Yeah. so So, so so so so so so so Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this worship service. It's a blessing to be able to gather together as God's people. Special welcome to any visitors in our midst as well as those listening in on live feed. Consistory has a few announcements. Consistory announces that Nolan DeWitt and Sam Lionhorst have indicated their intention to enter into the married state according to the ordinance of God. They desire to begin this holy state in the name of the Lord and to complete it to His glory. If no lawful objection is brought forward, the ceremony will take place, the Lord willing, on June 25th at 12.30 in the Aldergrove Canadian Reformed Church. Also, there will be a consistory meeting tomorrow, Monday evening at 7.30. Brad and Rebecca Ikema with Alyssa and Justin have requested an attestation to the Church of St. Albert Canadian Reformed Church. Chantelle Ikema has also requested an attestation to Refuge Church in Langley. We welcome Pastor Doug to our pulpit to lead us in worship this afternoon. Our call to worship comes from 2 Corinthians 6. There it is. For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no one clean. Then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. Thank you for the opportunity to once again lead you in worship. If you're able, I invite you to rise. Our congregation, from where does our help come? Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Receive now the greeting of our God and grace to you and peace from God, our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's respond to that greeting of our God by singing to his praise the hymn before the throne of God above. I saw him perfectly, with my gracious wisdom. you. ♪ Sing the song of Israel ♪ you. Since our lives are hidden with Christ in God, we are to seek the things that are above and not the things that are below, that our lives might be guided then for God's glory as well as our own benefit. We give attention this afternoon to the Ten Commandments as they come to us in Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You should not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, that is in the water under the earth. You should not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You should not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourn who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long on the land the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant, or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbors. Our Lord Jesus Christ summarized these 10 commandments when he taught us the following. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment. There is a second like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments and therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Let's respond to God's law by singing from Psalm 65, two and three. all your sins Let's come to our God in prayer and seek his blessing as we continue to worship him this afternoon. Now, Father in heaven, we thank you for gathering us here in this place to worship you. You are worthy of praise for you are the one who made us. You are the one who sent your son to save us. You are the one who, together with your son, sends your spirit into our hearts and into our midst as a congregation, that we might individually but also communally more and more be transformed into your likeness. You are the one, O God, who cares for each one of us each and every day. And we praise you for your goodness, for your mercy, and for your love. You are the one who blots out our sins in your compassion. You are the one who embraces us in your love. You are the one who provides us with every blessing of salvation. Oh God, who can repay you for all of your benefits? We certainly cannot. And yet we want to express our gratitude and so we're here. with our prayers and with our songs of praise and with our financial gifts. We're here to worship You, to glorify and to bless You and to praise Your holy name, to thank You for who You are and to thank You for what You have done and what You are still doing for us, Your people. At the same time, Father, as we come to You in worship, we cannot look past our sins and shortcomings of this past week. We have at times wandered from Your ways. We have transgressed Your commandments. We have forgotten about Your love and Your call to love others as ourselves. And so, Father, we do pray that You would look upon us according to Your mercy and grace, that according to Your covenant promises signified and sealed to us in our baptism, You would cleanse us in the blood of Christ. And that You would renew us also in this time of worship by Your Holy Spirit, that He who dwells in our hearts would take the word that we're about to read and form us and shape us through that word so that we might bring You even greater praise and glory. And so, Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. I invite you to take your Bibles as we turn in Holy Scripture this afternoon to the 103rd Psalm. I've chosen this song for reading this Father's Day with an eye on the verses 13 and 14, but I want to read that song in its entirety with you just to have us gain a sense of the whole. It bears a simple title of David. Bless the Lord, oh 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, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. 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 toward those who fear Him, As far as the 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 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. 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 Word, obeying the voice of His Word. Bless the Lord, all His hosts, His ministers who do His will. Bless the Lord, all His works and all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever, and may he bless his word in our hearing this afternoon. Let's sing by way of preparation from Psalm 116, the stanzas one and three. you I know. you. Beloved, the text that I have chosen for this sermon is, as I mentioned, the verses 13 and 14 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. In my ongoing quest to be a good father. I looked at. the high school exam schedule this past week. And if you're in the ninth grade, as my youngest daughter is, then you know that you have an English exam on Wednesday morning, beginning at 9 a.m. Now, if I had to prepare an English exam for the grade nine students, One of the things I would like to check in on is their understanding of literary devices. And if I've lost some of you already, don't worry, you'll catch up. I went and looked at the English 9 curriculum this past week, and I discovered that it says there under these core competencies, students are expected to know, among other things, literary devices. And then I checked at the grade eight level, and they too are supposed to know that. And I checked the grade seven, and they're supposed to know that. So I discovered that if you're in grade nine, you learn this stuff back in grade five, so you should have no problem with answering the question that I'm about to ask. And the question I have for you this afternoon is, what literary device is used by David in the 13th verse of Psalm 103? At which point, some of you are going, but we like multiple choice. You know how kids do that, right? Sir, is this a multiple choice test? Well, I didn't come up with a whole test. I only got one question. But I will give you multiple choice, and that'll maybe make things easier for you, or it'll make things harder. And some of you are still wondering what literary devices are. Well, here's your moment. Here's your four choices. Metaphor. simile, hyperbole, and personification. You look at verse 13 and you decide, you don't have to say it out loud, it gets a little crazy, but you decide in your own mind which one of those four is there. And if you say simile, give yourself a gold star, because that's exactly what's in verse 13 of Psalm 103, a simile. In case you've forgotten, and I often forget this as well, it's a comparison of one thing with another of a different kind using the words as or like. While you look at Psalm 103, 103 verse 13, and you see the word as at the beginning, and you see there's a comparison of two different persons of different kinds, very different kinds. You've got the covenant God of Israel, the Lord, and you've got a loving human father. These two vastly different persons, and yet David compares them. And as David makes the comparison between these two different persons, he says there's something that they have in common. There's something that the Lord of heaven and earth shares with a loving earthly father, and that something is compassion. And so on this Father's Day, we're gonna look at the simile of Psalm 103. Under the theme, the Lord shows you compassion like a father. And we're going to look at the heart of this comparison, and then we're going to look at the reasons for his compassion. Psalm 103 begins with David commanding himself to bless the Lord. That means to praise the Lord. Bless the Lord, O my soul. He's talking to his soul. And he returns to that theme at the end of the psalm, and he tells the angels in heaven to bless the Lord. And what is the reason for David's blessing the Lord? He tells us in the second verse, it's because of all the Lord's benefits, all the good things that David experiences day by day from the Lord's hand. You see that in the verses three, four, and five. reflection on the personal experience of the Lord's benefits. And then in the verses six through 18, there's a communal reflection on the experience of the Lord's benefits. Not only is David as an individual believer, one who has experienced all the Lord's benefits, but the people of God through time have experienced all the Lord's blessings. We're in the we section of Psalm 103, so 6 through 18. And this section is an extended meditation on one verse of Scripture. And the verse of Scripture is Exodus 34, verse 6. It's that moment where Moses is on the mountain, just him and the Lord, and the Lord reveals Himself to Moses by telling him the meaning of His covenant name, the Lord. He says, this is the kind of God I am. I am a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. That's the verse that dominates 6 through 18. You find it in verse 8 of the psalm. That's the verse that gets meditated on. That's the verse which explains why it is that individually as believers and corporately as Church of Jesus, we experience this abundance of benefits from the Lord. It is because of His character. It is because he is merciful and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And as David meditates on this word of the Lord to his servant Moses, he highlights for us in the verses nine and 10, how limited the anger of the Lord is. And then beginning at verse 11, he highlights for us how limitless the Lord's love is, how limitless the Lord's grace is, how limitless the Lord's mercy is. You see the limitless love of the Lord, right? As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love. Limitless. You see the unlimited nature of his grace removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. And you see that his mercy is without limits, for he shows compassion to those who fear him as a father shows compassion to his children. And it is then this showing of compassion that is at the heart of this comparison before us this afternoon. And there's a complete intentional pun when I talk about the heart of this comparison for those of you that like puns. Because when we're talking about compassion, and that is what is being compared, then the heart is at the heart of this, isn't it? When we talk about compassion, we're talking about the emotional response of one's heart, how one feels in one's heart in response to seeing in someone else pain and suffering and vulnerability, and sometimes pain and suffering because they are vulnerable. You see, compassion is identifying with someone in their pain and then involving yourself in their lives in such a way as to help them and hopefully prevent any further experience of pain. This is how a loving father's heart responds to the pains and the hurts of his children. And children are, in the broadest definition of the category, vulnerable. And what a loving father does is he shows compassion to his children. I realize that there's probably some of you here this afternoon who haven't experienced that kind of father. Makes Father's Day a tough day for you. and you carry some hurts and your pains because of your father, and I'm gonna return to those hurts and pains in just a little bit, but there's a basic assumption here that we have to run with, and the basic assumption that David makes is that fathers do show compassion to their children, as a father shows compassion to his children. It's a basic assumption that David is operating with. He assumes that a father's heart is a compassionate heart. And there's probably no greater biblical illustration of this than the father in the parable of the prodigal son. And if you don't know the parable, it's in Luke chapter 15, and you can turn to it if you like. The prodigal, even outside of, you know, kind of church context, people will We'll sort of know what you're talking about when you talk about the prodigal, that son who looked at his dad and says, let's pretend you're dead, and then I'll take my inheritance. And then he went off and he wasted the whole inheritance in reckless living. And this prodigal returns to his father. And as he returns to his father, you know what he is carrying in his heart and in his body. He is carrying all sorts of pain and all sorts of hurt. No doubt the greatest pain that he is feeling as he's walking towards his father's house is the fact that he had hurt his father deeply, that he had said in effect to his father, let's pretend you're dead and give me my money. But not only is he carrying that pain and that hurt, but he has accumulated in his wandering years and in his years of reckless living, all sorts of hurt and all sorts of pains of his own. As a matter of fact, as He walks, He hasn't eaten for days. The farmer that He worked for did not see fit to give Him the food that He was giving to the pigs. And it was in that moment as He was sitting among the pigs, hungry, that Jesus awakened to Himself and He said, hold on a minute. The servants in my father's house had it better than I do in this man's house. Now the point is that when Jesus tells the story, the most heartfelt moment is of course the moment when Jesus describes the father seeing his son while he's still a long way off. Jesus said he saw his son and he felt compassion. He saw his son and he felt compassion. He saw from a distance, he could see all the pain and all the hurt of his son. He saw his shoulders slumped. He saw his head cast down to the ground. He saw the clothes that his son was wearing. They certainly weren't the clothes that he left home with. Now, you have to remember, this is the father who had been hurt by his son. And no doubt, to that very moment, there was profound pain in this father's heart. And he could have responded to his son coming towards him out of that pain, but he doesn't respond to his son out of his pain. He responds to his son out of the abundance of his love for his son. And because his son was the son he loved, because his son was a son in whom he was invested from the moment he was born, invested in his well-being. He felt compassion for his son, and he starts running, and he hugs his son, and he kisses his son, and he dresses his son, and then he throws a party like there's no tomorrow for his son. This is what fathers do. This is what fathers do. They show compassion to their children, says David. And whether their children's hurts and pains are caused by accidents, or whether they're caused by other sins, or whether those hurts and pains are because of the children's own sinful choices, it doesn't matter. A father's gonna show compassion to his children. As I said, even even if even if the father has hurts in his heart from his children, when those children come to him, nonetheless, he will show them compassion because his love is abundant as a father shows compassion to his children. So the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. And I want you to notice something about Psalm 103 13. That it's a simile, as I said. It doesn't say in Psalm 103 that the Lord is a father. It doesn't say in Psalm 103 that you are his children. It says as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. But the interesting thing is when you get to the parable of the prodigal son, when you get to Jesus, the simile turns into a metaphor. No longer do we speak of the Lord as someone who is like a father. We speak of the Lord God as a father. Because in Jesus, He is revealed to be Father. A Father whose mercy knows no limits. A Father whose love for His children is limitless. A Father who shows compassion to those who fear Him. You say, what does it mean to fear Him? The answer is in the parable of the prodigal. This is what it means to fear the Lord. It means to want to live in his house because you've awakened to the reality that you cannot author your own story. You cannot author your own story. That's the prodigal's awakening. I need my father. I need His care. I need His guidance. I need His mercy. I need His grace. I need His love. I need You, Lord. That's what it means to fear Him. And if that's your relationship, He will always, always receive you. into His compassionate arms. Every single time you come walking up to the door, He will come running out to you before you even get to Him. And if you ever find yourself wondering if that is true, then you need to look at His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and His entry into this world. Because the entry of the eternal Son of God into this world is the story, the story of compassion. It is the story of identifying with someone else in all of their hurts, in all of their pains, to the point where God would involve himself to such an extent that he would become one of us. That's how invested God was in helping us. That's what it meant for him to show compassion to us. The Son of God takes on our human flesh, and He doesn't just take on our human flesh in some abstract way. He takes on this real thing we call flesh and blood, a real human body, a real human soul. He took on all of our pains and all of our hurts. He took on our diseases, says the Scriptures. Throughout His life, He's busy taking on all of that hurt. Time and again, you read in the Gospels, Jesus looks at a crowd of people and he feels compassion for them. They're hungry, they're sheep without a shepherd, and so on. But not only does he throughout his life take on that, identify himself and involve himself with all of our hurts, but at the end of his life, in his death, he takes on the judgment of God against our sins. And if you have any doubts in your heart right now, about how the Father views you. Let those doubts dissolve in the person and work of Jesus. The Father's heart is full of compassion. The Lord, your God, is not just someone who shows compassion to you like a father, but He is someone who is your Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. And even if your father didn't show you. The compassion he should have. Even if your father is the reason that you carry hurt and pain. The Lord, as your father has shown you his heart. In Christ his son. And he stands there every day. With open arms. Full of compassion. because He loves you as your Father. So you can go to Him with your pains, and you can go to Him with your hurts, and He will show you time and time and time again His compassion. It doesn't matter where the hurts and pains are coming from. They could be created by someone else, caused by someone else. But they could also be the result of circumstance, things beyond your control. They could be the result of your own sinful choices. It might be that the hurt and the pain you carry is that of a father who looks at his body of work as a father and says, I don't think I was a good father. I think I failed my kids. And now it's too late to make things up. Whatever your story, whatever your hurts, whatever your pains, I want you to know that the Lord feels compassion for you as you walk towards His house. His mercy is always more than your sins because His mercy is limitless. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. End of story, sort of. We have a question left to wrestle with, and the question is why. Why does the Lord do this for you? Why does the Lord do this for me? Why does he show compassion to us? And David gives us the answer in the 14th verse. For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. And we hear the echoes of Genesis, don't we? Genesis chapter two, verse seven. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. This pulpit Bible says that, verse 14, for the words, for he knows our frame, says, or at the bottom, knows how we are formed. And the reason there's the alternate translation is because the word frame and the word, formed in Genesis 2, verse 7, are the exact same word. He knows our frame. That is, he knows how we are formed and how are we formed. We are formed from dust. He remembers that we are dust and the Lord God formed the man from the dust to the ground. And we not only hear the echo of Genesis 2, verse 7, we hear the echo of Genesis 3, verse 19, as God is speaking to Adam, saying to him, look, You've messed up, and now you're gonna work by the sweat of your brow until the day comes where you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, and to it you'll return, for you are dust, and to dust you will return. Why is God, our Father, so compassionate? because He knows our frame, He knows how we are formed, and He remembers that we are dust. What was true of those first human beings is true of you and of me. The origin of our body and the destiny of our body are one and the same. It is the soil of the ground. And the Lord knows it. The Lord remembers it. That is to say that there's never a day in your life where the Lord looks at you and forgets this one fundamental truth about you. And because he never forgets this about you, he knows your frailties. He knows your failures. He knows your fleetingness. He knows that you are imperfect and he knows that you are impermanent. He knows that the human condition is one that is both fragile as well as flawed. When you show compassion to another human being, the primary reason that you do so is because you recognize in someone else our shared human condition. You have compassion for another person because you see in yourself their weakness, their pain, their sin, whether in real terms or in potential terms, but you see yourself in them and it moves you to compassion, which tells you what's going on when you fail to show compassion. When you fail to show compassion, It's because you expect people to be flawless just like you are. That was the fundamental problem of the prodigal son's older brother. He considered himself flawless and he considered his brother profoundly flawed. He was half right. His brother was profoundly flawed. But he was not flawless. He was just as flawless. He was just as flawed as his brother. But he didn't recognize it, and so he didn't understand the compassion of Dad. He had no category for a father whose compassion goes far beyond human expectations. And sometimes we take that to God Himself. God shares in our humanity in Jesus. God knows our frame intimately, not just because He's the one who knits each one of us together in our mother's womb, but He also knows our frame intimately because He was the one who was knit together in His mother's womb. Jesus knows frailty. Jesus knows fleetingness. He got 33 years on this earth. Jesus knows suffering, Jesus knows pain. Hebrews says we have a high priest who can sympathize with us. And then it adds, and yet was without sin. And that's the part that always is gonna blow our minds when we think about Jesus and his compassion, and we think of the Father and his compassion. It's gonna blow our mind because you would expect that God's compassion that the Son of God's compassion, that Jesus' compassion would only extend so far as we are like Him. But it extends to all those areas where we are so utterly unlike Him. It extends to those areas of our sins and our transgressions. Why? And God says, because I know your frame. I remember that your dust. And part of that frame and part of that dust. Is that you'll never be? Flawless. This side of glory. Do you know that the Lord doesn't expect you to be flawless? Do you know that? Do you know that the Lord knows you can't be flawless? That if He expected you to be flawless, He knew you could be flawless, He would have never sent His Son? There's but one flawless one, one flawless human being. The Son of God become flesh God doesn't expect you to be flawless, because He knows you can't be. He knows your frame. He knows how you were formed. He remembers that you are dust. And it is that knowledge that leads Him to show compassion, even when we are the ones who've made a royal mess of our own life. I want you to find that truth today and hold on to it and let it go deep into your body, let it go deep into your soul. And I say this because I know something about some of you. And I know that always sounds a little odd, but I'm just making a basic assumption here. And here's my basic assumption. I know that some of you are hard on yourself. And I know there's some dads here that are hard on themselves. I'm sure there's moms too, but it's Father's Day. So I'm just going to stick with the dads and the moms can take out of this whatever they want. You know, Father's Day is a happy day. It's supposed to be a happy day. We try to make it a happy day, even if it's not always a happy day. But sometimes, you know, as fathers, we sit there and we just We zero in on our faults and we zero in on our failures. And the older we get and the more that the kids are gone out of the house, it seems that we have more time to live with a measure of regret about I failed here and I didn't do the right thing over here and all of that stuff. And you get hard on yourself. And I have a question for you this afternoon. Why are you so hard on yourself? Why are you not showing compassion to yourself? Do you know that the Lord knows everything that you know about yourself and his perspective on you is very different? The Lord knows the very same things that you know about yourself. He knows your frame and he remembers that you are dust and Does that cause him to be hard on you? Quite the opposite. The very fact that he knows your dust and the very fact that he remembers how you are formed is enough for him. It's enough for him to show you compassion. These are the very reasons for his compassion. And as you think about that, You gotta get back to the beginning of the psalm, don't you? 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. David is talking to himself. David is talking to his soul. You know, it's easy when you're talking to yourself, it's easy when you're talking to your soul to be hard on yourself. It's easy because the human condition is one that is flawed. Oh, we're beautiful. But we are beautifully flawed. And we are fragile and we are marked by all kinds of failures. So listen to David as he talks to his soul in order that you might take that language and use it to talk to your own soul. And tell yourself about all the wonderful benefits that you have experienced and continue to experience from the hand of your Father who is in heaven. Tell yourself that He shows you compassion as a father shows compassion to his children. Show yourself His compassion, for His compassion is but one of 10,000 reasons for your heart to find. As you sing, bless the Lord, O my soul, worship his holy name. Let's pray. Father, we bless you and we worship your holy name. We praise you in particular for your compassion to us. Thank you, Father, for never forgetting our frame. Thank you for always remembering that we are dust. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your compassion. that led you to become one of us in order to save us. Thank you for giving us earthly fathers to show compassion to us. Bless every father here, young and old. Bless them with a heart of compassion towards their children. Where we have failed as fathers, forgive us in your compassion. Where our children hurt because of our failures, show them your compassion. And if we can do anything to make it right, help us to acknowledge our sins and shortcomings to them. And where we might hurt. As fathers, because of what our children have done to us, help us not to act out of our pain. But to act out of the abundance of love that we have for them. Father, you know that sometimes Father's Day is. A tough day because. lost a child or because we've lost a father. Even those in this congregation who are maybe grieving in that regard, some recent losses or some particularly poignant losses. We pray that also in this day, they would know you as the father of all compassion and the God of all comfort. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you.