to read Psalm 103. While you're looking that up, I have something to say. This morning, in my sermon on Lord's Day 3, we read Isaiah 1. in some of my explanation of Isaiah 1, I use an expression, dumber than an ox, dumber than a donkey. And upon reflection, I decided that that language is perhaps unbecoming of the pulpit. And I just wanted to express my apologies for that. I don't want rhetoric that is too strong or unbecoming to detract from the important doctrinal points that are made. So for any offense that may have caused, I just wanted to express those apologies to the members of First Church. And I take that as a reminder to myself also, just to be careful of the words that I use, especially from this pulpit. And I appreciate your graciousness also with me as your preacher. Let's read 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 not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies, 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 oppressed. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts upon the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children, to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all. Bless the Lord, ye his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye ministers of his that do his pleasure. Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. The text for the sermon is verses one through five. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, to bless is to speak a word of goodness and peace to another. It is usually God who is the one speaking the blessing to his people whom he loves. We hear such a blessing every time we enter into the place of worship, for example. Jehovah bless thee and keep thee. Jehovah make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. Jehovah lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. Yet the people also respond to God and his blessings with blessings of their own. Here the psalmist gives voice to what is perhaps the most famous of all such blessings of response that come out of the mouths of believers. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. It's not difficult for us to appreciate why Elliot and Andrea asked me to preach on this text for this particular occasion. That's exactly what we were all feeling, isn't it? When we heard the news that this little boy was going to live. Bless the Lord. Oh my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord who heals all thy diseases. Bless the Lord who redeems thy life from destruction. Bless the Lord, O my soul. We get to observe a baptism this evening instead of having to attend a funeral. And that makes words of blessing arise in our souls and come out of our mouths quite easily. Yet even if it had been otherwise, This would still have to be the song of our souls ultimately, wouldn't it? For every word here that the psalmist gives expression to would still be true regardless of the outcome of what happened with our brother and sister and their child here. Though in this life we face sin and disease and death and disappointment and emptiness, through Christ, we and our children nevertheless enjoy the benefits of forgiveness and healing and redemption and love and fullness, so that always With all that is in us and at all times, we must learn to bless Jehovah in our souls. Let's consider this text together then under the theme, Blessing Jehovah in my soul. First, for all his benefits. Secondly, with all that is within me. And finally, in all of life. Blessing Jehovah in my soul. The psalmist blesses Jehovah in his soul for all of Jehovah's benefits. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Speaking to his soul then, the psalmist begins listing off of these benefits one by one. The Lord whom the soul of the psalmist blesses is the Lord who forgives all your iniquities. Now there are several words in the Bible for sin, including sin and transgression and guilt and iniquity. Here the word iniquity is used, which is a word that describes sin as something perverted, something crooked and disgusting and revolting to God. Iniquity is the filth and the stink that must be washed away in order for us to be presentable to the holy and righteous God. And yet wash it away, he does. He forgiveth all thine iniquities. He also heals all your diseases. He looks down on the leprous man covered in corrupt and dying skin, the man who has been cast out of the city, cast out of the society of God's people. And he comes down to that man and he heals him. And the white rotting flesh becomes clean and whole like a baby's once again. He looks down on you and me also in our spiritual death and depravity, unable to do any good, and He regenerates us and gives us a new life in Christ. He healeth all thy diseases. He also redeems your life from destruction. It's not just that you committed a few perverted deeds, iniquities that Jehovah was gracious enough to forgive. It's not just that you had a spiritual disease that kept you from ever seeking the Lord. No, it's that you were under the power of sin, under the power of the devil who was driving you to destruction. You were a slave with the devil's boot in your neck. until Jehovah came and redeemed you from destruction, pulled you back from the pit into which you were falling headlong. He forgiveth all thine iniquities. He healeth all thy diseases. He redeems thy life from destruction. He crowns you also with loving kindness and tender mercies, the psalmist says. He embraces you as a father embraces his child. That's the sentiment behind that word, loving kindness. Chesed in the Hebrew, steadfast love, covenant faithfulness, and friendship. And he feels toward you the way a mother feels toward her sleeping child in her arms. That's the tenderness of his mercies that the psalmist refers to. He crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies, and he satisfies your mouth with good things. It's not enough just to forgive you of your iniquities. It's not enough just to heal you of your diseases. It's not enough just to pull you back from the brink of destruction. It's not enough even just to have a heart and an attitude of loving kindness and mercy towards you. No, He does more. He sets you at His table and He fills you with good things in Christ. He takes you into His house and He washes you in His very own bathtub, as it were, so that the scent of heaven now clings to you forevermore. He makes you into a prince or a princess. He turns you into an heir of life, an heir of all the riches that are his as the everlasting God. These are all his benefits. All the benefits of salvation. All the benefits of eternal life. And it's important as we consider these benefits to consider them the way that the psalmist considers them, which is specifically as benefits for the soul. Bless the Lord, O my soul and soul. Forget not all his benefits to you. That's where we feel the ugliness and perversion and distortion of our sin most acutely, isn't it? I did that. I did that sin. And I didn't just do it. But I wanted to do it in my soul. I conceived of it in my soul. And the actual deed that I committed was only the outward expression of what I had already done in my soul. That's where the perversion was. That's where the iniquity was. I wanted to make that nasty remark behind his back. I desired to serve that idol. I enjoyed committing the perverse deed in my soul. And yet God forgave me. He forgave my soul and all those sins that came out of my soul like a mighty stream of foul transgression. That also is where the deepest and most debilitating diseases are found as well, aren't they? The deepest and most debilitating diseases are the diseases of the soul. Diseases that come from being sinned against repeatedly and horrifically so that scars build up in the soul and walls are built up that makes it difficult to trust anyone again, even God. Diseases that come from going to sin and returning to sin again and again and again as a dog that returns to its vomit so that the soul becomes addicted to evil. Diseases that cloud everything with darkness and loneliness and misery and shame. Diseases of the soul. Those are the worst diseases of all. And yet, God heals the diseases of the soul. He cuts away the scar tissue and teaches my soul to trust again and to love again by the power of His Spirit. He exposes the ugliness of my sin to my full view, and he breaks the enchantment that keeps me addicted to that sin. He enters my darkness with his light. He becomes my closest and my most constant companion and friend. He healeth all thy diseases, soul. The worst kind of destruction imaginable also is the destruction of the soul, isn't it? It's one thing for the body to die, only for the soul to spring into heaven and to awake in the presence of the risen Jesus. But it's another thing for the soul to be destroyed utterly in hell after the body dies. And that's where the devil seeks to drive us as our soul's slave master. That's where our soul was headed on its natural course to hell and destruction. Yet God redeems your life, the life of your soul, from destruction, from hell. His loving kindness and tender mercy are also aiming at your soul. Think about that. God loves your soul. God seeks in all that he does to be faithful to your soul with that chesed, that covenant faithfulness, that steadfast and abiding love. God's heart wells up with compassion and tender mercy when he thinks about your soul. He finds your soul to be precious. He finds your soul to be valuable. He finds your soul to be worth saving. Even at the pain of death in his son, for no other reason than it seemed good to him. It was his good pleasure to do so. And in this steadfast love and tender mercy, he also satisfies your soul with good things. And those are the things that are most important in the end, aren't they? The meat and the drink that we swallow with our mouths into our bellies are good things. They make life enjoyable from a certain point of view. And we can receive those good things and thank God for them. And yet, that bread perishes in the end. But it is the beauty and the goodness of Jehovah that fills the soul up with a sense of wonder and peace and the knowledge that all will be well. These are all the benefits the psalmist has in mind as he seeks to awake his soul to bless Jehovah. Oh my soul, bless the Lord. And all that is within me bless his holy name. Soul, forget not all his benefits. And in blessing Jehovah for all his benefits, the soul of the psalmist blesses Jehovah's holy name. If you remember how Hebrew poetry works, we're in a psalm here. You might remember that Hebrew poetry is not A poetry of rhyming, like our English poetry, but it's a poetry of parallelisms, and you find parallelisms in this text. Blessing Jehovah and His Holy Name with all that is within you is parallel to the soul, forgetting not all of His benefits. In other words, these are one and the same thing. All of the benefits that Jehovah gives to your soul proclaims to you what the Holy Name of Jehovah is. All of those benefits make clear to the psalmist and make clear to us who Jehovah God is. There are plenty of people out there who think that they know who God is and don't. They say that he is a God who only ever tantalizes with good things before taking it all away, not allowing us ever to be satisfied, but always keeping us pursuing, pursuing, pursuing. Or they say that he is a God who is narrow-minded and bigoted and stingy and full of hatred and all kinds of strict requirements that aren't really necessary, only make our lives difficult. Or they say that he is a God who created us just to beset us all around with all kinds of rules before casting us into hell for not keeping those rules. Or they say that He is a God who sends diseases and afflictions and all kinds of things just to torment us as if He gets enjoyment out of that. They say He is so easily offended by the smallest things and He holds them all against us with no forgiveness. There's no mercy in Him, no loving kindness in Him. His face is set against us. That's how many view God. That's how many think of him. And then they use all of these apparent observations to turn around and curse God's name. To say things like this, what kind of God allows a little child to be afflicted with disease already in his mother's womb? That God is more like a monster than a God of supreme goodness and worth and love? Curse him! Curse that God. Curse His name. What kind of a God creates a world and then allows sin to enter that world and ruin everything? We don't want a God like that. Curse that God. We will make our own God. A God who matches up to our own standards. A God who does what we want Him to do. And a God who lets us do what we want to do. We would be better off serving the cow that eats the grass, or the sun in the heavens, or even ourselves than God. That's how many think and the proof that that's how many think is all of the blasphemies. All the blasphemies against God and his name that are constantly being sounded out by the men of this world. That to our shame sometimes come even out of our own mouths or sentiments. Yet the psalmist knows better than that. The psalmist knows how sin came into the world, and he knows who is responsible for that sin. Not God, but man. And the psalmist knows that Jehovah, though he's not responsible for the sin that came into the world, is nevertheless so gracious and so merciful that he is willing to forgive that sin, even though that sin is so offensive and so serious that it provokes his heavenly majesty. The psalmist knows why there is pain and suffering and disease and destruction and death in a fallen world. He knows that this is the outflow of the consequences of man's own sin. But he also knows that Jehovah is a God who is so merciful that he is willing to pull even those who behaved as enemies out of the fire and to give unto them the inheritance of his own children. The psalmist knows that there is no evil in the heart of God, but only in man's faulty and unbelieving perception of God. The psalmist knows that God is in fact full of loving kindness and tender mercies, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He knows that this is who his God is and this is who his God is in the very depths of his being. This is his name, his holy name. And knowing what the psalmist knows about God prompts him to bless that name, not curse it, bless that name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. All these benefits also help the psalmist and us to see why that name is called holy and what makes that name so holy. You only bless that which is holy. It would not be proper in the Old Testament for the priest to bless someone who comes into the temple having touched a dead body or become unclean in some way. That would be a violation of the ceremonial laws. First, this person must be cleansed to become clean again. And then, as he approaches the priest, after his cleansing offers his sacrifice, the priest will bless him. It would not be proper in the New Testament either to pronounce blessing over someone who is walking in blatant unbelief and impenitent sin. Such a person must first be washed and cleansed, washed and cleansed. repentance and faith in Christ. And then when he enters into the holy place on the Lord's Day, he can receive the blessing that is given and he can receive it by a true and living faith. But what is it that makes God's name holy and worthy of our soul's blessing? Certainly God is holy in and of himself. He is a consuming fire. He is the one who judges all sin. He is set apart from all creatures as the creator, and the psalmist knows this as well. But what impresses upon the psalmist here in the utter holiness and goodness of God is what he recounts for us. This is what makes God's name so holy to the psalmist, so set apart, so otherworldly that he cannot respond in any other way but to bless him. He's a God who forgives my iniquities. Who would have expected such a thing from a being who is so righteous and true as God? And me, such a vile sinner. He's a God who heals my diseases and redeems me from destruction. He's a God who loves me, who's full of tender mercies and compassions toward me. He's a God who satisfies me with good things. He's a God who came to me in my Lord Jesus Christ and laid His life down for my sake. He's a God who dwells in me by His Spirit. A God who will never leave me or forsake me. There's no God like this God. Look at all the gods of the nations and compare them to this God. Look at the gods that we imagine in our own hearts and compare them to this God. Look at any human being and the way human beings behave and compare them to this God, the depths of His compassion. His patience, His mercy. His name is holy. Bless, then, the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. With all that is within me, there are certain moments in life that help us understand what the psalmist means when he says, bless the Lord with all that is within me. All those months waiting for this little boy to be born. Trying to prepare mentally and spiritually for whatever outcome God and His sovereignty would give. And yet praying fervently that if it be thy will, Father, our little child would live. He would survive the condition that he has and he would grow. And then the day arrives of the birth. And all you can do is wait for the birth to happen and let the medical professionals, the doctors and nurses do their work. And all your senses are fully awake. and your teeth are clenched in your jaw and your body's tense. And there's a particularly scary moment when you see your baby, but he isn't breathing right. And all the doctors jump into action, and they perform a procedure, and then he stabilizes. And as the day proceeds, you start to let yourself believe that God is allowing your little boy to live. And as each day goes by, the situation improves little by little. And now you sit here, Elliot and Andrea, grandpas and grandmas, friends. On the day of his baptism, And there's a living, breathing, growing, healthy baby boy. And you look back on everything that happened and you reflect on it all. And you know exactly what the psalmist means when he says, all that is within me, all that is within me, bless his holy name, the relief, the relief from the fear of what we might be facing, the hope That you will get to see this child grow into a boy and to grow into a man if the Lord tarries. The joy that you get now every time you look at that little face and you see a living child is overwhelming, overwhelming to the soul. And the only outlet that the soul has, at least the soul of a believing child of God, is what the psalmist says here. Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits to me and to my family. All that is within me is a powerful way in which the psalmist captures what the spirit of worship ought to feel like. The spirit of worship, that is the spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving to this God who has given us all these benefits. All that is within you is your guts. It's your insides. It's your stomach and your bowels and your insides as opposed to your skin and your face. Now, of course, I realize that here, too, the psalmist is using a parallelism for the soul and the spiritual side of our life. All that is within me can refer to what's going on in our thoughts and in our, in our feelings and emotions, and yet there's a reason the Bible describes a deep spiritual feeling like mercy, true spiritual mercy. When you see someone in need and you have compassion on them, the Bible describes that as bowels of mercies, bowels of compassions. Or the Bible describes a feeling of conviction of sin as being pricked in my reins, your reins which are your kidneys. Or even the Bible's typical description of our inner life, our heart. Our heart. Our internal organ, of course, when the Bible talks about our heart, it's not really talking about that organ that thumps, thumps, thumps. But all that is within me, my guts, my insides, the reason the psalmist describes it that way and the Bible uses that kind of language is because that's the way it feels. When you are holding that newborn baby who might not have made it, you feel it in your guts. Oh Lord, you did this. You gave me my son. You gave me my child. You preserved his life. And when it dawns on you what a horrific sinner you are and what that sin does to God, it provokes him. It mocks him and offends him and moves him to wrath. Wrath which he pours out on others. And yet for you, He has chosen to forgive your iniquities and to redeem your life from destruction. You feel that too in your guts. Or at least you ought to. Oh Lord, I don't deserve this grace. I don't deserve to live. I deserve damnation. Yet you have shown me mercy. You have shown me loving kindness. And when you realize that this mercy arises out of an eternal heart. An eternal heart that has always, always known you. always out of the depths of eternity, willed your good and your salvation, always loved you with a love as deep and wide as the ocean and deeper and wider still. It's like a twisting sensation in your guts and your insides that brings you to tears. And when the cost of all of these benefits that our soul freely receives, when the cost hit home. And you think that all these benefits could only come to me if God made the ultimate sacrifice. When you think of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, hanging on that cross, suffering as a perverted, iniquitous, evildoer, though it was not Him, it was me. When you think of Him doing that, in order to open a way for you to come into the loving arms of your Father in heaven, then this is the response of the soul. And it's the only response that could possibly be appropriate. And it's, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not, forget not all His benefits. The sad truth, however, is that we do too often forget, don't we? God does not forget us. When the time of crisis and trial fades from our memory and we go back to daily life, When our prayers go back to the routine sort of prayers that we can repeat without hardly even thinking about what we're saying. When our soul forgets about God and all of the good things that he has done for us because now the soul is focused on something else. God continues to love us just the same, and He continues to give us benefits just the same. He never forgets us. He never slumbers. He never sleeps. He never stops making sure that we are cared for. He is a heavenly Father, and we are His children, and yet we do forget about Him and His benefits sometimes, don't we? We forget about Him more often, I think, than we care to admit. And we wander off into sin again in our lack of remembrance. Because when we're not remembering His benefits, we're not thankful for them. And when we're not thankful for them, why shouldn't we indulge the flesh? And so the psalmist commands his soul not to do that. I wonder if we should do that sometimes like the psalmist does. Address your soul. Soul? Forget not. Forget not his benefits. Don't you know what you're doing when you forget? Don't you know where that leads? Stop it. Forget not all his benefits, soul. Do you ever talk that way? The psalmist is giving us an example here. It's not weird. Maybe we should do this. To help us not forget His benefits, the Lord has given us a beautiful picture and a beautiful ordinance, hasn't He, of baptism. God is saying in the sign and seal of baptism, He's saying, now look. Look at this helpless little child who was conceived and born not only with a medical condition, but conceived and born in sin. Look at this descendant of Adam, a rebel and a traitor. The Adam, the rebel and traitor who corrupted his children. Look at him. And now look what I can do to him. I can wash him so that he is clean of all iniquity. I can heal him of all diseases. I can redeem his life from destruction. I can put on him the mark of my loving kindness and tender mercy. I can satisfy him with good things as he grows and as his parents teach him of me and of all my benefits. And the point when we sit here in the congregation observing this sacrament, the point is that's you and that's me. And that's everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ. You are that helpless child who must be brought to God by grace, for you would never come to Him yourself. You are that descendant of Adam who was conceived and born in sin. You are that person who has committed iniquities and walked on the road of destruction, and yet God is able to wash you clean. And in Christ, He has done exactly that. everyone of his elect, for everyone who believes on his son. And as we have witnessed that picture again, we need to address our souls. Now soul, did you see that? Don't forget what you've seen. Don't forget his benefits. But remember them. Remember, that was me. He did that to me too. Remembering his benefits, not forgetting them, that's the key to opening up the soul and blessing the Lord with all that is within you. And notice finally, the effect of all these benefits is that your youth is renewed like the eagles. last thing the psalmist says in verse 5, which I don't think is only intended to be connected to the first part of verse 5, but is really the conclusion of all these benefits. He forgives all your iniquities, heals your diseases, redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercy, satisfies your mouth with good things. And this is the effect of all those benefits. Your youth is renewed like the eagles. This is probably a reference to the eagle's molting of its feathers. Eagles are beautiful birds, but they do sometimes start to look rather old and shaggy. And yet God has given them this ability to shed all of their old feathers and to grow new ones underneath. So the eagle is constantly renewing its appearance, at least, of freshness and youth. Like that then, all of the benefits that Jehovah gives to our souls renews us day by day. As children of God who participate in all of these benefits, we remain forever young. As the children of God participating in all of these benefits, we remain forever children before our Father in heaven, fresh and full of life. This body may grow old and die. And yet, even when we shed away this old body like an eagle sheds away its feathers, our soul will only spring up into heaven in the presence of Jehovah himself who has been pouring out all these benefits upon me all my life. I think there may also be some allusion here simply to the beauty and high-flying freedom of an eagle. You ever see an eagle flying high up in the sky? You can't help but think, boy, I sure wish I could do that. He looks so free, so graceful up there. He isn't worried about all the things that are going down on the earth. And the psalmist is saying, that's you. That's you. That's the child of God who partakes in all these benefits. He mounts up with wings like an eagle and is carried heavenward by the grace of God. He's free and alive and full of strength and beauty in God. That's the effect of all that Jehovah does for his children. They have life. They have life and they truly live it and it never runs out for them. It's eternal life. And keep in mind, that he's still talking to his soul here. Soul, thy youth is renewed like the eagles. Our souls can start to feel so shriveled up and dry sometimes, can't they? Our souls often feel more like a rock sitting on the ground than an eagle floating gracefully on the wind. All the cares of life, and shame of sins that we committed, fear of destruction, the emptiness of the world, everything can start to feel so depressing, so heavy. And when we feel that way, we need to do what the psalmist does here. Now look, soul. Now see here. these benefits Jehovah has given to you, poured into your life so wonderfully and so freely. He has turned you into an eagle who should be flying high gracefully on the wind. Why are you sitting down here like a rock on the earth? He has given you life. He's filled you up with all of his benefits. He's redeemed your life from destruction. His loving kindness and tender mercies is towards you, soul, He has given you life, eternal life, eternal youth. Now live that life. Enjoy that life. You're blessed. You're blessed every day. You're blessed by God himself. Now bless him in return. Oh my soul, let the holiness of his name carry you heavenward. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. May that, beloved, be our song. May that be the sentiment of our souls as we conclude the Sabbath day and as we think about where we're headed tomorrow and the day after that. in all of life, beloved. Bless the Lord in your soul. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for all of Thy benefits and we bless Thee. We bless Thee as the God who has been so good to us. And we pray that Thou wilt remind us of it and help us to see it so that we may bless Thee all the more. Forgive us when we have forgotten, when we have not remembered, when we have become discouraged, or when we have returned to sin in ingratitude, and call us back, draw us back. Renew our youth like the eagle. Pour thy graces into our soul that we may bless thee again. Send us away now with thy blessing upon us, and hear our prayer for Jesus' sake.