Let's join our hearts together in prayer. O gracious Heavenly Father, we ask for that special blessing upon your word. With Mary, we sit at your feet. We pray that you would speak that prophetic word to our hearts, and that we, O Lord, would grow in the grace and knowledge of you, our Savior, and that we would be effective We ask that you would open up our minds and our hearts, that we might lift up holy hands in praise to you, calling you our exceeding joy. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. Our scripture for the passage, for our message this morning is Psalm 103. Psalm 103. I'll read the first five verses. 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 eagle's. Psalm 103 is called by some a psalm of exquisite beauty, the noblest of psalms, in how it so shamelessly puts the attributes of God on open display, showcasing in particular the love of the Lord to the degree that it is in every bit in the spirit of the New Testament. The psalmist goes as it were, to the very boundaries, pushing the boundaries of what could be known of the Lord's love prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He looks as through a glass darkly. John Trapp, a Puritan quoted Beza, the predecessor, or the one, the successor, I should say, of John Calvin, who gave this psalm a title, A Psalm of David, which he wrote when carried out of himself as far as heaven. Striking in this psalm is the absence or perhaps the indifference to the ceremonial system. Throughout the entire psalm, there is no mention of any aspect of the animal sacrifices. In fact, we see elements of that in other psalms and in other areas of the scriptures. I could give you animal sacrifices if that would please you, that's what I would do. But they knew already that it wasn't through the animal itself, the sacrificing of the animal, that we can draw near to God and that our sins would be forgiven. And so in faith, they looked forward ultimately to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Equally impressive is the exclusive use of the covenant name for God, Yahweh. Bless the Lord, O my soul, begins the psalm and then diverges into three sections where addresses are made to an ever-expanding purview, beginning first with himself, that's what we'll look at tonight, verses one to five, And then the congregation, looking at the congregation, and finally closing it out, opening it up to all and the angelic hosts. And then at the end he converges again to close out the psalm just as he began and reiterating his main interest. Bless the Lord, O my soul. So why will the psalmist exhort himself to bless the Lord? Well, the short answer is, I will bless you, Lord, because you first blessed me. It's as simple as that. The long answer, I will exhort my soul to bless you, Lord, because you are the great I am of my history. You are the great I am of Israel's history. You are the great I am of the world history. In music, a medley is a series of songs sung as a unit. It takes different forms depending on the intended purpose. So lullabies are sung to babies for the purpose of calming or lulling them to sleep. The psalmist has a different purpose. The psalmist sings a melody of songs to his own soul, praises. not for calming or for lulling to sleep, but for stirring up to this one glorious task and theme, to bless the Lord. The significant thing about this medley is that all the songs are his. You know, if you look at birds and their songs, you could tell Mockingbird and the Meadowlark are two birds with great songs. They're nice, very easy on the ear. The Mockingbird strings songs together that are not its own. Some have been known to mimic even frogs and dogs barking, whereas the Meadowlark sings its repertoire of songs as its own. I'd like to look at the first song of the medley, which I've entitled, Your Exceeding Joy. Psalm 103, verses 1 to 5. And in the meditation, in the beginning of the service, I placed Psalm 43, verse 4, and also we read 1 Peter, chapter 1, verse 8. And there we see the elements of joy, joy inexpressible, and calling God, my joy, despite the fact If you look at the context of these two chapters in the Bible, there's great distress upon the soul and there's great anguish. And despite that, that's the expression of the soul, of the heart. So it doesn't depend upon our own emotional ups and downs. It's something of a relationship with the Lord. We know him to be my exceeding joy. So how shall it be sung, first of all? Secondly, what shall be sung? And then thirdly, why shall it be sung? So first of all, how shall it be sung? Well, to the tune of all that is within me, verse one, singing, to his soul, the whole man, the seed of understanding and affections with all the inward parts of mind and of heart and all their faculties. Tell him how great he is, how marvelous the Lord is and how wonderful and exalted his name is and his character, how holy he is. The holiness of God does not frighten us, rather it is the fact that we are not consumed due to our sin, but we have been set apart as holy and sanctified, and so we sing of the holiness of God in that light. The psalmist uses the literary device of soliloquy, broken up, solus, alone, plus loqui, to speak, meaning a talking to oneself. And as he talks to himself, he strikes three inner chords, E, A, and I. First of all, engagement, E for engagement. all that is within me, the engagement of all of his parts, every fiber of his being, the feeling part of him, the thinking part of him, the doing part of him, every ounce of my strength, he's saying, body and soul. In school, when I teach the first graders and I see one there that thinks that he can just or she can just do what he or she wants and not participate, they learn very quickly that that's not an option. And I do what I have to do to stir them up, that they become full and complete participants of the classroom. And so, too, the psalmist is speaking to himself in that way to stir every aspect of his being up that they might praise the Lord and bless the Lord. All that is within me, A, for acknowledgment and acknowledgment of the gifts and the giver. And I think, you know, we look at the word bless the Lord, and some want to say, well, let's use a word that we're more familiar with, praise the Lord. Yes, it means praise the Lord and thank the Lord, but it is the word in the Hebrew for bless, bless the Lord. I think what we can see here is that the Lord has his hand of blessing upon the individual. And so what we do is we put our hands on that hand of blessing. And so we bless God in that way. It's more of an acknowledgement of God's hand of blessing upon our heads, as it were. So we're tracing the blessings back to the one doing the blessing. Bless the blesser is one way to phrase it. It's to acknowledge that the benefits have come by the hand of a benefactor. And also it strikes the chord, I, involvement. And here we see that he wants to be an exemplar for his readers to copy and imitate. So he reveals his innermost thoughts to the reader of his intent to worship and praise the Lord. Your exceeding joy. That's not me talking to you. That's the psalmist talking to himself. Your exceeding joy. And so if you would enter into the spirit of the song, you must do the same. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, Paul says, that I may share with them in its blessings. 1 Corinthians 9, verse 23. imitate me insofar as I imitate Christ. Calvin strikes all three chords when he says the Holy Spirit by his mouth, that is the psalmist's mouth, indirectly upbraids us on account of our not being more diligent in praising God and at the same time points out the remedy that every man may descend into himself and correct his own sluggishness. So it shall be sung to the tune of all that is within me. Well, what shall be sung? Lyrics. Lyrics that forget not all his benefits. Verse two, don't forget what he has done for you. with gladness of heart, describe all of his fruitful benefits. Forget not all his benefits, because contrary to the message of the world, you do not deserve them. I'm thinking of my own teacher's union, which insists on receiving and holding certain benefits. And of course, we're talking about how the world operates and whatnot. But when we consider our relationship with God, we know full well that we do not deserve even one of them. And these lyrics are to be sung with that advisory label in mind. They come with that advisory label, forget not. You see, he gives himself wise advice. So simple and yet so profoundly important. Because consider these following thoughts. If you forget, what do you have? You have sorrowful loss. In John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Christian's scroll of benefits, we might say, may represent assurance, which explains Christian's distress when he succumbs to sloth and loses the scroll. He's failed to be diligent And he's lost the confidence of his salvation. The opportunity to praise God dies. Consider also that if you forget not, you have joyful gain. I was listening on a radio to a Christian song by Jason Gray. If you want to love someone, He goes, if you want to love someone, search their soul for where it's broken. Find the cracks and pour your heart in. And at one point in his song, he says, that's what you did. He's talking of the Lord Jesus Christ, what he has done for us. I was looking online at some of the reactions to the song, and one person said, it's the first time I've heard good advice being poured into a song. And how true that is. The lyrics not only come with an advisory label, but the lyrics are experiential in nature. All his benefits. It's what he remembers of the Lord's work in his heart. And so what we have here is a list or maybe better to look at it as a diary or a scroll that he rehearses and updates, downloads or uploads in the heart. It's experiential. We have a wonderful quote from Spurgeon. Here David begins his list of blessings received, which he rehearses as themes and arguments for praise. He selects a few of the choicest pearls from the casket of God's love, threads them on the string of memory, and hangs them about the neck of gratitude. Pearls on a necklace. We may count them one by one and see the various blessings and benefits that we have in Christ. We may count them two by two or in groups of three. If we do one by one, we can see them as individual policies or benefits that we have with the Lord. If we break it in half, we see that the first three deal with deliverances, the last three with endowments. Two by two, we see the first two as justifying grace, the second two as redeeming grace, and the final two as renewing grace. Pardon, the bill of health, ransom, the crown, the provision, and renewal. The pardon, he forgives all your iniquity, heads the list as the mother of pearl, the bed for the pearls to develop and layer upon layer. Forgiveness. Bill of health, he heals all your diseases, not merely bodily diseases, but all kinds of inward and outward sufferings. Ransom, or redeeming your life from the pit, to buy back, to free from what distresses or harms. He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, woven into the warp and woof of our individual lives, crowns us as those who are adopted and seated at his table. Provision, he satisfies you with good in Psalm 104, We have this very picturesque verse talking about all of God's creation, all of the animals and the living creatures that God has created. And he says, you open your hand and they are satisfied with good. And God cares for us that way, we know. And the psalmist acknowledges how he cares for us in a spiritual sense as well. when he says in Psalm 63 verse 5, my soul is satisfied with fatness and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. And renewal, so that your life is renewed like the eagle's, whether he's referring to the plumage of the eagle or the status among the feathered creatures, its size, its vitality, its longevity, matters little because it's such a wonderful creature of the Lord's in its greatness. how it flies and is a picture of how we in our life with the Lord are renewed. Before the discovery of how pearls were formed, pearls were obviously hard to come by and they were exceedingly rare and expensive. So much so that the Romans decreed that the common folks, the common people, could not wear them. Only people of high society. As children of the Lord, though, as children of the king, he makes no such distinction. We may wear this around our neck in gratitude to God for our salvation. And lastly, why shall it be sung? The answer, so that the joyful sound may complete the holy or the sacred exchange. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Bless his holy name. Forget not because God first blessed you. God is deserving of it. that my resounding cry may be, you, oh God, are my exceeding joy, the exceeding joy of my soul, oh Lord. That's really the heart and soul of the blessing. There is that personal exchange, first of all, you are his. and he is yours. He embraces you in grace and you embrace him by grace. There is that sense of belonging. How awful it is when the Lord spoke to those that were critical of him and did not see that he was sent by God and did not humble themselves before the Lord. Referring to little children as an example Children in the marketplace, we played the flute for you. There was no reciprocal exchange. You have not danced. We sang a dirge and there was no reciprocal response and you did not mourn. John came not eating or not drinking and you say he has a demon. The son of man came eating and drinking and you say he's glutton. He's a drunkard. He's a friend of sinners. the wrong response. We have that exchange, that personal exchange, because we have been touched by the grace of God and we thank him so much for it. We embrace him by grace. It is purposeful as well. Not only is it a personal exchange, but a purposeful exchange. There's that sound of joy in purposeful exchange. God's glorious purposes are being fulfilled in you and you begin fulfilling your purpose in glorifying God. If you don't, God will raise up others to do it. There is, thirdly, the poetic exchange. There's that sound of joy in the poetic exchange, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the Lord's grace and beauty in our hearts. So he beautifies and you are inspired by his creative and artistic touch. we look at certain aspects of those things that we engage in day-to-day. I'm thinking of the exceptionally well done series Downton Abbey and we can say how well it was done and we can say wow the acting was just so spot on and how it captured the nuances of the time and of the culture and every aspect of it was so wonderful and what? We're going to be silent? With God's display of love for me? Absolutely not. How wonderful, how beautiful is the Lord in all that he does and all that he is. By way of conclusion, let's talk about the counsel of the heart. The counsel of the heart. Don't allow discontentment a seat. at the table of your hearts, or worse yet, in the den of your hearts. Do not allow doubt or discouragement or fear or pride to take hold within your heart. Many a battle was lost or won right here in our hearts. This is where discipline begins, right in our hearts, where full engagement, and acknowledgement and involvement are present, self-inflicted malaise and the culture of death are not. When every part of me is focused on praising the living God, what part of me will seek answers and suicidal thoughts which could only cut short that goal? Oh no, we have an immense privilege of the Lord Let's talk about painful gain. Mentioned earlier of sorrowful loss on the one side and joyful gain. There's also a third category, a painful gain, painful gain. God is in the business of using our sorrowful losses to our advantage so that we gain in him. And we learn to wait for it. The psalmist said, it was good for me to be afflicted. Think about that. Let's talk about the nest and the egg. Each benefit is a demonstration of his love. Each of the benefits that we spoke of is a demonstration of his love and brings with it godly contentment, which leads to joy. We can look at it this way, if love, the love of God, and all of these benefits that He has displayed for us is the nest, the nest of the benefits, then joy is like the egg sitting in that nest, contented, and breaks forth into joy. It's like the weaned child at its mother's breast. It is that contentment that we have of a soul that's being held in love by a holy God. And that soul will rejoice. As the benefits are remembered, the blessings that we offer to the Lord will be real. Let's talk about the benefits of the new covenant of grace. We talk about, in the Shorter Catechism, justification, adoption, and sanctification. Notice how it says, and the several benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from them, the assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, increase of grace and perseverance there unto the end. See, how well you forget not justification, how well you forget not adoption, how well you forget not sanctification directly correlates to the measure of enjoyment you have and those benefits that accompany them or flow from them. Let's talk about the Lord's Supper. Christ's demonstration of love. a gospel within the gospel. As the gospel is proclaimed through the preaching of the word, we have the table set before us displaying in a stripped-down version of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, of his love for us and what he has done for us. He puts on open display for us in the Lord's Supper all of the benefits of Christ's atoning sacrifice, and they're all communicated to us. He says, do this in remembrance of me. Forget not the covenant of love of the Lord. toward you, which is demonstrated so clearly by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, particularly in his laying down, the laying down of his life as an atoning sacrifice for sin. And so the tune are the chords of engagement, acknowledgement, and involvement. The lyrics are those benefits that the Lord has so graciously bestowed upon us, and we make that joyful sound. Oh my soul, He is your exceeding joy. Jesus is my joy because I am Jesus' joy. Let us bow in prayer. O gracious Heavenly Father, We thank you for that love that you have poured out upon us in sending the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Savior. O Lord, may we sing of your tender mercies toward us, of your great and powerful salvation and the love that you have for us. We thank you that you have drawn us to yourself in Christ Jesus and that we can call you Abba Father. We thank you and praise you for this evening. We thank you and praise you for each other. We thank you above all for that opportunity to come and to sing your praises, to bless you, oh God, together as a body. We ask all of these things in Jesus' wonderful name, amen.