Inhibited in Praise
Notes
Transcript
Handout
I sure hope you folks all had a great Christmas. It was really special for us in a lot of ways. First of all it was Luke’s first Christmas as our son! Also, it was the first Christmas in which he showed any interest at all in presents. Secondly, Bella is with us! It’s actually her fourth Christmas with us, but this one has the anticipation of her being a permanent part of our family. Thirdly, because my brother Darryl and his bride, Lori, drove all the way from Oklahoma City to spend a few days with us. Fourthly, you, our church family always are so precious to us. You treat me far better than I deserve — my family is probably more worthy of the wonderful treatment than I am.
For many, Christmas time is a depressing time. This may be due to many reasons. Some just struggle with the grayness of this time of year. Short days. Not much sun. And often it’s too cold to enjoy the sun when it is out. Others struggle because of loneliness. No one to celebrate with.
Please take your Bible and turn to this morning. This is a Psalm of David. We don’t know anything about the background of this beautiful psalm, but many scholars believe that David, for some reason or another, was down in the dumps. He was having a difficult time bringing himself to praise God. And so he wrote this psalm by way of reproving himself for his inhibited praise of the LORD.
As we journey through this psalm we will look at how meditating on our spiritual blessing, meditating on God’s word, and meditating on God’s sovereign rule can motivate our souls to bless the LORD with everything that is in us.
The key thing that I want you to remember is that our God, who does not let the guilty go unpunished, has not punished us in the way our sins deserve; therefore, we should bless Him, since He has so blessed us.
Let’s read our passage together.
A Psalm of David.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
The Lord performs righteous deeds And judgments for all who are oppressed.
He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.
As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer.
But the lovingkindness 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 His precepts to do them.
The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all.
Bless the Lord, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, Obeying the voice of His word!
Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You who serve Him, doing His will.
Bless the Lord, all you works of His, In all places of His dominion; Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Let’s consider first how we should:
Meditate on Spiritual Blessings
Meditate on Spiritual Blessings
The key thing that I want you to remember is that our God, who does not let the guilty go unpunished, has not punished us in the way our sins deserve; therefore, we should bless Him, since He has so blessed us.
Let’s look again at verses 1. I think the CSB, which is the successor to the HCSB, does a great job of showing how David was emphatically trying to stir up his soul to praise God.
My soul, bless the Lord, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Let’s read our passage together.
Note that:
We should not be slothful in blessing God
D. A. Carson points out:
The New Bible Commentary Psalm 103. ‘Your God Is King, Your Father Reigns’
When the Lord ‘blesses’ us, he reviews our needs and responds to them; when we ‘bless’ the Lord, we review his excellencies and respond to them.
We don’t always feel like blessing and praising God
Sometimes we need to give ourselves a swift kick in the pants to stir us to praise
Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.
As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.
Our blessing or praising God should not be mere lip service — it needs to be from the heart — with “all that is within [us]”
Note next that:
When we find ourselves inhibited in our personal praise of God, we should meditate on His spiritual benefits
If we find ourselves being slothful in our praise we should meditate on His spiritual benefits
Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget none of His benefits;
Note the benefits that are outline in the next three verses:
Pardon
Pardon
Who pardons all your iniquities
This is obviously referring to those who are in Christ. Only those who are in Christ have their iniquities pardoned — have their sins forgiven. David will refer to this in more detail later on.
The next spiritual benefit is:
Spiritual Healing
Spiritual Healing
Who heals all your diseases
I really believe that this is referring to spiritual healing instead of physical healing. Obviously, the wording can be taken either way. But the rest of the context speaks of spiritual things, and life itself proves that not every disease is healed for the believer in Christ.
The blotting out of the guilt of our sins produces a curing of the corruption that is inherent in our sin nature. And therefore God’s people do not experience the punishment they deserve.
The next spiritual blessing mentioned is:
Redemption
Redemption
Who redeems your life from the pit
Charles Spurgeon wrote:
“By purchase and by power the Lord redeems us from the spiritual death into which we had fallen, and the eternal death which would have been its consequence. Had not the death penalty of sin been removed, our forgiveness and healing would have been incomplete portions of salvation, fragments only, and but of small value, but the removal of the guilt and power of sin is fitly attended by the reversal of the sentence of death which had been passed upon us. Glory be to our great Substitute, who delivered us from going down into the pit, by giving Himself to be our ransom.”
The next spiritual benefit is:
Coronation
Coronation
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion
Compassion is something that is sorely lacking in society today. Oh, we have groups such as Compassion International and Samaritans Purse which do a fine job of promoting the need for compassion. But the truth is that most of us are so stuck on our own little world that we give very little thought to the needs of others.
What if God’s compassion towards us was as feeble as our compassion towards others?
The final blessing that is mentioned in this portion of our text is:
Satisfaction
Satisfaction
Who satisfies your years with good things
We can truly only find satisfaction in this life because Jesus satisfied God as He bore the sins of many on the old rugged cross.
As members of the human race we each have an inherent longing for satisfaction. We look for it, as the song says, in all the wrong places, and in too many faces. We look for satisfaction in our employment. We look for it in our relationships. We look for it in our material purchases. We look for it under the Christmas tree. But we do not find it in any of these things.
The only place satisfaction can be found is at the cross of Jesus Christ. When we embrace what the cross means, when we place our faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, and in His death and resurrection, then and only then will we find satisfaction and contentment. I love the old hymn whose refrain goes like this:
Hallelujah! I have found Him -- Whom my soul so long has craved! Jesus satisfies my longings; thro’ His blood I now am saved.
All of this, and we are just finishing point 1! We haven’t even gotten to the main thrust of the message, so let’s move on from considering the importance of meditating on spiritual blessing to the importance of:
Meditating on God’s Word
Meditating on God’s Word
Note this:
When it seems difficult to stir up our souls to praise God we should meditate on His Word
This next section of our psalm is somewhat of an exposition of certain writings of Moses. Hence the emphasis on meditating on the Word of God in order to stir our inhibited souls to praise God.
In the book of Exodus, we read how Moses smashed the first tablets in which the Ten Commandments had been written by the hand of God. The irony is that the people of Israel had broken the commandments that were written on the broken tablets. After this event, God instructed Moses to come back up the mountain and He would redo the tablets. It was at this point in time that Moses asked to see God’s glory. And as God was revealing a hint of His glory to Moses He said this:
Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;
who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
Notice verse 6:
The Lord performs righteous deeds And judgments for all who are oppressed.
The righteousness of God is His inflexible commitment to His own righteous nature and purposes. Though people often accuse Him of turning a blind eye to those who are being oppressed, in truth He will hold the oppressor accountable . Especially those who oppress His people.
Much of what is written in verses 7-9 is taken from the Exodus account we just read a few moments ago:
He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever.
Note that:
When we are down or distressed, meditate on God’s Word which reveals God’s attributes
Two of the finest books I have owned (other than my Bible collection) are books on the attributes of God. J. I. Packer’s classic book titled KNOWING GOD, and A. W. Tozer’s book KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOLY.
The admonition to meditate on God’s Word and attributes is in keeping with what the writer of Hebrews wrote:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
I don’t know about you, but I am very grateful that God’s anger toward my sin doesn’t last forever. As a matter of fact, since my sins were nailed to the cross of Christ I stand before God as one who has been made righteous by the blood of the Lamb!
I find verse 10 to be the highpoint of this beautiful psalm.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
Remember, our God, who does not let the guilty go unpunished, has not punished us in the way our sins deserve; therefore we should praise Him with uninhibited praise!
As we meditate on God’s Word we discover that He has been overly generous to those who belong to Him as it relates to sin and judgment.
We saw in the Exodus passage that God will not allow the guilty to go unpunished. And yet you and I who are believers in Jesus Christ are truly guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against God. But we go unpunished.
That is only made possible because Jesus was our sin-bearer. Isaiah prophesied more than 700 years before the birth of Jesus that
The LORD [would lay] on Him the iniquity of us all.
Paul wrote of Christ’s sin-bearing when He stated:
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
To the Romans Paul stated:
It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
God was just in demanding that our sin be paid for, and the penalty was death. But God was also the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus because Jesus paid it all!
But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,
Because we who are believers have entered into a covenant with God through the blood of Jesus Christ, we have become His covenant people, and our sins are remembered no more. Notice how David referred to this in verse 11-12.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
One songwriter has written this beautiful lyric based on this passage:
Jesus, can you show me just how far the east is from the west?
'Cause I can't bear to see the man I've been
Rising up in me again
In the arms of your mercy I find rest
You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other
What a beautiful picture of forgiveness — cast away as far as the east is from the west in God’s eyes. Sadly, as human beings, most of us don’t have the ability to do this, both in relationship to our own sin, and to the sin of others. Yet, as this songwriter wrote, we can pray that God would enable us to have His perspective.
David goes on to present another picture of forgiveness and compassion. Look at verse 13.
Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
Good parents, though they may become angered by their children's sins and shortcomings, will still be compassionate towards them. And if sinful parents can have such compassion, how much will God have compassion on His children.
There is a qualifier in this verse. It is not necessarily a universal compassion. God’s compassion, on the eternal perspective of things, if on those who fear Him.
Verse 14 tells us why God is so compassionate regarding His people.
For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.
The One who created us certainly remembers the material He used to create us.
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Note what David writes about:
The fleeting nature of the human lifespan in comparison to the eternal nature of God’s compassion
As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer.
But the lovingkindness 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 His precepts to do them.
Though there is much to be said about this, our time for today, rather than being “eternal” is “fleeting,” so we will move on to consider how we should:
Meditate on God’s Sovereignty
Meditate on God’s Sovereignty
Look at verse 19.
The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all.
Note that:
There is great comfort to be found in God’s sovereignty
Why do I say that God’s sovereignty is comforting? For me, anyway, understanding that God has everything in control is overwhelmingly comforting. There are times when I feel like life in caving in on me. These times can lead me into despair. But as soon as I acknowledge that God is even in control of these things, I am able to come out of that pit of despair. And when I do, then I want to give a similar exhortation as David did. Look at verses 20-22.
Bless the Lord, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, Obeying the voice of His word!
Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You who serve Him, doing His will.
Bless the Lord, all you works of His, In all places of His dominion; Bless the Lord, O my soul!
This morning, we have only scratched the surface of this beautiful psalm. As we have done so, we have seen the importance of meditating on God’s person, His word, and His sovereignty.
Remember that our God, who does not let the guilty go unpunished, has not punished us in the way our sins deserve; therefore, we should bless Him, since He has so blessed us.
Perhaps you are with us today and realize, perhaps for the first time, that you are bearing the burden of your own sin, and are under the condemnation of God. If so, I invite you to acknowledge first that there is a God to whom you are accountable. Second, acknowledge that your sin has separated you from God and it will lead to spiritual death, which is eternal separation from God. Third, acknowledge that Jesus is the Eternal God, the Creator of the world, who became man so that He could bear the sins of those who place their faith in Him. Fourth, ask Jesus to be your sin bearer too! And fifth, begin blessing God with all that is within you!
Let’s pray.
Closing Song: #1
Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven
