It is good to be back in the land of the living. Last week was not fun at all. Excuse me, I'm still getting over the flu, the lingering cold, so I may not be the most fun to listen to today as I wheeze and whatnot. The text this morning is Psalm 103, so if you would please turn there with me. I've titled this lesson, Preparation for Worship, I think you can view this psalm in many different ways. You may see it as a reflection of God's goodness or simply a psalm of direct praise just declaring God's goodness. But as I read through it, it really struck me as a simple and valuable lesson as to how David prepares himself to come before God in worship. And that's how I'd like to treat it this morning. And I may not say anything earth-shattering. anything worthwhile, but I am about to read the divinely inspired Word of God. So if you don't hear anything else, hear Psalm 103 this morning as I read it. Here it is, Psalm 103. 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 loving kindness 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 loving-kindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger with us 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 loving-kindness 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 the Father has compassion on His children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame, and 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 who 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. We see Psalm 103 is bookended with calls to praise. David begins the psalm instructing himself, really. He's exhorting himself to bless the Lord. That's just apparent in verse 1 and 2. Bless the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me, bless His holy name. And then at the end of the psalm, in verses 20-22, is a corporate call to praise. He commands angels, he commands creation to join in blessing the Lord. In verses 3-5, he dwells on God's mercy directly to himself. He says, he pardons my iniquities, he heals my diseases, he redeems my life from the pit, he crowns me with loving kindness and compassion, he satisfies my years with good things such that my youth is renewed. So it's very focused on God's benefit directly to himself. In verses 6-19, he launches into God's mercy and compassion towards all people. And so, he stresses God's goodness overall. He says, He will not always strive with us. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, as far as the East is from the West, so far as He removed our transgressions. He's mindful that we are but dust. Verse 17, the loving kindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. Verse 19, the Lord has established His throne in the heavens and His sovereignty rules over all. So we see in verse 1 and 2, there's a personal call to praise. And he says, Bless the Lord O my soul. And then, really throughout verses 3 through 19, it's supplying himself with abundant material for praise. So there's a personal call to praise, self-exhortation, and there's abundant material for praise that he gives, who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases. And then, in the end, there's a corporate call to praise. So that's kind of the overview of the psalm, how I view it as being laid out. But I want to look at two things specifically, really more so focused on the first five verses. But the first thing I want to look at is David's self-exhortation to worship. In verse 1, "...bless the Lord O my soul." He's addressing himself here, he's commanding himself to come into worship. So I want to look at David's self-exhortation and how we too should urge our beings into worship in a similar way. And then I want to look at how reflecting on God's benefits and His mercies leads us into worship. So we command ourselves to worship, and then we reflect on exactly what God has done. So we do exactly what David did. There's a call to worship in ourselves. We command ourselves, bless the Lord, and then we supply abundant material for that blessing. So first, David's self-exhortation. And I've read it several times. Verse 1, Bless the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits. So it's an enthusiastic self-exhortation to praise. He doesn't want to come to bless the Lord with half-heartedness or fickleness. He doesn't want to bless God with his mouth, but not with his heart, or with his heart, but not with his soul. So he's putting attention to the fact that there's more to him than just his mouth. And he doesn't want to just stand there and say, bless the Lord who is one part of him. So he says, all that is within me, come, bless Him. And I want to look at I believe that he does this for two reasons, and I think the first, so there's two sub-points here. The first is that God commands, desires, and claims all of us. And so David, in addressing himself this way, saying, bless the Lord, he's actually aligning himself with God's desire for him, and God's desire for all of us. So the first verse I want to go to to show that is one we all know, but it's Deuteronomy 6. in verse 5. You can turn there, or you might could just quote it. But in Deuteronomy 6, I'll start in verse 4. This is the Lord speaking. He says, Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. The same thing is almost echoed in chapter 10 of Deuteronomy, verse 12. It says, And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul? So He's encompassing more than just one aspect of us. He says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And He doesn't say, love the Lord your God with all your heart, or with all your soul, or with all your mind, or just pick two of them and come worship me. It's a very total thing that He commands all of us to come. And so David's aligning himself with that desire. So there's this command to wholly worship with our entire being that we find in Scripture. There's also a warning to heed, and that's in Isaiah. Chapter 29, Jesus quotes this actually as recorded a couple times in the Gospels. But in Isaiah chapter 29, verse 13, Then the Lord said, Because this people draw near with their words, and honor me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from me, and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote. Therefore, behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be concealed. So that's a warning, and I don't know what it means when he says, I will deal marvelously with this people, marvelously wondrous, but I don't think it's a good thing. I think it's a warning. So we have this command, Deuteronomy says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind. We have a warning saying, they honor me with their lips, but they don't honor me with their heart. So, and Jesus also tells us actually, He says that you cannot serve two masters. Either you will love one and hate the other or you will despise one and hold to the other. So we don't need to come to God. serving two masters, praising Him with our lips but not with our heart." And this is what David is giving attention to. There's also a promise if we heed this, back in Deuteronomy, and you can keep flipping around with me or just listen. In Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 29, God says, "...but from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him, if you search for Him with all your heart and with all your soul. And I don't think it's a dangerous jump from this verse to say that if we come to worship Him with all of our heart and soul, we will truly be allowed to be uplifted in our praise, and that we will have the awesome knowledge that God is honored in this that we do. And I think we will find Him. Now I know we still live in the flesh and I do not, not under the impression that we can in this life bring perfect worship to God. I know we'll never love Him and sing to Him and bless Him and adore Him as He deserves, but I think we can just through laziness and sinfulness bring Him much less devoted worship than we can even in our broken state. And we honestly simply just don't want to take every thought captive as we are commanded to do. And we often, we won't, we just do not put the energy into arresting our affections and arresting our mind and focusing on Christ. We like dwelling on our worries often times. Even if it's just good things that we let distract us. We often do not turn our hearts towards God even as we in our broken state are able. But I don't want to get discouraged for surely we do bring God glory even in feeble worship that we do in our flesh. But that brings us to the second sub-point. So the first reason I believe David exhorts himself is that it's in line with God's commandments. It's in line with worshiping God with all of our heart and all of our soul. But secondly, and I think we need to learn this from David, is that speaking to ourselves either outwardly or inwardly is a great practice. is something that we should learn. It's not crazy, but I think it's good for us to address ourselves in this way. How often do we not focus on God in prayer or meditation or worship or reading simply because we haven't taken the time to arrest our thoughts and our affections and turn them towards the object of our worship? And we come very haphazardly, I think, often in worship, and we are not willing to sit down and say, no, heart, you're looking at the wrong thing, look at Christ, bless the Lord. You mind so worried about people's opinion or work or whatever is going on, bless the Lord. You soul trying to find peace outside of your Creator, bless the Lord. And this is what David is doing. Surely this addressing ourselves is not a hard task, I just think it takes forethought and it takes preparation. So David says, bless the Lord O my soul, all that is within me, bless His holy name. This is the self-exhortation. I think David wants to worship God in a way that is in keeping with God's desire and command for all things that belong to him to be engaged in his worship. But the good thing is, David doesn't sit in one spot, and he doesn't just sit there and say, bless the Lord, bless the Lord, bless the Lord, why isn't it working yet? He doesn't keep self-exhorting himself. You know, bless the Lord. Alright, am I doing it yet? Nope. He points to reasons to give God praise. And this is what I said, there was a call to worship, but then there was him supplying himself with abundant material for praise. And that's the second point. So there's the self-exhortation that I believe we can learn from, and need to learn from, and need to use. But there's also this reflecting on God's benefits to move us to worship. So David urges himself to praise, And then he turns to look at the abundant reasons he has to bless the Lord. He says, and forget none of his benefits. We are often not enthralled with God, I think, because we don't see him as the giver of good gifts. We forget what he's done for us. And so we often find it impossible to bless the Lord because we simply have not taken the time to look at His actions and His character. There are several examples in Scripture of the praise of God being enabled by reflecting on His deeds. In Psalm 78, verses 4 and 5, we see The psalmist says, We will not conceal them from their children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength, and His wondrous works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children. that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments." So, he's saying we will tell our children about what God has done so that they can bless the Lord too, so that they can honor Him. We will remember His goodness, that's what Psalm 78 is about, passing on the goodness of the Lord and His testimony so that we can honor God, we can come into worship. And in Joshua chapter 4, this is perhaps an even more stark example. We have recounted the memorial stones from the Jordan, when the Israelites passed through the Jordan, God commands them, He says, take up 12 stones and set them up on the other side of the Jordan. And this is what verses 6 and 7 say, of Joshua chapter 4. Let this be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, What do these stones mean to you? Then you shall say to them, Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever. So God was telling them, set up something so that you remember My goodness and praise Me because of it. You'll have something to tell your children, that's a reminder of God's goodness. And God is very concerned with this. Actually, there's a direct command in Psalm 111 verse 4. It says that He has made His wonders to be remembered. This is very, very important to God. He doesn't want us to forget His awesome deeds that He has done. So the psalm says that He has made His wonders to be remembered. He's very concerned in Joshua with having something that the sons of Israel look back and say, that shows the great deeds of our Lord. But to rightly reflect on His goodness is to give thanks to Him. So I don't think it's right to just look back and say He did this, but then forget that He is worthy of thanks because of it. As God's people, we must not only see Him as the giver of all good gifts, but also worthy of thanks for these things. I think it's two parts. simply look back in our psalm, it says, forget none of his benefits, I think is hand in hand with give thanks for his benefits. In fact, in Romans chapter 1, Paul describes the ungodly and unrighteous men, and one of the severe indictments against them, it says, for even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks. That was one of the worst things he could say about these people, was that they weren't a thankful people. And so are we reflecting on God's benefits and are we giving thanks for them? I think this is crucial to come into worship and to repair our hearts for worship. 1 Thessalonians 5 says, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks. Colossians 3.15, And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Psalm 100, Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. So to come to worship God we must come and reflect on His good gifts with thanksgiving. I think that's how you reflect. You don't simply think of, oh well He did good things for me, but you don't give thanks to the giver. So David exhorts himself in worship, bless the Lord O my soul. Exhorts himself to remember God's goodness. forget none of his benefits, and then he recounts individual mercies of God. That's what the majority of the rest of the psalm is, is recounting the individual mercies of God who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion, who satisfies your years with good things, so that your youth is renewed like an eagle, and so on through the rest of the psalm. And I do want to spend some time looking at more, a couple of these individual things that David focuses on, mainly the ones that reflect on salvation. But before I do that, I was reading through this psalm, and there were several verses that it struck me that there is, well, the very name that this psalm is shouting is missing from the psalm. And I think this really hit me when I compared verse 7 with another verse in John. And so I want to read. I want to read that. Well, you see David going through the psalm. He says, God, You pardon, God, You heal, God, You redeem, God, You remove our transgressions, You satisfy us. It's just there's something lacking. There's something missing from this psalm. And if you go to verse 7, he says, He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. And this is where I just thought it was a beautiful contrast. So turn over to John chapter 1. And we'll start in verse 16. So we just read, He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. And then you get to John 1 verse 16. He says, For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him." Indeed, God's revelation to Moses and to the sons of Israel is worthy of praise, and David was right to shout and say, this is something that I praise you for, God. This is something that I prepare my heart for worship with. But for the believer, we have so much more to rejoice in. He made known his ways to Moses, but John says that the law was given to Moses, but grace and truth were realized in Jesus Christ, and that was not something that David knew. I don't know how much David knew. I'm sure he knew something about the promises of God, and he certainly penned a lot of the prophecies about Christ. But I think it was a mystery. What is God's pardon without Christ? What is God's redemption without Christ? How does He satisfy us and crown us and restore us and remove our transgressions without Christ? And so David praised, and indeed he was right to do so, but I think he praised a mystery. And in Ephesians we're told, in chapter 1 it says, in all wisdom and insight, God made known to us the mystery of His will. And you read down a couple lines and it says, that is the summing up of all things in Christ. And so the things that David is referring to here, I believe they are all summed up in Christ. And 2 Corinthians says, for as many as may be the promises of God in Christ, they are yes. and amen. And so, we have to see, I think at this point, that we as New Testament believers have abundantly more reason to praise than David had. David had great reasons, and David praised God as, I only hope to, but we more. We have much more reason We have a better covenant. That's what Paul says. We have better promises. We have seen the radiance of God's glory. We have the image of the invisible God. We have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, and David did not. And so he looked with hope on the God of promises, and yet we look with certainty on the man Jesus Christ. And so I think we have all of these reasons, yes, we can praise God for, but we see what they were pointing to, and we see the fruition. We don't just say, He pardons all our iniquities. How do you do that? Maybe David was asking. He felt it maybe, but he didn't know. And yet we know now. And he says, He redeems your life from the pit. But we have seen the redemption, and we know where we're headed. So the foundation of Christ is there now, and I think that allows us to look at a few of the specifics. I briefly want to go through three things that David looks at, and they're all centered around the Gospel, because now we know, we're equipped with Christ, we know the Gospel. And the first thing I want to look at is verse 3, "...who pardons all your iniquities." So again, we're looking at all of this in light of preparation for worship. And so I think to prepare for worship, we should consider our iniquity and His pardoning. So to truly come to God in whole body, soul, mind, spirit, worship, we must see our iniquity. We see our sins are very great. Our debt is heavy. There is a burden on our backs. And apart from God's grace and the work of Christ, there is an enormous barrier of sin in between us and God. And we must see that to come to worship. I don't think us coming to God without recognizing our sins, how can we come in worship? If we don't feel we have any need for His condescension and His mercy, then the praise will not be ready on our lips. So we must see that we stand condemned. In fact, Colossians 2 reminds us what this condemning was like. And it says that there was a certificate of debt consisting of decrees which was against us and which was hostile to us. And so, we must see that. We must see our iniquity. We must see our sin, but then we must see His pardoning. Because that's what David does. He immediately, He pardons your iniquity. He doesn't just stand there and say, I have iniquity. Now what do I do with it? He pardons your iniquity of the merciful nature of our God. For though our sins, which are as scarlet, they should be white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. And in Colossians, thankfully, we are not only told that there is a certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us, but we are told this. And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him. having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." So David wondered, he said, you pardon my iniquities and we say he nailed them to the cross. We know exactly what happened to those and they're gone. And there is no longer a certificate of debt that's hostile to us. And so that is a reason for praise. Right out of the gates, that's David's main reason for praise. I don't want to forget your benefits, you pardon my iniquities. Secondly, we should consider our redemption. That's in verse 4, who redeems your life from the pit. God does not just pardon, He redeems. And He doesn't just forgive our sin and say, you're no longer an enemy, He makes us a friend. We are now claimed by Him and He has changed our eternal destination. I don't think when David wrote this, I don't think it was because he was just sitting in a pit and suddenly God plucked him out and said, Oh, you redeemed my life from the pit. I think he's looking forward to something. He knew he was headed for the pit. This is not something that had already happened to David as far as going to the pit and yet he can still say, You have redeemed my life from the pit. That's because I think he knew where he was headed for. He knew that the destination of his flesh was hell. And we too should see that and should recognize that. But God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son through whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And so that is what another large reason for praise is that He has redeemed us. He has redeemed our life from the pit. So we now have the sure hope of heaven, of paradise, salvation, eternal life, Jesus told us when He was here, He said, I go to prepare a mansion for you. And that's what David is rejoicing in here. He said, I am no longer bound for the pit. John told us that He wrote so that we may know that we have eternal life. And do we know that? Do we recognize that that is a reason for praise because we know we have eternal life and that can lead us into worship? So let us praise God not only for forgiving our sins, not only for keeping us from hell, but for promising us heaven. And lastly, we can be brought to worship by the completeness of our salvation. And that's just another term, or another way of looking at verse 12. As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. It's just an expounding upon verse 3, I think, when he says, who pardons all your iniquities, and now he's saying they're so far apart, they're like the east is from the west, which I think we could all have to conclude that that's an infinite distance. If you took your compass and walked east, that's probably not east, but you'd never get there, and then you'd say, well, I'm not there, so I'll turn around and I'll walk west, but you'd never find it either. There's an indescribable distance in between us and our sin. And so we have to see our sin, and then we have to see that God pardons that sin, and then we have to see that it is unbelievably far away. There's no more condemnation, and there's no more fear as I draw near the throne. Romans 8 says, Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. And Hebrews 7 says, hence also He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. So how are our sins infinitely far away? It's because there is an infinite God and Savior standing in between us and our iniquity, and our debt is paid. And that is what he's rejoicing in, that's what he's drawing near to worship God through, is this distance that's between us. And we happen to know, he saw the distance, we see the person, the intercessor in between that's keeping our sins at bay and interceding always for us before the Father. So to praise God, we must see that we are in sin, We must see what God has done for us in Christ. I was listening to a Spurgeon sermon a couple months ago. And there was an awesome quote stuck out that I think really drives home this past three points. Reflect on the pardoning, reflect on your redemption, reflect on the distance between you and your sin, as far as reflect on those things to draw near in worship, to prepare your hearts for worship. And this is the quote by Spurgeon. He says it much better than I can. Did we recollect how near to death's door that death's dark door we once laid, and how the gates of hell were opened for us, and fain would have closed upon us forever, we should bless that mighty arm which plucked us like brands from the burning, and adore that matchless atonement which has delivered us from going down into the pit because a ransom has been found. We would bless the mighty arm that plucked us like brands from the burning. Did we see ourselves as being so close to being burned? For me, I was saved very young, and it's a hard realization to have, but I was just as near as Spurgeon was, or as any man was, and yet he plucked me like a bran from the burning. And the reason was, says, delivered us from going down into the pit because a ransom has been found, because Jesus Christ thought it not a waste of time to come down here and save us from hell and the pit. And so we have a new life in Christ. So as a recap, we exhort ourselves, bless the Lord, O my soul, because God demands all of us, and because I believe it helps us to realize that we are more than just a mouth, and we're more than just a heart, so we must pay attention to bringing those things into the worship of God. So we exhort ourselves as David did, And then we reflect on His goodness. And that's how we come into the worship of God. And so this next hour, can we reflect? Can we tell ourselves, alright, you're going to quit being distracted and bless the Lord. And can we look at His salvation that He has done to bring us into worship? And adore that matchless atonement which has delivered us from going down into the pit because a ransom has been found. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for this psalm and how it shows us salvation, even though it was written by a man who had not seen the work of Christ. And we thank you for the wisdom you gave him, but we thank you for Jesus Christ that you gave to us. Lord, I pray that you would help us this next hour to worship you and to come and ready ready to bless your name with all that we are so that we may honor you and glorify Christ. Lord, we thank you and we love you in Christ's name. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. We're out of time. I'm shocked. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and start. Yeah. I think it's the worst thing I've ever seen. So now, we're going to have a look at the production. We're going to have a look at the production. Yeah, she's going to have a look at the production. How are you? Did you have a nice day? I don't know. Yeah, sometimes they were like... And the average, that's a, we had a lot of questions. And we're going to send this one more person forward. And this is going to take us to the next area. And it's a little bit hard to tell, but we're going to have to go back. And if you can't pass it, we're going to let you know that you passed it. I was scared to death. I didn't know who it was or what it was. I was scared to death. I didn't know who it was or what it was. Yeah, I'm glad Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Thank you. Yeah. There's actually a bunch of stuff. I think that's a great thing. I don't mind. I don't mind. I didn't know that. yeah yeah yeah yeah Thank you. How do you like it? Yeah, I got one. Okay, that's fine.