Psalm 103 Sermon
Notes
Transcript
Bless the Lord for His Benefits
Bless the Lord for His Benefits
We’re told to bless the Lord
Sounds like buying your parents a Christmas gift
How can we give God anything when he already has everything?
How can we give anything in return for all that this Psalm brings to mind?
It’s remembering all of the blessings that he’s given us
The Benefits
The Benefits
3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 5 who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The chief benefit is forgiveness
All of the following are descriptions of what forgiveness feels like
Healed and Redeemed
Healed and Redeemed
Being sick means something has gone wrong
Your body is misfunctioning
You’re under attack from some virus or infection
This has made it a perfect metaphor for our sin - there’s something wrong with me
You can feel it
Staying up all night with anxiety and regret instead of a fever
Guilt takes the joy out of everything
You ache with all the pain you’ve caused
What if it gets worse? What if it kills me?
It will kill you
An unchecked disease leads you to the pit
That’s the ultimate destination of sin
We were supposed to live with God in the garden forever, but something has gone horribly wrong
But we have God healing and redeeming - and that’s something you can feel as well
It’s like your nostrils are clear and you can breathe again. Anxiety is gone and you aren’t holding your breath waiting for the hammer to fall.
It’s the night that the fever breaks and you feel at rest for the first time since you don’t know when
Just when you thought everything was over, God reaches over and takes your hand
Crowned and Satisfied
Crowned and Satisfied
But what if it happens again?
Sin is like the common cold - it always comes back
Does God ever get tired of playing doctor?
We are crowned with steadfast love and mercy
Some propose the translation ‘surrounded’
Everywhere we go we’re still surrounded or bearing God’s commitment to us
He is more commited to us than we are to him
Hosea and spiritual adultery
19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.
Not because we’re perfect, but because God is commited to us
God’s forgiveness is everything Redd Bull claims to be
They say they’ll give you wings - I got heart palpitations
When we’re not weighed down by sin anymore it feels like flying
Life can be enjoyable again
These are not one time actions
They are ongoing, repeated actions
Every time we have a new disease, he’s got the cure
when we’re tumbling over the edge fo the pit, he’s pulling us back
Every time we think we’ve exhausted his love he has more
Anytime we feel overwhelmed he’s there to supercharge us
Why do we bless the Lord?
Examples of Mercy
Examples of Mercy
These all sound wonderful - but a little abstract
Yeah God can do all of that stuff
But we have hard time thinking if he’d do it for me. Doesn’t he know what I’ve done?
Psalm 103:6-12 give us two example of God’s mercy in action
The Exodus
The Golden Calf
6 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. 7 He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.
The Exodus
The Exodus
Verses 6-7 are Exodus 1-23 in two verses
It wasn’t right what was happening to Israel down in Egypt so he made it right
Then he gave his law, the way of the Lord, so that we could live in a right relationship with him and our neighbor
He didn’t do any of this because Israel deserved it
7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Israel was actually pretty awful
6 “Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.
Why does God forgive you? For the same reasons he saved Israel
It’s not right that God’s people should be held by sin - so he’s going to do something about it
It’s not because you’ve blown him over with your good works and adorable personality
God simply loves because he loves you - you are his child
The Golden Calf
The Golden Calf
He loves you even when you’ve done something that you think makes you unlovable.
Second example - The Golden Calf
8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
As soon as the covenant was made Israel broke it
Moses was taking too long on the mountain receiving the law
“Where is the god who saved us?”
Aaron takes all of their gold and makes a cow
Now seems like an appropriate time to reassess the relationship
Does God really want to go through with everything with these people?
If your spouse cheated on you on your wedding night, would you really want to keep working towards a future with them?
Moses has a second encounter with God on the Mt. Sinai
He sees a glimpse of God
God proclaims his name
Listen for similar language in God’s name as here in verses 8-10
5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
It’s verse 6 that our Psalmist quotes
The same God who forgave Israel is the one who forgives us
The God who began a good work in us is determined to see it through to the end
And that’s no matter how we mess up
Forgiving Anything and Everything
Forgiving Anything and Everything
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
God forgives everything
Sin - missing the mark of what we should be
Iniquity - taking good things and twisting them
Transgression - stepping over the line and stabbing God in the back
He forgives more than we can comprehend
As high as the heavens
Voyager Space probe - 35,000 MPH
After 40,000 years it will have gone 2 lightyears
Universe has been measured to 93 billion lightyears, and it’s expanding
As far from east is from west
You can travel so far north that you curve around and go south
Travel west all of your life and you’ll never go east
Jeffrey Dahmer
Did crimes I can’t talk about in the pulpit - serial killer was just one of many other horrible things we could call him
He said in an interview that “he had no reason to change his behavior because if there was no God, there were no universal morals, and there was no accountability in an afterlife.”
But He had also said at one time that he wised he could find inner peace
So Mary Mott sent him a bible correspondence course
Then she sent Roy Ratcliff - a preacher in a church of Christ
Roy studied with him and baptized him in the name of the F, S, HS for the forgiveness of his sins
He was murdered 7 months later
And a lot of people told Roy that Jeff was in hell - not because of a lack of sincerity after he was joined to Christ, but because of all those things he had done in the past
But God does not work our sins against us
Verse 10 is the mirror image of verse 6
Instead of working our sins against us, he makes things right a different way
He forgives us and creates something new in place of our sinful past
If he could do that for Brother Jeff, why can’t he do that for you?
Our Father
Our Father
13 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. 14 For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. 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, 18 to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
The final illustration is a personal experience I hope we all had - a father raising his child
You have to teach a child everything
There are going to be mistakes along the way
But we understand their frame, we remember that they’re just kids
And that's how God looks at us as we learn his ways and strive to imitate him. We're a bunch of clueless kids.
God knows our struggle with temptation and sin.
He knows how we operate because he knows our frame, and he knows how weak we are being made of dust.
He knows that we are here one day and are incapable of ever truly comprehending God and his ways.
And just as a father still loves his child after making a mess, or for pulling their siblings har, God is going to love us from everlasting to everlasting.
Application
Application
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! 2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
Bless the Lord today
With your soul - everything you are
All that is within you
When you come to Sunday bring everything with you
Bless the Lord tomorrow
Our entire lives should be transformed by mercy
We learn to forgive as we’ve been forgiven
Bless the Lord out loud
19 The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. 20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! 21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! 22 Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!
The psalm ends with a call for everyone and everything to bless the Lord
Don’t keep the good news all to yourself - tell others about it
They’re in need of healing, standing on the edge of the pit
They’re struggling with a past that won’t let them have peace
You have the solution - You have our God
Invitation
Invitation
Someone here is dying right now. God is offering you life.
Some people look at coming forward and confessing their sins as something shameful, as a moment of weakness. I get it - you can come forward or we can talk about all of this in private.
I want you to see it as a moment worth celebrating.
Cancer patients get to ring the bell when they find healing. Come and ring your bell.
And you’ll find yourself surrounded with God’s love and God’s people.
