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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.
The God Who Forgives
Series Psalm Sermons
| Sermon ID | 2115175736 |
| Duration | 24:40 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Psalm 103:6-12 |
| Language | English |
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