Thanksgiving 2017 part 2
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We had a great day on Thursday with our family Thanksgiving celebration here in the Chaplain Center. We had over 40 people here fellowshipping together and offering thanks to God for the blessings He has granted us. And we hope everyone else who wasn’t here had a great time of fellowship with your families as well. But you know, as I talked about last week, thanking and praising God is something that we should do every day, not just once a year on Thanksgiving, or even once a week when we go to church on Sunday morning. This morning I want to pick up where we left off last week in because there is just so much more to this song of praise that David wrote.
Last week we stopped at verse 5 but we read the whole Psalm so let’s read through it once more and then we’ll pick up talking about verse 6 and following.
Of David. 1 My soul, bless the Lord, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. 2 My soul, bless the Lord, and do not forget all his benefits. 3 He forgives all your iniquity; he heals all your diseases. 4 He redeems your life from the Pit; he crowns you with faithful love and compassion. 5 He satisfies you with good things; your youth is renewed like the eagle. 6 The Lord executes acts of righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. 7 He revealed his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. 8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. 9 He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. 10 He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. 13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. 14 For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field; 16 when the wind passes over it, it vanishes, and its place is no longer known. 17 But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren 18 of those who keep his covenant, who remember to observe his precepts. 19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all. 20 Bless the Lord, all his angels of great strength, who do his word, obedient to his command. 21 Bless the Lord, all his armies, his servants who do his will. 22 Bless the Lord, all his works in all the places where he rules. My soul, bless the Lord!
Now remember last week we saw that David is speaking to himself here. He’s speaking to his own soul and he’s reminding himself of all the blessings that God has granted. So look what he’s saying here in verses 6-10
6 The Lord executes acts of righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. 7 He revealed his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel. 8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. 9 He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. 10 He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities.
David may be speaking to his own soul here, but he also has something to say to us. “The Lord executes acts of righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.” Anyone here ever felt oppressed? I’m talking about oppression due to your beliefs, due to your faith in Christ and your standing for Him. I know there’s a huge debate going on in our country right now about oppression and what constitutes oppression and what doesn’t but what we’re talking about for our purposes this morning is oppression due to our faith in Christ. Unfortunately that’s something that we’ve seen rising steadily in this country over the past several decades and even more so the past few years. We’ve seen court rulings removing prayer from schools. We’ve seen rulings that make it illegal for Christians to decline to participate in ceremonies due to their sincerely held religious beliefs while at the same time making it OK for anyone else to decline service to Christians for the same reasons. But even in the midst of times like this we don’t have to lose heart because God promises us, through David here, that he will “execute acts of righteousness” on our behalf. Isn’t it an awesome feeling knowing that no matter what the world throws at us, God is behind us? David didn’t have the benefit of reading Paul’s writings in the New Testament like we do, but still he understood the truth of
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He did not even spare his own Son but offered him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? 33 Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. 34 Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. 35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
This is what David was praising God for back in . He knew these truths just as much as Paul did when he wrote them centuries later. God will take care of us because we are His.
But as much as verse 6 offers comfort in our oppression, I think verses 8-10 speak more directly, at least to my heart. “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. He will not always accuse us or be angry forever, He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities.” Aren’t you glad that’s true? That God doesn’t deal with us as our sins deserve? I know if He dealt with me as my sins deserve I’d be a goner. We all would. tells us
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Aren’t you glad we have access to the gift, and not the wages? David is reminding himself, and us, that God is merciful. God has every right to punish us, because we have all broken His commandments, again and again. But He doesn’t, because as David says here, He is “slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.” We deserve the wrath of God, but instead of pouring out His anger on us, He poured out the blood of His son Jesus to make a way for us to be reconciled to Him, to give us that gift of eternal life.
David didn’t know what form the coming Messiah would eventually take, but he already understood what His salvation would do for us. Look at verse 11 and following in our text this morning.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. 13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. 14 For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.
Psalm 103:11
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Does anybody else find maps and globes fascinating? I’ve always loved just sitting and pouring over maps. Old maps, new maps, globes, whatever. And it was one day looking at a globe that this verse really hit me. If you study a globe, there is a definite dividing line between north and south, the equator. Above the equator is the northern hemisphere and below the equator is the southern hemisphere. But you don’t get that with east and west. Theoretically the dividing line is the prime meridian and the international date line. But that doesn’t really hold up since Greece, the birthplace of “Western” civilization lies east of the prime meridian and therefore in what would be the “Eastern” hemisphere. It’s on the same side of the world as what we call the Middle East and the Far East, and yet it gave rise to Western civilization. Doesn’t make much sense does it?
You can also look at it this way. If you start at the equator and head directly north you’ll eventually reach the North Pole and from there you’ll be heading south again. Keep going down the other side of the world and you’ll eventually reach the South Pole and then start heading north again until you get back to your starting point. Now start at that same point and head east. You’ll go all the way around the earth heading east until you get back to your starting point, still heading east. At no point do you ever go west. Turn around and you’ll find the same thing is true if you’re headed west, you never go east. That’s what David is trying to explain here. When we come to faith, when we ask for forgiveness of our sins, God separates us from our sins. And he separates us so far from them that, not only can we never get back to them, but God doesn’t even remember them.
25 “I—I sweep away your transgressions for my own sake and remember your sins no more.
When we confess a sin to God and ask for forgiveness He literally erases it from his mind. Now we don’t have that luxury. We continue to remember the wicked things we’ve done and go back to God over and over saying that we’re sorry for them. But if we were sincere in our repentance that first time, when we go back talking about that same sin God is sitting there on his throne saying, “What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about that.” How comforting is that? God not only forgives our sins, He wipes all traces of them from his memory.
But then, just before the close of this chapter David adds a note of warning for himself, and for us as his readers.
Then just
15 As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field; 16 when the wind passes over it, it vanishes, and its place is no longer known. 17 But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren 18 of those who keep his covenant, who remember to observe his precepts. 19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
David reminds us here that our days on this earth are numbered, they’re fleeting. Now we have some in our church family here that are into their 80’s, and that may seem like an incredibly long life, but even those that live into their hundreds or even those in the Bible like Methuselah who lived hundreds and hundreds of years are just a drop in the bucket to God. But we need to pay special attention here to verses 17 and 18. “But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren of those who keep his covenant, who remember to observe his precepts.” Did you catch the emphasis there? God’s love is toward those who fear him. Now this isn’t fear in the sense of being scared, it’s in the sense of honoring Him. And then God’s righteousness is toward those who keep his covenant and who remember to observe his precepts. That’s the warning I was talking about. God promises to take care of us, He promises to wipe away even the memory of our sins. But He requires something of us as well. We have to honor and obey Him. We have to keep his commandments. We have to devote our lives to Him.
Then David closes out with this final call for praise.
Psalm 103
20 Bless the Lord, all his angels of great strength, who do his word, obedient to his command. 21 Bless the Lord, all his armies, his servants who do his will. 22 Bless the Lord, all his works in all the places where he rules. My soul, bless the Lord!
Even though this is a song written to his own soul, David seems to know that others will someday read it. He calls on the angels in heaven to praise God. Then he calls on us, the armies, the servants of God, the believers, to praise. And then finally, just in case he missed anybody, he calls on all creation to praise God. Notice how he says it in verse 22, “Bless the Lord, all his works in all the places where he rules.” Back up a few verses to verse 19 and David has already said that “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rule over all.” So when he says, “all his works in all the places where he rules,” that covers everything in existence, because everything is God’s work, God’s creation, and He rules over all of creation.
So that closes out our look at thanksgiving and praise. But remember it’s something that we should be doing every day, not just on Sunday mornings, and definitely not just during this time of year. We always have something to thank and praise God for. Next week begins the season of Advent when we prepare for the coming of Christ. We will look back at his first coming in a manger, in a stable in a little town called Bethlehem so many years ago and what that first coming meant for us. We’ll look at his current presence within our lives today. And we’ll look with anticipation for his second coming whenever that might be.
Would you pray with me?