This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. A few of your scriptures. We are in Psalm 103. Psalm 103. And I will add that Katy Perry will sing of nothing so glorious as we just sang of. Glorious, glorious, glorious. If you don't know who Katy Perry is, that's okay. We will pick up at the start of the Psalm and we'll stop about halfway through it. Psalm 103, this is the reading of God's word, of David. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, Nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. Yeah, we'll pause there. This is the reading of God's word. Please have a seat. We'll open in prayer and then we'll dive right in. Our Father, we remain your needy people, so please be with your needy people. Minister to us, I pray, for those who are tired, who are distracted, who are worn out, Lord, may they hear the good words of your gospel. May they hear you speak. Please continue to help me to speak only what you would have spoken. May your Holy Spirit be mighty among us. We ask this in Jesus's name, amen. I stop at verse 12 reluctantly because this psalm has a momentum about it. You could preach a good two hour sermon to get through this. This psalm, and particularly where we are, it is a psalm for the guilty. Any guilty people here? You see, if you know that you're guilty, then good, you're in the right spot. If you don't know you're guilty, stay in here because there are things you haven't even tasted or realized yet. This is a psalm for people who have failed. recently, lifetime failures, whatever. It is a Psalm for those who are ashamed of their past. Though we often feel like we are this ugly people of God, our God has some beautiful things to say to his people. This psalm is glorious. Let's dive into David's soaring psalm at verse six. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. If you recall where we left off with the last the last sermon, those first five verses of this Psalm, the transition here is from David's own experiences of God's grace and of his goodness into how God has acted on behalf of all the people of God in general, how good God has been generally speaking. And that's a good place to be. I don't want to be, to have a God who is just the God of me. I think we're tempted to think we want that, but you don't really. We rejoice in a God who was not invented 50 years ago. We rejoice in a God who has been faithful to generation after generation after generation. We rejoice in the God of all his people. And this God is the God of righteousness and of justice. He is the righteous judge who will right every wrong. He will answer every act of oppression. All who know the fear of violence, the powerlessness of injustice, they can know their God is not blind, nor is he deaf. The judge will bring justice, whatever it may appear right now. David draws again, like he did in the last passage, on Israel's own background. You recall that the people of Israel had lived through slavery. They had borne Pharaoh's oppressive burdens. And God heard their cries that they just directed heavenward. And he answered. He delivered his people in justice and in power. But you don't actually realize when you read this quickly that more important than God's intervention is his revelation. Mankind needs God to show himself to them. They will never find him otherwise. They need a God who will make himself known. Because you put it even back in Israel's shoes, even the freest people in the world will still be slaves of sin unless God has made himself known. Their worldly freedom means nothing if they do not know the God who frees them. If God hasn't shown himself, there's just no salvation. There's no reason to get together. There are still abundant blessings across this world. God in his common grace has made sure of that, but salvation is not one that we would ever have had unless God revealed himself like he did to Moses, like he did through his acts to the people of Israel. Even if humanity has all the resources just bound up in themselves to unravel the deepest secrets of creation, They have no access to their creator unless God shows himself. It's so popular to think that we can think our way to God, that our musings and our meditations somehow gain us access to him, but it's an illusion. The God of the Bible is no such God as we like to imagine him to be. The knowledge of God, the knowledge of how we can be saved from our sins that we all know we're guilty of, It must be shown to us. We would never discover the gospel on our own. I'm not saying it's unlikely, I'm saying it's impossible. God must reveal himself. Picking up in verse eight, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. You know, the people of God, we are right to rejoice in a God of righteous justice, but you have to remember the other side of that coin. A God of righteous justice alone would be our doom. We would be utterly undone by pure justice. We sang it. If you, O Lord, should count iniquities, it's been heavy on my mind and heart since we did Psalm 130, but if you counted iniquities, not a single one of us could hold up to the examination. Not a single one of us would escape without a guilty verdict and the condemnation that would follow thereafter. There is too much guilt. There is too much evidence that I am not righteous like God demands I be. So that is why the people of God rejoice in a God that is merciful, in a God that is gracious. Merciful meaning he does not give us what we deserve, and gracious, meaning he blesses us in all kinds of ways that we don't deserve. He is merciful and he is gracious. I had a friend once, maybe I told you about him before. He actually said the words one time, I just really want to know that I've earned salvation. It was a great introductory comment. We got to talk about some stuff after that, but you can only say that kind of thing if you have not seen your sin for what it is. If you're hoping to earn your way up there, and then you look at that pit of sin in your life, you're gonna realize, oh, this is hopeless. It's only if you have no idea what your sin looks like before God and before his law that you can hope for that kind of hope. Once you have seen your sin in the light of God's law, you stand condemned. There's no other way to get out of that. You stand condemned. You know you are absolutely hopeless. The person who knows their sin and its depths and its stench and its guilt, that's the person who rejoices in a God who does not give his people what they deserve. In God's economy, we are utterly dependent on gospel welfare. Utterly dependent. What our sins deserve is justice, and that justice would be our eternal doom. That is hellfire right there. That is justice for you. In God's mercy and his grace, he treats us better than we deserve. He is slow to anger, David writes. And that is good news to a people who are constantly breaking his laws and almost trying to provoke him to anger. That is what we are like, poking the bees nest with a stick. That's us and our God. If he were quick to anger, if he were quick to dispense justice, think how much trouble we would be in. I would not make it off this stage if that were the case. struck down on the spot if he wanted to be quick to the draw. But he's slow in anger, slow to anger. In grace, he gives us time. He gives us that time to repent. In our sin and in our limited finiteness, we need it. We don't even recognize that we're committing capital crimes against our God. He gives us the time to seek reconciliation. Do we deserve it? We sure don't. but he is slow to anger. He will not always chide, meaning he will not always press his case against us. The prophets were known for making these kind of covenant lawsuits. This is all you've done that makes you guilty. And they were like God's lawyers talking about all that we had done that was wrong. If God wanted to press the case against us, he would win it 100% of the time. No doubt at all, unanimous verdict, guilty, but he will not press his case against us forever. He will not contend against us forever. He will not keep his anger forever. though we are just little sinful provokers, his anger will not persist. And the good news for the people of God is that his anger certainly will not follow into the next life. Picking up in verse 10, he does not deal with us according to our sins. That's good news. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. He won't be angry with us. He won't press his case against us because he does not deal with us according to our sins. He does not repay us according to our iniquities. That is, that's the gospel right there. It's the best of blessings. It's the highest of privileges. Just in our community, if someone commits some grievous crime, what do we want? What do we cry for? We want justice. Give them what they deserve is what we say. We rally around it. Everyone will hit like on Facebook for that kind of comment. They knew the law. Let them bear the consequences now. Well, it makes so much sense then. What about when it comes to your sins and to your crimes? What about when the law is looking at us now? What if God deals with us according to what we deserve? The law we knowingly broke, what if he punishes us according to it? Justice would be our doom, but God doesn't deal with us according to our sins. He does not pay you back like you deserve. I mean, hear how good this gets. Know first how great his love is for us. I'll read the verse again. I'll read it all day. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. The pictures of a height that cannot be measured. It's a height that cannot be scaled, whether you're measuring it by the eagle soaring over your head or the stars across the night sky. You can never get that high. This is the picture of God's love for his people. It's a love that cannot be imagined or even measured in any way. This covenant love, he pours out, and let's be clear, on those who fear him. You see, God is loving, but it's not a cheap love, and it will not be cheaply received. The fear of God spoken of in the Bible, it's not a fear of revenge, it's not a servile fear of one cowering in a corner. The fear of God is the appropriate reverence and awe of the creation toward his creator. That is the fear we are talking about. God's love is poured out upon those who in faith are reverent. Those who hold him in proper esteem. That is his steadfast love though. And then know also how great his forgiveness is. As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. The last picture was a vertical picture. This one is a horizontal picture. He paints another picture of infinite distance. Try as you might, when the Lord has forgiven you, there is no way to find your sin. If Jesus has borne it away, it's gone. There's nowhere to find it anymore. We are so fearful. We know how we forgive people and it can be a pretty shoddy job sometimes. And we think God forgives us like that. We could picture the enormous file cabinet full of our sins against God. He's noted every single one of them and we're just waiting for the time when he pulls them all out to use against us. We fear his forgiveness is just him saying, I won't use this against you yet. That is nothing like what his forgiveness is like. When you have been forgiven, there is no trace of your sin anymore. No stench, no hint. There is no other shoe that is about to drop. The forgiveness of our God is full and it is complete. If you are in Christ, you are not what you once were. Will you believe Him when He tells you that you are forgiven in Jesus Christ? That's the challenge. That's the challenge for us, especially when we're wallowing in our guilt. We find it difficult to believe that this forgiveness means what God says it means. It seems too simple. If I were really forgiven, it would be harder. And there's actually a part of that objection that's good. Most of it we need to say that's just hogwash, right? But there's a part of it that's good. When you hear the glorious promises of this psalm and of the gospel, it is actually a very God-glorifying question to ask, how is that even possible? You go back through these promises, why shouldn't he be angry with us forever? I deserve it. Why shouldn't He press His case against the guilty? Again, I've earned it. How can He just forgive us? How can He make us clean? These are good questions. These are gospel questions. They're gospel questions because the answer always comes back to our Savior. Though our sins were as scarlet, He washed them white. as snow. You ask, how can I possibly be forgiven for the sinner that I am? It's because you have a Savior who is greater than your sin. Believe that you have a Savior that is greater than your sin. We are right to recognize the overwhelming debt of our sin. We are right to recognize how deeply we have stained our very souls, but we must also know how great a price was paid on that cross. You see, when Jesus paid for your sins, he didn't just like barely have enough. You know, like you show up at dinner and you ordered more than you meant to and then you look down and you're like, I barely have any money to pay for this. That was not Jesus paying for our sins. We have this fear that our sins are too much, that our guilt is too taxing for God's grace. The cross can't pay for a sinner so guilty as me, we fear. And again, that guilty conscience always fearing that the other shoe is about to drop. They can't shake the sense of how corrupt they are. of how guilty they are. They sit there and they truly fear that they have out sinned God. They have out sinned God's grace. His guilt is just too much. That's what we fear, especially in the depths of it. But the gospel says, look at that lamb who was slain. Look at him. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for his people. Now, what do you think is worth more? A lifetime of your sin or the blood of the perfect Son of God? That is gospel math for you. There is no competition. Your sins don't stand up for a second against the blood of the Son of God. Know today and believe it. Believe it with your heart that our Savior paid it all. The record of your transgression, it has been canceled. It has been obliterated. When you ask yourself, how your forgiveness is possible, go running to the cross. Remember that Savior hanging from that cross. That is how your forgiveness is possible. We despair and we ask, am I truly forgiven? Brothers and sisters, in faith, Take yes for an answer. You are forgiven in Jesus Christ. The mercy of God came in the shape of the God-man broken on our behalf. The grace of God came in his blood shed for his people. People of God, you have been shown mercy, irrevocable and glorious mercy. If you know yourself to be a sinner, then believe in Jesus Christ and know yourself to be forgiven. Why do we praise God? We praise God for his justice to all the oppressed. We praise God for making himself known to a lost and blind people. We praise God for the mercy by which we are spared. We praise God for the grace that makes us rich. We praise God for his steadfast love, his faithful love to his people. And we praise God for our total and complete forgiveness in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's pray. What a gospel, what a savior. Our Lord, we praise you. We praise you for sins that are truly forgiven, for guilt that cannot stand a second before your gospel. Lord, may your forgiveness be known and experienced in our hearts. Lift us out of the guilt that we have cast ourselves into. May we never believe for a second that our guilt speaks louder than your grace. Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and for a forgiveness that we have never earned or deserved. We pray this in Jesus Christ's name, amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.