassion of a father who knows our weakness. He knows how easily we fall into sin.

He knows how much we need his forgiveness, both at the cross and because of the cross, even now, first John 1 .9.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Is that not a father's compassion? A mean, miserly father might say, well,

I forgave you that once. I told you not to mess up again. And you better stop messing up because I'm tired of it.

No. That's not our God at all. The compassion he shows us is to know that we're weak, to know that we're frail, to know that we're but dust.

That a wind can blow across us like the wind knocks the flowers off the prairie and they are no more.

The place is not known anymore. He knows how weak and how mercurial we are. Mercurial, excuse me, we are.

And yet, in his fatherly compassion for us, he makes a way for us to have forgiveness, both at the cross when we come to salvation and through our life as we go to him constantly and seek that forgiveness, that restoration to get us back onto the right path.

He knows our frame, he remembers that we are but dust. As for man, verse 15, 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.

This is the promise of scripture. The Lord God who said

I will never leave you or forsake you. This is our confidence, this is our hope.

This is why we as Christians don't go through our life with our hands over our head, afraid we're gonna be smited by God for every little foible and stumble we go through.

We try to get on the right path, we try to stay on the right path, we give all effort to reach up for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus, always trying to be more like him, always repenting when we fail.

But not scared of this God, not afraid of this God because the scared and the fear and the afraid was upon Jesus Christ.

So we come boldly to the throne of grace and there seek help in our time of need. And God accepts us as we are because of Christ, because we're in Christ.

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

Do you know the Lord? Do you bless the

Lord and forget not all his benefits? There's a movie called

Memento, spelled with an M -E -M -E -M -O -N -T -O, Memento, M -E -M -E -N -T -O.

And this guy has something called anterior amnesia. So he got memory to a certain point,

I think with him it was right up to his marriage, and then this condition started, it's an actual condition. We cannot make new memories.

You can't start, you can't remember anything from moment to moment to moment. And so this guy in the movie, he's tattooing all these important facts on himself so when he stands in the mirror he can read and remember just for that moment, because he can't make new memories.

I wonder sometimes we have that kind of a spiritual amnesia. Do we have a kind of spiritual anterior amnesia?

Where we can remember things, we can get all the dates, but we forget the

God behind it, the things that have happened to us. We remember the facts so we can cite out so many verses, we can recite entire chapters or even whole books.

And some of us have our Bibles with so many colors in it that it indicates so many things I think it would give Rembrandt a headache.

He wouldn't know what to do with all the colors. And I don't mind you marking your Bibles. And some people have codes that really help them.

This is a messianic prophecy and this is a fulfillment of it and so forth. That's all great. But we're not here just to be able to cite verses.

Though hide God's word in your heart that you might not sin against him. Do memorize your

Bible. But don't just remember the lines. Forget not the

God who gave you the lines. Don't just think of dates and facts and things that you can recite without error, getting every syllable correct.

Do that. I try. I'm not good at memorizing but I work at it. But not just to remember.

But to forget not the God behind it all. Bless the Lord, oh you his angels.

Now we have cause to bless the Lord. We've seen his benefits. We're reminded that all that is within us is to be geared towards blessing the

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

I would apply this to all of us who are in Christ Jesus. Bless the Lord, oh you his converted to Christ.

Oh you Christians. Oh you his saints. You mighty ones who do his word.

Mighty in the Lord, powerful in the Lord. Obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord all his hosts, his ministers who do his will.

Bless the Lord all his works in all places of his dominion. That last phrase takes us to Romans chapter eight where all creation is groaning, waiting for the redemption.

It will know too when Christ Jesus returns. So bless the Lord all his works, all these benefits that these works have given us.

Bless the Lord all his works, all places of his dominion. Back to verse 19, he's established his throne in the heavens, his kingdom rules over all.

So all his dominion, all that exists. Bless the Lord and finally bless the Lord, oh my soul.

Dear ones, bless the Lord today. Bless the Lord tomorrow. Forget not his benefits.

Remember that all good that you have, everything you have is a good and perfect gift from above.

It gives you cause so that all that is within you may bless the Lord, amen.

Heavenly Father, thank you again for this day that you've given us. For a God who's worthy of all blessing, praise and honor and glory.

It may be so with us, Lord, that we remember all about you, but most of all, forget not who you are and what you are and what you've done for us in Christ Jesus our

Lord because of who you are. So Father God, we bless you this day. We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ for this day of worship you've given us.