We will be reading from Psalm 103 this morning. The title of this psalm is, Bless the Lord, O My Soul. It is a psalm of true thanksgiving. David writes, Bless Yahweh, 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. Yahweh performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel, Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness. He will not always contend with us, and He will not keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, and He has not 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. As a father has compassion on his children, So Yahweh has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our form. He remembers that we are but dust. As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flowers. When the wind has passed over, It is no more. And its place acknowledges it no longer. But the loving kindness of Yahweh 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. Yahweh has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all. Bless, Yahweh, you His angels, mighty in strength, who perform His word, obeying the voice of His word. Bless, Yahweh, all you His hosts, you who serve Him, doing His will, Bless Yahweh, all you works of his, in the places of his rule. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Let's pray. Father, we do praise you. We bless your name this day. That we are not here for the exercise of men's religious trappings. We are not here this day to celebrate man's ideas. We are here this day to proclaim the glories of the great God who is in the heavens, who does as He pleases. And it has pleased you to send your Son to save a people for your own possession. And we come here this day as the people of God. We come here this day for the meeting of your people on your day where you do the work that you only do when we are together, so that you might accomplish your good purpose in every heart, bringing restoration to the weary, bringing reconciliation, Lord, to the disobedient, bringing salvation to the unbelieving. We pray that you will move and accomplish all that you desire in this place on this day, and that we may leave here praising you, more than we have when we arrived, that we would leave here knowing you better than when we arrived, that we would leave here better prepared to serve you than ever we have been, and that in all these things, Father, you will receive the honor, that the Savior will receive the glory that he is due, and that the Holy Spirit will find pliable and malleable hearts, desirous of the will of God to be accomplished, so that this day might be an honor to you, and be profitable for us. And we pray it in the fully sufficient name of our soon coming Savior. It is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. Friends, we serve a great God. And His praise is worthy to be proclaimed. And His worthiness of praise goes far beyond what we usually give it credit for because in our fallenness we are very often captivated by what is right in front of us and we are consigned to inability because of the frailty and fallibility of our intellect and our understanding. But I hope that today as we are going to take this Thanksgiving holiday service, if you want to call it that, We are looking at Thanksgiving, the official recognition of Thanksgiving in our country on Thursday. We want to take this Sunday, this evening, and even here this morning in the pulpit to look at what we are thankful to God for, thankful to the Creator for. You may have captured a little bit of that idea in the scripture reading this morning. I do not arbitrarily pick our scripture reading. It's always for a purpose. It's always a leading of thought in what I choose to read. Very often it is a cross-reference, as it will be today. But we began two weeks ago, nearly three weeks ago, looking at the core tenets of the gospel. And the first most foundational tenet of the gospel is that you and I are natural born irreparable sinners before a holy God. That is the starting point. The gospel cannot start anywhere else. Because the gospel being the good news of God in Jesus Christ, the gospel is no news until you know the bad news. It is mediocre news until you know the bad news. That is not a popular idea today. And I understand why. It doesn't really have so much to do with today as it has to do with mankind in general. This is never popular. People don't like to be told that they're wrong. People don't like to be told that they're bad. People want compliments. That's what Facebook is for. Hey, y'all, look what I did. And when it turns sour and people make negative comments, you can just go in and erase them. Pretty good, isn't it? I tell you that everyone needs somebody in their life that has the authority to tell them to be quiet and sit down. You need to have somebody in your life like that. I don't mean that that gives license to everybody to tell everybody else to sit down and be quiet when they feel like it. But you need somebody that has the ability to tell you that you are wrong and you to listen to them. And that is because we are born with an incapacity to understand, accept, or even tolerate the hearing of the truth about who we really are on the inside. Everyone looks great on the outside here this morning. But God doesn't look at the outside. God looks at your heart. He looks at my heart. And we want to know what God sees. Fortunately, he has made it very plain to us what he sees. We've been looking at the radical corruption of man's heart. We've been looking at the total depravity of man's being. We're looking at the absolute spiritual inability of spiritually dead sinners born that way. And if all we did was to look at that and then close the book and go home, it would still be a profitable day to be together to do that. But the only reason that you paint a person into that corner, the only reason that you lay that foundation, the only reason that you lay out that black velvet backdrop is so that the glistening gem of the gospel will be seen in its true beauty. As you study the New Testament, you come to find out that the gospel of Jesus Christ was God's plan from the very beginning. Someone recently told me that one of their relatives asked the question, that if God is there and God is good, why did he allow Hitler to do what he did? And I said, man, I wish somebody would kick that door open in front of me. That's an easy question to answer. Man's philosophy cannot answer it, but that's an easy question to answer. Why did God allow that? God allowed that for his own glory. Oh, you mean he wanted the Jews killed and all the gypsies killed and all the blacks that he killed? He wanted all the lesser peoples killed? That's not what I said. If it were not for the presence of sin in the universe, who would ever know the glory of the holiness of God? There would be no way to know that. Is God the author of sin? Absolutely not. Shut your mouth. I believe man should have free will. Good, because he does. And he takes that free will and he sentences himself to hell with it. Left to himself, hell is his destination. But because God is holy and part of that holiness is that he is good and he is long-suffering and he is gracious and merciful. Because of that, he sent a savior. And he sent a savior to save a peculiar people for his namesake. He did not send a savior to produce a possibility. And he had to send a savior to perform a decisive act. Because men and women, boys and girls, are in a spiritual condition where they have no capacity, no ability on their own to even care about reaching God. It's not that they can't get there, they don't even care about getting there. What modern evangelicalism has figured out is that if you go to a natural-born sinner and you promise to them that Jesus will do for them what they already want, they'll accept that Jesus. Problem is, that Jesus is not in this book. That Jesus is in a man's mind. But what this book does tell us, with great clarity, that man is an absolutely spiritually destitute being and that the God in heaven is an absolutely magnanimous long-suffering merciful Savior you're a great sinner my friend whoever you are you are a great sinner The good news is that Jesus Christ is a greater Savior than you ever were, sinner. That is where we are going to land today. We've looked at the poisonous introduction of corruption, the poisonous introduction of depravity, when sin entered the world in the Garden of Eden. A warning was given, a warning was ignored. We see what the outflow of that warning illustrated in the life of Cain. We began looking at the perpetual infection of corruption. It didn't stop there. It continues to corrupt. Mankind is corrupt to the core. We looked at the infamous culmination of depravity, when corruption reached its nadir in the days of Noah, when God had to destroy every living thing. And he saved eight people and a handful of animals on a barge. And immediately as they come off of that 14-month stint in that boat, immediately as they come off, we see the immediate continuation of depravity. We looked at Genesis chapter 10. We looked at Nimrod, the rise of Nimrod. And that although they know the righteous decree of God, they not only do sinful things, but give hearty approval to those who make a practice of it. Romans chapter 1 verse 32, men have not changed. And because they have not changed, we need merely to look back at what men used to be as recorded on the pages of Scripture to understand how men are today. And we will, Lord willing, next week we are going to look at what happens in real time, what today holds, what is the present implication of the corruption of the heart of man. What is the present implication of radical corruption in your children and in your family, in your co-workers, in your town, wherever that town is? I know that some of you think that Opelousas is a terrible place to have a church. You mean they got a church like that in Opelousas? In Opelousas, Brother Charles, there's one. But every town is full of sinners. Every town is full of people that don't deserve anything but the eternal righteous judgment of God. Yet, there are many, an innumerable mass of people from every tribe and nation and tongue that will be in heaven and populate heaven for eternity. How does that happen? Well, it happens by God saving sinners. But in order for the glory of the gospel to receive its full-orbed recognition, we need to understand what exactly sinners are. How destitute are we? Because, let's face it, we all do this. We look around at who's around us, and they're worse than I am. No matter what you've done, you always try to find some reason that somebody has done something worse than you have. That's just how the flesh works. But if you have your copy of the scripture, and I hope that you do, turn to Genesis chapter 18. We're going to look a little bit more into this this idea of depravity, but we're not going to end there. We're going to look at the glory of the gospel and have true reason to leave here today in a spirit of thanksgiving to the one that is due our praise and our thanks. I've titled this the inevitable conclusion of depravity. Where does depravity end? Where does it go? Where does it wind up? What you need to understand about sin is that sin pushes God away And then God, in response to that, is willing to give man what he wants, and he backs away. He gives man over to sin. We see that in Romans 1. God gave them over, and because they continued in sin and continued to reject him in their unrighteousness, they denied God and pushed out the reality of God. He gave them over to sin. And when sin pushes God away and God gives man over to sin, friends, sin explodes. Sin is never content to remain stagnant, it doesn't. Sin in your life, a little bit gets in, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, and then it explodes, and before you know it, your life is a disaster because of sin. In Genesis chapter 18, God shows up at Abraham's house. I don't know if you've ever had an unexpected guest at your house that surprised you by being there. But you never had one like this. You say, well, what did he look like? I have no idea. But he was so much different than anybody else. Abraham said, this ain't normal. It may be that Abraham didn't know the full reality of it until later, but as Chapter 18 and verse 20. He's there. Abraham feeds him. Three men come in. It's a Christophany. It's a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ and two angels, as we'll see in the beginning of chapter 19. And he realizes that he wants to tell Abraham what's going on. I want to tell him why I'm here. I'm not just taking a stroll. or any reason like that, I'm here for a purpose. Verse 20, so the Lord said, the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great indeed, and their sin is exceedingly grave. This sounds very much like what we read back in chapter six, that the sin of man was great and the intentions of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. The outcry of Solomon Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now and see whether they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to me, and if not, I will know it. Verse 23, then Abraham came near and said, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Well Abe, all he said is he's going to go down there and find out. But Abraham knew something. You don't get out and find that it's worse than you heard. Abraham gives clear evidence that man knows the penalty of sin. And he knows that he's going to sweep away the righteous with the wicked, and then they start having this. It's not a debate. He's haggling with God. Well, you know, what if there's 50 righteous people there? You gonna kill the righteous with the wicked? Will not the God of all the earth, will not the righteous judge do what is right? Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice? He always said, if there are 50 righteous within the city, I will spare the whole place on their account. That's pretty good news, isn't it? And Abraham thought about it. Well, you know why we're talking about it. What if it's only 45? Not quite 50. You say, okay, for 45. Oh, you know, I just had a thought. What if it's only 30? Maybe, and Abraham's starting to realize I really don't have any reason to ask him not to go there. But Abraham's thinking about somebody. We'll see that later in chapter 19. He's thinking about Lot. Because the last time we saw Abraham's nephew, he pitched his tent towards Sodom. We're about to see him at the gate in Sodom. He is fully immersed in the wretched, wicked commerce that's going on in this city. Peter goes on to say that Lot was a righteous man who was vexed. His soul was vexed every day by the unrighteousness that he saw in Sodom. That does not give him an excuse for being there. Abraham whittles it down to 10. What if there's 10? Verse 32, I will not destroy it on account of the ten. And as soon as he finished speaking to Abraham, Yahweh departed and Abraham returned to his place. And then we set the scene here in chapter 19. Then the two angels came to Sodom. The Theophany goes away, the two angels walk on, the two men walk on. We see that these two men were angels here. They come to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. God made a choice and he made a choice for himself when Abraham said, look, we can't stay together. So you pick and I'll take the other because I'm trusting God to bless me and he doesn't need the best. God just needs me to be obedient. He just needs me to, to walk with him, to rest in him. We find a lot inside of this place that is about to be destroyed because it's the, the wickedness, the outcry of its wickedness has reached God. Friends, this is less than 400 years since Noah got off the ark. It's not a long time. God confused the languages and sent them out into the world and all they did was go out and sin in different languages. Lot sees these two guys come in and there's something in Lot that sees kind of what Abraham saw and said, I can't let these people, these men do not need to be introduced to the rest of the men in this city. Lot saw them, rose to meet them, bowed down with his face to the ground. This is the guy sitting in the gate of the city. This is a man with a great reputation in the city. He had standing in the city and he comes and gets face down on the ground before these men. And he said, now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet that you may rise and go on your way. Come stay at my house so in the morning you can get out of here. You don't want to be here. You don't want to know what's going on here. You don't need to know anything here. You need to just come to my house and I'll keep you safe and get you out of here. They said however, no, but we will spend the night in the square. Now, why do they want to spend the night in the square? Not spend the night in the inn, not spend the night, we're going to stay in the square because they've come to see if the wickedness of that city is exactly what it has been portrayed as and they know what goes on when the lights go out. John 319, Jesus said, men love darkness because their deeds are evil. And they hate the light that is figurative, figurative and literal. Yet he pressed them strongly. So they turned aside after him and entered his house and he made them a feast. They baked on leavened bread and he ate. Then the sun goes down. Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house from young to old, all the people from every quarter. People from every quarter. Young and old, it was a group of people that represented the entire city. Obviously, a couple of them weren't there, as we'll see in a moment. He's gonna go and talk to his sons-in-law. They weren't there for any of this. But the entire city is represented here, they've surrounded the house. The whole city is complicit in this. Verse five, they called to Lot and said, where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them. Now, it's been said in recent years because because homosexuality has become the vogue in thing today. There are preachers that have begun to re... Translate this and look at this from a different angle said well It was really that they were inhospitable to these men that came in there not because it wasn't about the the sexual attraction It wasn't about the perversion. It wasn't about the homosexuality the lust that consumed them that they wanted to to Satisfy with these men it wasn't about that it was because they were inhospitable And if you hear a man say that Turn off the television go find something else to do The inevitable conclusion of depravity ends in a homosexual revolution. We see that clearly depicted here. We see it all over our country. We see, we're gonna look at Romans chapter one, and the next time that we're together, and we see how Paul outlines, this is how it always goes. than one of the most astounding suggestions that you will ever read in the Bible. You see it here, and you see it in Judges 18. And what this does is it depicts for us the depravity of the hearts of these people left to themselves. This is where it goes. God didn't cause it to go there. He just stepped out of the way, and their depravity brought them. Sin wants one thing. It wants more. More sin and more sin and more sin and more sin. Verse six. But Lot went out to them at the doorway and shut the door behind him. So he goes out and he's going to try to reason with these people. And he said, please, my brothers, that's an interesting way to refer to them, do not act wickedly. There's the key. We're going to see how they respond to that in verse nine. But for right now, don't act wickedly. What you want to do is wicked. Was he right? Oh, yeah, he was right. Do not act wickedly. Now, behold, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you and do to them what is good in your eyes. Only do nothing to these men in so much as they have come under the shelter of my roof. I have no explanation for him doing that. Except that the depravity of man had infected his heart to such an extent that he couldn't even see clearly. Friends, when you're in sin, your capacity to understand and discern is damaged. Sometimes it is irreparably damaged. Depending on the level of sin, you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to get some of that back. He has reached that point, and he offers his two virgin unmarried daughters to this mob. Now in the providence of God, they had no desire for the natural and normal. They burned with lust for one another. Romans chapter one, verse nine. But they said to him, he said, don't act wickedly, take my daughters and get it out of your system, but leave these men alone. They said, step aside. Furthermore, they said, this one came to sojourn, and already he is persistently acting like a judge. This tells us a little bit about Lot. He's been there, and he's been trying to tell them, this is wicked. You shouldn't act this way. But I guess he had enough money to put in the marketplace that they allowed him to tell them that. He is persistently acting like a judge. Now we will treat him more wickedly than them. Was just tell us that these men knew they knew that what they were doing was wrong. They knew that it was wicked. We'll treat you more wickedly than them. Yeah, we were going to get we're going to practice some wickedness with them. It's going to be worse for you. This is unbelievable. They are aware of their wickedness. They are absolutely unmoved by it. Very often that happens with you and I as we are in a gospel testifying situation. We come to people with the gospel. They are totally unmoved by the gospel. You ever had that happen? Some of you, that was your response to it for years before you surrendered yourself to the Savior. You heard the gospel, it went off you like water off a duck. You weren't worried about the gospel. But the Lord kept coming, kept bringing it. But the reality is there comes a point where he stops. And he's about to stop in Sodom right here. They've heard that it's wrong. They've been confronted with it being wrong. They've admitted that it's wrong and that they do it, and now they're doubling down on it. Not only are we going to do it, we're going to give more effort to it than ever before, and we're going to violate every law that we can think of right now with you. Don't worry about them. When we're done with you, we're coming back for them. That's what they're telling you. Don't worry. We're done with you. You'll be out of the way, and we won't have anything or anybody here to stand in our way to exercise our depravity however we see fit. Verse 10, we see undaunted depravity. Look at this. So they pressed hard against Lot and stepped up to break the door. But the men, the two angels, reached out their hands, brought Lot into the house, and shut the door. And they struck the men who were in the doorway of the house with blindness from small to great. So they all went home, terrified. Is that what you were saying? So they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway. I think if us just sitting here, all of a sudden you had an aneurysm or something and you lost your vision right now, we'd have to stop the service, get you hysterically out of here so you can go to the hospitals and we can continue. Now what happened to these men? So overcome with their desire for sin were they that even the loss of their sight had no effect on their attempt to gain it. You need to understand that the seeds of every sin is in the heart of every person. The seeds of every sin are in the heart of every person. We may not be as bad as we could be, but if left to ourselves, this is where it inevitably goes. Now it's not over. Verses 12 and 13 we see the attempted rescue. Now Lot has some influence over some people that are closer to him. The two men said to Lot, now this is what the angels say to him, the angels that have come, knowing, they know what's going on, they're coming down here to give the people an opportunity to corroborate it or an opportunity to to show it to be false, and they've given them an opportunity to repent because he has called and said, this is wicked, don't do it. Oh, you're right, it's wicked. I'm sorry, we shouldn't have done this. I don't know what came over me. He doesn't get that. They know who's in the city, and they say this to Lot. I'm gonna count up some stuff for you in a minute. I told my wife this last night. Then the two men said to Lot, who else do you have here? Whom else have you here? a son-in-law in your sons and your daughters and everyone you have in the city bring them out of this place for we are about to destroy this place because they're outcry he's become great in this place at their outcry has become great before yahweh so yahweh has sent us to destroy it we've been sent here to destroy this place now what was the number that abraham and god settled on when abraham finally quit trying to uh... negotiate And we know he goes and speaks to his two sons-in-law in verse 14. He went and spoke to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters. These two daughters that have not known a man. He's somehow been able to keep his daughters pure. Gonna give them to these sons-in-law. He goes to them and he says, get up, get out of this place for Yahweh will destroy the city. But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting. He had so lost his ability. He had so ruined his testimony. Of anything good that they thought he was joking. He had no reason to believe that But this is what the man said to him Do you have a do you have a son-in-law now verse 14 says he had sons-in-law who were set to marry his daughters but if he already has a son-in-law that means he has a son-in-law and another daughter and Your sons that means more than one. So we say that's two sons and those sons each have a wife and He has two daughters and himself And his salt block wife, how many is that? That's 10. I just wonder if Abraham had those people in mind and thought maybe Lot has had enough influence in their life to be able to have 10 to spare the city. But he goes to the men and they all reject it. His daughters get dragged out with him. His wife gets dragged out with him. Because nobody will listen to him. They think he's joking. And they look at it and say, why would there be judgment for me? I'm not that bad. I'm not as bad as these guys are trying to break your door down. God can't be that mad at us. Friends, God is so angry with the sinner that we can't even quantify it. And he is angry with the sinner every day, every moment of every day. He's angry at sin, but he's angry at the sinner. That's why hell exists. And eventually God's wrath toward sin and his wrath toward sinners will be eternally poured out in hell for those that do not repent and turn to him. Verse 15, we see the grace of God here. We see the grace of God here. Because God tells Lot to leave and he doesn't want to leave. Now, if God were like you or I, I'd say, hey, buddy, that was your chance. At the breaking of dawn, the angels urged him, said, get up, take your wife, your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of this city. But he hesitated. We don't even have time to dive in. Why in the world would you hesitate? But he did. So the men seized his hand, and the hands of his wife, and the hands of his two daughters, for the compassion of Yahweh was upon him. And they brought him out and put him outside the city. And they tell him, get out of here. And he starts negotiating. Escape for your life. Don't look back. Don't stop in the valley. Escape to the mountains, lest you be swept away. But Lot said, oh, no, my lord. Let me go to this city. And he goes to the city of Zor. Zor was one of the five cities that was going to be destroyed in that valley and God spared the city because Lot wanted to go there with his two wretched daughters and his unbelieving wife. Don't think that it's a different God in the Old Testament than in the New. Verse 24, God rained on Solomon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven. People try to say, well, it was the volcanic eruption that caused this. I don't think it had anything to do with the volcano. I think God just sent it. I think it fell out of the sky. You say, well, where was Solomon Gomorrah? God destroyed it. Probably about where the Dead Sea is. It was in that part of Palestine. It was in that part of the Promised Land. But we don't know. God wiped them from the face of the map. Judgment on depravity is illustrated here. He just burns up everything. He tells them not to look back. Then Lot's wife from behind him, she's not following him. She didn't want to leave. She looked back and she became a pillar of salt. It's probably that he just took off and said, we're not looking back, let's all go. And she hung back and she got caught up and swept away in the destruction that came. You get to Zohar, he doesn't want to stay there. He's nervous about being there. He's a pretty nervous guy. He didn't want people to find out he was the only one that survived Sodom and the destruction and then have to answer for why. We don't even know why. But they were afraid to stay in Zohar, so now they go to a cave. He told him to go to the mountain. He wanted to go to Zohar. He gets to Zohar. He doesn't want to stay there, so he goes and stays in the cave that he should have gone to to start with. But he gets there with his daughters and friends. What we see is that old habits die hard. We see that the depravity of that city, the depravity of man is contagious and we see he leaves with his two daughters who are depraved just like the people that they left. And their depravity is totally unmoved by the judgment that they just saw. Both of them get their dad drunk and both of them wind up with John. I don't know how to discuss that in mixed company without getting off in the weeds. But friends, if what was going on in that city was the dregs of society, what these girls brought out was as bad or worse. The younger bore a son and called his name Ben-Ami. He is the father of the sons of Ammon to this day. And the firstborn had a son and named him Moab. And he is the father of the Moabites. The Moabites and the Ammonites are the perennial enemies of the Israelis. They are born out of this incestuous union. And you say, well, man, why are you talking about all this on Thanksgiving? I'm glad you asked. Because the black backdrop ignites the glory of the gospel jewel when you see them in connection with one another. You cannot see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ until you understand the destitute position that you occupy in lieu of your birth. You were born this way. You were born just like these people. We read this and say, oh, well, I would never do that. Don't say that. Why would you not do that? In the right situation, with the right circumstances, willing to give yourself to your flesh, and in the habit of allowing yourself to do what you want, you could descend to this level in just a few decisions in your life. What we see here is man's inability to do anything but sin on his own. That means that we need a rescuer. That means that we need a savior. I've got good news for you. There is one. You can turn to Psalm 103. Let's step out of the dark and step into the light, shall we? Psalm 103 begins with these words, Bless Yahweh, O my soul. Most of your translations will say, Bless the Lord, O my soul. All that is within me, praise His holy name. This word, bless, It means just that, to bless or to praise, to kneel before, to adore. I ask you why? Why such a strong expression coming from the heart of this psalmist? Bless the Lord, oh my soul, all that is within me. Praise Him. We praise Him. because of what he has done. But we really praise him because of who he is. Because when we come to dealing with the Almighty, when we come to dealing with the Lord, we're dealing with him on a basis of what we know about him through what he has done. We praise Him because of what He has done, because of who He is. And in this psalm, He unpacks what God is like and why He is worthy of praise, why our inmost being, all that is within me, oh my soul, praise His holy name. Ephesians 2, it says that that god made us alive together with christ and he describes god is being rich in mercy let me tell you needed uh... you need to be it is rich in mercy if you need some mercy and you need all the time and you need a very very larger measurable pile of mercy from which he can draw in order to continue to lab as you with the mercy that you continually need over and over or why is he so rich in mercy Paul says he is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. And we see that what God has done for his people in Jesus Christ is an immediate description of who he is because we see what he has done. This act of love has come in an abundance of mercy because it is depicting the greatness of the love with which he loved us. It wasn't a little love. It was immeasurable love, rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us. And this is what is on the heart and the mind of the psalmist in Psalm 103. Bless, O my soul, bless all that is within me. We're going to look at corruption affecting the totality of personhood. We talk about total depravity, radical depravity. It impacts the totality of personhood, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, all that you are. And what David is calling for here is a praise to God from the totality of his person, from the totality of personhood, all that is within me, my soul, my life, my everything. Praise Yahweh, praise his holy name. In verse 2, he says, forget none of his benefits. You know why he has to say that? Because we forget his benefits. We kind of take him for granted. We presume on him. He says, don't forget his benefits. Well, what are his benefits? Great question. Verses 3 to 5, he outlines the benefits. Forget none of his benefits. The first, that he pardons. Look at, these are all verbs. These are action words. This is what God does. And he's doing what he does because of who he is. We find out what he is like by seeing what he does. our experience of him and he says he pardons your iniquities you need that because you have iniquities that you can't do anything about and you're going to have some more tomorrow and you're going to have some more the day after that and you need someone to pardon that because you cannot do anything about it the best that you can do is send some more he pardons your iniquities now he's going to qualify that statement In some later verses we're going to get to in a moment. Whose iniquities? We're going to answer that. But he does pardon iniquities, and he pardons all of the iniquities of this group of people that should be praising his name, not forgetting his benefits. He pardons your iniquities. He heals all of your diseases. This is the Hebraism. He's talking about pardoning iniquities and healing diseases. He's not so much looking at physical diseases as he is spiritual sickness. Does God heal people? Oh yeah. God heals anybody He wants to. Do people heal people? Nah. Not at all. No one. God does. And God can. That's why we pray for God to heal people. Because he moves in and nothing can stop what he wants to do, but he does it on his time, his way, and he is not cajoled into it. And he heals completely when he does, physically and spiritually. His benefits, he pardons iniquity, he heals your diseases, he redeems your life from the pit. David will later say that he, he took me from the miry clay The picture of a potter who has prepared his clay in this dark room. It's almost like a little closet outside that they would bring in the right type of organic matter to mix with this dirt so that it would make the right composition to make pottery out of it. He would reach in and feel around and find the lump that he wanted. He would pull that lump out of that miry clay, out of that dark pit, and he would take it out and put it on his potter's wheel and make something beautiful and useful out of it. He says He redeems you from your life from the pit. That is where you were and you could not get out, but He comes and purchases you back and takes you back from the pit. All things that you could never do for yourself. Oh, but the next one, friends, He crowns you. That's kind of lost on a modern American audience. Someone's wearing a crown. You see some old pictures, you see people of prestige from generations gone by, and they had these crowns, and the bigger the crown, the more authority they had. Someone had a little crown, you know, the princess had a little crown, and the queen had this big gigantic thing, and the king's wearing something he needs help to walk around with. So I said, he crowns you with something better than gold. he crowns his people with something better than the only people go as all god wants you healthy and wealthy i'm worried about being healthy i want to be here that long i couldn't care less about being wealthy because i'm a new would be in the presence of the savior my flesh is staying here with all that health and wealth so supposedly what i need what i want what do you need what you should want is for God to crown you with loving kindness and compassion. Friends, if you need something from God today, what you need is loving kindness and compassion. That's what you need from Him. Regardless of how that works out in your life, you may need something financially or physically or spiritually, but you need all of that to flow from His loving kindness and compassion because He owes you no good thing the way that you are. But this is what God does. He pardons, He heals, He redeems, He crowns, He satisfies your years with good things. This is in line with Psalm 37, that you delight yourself in the Lord and He gives you the desire of your heart. When you are praising God and walking with God, you find that He is satisfying your years with good things by His definition, and you are crowned with loving kindness and compassion, and you revel in the provisions that He makes for you because you are ultimately more satisfied with Him than with any earthly thing that He gives you, and He satisfies your years, not moments in time. satisfaction of life in him. These are the benefits that we are not to forget. He pardons, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies, and at the end of verse 5 it says that your youth is renewed like the eagle. The idea is that he sustains you in life. Mark Twain was right about some stuff, and one of the things he was right about is that youth is wasted on the young, brother Charles. He will renew your youth like the eagle. Some of that has to do with the renewal that comes from His loving kindness and compassion and the forgiveness of sin. But forget not His benefits. This is the God that we praise. This is the God that's praiseworthy, friends. The one that pardons and heals and redeems and crowns and satisfies and renews. The one that sustains His people. And as we read that, one word should pop out in your mind, all caps, all bold, flashing lights around it. Five letters, G-R-A-C-E. The grace of God is the most important thing in your life. You need that more than anything. You need the unmerited favor of God, the unmerited loving kindness. When you read loving kindness in the Old Testament, That word is typically translated as charis in the Septuagint. You can substitute the word grace, the New Testament idea of grace, unmerited favor, loving, kindness, and compassion. You need the grace and compassion of God to crown your life. And that is what we see depicted here. He reveals himself, verses 6 and 7. He performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the sons of Israel. You know what that means? That God reveals himself unsolicited. And he has to because no one would ever ask him for it. These people need to know who I am because they're going to have to have the opportunity. They're going to have to have the opportunity, just like the people in Sodom had opportunity. I'm going to give them opportunity for the glory of my name and I'm going to save some and the rest are going to get what comes to them because that's what they're going to deserve. That's what everyone deserves. Some people ask, why does God only take some people to heaven? That's a dumb question. You know what question you need to ask? Why does he take anybody to heaven? Aren't there more people in heaven? Why is anybody there? He reveals himself and his plan unsolicited. Verses 8 through 10. He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness. He will not always contend with us. He will not keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins. Friends, you can say yay and amen to that. You know that he has not dealt with you according to your sins. You know how? Because you're still here. And He has not rewarded us according to our iniquities. We learn who He is by what He does. He is long-suffering. He is full of loving-kindness. He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger. Verses 11 to 14, we see measureless grace and measureless forgiveness. We see tenderness and intimacy. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those that walk the earth. Is that what yours says? Because we need a qualifier here. Because if he's like that to everybody, why is hell a reality? This psalm is written from the perspective of a believer. a repentant believer who has been saved from God, by God, for God. So great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the East is from the West, you know how far that is? That's infinity. You can't get there from here. So far has he removed our transgressions from us. The us is those who fear him, those who have come to him on his terms. He removes their transgressions from them as far as the east is from the west. You've all heard the song. Can you tell me how far the east is from the west? From one nail pierced hand to the other. He has taken away sin for those that put their trust in Him, those that have what is described as a fear of Him in the Old Testament. Then we see the tenderness, as a father has compassion on his children, so Yahweh has compassion on those who fear Him. Dad, do you love your children? You say, well, preacher, not like I should. That's not what I asked you. I know it's not like you should. Do you love your kids? That's how God deals with His people. I tell dads all the time, you need to treat your kids the way God treats you. That means you need to understand how he treats you. He's not waiting to crush your life when you do something wrong. Prove it. I will. You're still here, dingus. Well, God is a disciplinarian. No, he's not. He is gracious and long-suffering, and when you step outside of God's will, he sends the hound of heaven to bring you back to him. He doesn't close the door and leave you outside. You mean we shouldn't spank our kids? Did I say that? There's a time and a place for it, but that is not the first resort. That's never God's first resort. And trust me, whatever your kids did to you pales in comparison to what you've done to him. In fact, the only reason that they've done something to you that you could say is wrong is because they did something to God first. They disobeyed him, and that put him in the position to be out of fellowship with you. It is the kindness of God that leads you to repentance. Not the iron rod of supposed correction. Verse 14, we see intimacy. Look at what it says. He knows about you. He knows more about you than you do. He himself knows our form. He remembers that we are only dust. You know how he remembers that? Because he started with some dust and formed the man and he breathed the breath of life and man didn't get better. It's funny people say, oh well, you know you can take all these natural remedies because this chemical works and this mineral works and this stuff that we find in rocks and dirt. Well that makes perfect sense to me because that's what I am. I'm all those things. I'm a dirt bag. We come to verses 15 to 18, and here's where the praise really starts to effervesce. As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flowers. Look outside right now. It's getting to be fall in Louisiana. There's just a little bit of green out there. All the flowers are gone. The grass is dying off. This is what it does. It says man is like that. He's temporal. He's here today and gone tomorrow. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and the place acknowledges it no longer. You don't even know that it was ever there. It speaks of man's frailty and man's temporaneity. You are temporary. You live in a temporal reality. In that great word at the beginning of verse 17, but the loving kindness of God. One, we can't be consistent our whole life through, and two, our whole life is very short. Comparison to that God is faithful all of the time his loving-kindness endures forever because he is forever And that is the kind of loving-kindness that we need The loving-kindness of Yahweh is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him You know what people who fear God do you know what they do they listen to him You know what people who fear God do they believe him? I told you I was asked by someone if Adam and Eve went to heaven. I said, friend, Adam and Eve went to heaven the same way Abraham went to heaven, the same way I'm going to go to heaven, because they believed God. When he told them, in the midst of their rebellion, they're blaming everybody but themselves. They're throwing one another under the bus. They're both stepping on the snake. And he tells the snake that I'm going to put enmity between your seed and her seed, and he will crush your head and you will bruise his heel. And when her first son was born, you remember what Lee said? She named him Cain because she said, I have begotten a son from the Lord. She said, this is what God promised me. She believed God. says that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. What's remarkable is that what Abraham believed was what God said about him having kids. If you can count the stars, then you'll know how many grandchildren and how many, what a posterity you're going to have as a man who has never had children and cannot naturally have children. You are supernaturally going to have a child with that old woman in that tent. And she laughed. He said, I'll be back next year. You're going to see. And it says that Abraham looked at the stars and he believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Whatever God told him from then on, he believed. And he put it into pretty good practice when God told him, take that boy I promised you, bring him to the mountain I'm going to show you and offer him to me as a sacrifice. And he got up and he went. And he said, me and the boy are going, me and the boy are coming back. I don't know how it's going to work out, but this is what He promised, and I trust Him. I believe Him. I fear Him. What do those that fear God look like? It's those that believe Him. How do you get to heaven? You believe what God said about your sin. You believe what God said about the Savior, and you believe what God said about you giving yourself to Him, and He gives His life for you. It's the great exchange. I give all of my sin to Him. He gives me all of His righteousness. I give that old life to Him. He gives me a new life to live for Him, and I now belong to a Lord. I don't belong to another master who is now my Savior. It is those people that fear Him, and for those that fear Him, His lovingkindness is from everlasting to everlasting. That's the only way really to describe God. We try to describe past, present, and future. Those are terms that we live with in time. But God doesn't exist in time. God is eternal. From everlasting, whatever eternity past would be, to everlasting, whatever eternity future would be. God's loving kindness extends that long because loving kindness is flowing out of who He is. He is loving and kind and gracious and merciful because of who He is. It flows out of Him. He is not reluctant with it. And he showers it on all who come to him on his terms, to those who keep his covenant and remember his precepts to do them. Friends, praise and thanksgiving are due to our God. Praise and thanksgiving are due to our Savior because of who he is. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ here today, it's because of who God is that he has done what he's done for you. He's not reluctant. No one dragged it out of him. No one begged him for it. He lavished it because it's who he is. The only question that really remains is whether or not he is indeed your savior. If he is not your savior, there is no time like the present to remedy that. Bible says that today is the day of salvation now is that the moment of salvation not go home and think about it not Say, you know one day when I got time, I'll think about it Life is much shorter than we give it credit for This could be the last time you hear the gospel this could be it and eternity is waiting There's loving-kindness from eternity to eternity in heaven and friends. There is the unmitigated unsquelched wrath of God poured out on sinners for eternity in hell. God will be conspicuously present and absent in hell in the form of His wrath. But for those that will come to Him on His terms, for those that will fear Him and manifest the fear of Him and respect and honor and adoration for Him by giving their life to the Savior that He sent, Friends, if there was any other way to get to heaven, Jesus died for nothing. But he didn't die for nothing. He died for God. He died to save a people for God's own possession. And I cannot recommend to you strongly enough that you give your life to him. And if you are a believer and you've not been giving him your all, stop that today too. What is too much of him to ask of you? Nothing. We serve a great God, beloved. If you stand, we're going to pray. Look forward to seeing you all back here tonight. I hope you can make it. If you need to talk to me, you want to talk about any of this in more detail, man, I'm willing, you just come find me. Brother Chad, would you close in prayer for us, please?