Let's go. Let's stand. You've been sitting a little while. Let's stand. We're going to do some responsive reading. That means I'm going to read the first verse. You read the second verse. Okay. Let's begin in verse number one. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are of us. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful. He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He did not deal with us like sheep or monsters. For as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. Well, glory, hallelujah. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. As for man, his days are as grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children's children. The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure. Hallelujah. Lord, thank you for your presence in this service tonight. Thank you, Lord, for your breath, God, upon this place. And I ask you, Lord, to continue to quicken us according to your love and kindness. And Lord, I pray you touch every person in this congregation this evening. And if there are those that don't have a testimony, they've never really been saved, I pray tonight would be the good night they'd get saved. Lord, I thank you for these testimonies of your grace and how you bring us in different ways, different levels, different times. But Lord, it's your doings. And Lord, as Jonah said, salvation is of the Lord. And we bless you for saving us. God, I pray that you'll bless this people tonight now. Lord, thank you for shining light, Baptist Church, and let their light so shine. that men might see what you're doing and get glory to yourself and salvation to souls. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. I'll be brief tonight, but Psalms 103 is a psalm of David where David just wants to bless and worship and honor the Lord. Now throughout the psalms, if you study the psalms and you read them It'd be good if you could read a psalm every day, about every emotion, every experience, everything that you'll ever go through with is recorded in the psalms, and David pours his heart out before the Lord. The Bible says that he was a man after God's own heart. He knew the Lord in a fashion of friendship and fellowship. And when David was going through something, opened his heart and poured it out before the Lord when he had made that sin against Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite and all that. And he said to the prophet, he said, I have sinned. He records in the book of Psalms what he was talking about and in that Psalm he gives I think about 12 different titles of sin and what he'd committed against God. And he asked God to purge him with hyssop and to cleanse him. And sometimes David would be in a deep, dark valley. Sometimes the entire nation of Israel would turn against him. The king himself was trying to kill David, and he was a wanted criminal. He had been convicted of crimes, and he was an outcast, and he didn't know which way to turn or what to do, but he knew to go to the Lord. There were times when he would be in a battle. They would be out in the desert sand, but he'd say, the Lord is my rock. And when you're fighting in those battles where there's desert, you want something to hide behind. And David said, the Lord's my rock. The Lord is my refuge. He's my shield. He is my defense. He said, yea, he is my high tower. Throughout the Psalms, David has a communion and a fellowship with God. And that's one reason the Lord said when we get full of the Holy Ghost, we ought to sing to ourselves Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs making melody in our heart unto the Lord. And it's a blessing to hear God's people sing these psalms. Many of them have been put to tune and put to music. I go to a church up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and their people have written psalms. And it's written psalms using the psalms and those verses. And they'll sing for 45 minutes. The preacher will call on somebody, they'll mention one, and then they will sing that entire passage of Scripture over and over and over. And man, they have memorized multitudes of passages of Scripture because they have turned to the Psalms to receive that strength and that help in their soul. In this Psalm, it's the Psalm of blessing the Lord. in his service to God or his worship to God. He said, as the heart paneth after the water brook, so paneth my soul after thee, O God. I've written my name in many Bibles where Folk have come, would you put your name in my Bible so I can pray for you? And I'll write down my name in Psalms 42, 1. That became a favorite verse of mine as a teenager, pursuing the Lord, seeking God's face, studying it as the heart pants after the water brook, so pants my soul after thee, O God. That heart is a deer. It's been run by the dogs. He's dying of thirst and he's panting, he's longing for one taste of that water. He's got a desperate need and he knows the only thing that's going to satisfy him is that drink from the water books. And so the psalmist David knew that the only one that could satisfy his soul was God. And the only one that can satisfy your soul is the Lord Jesus Christ. I think about how there are many rich people that have everything that a man can have but they're very dissatisfied because the devil has promised them if you get this toy, if you get this house, if you get this girl, this boy, if you get this car, if you get this real estate, if you get this position then you're going to be satisfied in your heart. This last Olympics, there was a fella that was in a swimming contest who had won four gold medals in the previous one. And they said he had been under psychological evaluation and receiving psychological treatment ever since then because he thought, if I won these gold medals, that's the apex of my life. But then when he got there, he said, I should have done more. I should have broke records. I should have attained more things. And that's not where it's at. And he just kept reaching. And he went into psychological evaluation. They couldn't help him in there. He competed again, but he come in like third or fourth. And I don't know if anybody's ever got to him to tell him about Jesus, but it don't matter. If you win 100 gold medals, doesn't matter if you have $100 million. If you don't know the God that David is talking about, then you'll never be able to have a soul that's able to worship and be filled and be blessed by the Lord. David said, Bless the Lord, O my soul. Not just bless the Lord, O my soul. All that is within me. I believe the seven churches of Revelation, Tell us of the church age and how it's digressed along the way. We've had the Philadelphian church age, which is the missionary church age. And there's remnants of the Philadelphian church today, but as a whole, there's a lot of Laodiceanism. And Laodiceanism is this. They said, ha, we have need of nothing. Pastor, why are you having another meeting? We don't need that. Why do you want us to have a prayer? We don't need that. We have need of nothing. We've got gold. We've got silver. We've got education. We've got everything there is to have. And the Lord addresses them and says, don't you know that you're poor? You're wretched, you're naked, you're blind and in need of eyesight, like a sheep that has matted up eyes that can't see. He said, I counsel you to buy gold tried in a fire. That's real stuff. The other stuff won't go through the fire, but the fire purifies the gold. And we've got so much plastic stuff in this hour. And then the Lord said to Laodicea, because you're neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth." There's three things that make God vomit in the Bible. One of them was Israel. He said that he would spew them out of the land. A backslid preacher will make God vomit. He gouged the well and the well threw Jonah up on the shore. But then a lukewarm church makes God sick and he says, I'll spew you out of my mouth. Not cold. Oh no, I'm not out there, you know, killing somebody, running around with somebody else's wife. I'm not robbing a bank. No, I'm not cold, but I'm not hot either. That's fanatical. For anybody just to stand up and testify like that, I just don't understand that. For a man to believe God and have a pastor anoint him with oil and then testify that God touched him and that, that's fanatical. That's just too much for me. The Lord said cause you're neither hot nor cold but just lukewarm. Lukewarm is climatized. How do you like it when the wife goes to the grocery store? She brings a gallon of milk back home. She forgets about it, leaves it on the counter. and then time passes and then suddenly she remembers to put it in the refrigerator. You come in right behind her and boy, you want a glass of milk and you pour that milk and it's lukewarm, it's climatized. Don't let that just sort of turn your stomach, it does mine. Lukewarm is climatized. We're climatized. It adapts to whatever temperature is around you. Are you climatized tonight? Or you're blessing the Lord out of your soul. Oh my, that's your innermost being. That's how you get saved with the heart, man believeth unto righteousness. You don't play games with God, it's a heart thing. And so it is, worship is deep in our soul. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me. And I'll tell you young people something, won't you look at me now. You'll never enjoy God You'll never enjoy the church if you're in and out, half-hearted, wishy-washy, and uncommitted. When I was a young person, the Lord worked in my heart, and I got on an altar, and I said, here it is, God, lock, stock, and barrel, and I'm on the barrel. Lord, I want you to have all of me. I'll tell you what, God began to fill my soul, and I got happy in Jesus alone. Got a ton of don't care, didn't care what the devil thought about me, the world thought about me, or anybody else thought about me. And it became all in all to my heart. And whatsoever you do in word or in deed, God said, do all to the glory of God. And you're not going to do that if you're not blessing the Lord out of your soul and your soul is committed unto him. He said, bless his holy name. His name is holy. There's no God like our God. When Isaiah was able to peek his head into the glory world and his ears were open, the throne was surrounded by the angelic beings crying day and night, holy. Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. There's nobody like him. He's an entity in and of himself. There is no darkness. There is no sin. He is complete righteousness. He is the essence of goodness. He is the very being of all power and all might and all wisdom and all strength and all righteousness. And he's in an entity all by himself. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's thoughts higher than our thoughts and God's ways than our ways. And as God's children tonight, we need to look at this very first verse and say, Lord, am I blessing you with all my soul? Am I considering that you're a holy God, that I'm unholy, that I ought to be burning in the pits of hell? But you and your mercy have saved me. You and your mercy have redeemed me. And I know what I am, and I know where I ought to be. God, in your grace, you saved me by your mercy. And holy is your name. And by the way, God is so holy, he didn't just look at you and say, oh, you know, I like you pretty good, you're all right, I'm just gonna, you know, we'll forget about it, don't worry about that, no. God would not spare his own son, but freely delivered him up for us all. that he might retain justice and be able to justify. God's a just holy God and he knows all about us and his sentence is death, eternal judgment upon sin forever and forever. And the only way that God can save you is for that sin to be paid for and you couldn't do it and I couldn't do it, but thank God Jesus Christ did it on the cross of Calvary. And when we trust him and that righteousness is imputed and imparted to our soul, then we're justified and declared righteous in the sight of God. Now we're not our own anymore, and therefore we are to glorify God in our body and in our spirit, which is the Lord. The psalmist goes on in verse 2 saying, Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all his benefits. And if there's any reason you ought to lift your voice up and bless God, it's his benefits, things that accompany salvation. He didn't just save you from hell. Praise God, there's things that accompany salvation that the world can't buy. There's joy, there's peace, there's satisfaction, there's eternal inheritance, there's a relationship with God. It goes on and on and on about the benefits and the blessings. And he said, don't forget that. He said, bless the Lord who forgiveth all thine iniquities. How many iniquities have you committed against God? And I've committed against God, but yet the Lord has forgiven us those. They're forgiven. What a blessed word. Have you ever had something happen between you and somebody? I'll never forgive you. It'll be a cold and a lake of fire before I forgive you. Boy, and they hold that grudge. You ever had anybody like that? I have, and that's awful. Glad when I bowed my knee before the Lord and I said, God, would you forgive me my sins? And what'd you say? He said, for Jesus sake, I forgive it all, it's gone. Forgiven, done, over with, hallelujah. He redeems your life from destruction. He crowns us with love and kindness and tender mercy, satisfies our mouth with good things. And he renews our strength like an eagle. We need renewing, we need reviving. That's part of what this holy convocation, this meeting's about. It's for a fresh renewing and a fresh reviving. And if God's revived your heart, you'll lift your voice and your heart and say, thank you, Lord, that you don't leave us alone. He which hath begun a good work in us will perform it till the lay of the Lord Jesus Christ. It says he made known his ways unto Moses and Israel. They're an example. But our Lord's a merciful God, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. You've read this chapter with me tonight, and it is absolutely bloated with reasons for us to bless the Lord and worship his name. I thank God for all these testimonies, but I just want to ask you a question. Are you in the frame of mind? Are you in the frame of the heart? where you can say, bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me. Do you need to draw nigh unto God? What's between you and the Lord? What's hindering your relationship tonight? I'm glad, thank God, he said, he forgiveth all our iniquities. And he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And truly, our fellowship was with the Father and with his Son, and you can have that fellowship restored. And there's nothing any more blessed, nothing any more joyous than having everything clean between you and the Lord. And throughout this psalm, he's magnifying the fact that how we're so frail Our days are like the flower of the field, they come and go like the wind that passes by so fast. But during this time, this little space that God gives us, he gives us the privilege to serve him, worship him, and to honor his blessed name. Let's bow our heads and hearts. Brother, I want you to give us a song tonight, please, sir. I think you've already got one picked. Come on, sister, if you'll come on the piano. Maybe tonight that you just need to draw an eye to God. You might want to do that right there in your seat. You might want to come get around this altar.