I want you to turn to two texts of scripture. Actually, we're going to be expounding the first part of verse 3 in Psalm 103, but before you turn to that, turn to a text that doesn't seem to fit our text, but you'll see eventually that it does. Go over to Matthew chapter 7, please. Matthew chapter 7. I've called this the sinner's worst nightmare. Matthew 7, beginning in verse 22, excuse me, verse 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. But he who does the will of my father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness." Now, go over to Psalm 103, please. Psalm 103. We began a series of studies on this psalm several weeks ago. We did an overview the last time. This morning, I want to focus in on the first part of verse three. Who forgives all your iniquities? In our introduction this morning to this text, I want to deliberately disarm any among us who have the mistaken belief that they are good and morally upright in the eyes of God, apart from the grace of God. You may openly acknowledge that you have made mistakes or that you have sinned on occasion, but for the most part, you don't believe you're a sinner, you're a good person. And this was probably confirmed by your friend. They would probably, from their perspective, say, yes, they are a good person. In fact, I was talking to a man a few weeks ago at the gym, and that's what he said to me. He said, Tom, I'm a good man. I'm a good teacher. And I'm going to continue the good things. And I believe when I get to heaven and I stand before the God, all the good things I do are going to outweigh the bad things I do. But I'm going to tell you one thing right now. I'm not going to hell. May I say that this is one of the greatest deceptions perpetrated on the human race. To believe that you're a good person and deserving heaven apart from the saving grace of God is a most damning delusion. It is not what we believe about ourselves, it's what God knows about us. And he has clearly stated there's none righteous. No, not one. He said, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It is God who will judge us. It is God who will determine our eternal destinies. And a pastor, Sean, quoted in the Sunday School this morning, Psalm 130, verse 3, If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Lord, if You hold the sins that we've committed against You, if You take our mistakes and our occasional sins and judge us according to Your Holy Word and to Your standard of righteousness, who will be able to stand before You? You know everything about us. Psalm 90, verse 8, You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins, in the light of Your countenance. And in Hebrew 4.13, there is no creature hidden from a sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Who will be able to claim, declare their self-innocence before your all-knowing eye? And the answer to this question is a foregone conclusion. No one. Or claims that you are a good person and try to do good things while you live on the earth will fall on deaf ears. Lord, did we not prophesy and preach in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do many marvelous works in your name? He never debated with them. Or that's future. He won't debate with them. He doesn't deny that they did all those good things. He merely says, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Hell will be populated with good people, morally upright people, people who believe that the good they have done will outweigh the bad. Even religious people who spend their entire lives doing things in the name of the Lord. And what hope is there for any of us? And I hope you're asking yourself, well, what hope is there for me? Because I'm glad you asked that question. Because there is hope, and a certain hope. You see, I only quoted the third verse in Psalm 130. I didn't quote the fourth verse. Listen, Psalm 130, verses 3-4, If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you. that you may be feared. God gets no delight in judging sinners. He must and will judge sinners. On the other hand, God gets great joy and delight in forgiving sinners. All that is a rather lengthy way of bringing us to the text before us this morning as we continue our series in Psalm 103. I've called this series now, Blessing the Lord, Reasons for Doing So. And the first benefit that we receive is the first part of verse 3, who forgives all your iniquities. Notice how David opens up this psalm that we should be blessing the Lord. He says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. All my energy, all my heart, all my soul, everything that I am. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefit. And the very first one He sets before us is, who forgives all your iniquities. And if that doesn't cause us to bless the Lord, I don't know what will. Now, your outline shows you how I've tried to break open verses 1-5. We should be blessing the Lord because of His abundant grace in the first part of verse 3. Although His grace isn't mentioned, we know when it speaks of forgiveness of our sins, our iniquities, is because of God's grace. And I just want to take each word and focus on those. Well, first of all, consider the focus of His grace, your iniquities, the manifestation of His grace, who forgives, and the scope of His grace, all your iniquities. Let's look at those for a moment. First of all, the focus of His grace your iniquities. Look at the text. Who forgives all your iniquities. That word mainly means bent or crookedness. It refers to that evil bent in our nature that pulls us towards sin. It's another word for sin. He forgives our sins, our transgressions, our wicked thoughts, our deeds, or our iniquities. Now, notice this is the first of the many benefits listed in these five verses for obvious reasons. This is the foundation for everything. Our greatest problem is sin. Apart from the grace of God in relationship to sin, we would not and could not be the recipients of anything but His wrath. The text also brings to mind the fact that before we were the recipients of God's abundant grace, we were all sinners. Now, I want you to look at the text again. Who forgives all your or our iniquities? The glorious fact that our gracious Heavenly Father forgives your iniquities means that there were in our iniquities found in us that need to be forgiven. Otherwise, the text has no meaning. And ignoring this fact is the reason why some of you here this morning continue to think I'm a good person and I really don't need to be saved. You do not believe or will you acknowledge that you are a sinner in need of God's abundant grace? You're like the person in our introduction, a good person. The word your is a third person plural pronoun which includes everybody. It's in the possessive case which means we all possess these iniquities. We are all guilty of these iniquities. Listen to Psalm 64, verses 6 through 7. But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness, that means all our good works apart from the grace of God, and all of our righteousness to God are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away, There is no one who calls on the Lord, who stirs himself to take hold of you. For you have hidden your face from us and have consumed us because of our iniquities. All have sinned, Paul says, and come short of the glory of God. One of the most offensive things that you can say to anyone is that they're sinners. This is one of the reasons why many preachers will not mention sin. They don't want to offend anyone. They want everyone who comes to feel comfortable. Well, a preacher should not be deliberately offensive, but there's an aspect of the gospel that is offensive. Sin is offensive, but it's a fundamental aspect of the gospel. Why do you have the gospel apart from sin? Why did Christ come to die for sinners if there's no sin? Preaching that deliberately omits any mention of sin is what Paul called a different gospel, which is no gospel at all. And those who deliberately do that should listen to what Paul says in Galatians 1.8. For if we are an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached, let him be accursed. Let him be a document. Let him be cursed. And then he underscores that in verses 9 and 10. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. In working on this text all week, And I have prayed for this over and over again. My great burden is that those of you who are unsaved here today would have your eyes open to the fact that you are a sinner, that you stand before God as a condemned sinner, and you'll begin to feel the weight of your iniquities. Psalm 40 verse 12. For innumerable evils have surrounded me, my iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart fails me. An even greater burden is that you will be made to see the perilous state that you are in at this very moment. Go over to the book of John, please. Jump back over to the book of John. We all know these verses, but we don't always consider the weight and the impact of what Jesus says here and what John says in this third chapter. having said in verse 16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. But notice verse 18. Look at it closely. He who believes in Him, that means he who believes that He is the Christ, the Son of God, God in the flesh, who came and died for sinners and He rose again the third day. He who believes in him is not condemned. But look at this. He who does not believe is condemned already because he does not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God. It's like when you stand before the Lord on the day of judgment as an unrepentant sinner, it's not there to determine your guilt or innocence. As an unbeliever right now, you've already been tried, found guilty, and the condemnation has been pronounced upon you. Because you do not believe in Christ, evidenced by the fact that you have not called on Him to be saved, you have already been tried, convicted before the court of heaven, and the sentence has been passed. You stand before the Lord as a guilty, condemned sinner. But your state is even more perilous than that. Look at verse 36. of John 3. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. But he who does not believe the Son shall not see life. Look at it. But the wrath of God abides on him. God's wrath hangs over your head. The hope of the gospel is in the first part of the text. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. He who believes he is God came to die for sinners. It also implies that you know you are a sinner in need of being saved by faith in Christ. But the terror of the gospel is in the second half of that same text. And he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. The wrath of God hangs over your head at this time, ready to break upon you. Wrath that will one day be poured out in full strength without the slightest drop of mercy. In that sense, you're standing on the very brink of hell. If God forbid you should die right now, today, tomorrow, or in the future, and we all will die, and you remain in your sins, you will be cast into hell and be made to suffer and be tormented forever and ever. It is this horrible fate that awaits some of you in this place that crushes my heart when I contemplate on it too much. I sometimes have to just stop thinking about that. to think that those of you I've known since you were young, have known you for several years, have come to know you recently, may die, and to realize that you'll be in hell if you don't call on the name of the Lord to be saved. Sometimes I just have to stop thinking about it because it just weighs me down. But it doesn't have to be this way. Go back to Psalm 103. If you call on the Lord, He will forgive all your iniquities. Look at what it says. Who forgives all your iniquities. And if you call, He will do it. But there's much more. Much more. Look at verse 4, the first part. Who redeems your life from destruction. And the word there, destruction, means what I was just talking about, the ultimate end of the unrepentant sinner, eternal destruction in a Christless hell. But when He forgives all your iniquities, He will save you from that ultimate destruction in hell. And I implore you, yes I beg to you to cry out to the Lord to save you. God be merciful to be the sinner and forgive me my iniquities and redeem my life from destruction. Do not deceive yourself into believing that your sins are hidden from the Lord. He knows all and sees all. He knows every thought that's in your mind. That is terrifying, even as believers. Psalm 90, verse 8, you have set our iniquities before you, listen, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. As it says in Hebrews 4.13, there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. But praise God He forgives. all our iniquities. And that's our next point. We've seen the focus of His grace, our iniquities. The manifestation of His grace, He forgives. The scope of His grace, all your iniquities. Who forgives? Let's go back and forgive. The manifestation of His grace. David begins by reminding us that God forgives all our iniquities. Who forgives all your iniquities. And the word translated forgives, listen to this because I never knew this, this is true in the Hebrew, is only ever used of God forgiving the sinner. In the Old Testament when it says forgive, this particular word is only used of God forgiving sinners. It is never used of us forgiving each other for at least two good reasons. First, We are limited in our dealing with the offense of people who sin against us. When we truly forgive someone, it basically means we no longer hold that offense against them. Now that's good, but that's as far as our forgiveness can go. But God's forgiveness is much more extensive. Like us, He no longer holds the sinner's offense against them. But He brings about a radical and permanent change to the sinner's heart and the soul. When they seek forgiveness, He forgives. The dead who are in sin are alive in Christ Jesus. The heart of stone gives us a heart of flesh. Sons of disobedience become obedient children. When He forgives, He brings a radical and permanent change to the person's status. Condemned sinners are declared righteous. Guilty sinners are justified in His sight. Children of the devil become the children of God. And the Scripture says we're transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son, Jesus Christ. Second, when we, when I forgive, we sometimes find that our forgiveness often fluctuates. especially if the sin of the offense committed against us was severe and the consequences are ongoing. Sometimes people do things against us that only hurt now, but maybe we have to live the rest of our life dealing with the consequences of what they have done. And that's when we begin to find our forgiveness will fluctuate from first being bitter And then by God's grace we forgive, but then we start dwelling on what happened and our forgiveness goes back to bitterness again. And when that happens, we must ask God to renew that spirit of forgiveness. But God's forgiveness doesn't fluctuate. His forgiveness is permanent. Look at verse 12. As far as the east from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. David said in Psalm 79, Oh, do not remember former iniquities against us. Let your tender mercies come speedily to meet us, for we have been brought very low. And I love this in Hebrews 10, 17. There are sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more. And one of my favorite verses of invitation is in Isaiah 55, 6 and 7. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, and listen, and he will abundantly pardon. He will abundantly pardon because the fountain from which the pardon flows is an infinite fountain. Our Lord pardons fully and completely. Pardon flows out of mercy, and the Scriptures tell us the Lord delights in mercy. He pardons and forgives our iniquities and does so with great joy and gladness. Now, there's one other thing. We've not exhausted the manifestation of God's grace found up in the word forgive. There's still more. Look at the text. The word forgives, even in Hebrew, is in the present tense. Now, that has great significance. It means who forgives and continues to forgive all your iniquities. The abundant grace of God moves Him to forgive all of our iniquities when we are first saved, but His forgiveness is ongoing because, let's face it, even as believers, our iniquities are ongoing. We continue to sin. And if you're like me, you find yourself committing the same sin over and over again. Then you begin to question, is God going to continue to forgive me because I keep doing the same sin over and over again? But that's why this text is so important. Who forgives and continually forgives. Even in my private prayer, I say, Heavenly Father, how can I ask you to forgive me when I keep committing the same sin over and over again? Now, don't move up on the edge of your pew, because I'm not telling you what that is. I'll tell you one. Speaking evil of those in authority over us. We're told we're not to do that. Now, that's a command of the Lord. But I watch the news. And I start yelling at our politicians. And I start speaking evil of them, saying, Lord, that's sin. Forgive me. And I keep on doing it. Get my 44 magnum out. Start blasting the TV. I have no idea what that accomplished. But you see, God continues to forgive. Now, that doesn't mean that we say, well, if God continues to forgive, I'll just sin, do anything I want to, and keep on forgiving. No. There is one of the many reasons that David said, bless the Lord, all my soul and forget not all his benefits. This is the first benefit that we must not forget that he gives and continues to forgive all our iniquities. It is here that the abundant grace of our precious heavenly father is magnified because he says when we confess and forsake our sins, I don't mean confess it to a priest. We confess it to our heavenly father. and forsake our sins. As believers, He continues to believe us. When we repent and plead for grace to forsake the sins that we commit over and over again, He will always show mercy and forgive. Proverbs 28, 13, He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. who forgives and continues to forgive all your iniquities. Let's be sure we don't forget that glorious benefit. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. But now I want us to look at the extent of His grace. Look at the text again. He forgives all your iniquities. The word describing the extent of God's grace is simple but powerful, all. God forgives all your iniquity. His abundant grace is far reaching all your iniquities. Here you see a vast difference between our forgiveness and God's forgiveness. There are offenses committed against us by others that will often make us unwilling, reluctant and very slow to forgive. And if we're not for the Word of God commanding us, the grace of God making us willing, and the Spirit of God compelling us, there are times we would not forgive. I remember when I was preaching at the other church, I think of preaching on bitterness, like I preached here about a month ago. And I said, the only way I know how to deal with bitterness is ask God for a forgiving spirit. Whether the other person ever admits they did anything wrong is not your concern. You're bitter. You're angry. And the only way to deal with that is, Lord, give me a forgiving spirit. And as the service was over, a man came through the line. He said, Pastor Tom, I know what you're saying, but my brother did something to me that was so horrible, I cannot and I will not forgive him. So I just ask him a simple question. Well, what is it that your brother did? And this is amazing. He stood there and looked at me and thought and thought and said, I don't remember what it was, but I know it was really bad and I'm never going to forgive him. The text takes in the sins of commission as well as the sins of omission. There is no sin that God will not forgive if we confess and forsake those sins. Listen to Spurgeon's comments on this text. He says, If just one of your iniquities, the smallest sin in thought, word, or act were left unforgiven, it would be as if none of our iniquities were forgiven. We would be as far from God as the worst of sinners. We would still be unfit for heaven. We would be just as exposed to eternal damnation as though the whole weight of our sins were still upon us. That's why David said in Psalm 51, 9, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. I'm sure that David was blessing the Lord with all that was in him when he was moved by the Holy Spirit to speak of the extent of God's abundant grace, when he wrote down, Who forgives all your iniquities? Because David was guilty of what we would call grossly immoral sin, adultery and murder. I had this woman's name, but it was hard to pronounce, so I'm not going to try to pronounce it, but I got this off the Internet. And I thought it was a good application here. Before she died in 1998, excuse me, 1988, a well-known secular humanist and novelist said, what I envy most about Christians is their forgiveness. And then she made this statement. I have no one to forgive me. Hear the hopelessness in that statement? As a secular humanist, she wouldn't believe in God, she wouldn't believe in Christ, she wouldn't see a need for salvation, she wouldn't even believe anything about the doctrines of Christianity. And she saw that Christians enjoyed forgiveness, but she realized, there's no God, there's no Christ, who's going to forgive me? And apart from the abundant grace of God, if you're here this morning and you're not saved, you have no one to forgive you if you refuse to turn to Christ. How can God forgive sinners without compromising His holiness and righteousness? Our court system does this all the time. Thieves, robbers, murderers, drug dealers, sex perverts, they're all turned loose many times without paying the price for their crimes. You might have saw it last week, the US Supreme Court ordered the California prison system to release 46,000 prisoners because of the overcrowding was life-threatening and uncomfortable for these men. Imagine what that's going to do to California society when those gangsters are turned loose. And this last week also, the man who in the Tucson red page had killed six people and left Representative Gabrielle Giffords with a bullet in her brain was found to be incompetent to stand trial and will spend up to four months in a psychiatric treatment. Six people he killed and wounded this congresswoman. And so far, he's only going to get four months in the psychiatric. They'll probably get more than that. But right now, that's the way it is. But God is perfect in righteousness. Justice and righteousness are the foundation of his throne. He will not forgive our iniquities without regard to justice and righteousness. It says in Exodus 34, he will not clear the guilty. Well, then how does he forgive us? The text reiterates the abundant grace of God in forgiving all of our iniquities, but it also says in another place that He will not clear the guilty. We are all guilty of great manifold iniquities. How then can God forgive us without violating His own Word and sullying His own righteous and holy character? Look at Isaiah 53. Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah is speaking of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ 800 years before the event. Even though I'm going to go a little bit over, I want to take the time to read this. Verse 1, Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness that when we see Him there was no beauty that we should desire Him. In other words, He looked just like a normal person. He is despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our face from Him. He was despised and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. This is Christ. Yet we esteem Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray and turned every one to his own way." Now look at this. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. When Christ was hung on that cross, God the Father took all of our iniquities and laid them on the Lord Jesus Christ. And He paid the debt that we could never pay. The wrath of God because of our sin was vented against Christ. Our guilt, our sin was paid for in full by Christ. That's why He could say before He died, it is finished. All that I need to do on the cross to save sinners has been completed. It's not our good works. It's not that we're a good person. It's that Christ died for us. He died in our place. And as a result, David could write, who forgives all your iniquities, if you'll see your need for Christ, and that you're a sinner, and will cry out to Him for mercy. Two quick lines of application. To those of us who have been saved, we must not forget that because of His abundant grace, the Lord forgives and keeps on forgiving our iniquities. who forgives and continues to forgive all our iniquities. And we must not forget that benefit. That's one of the reasons we go back into our life and look at all the sins that we've done in the past. And we drag it all up. And we feel guilty all over again. Forgetting that Christ paid for it all. Christ God has forgiven us of all those sins. Forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities? Secondly, I'm going to ask each one of you a question. And I'm speaking especially to those of you who have not been saved. With that, turn over to Luke 18. And I'll wait until you get there because I don't want you to be distracted by turning to that. If you want to determine where you are, have you been saved, or are you still unsaved, let me ask you this question. If you were to stand before the Lord right now, Why should he accept you into his heavenly kingdom? Why? Think about this. Close your eyes. Everybody bow their head and close their eyes. If you would stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, why should he let you into heaven? Why should he allow you into his heavenly kingdom? Now answer that in your heart. Now open your eyes and look at Luke 18, beginning in verse 10. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee would be considered to be a good person. He would be the most religious of all the religious people. He is a good person, and he does many wonderful things. In fact, he tells the Lord this. The Pharisees stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adorter, or even as this filthy tax collector. Then, having told God how wonderful He is, that He's not like other people, He says, look at all the good things I do. I fast twice a week, I give tithe to all that I possess. In other words, Lord, I believe I'm a good person, and I have done a lot of wonderful things, and therefore I ask You to accept me. But the second one is a tax collector. Now a tax collector was one who collected taxes for the Roman Empire. A Jew who collected taxes for the Romans. But he'd take $10, give Rome $1, and put $9 in his pocket. So he was considered the worst of all crooks. The worst of all sinners. When I want to talk about Jesus sitting down with sinners, he talks about harlots and tax collectors. So this was the worst of all sinners. But notice this man's attitude. And the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. He knew he wasn't a good man. He knew he didn't good deeds. He knew that they didn't make any difference anyway. He realized that he was a sinner and he asked God to be to save him and to be merciful to him. Which one was forgiven? Look at verse 14. I tell you, this man, that's the tax collector, went down to his house justified rather than the other. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now be honest with yourself. Answer this question. Which of these two men is a reflection of the answer I just gave? You either said, God should accept me into heaven because I'm a good person, I try to do good things, which means you would not go down to your house justified, or you knew that you're a sinner and that you knew God needed to save you and you called out for the Lord to save you. Which one of those best represents you? Let's bow our hearts in prayer. If the Lord has spoken to you this morning, and I truly hope He has, and He's opened your eyes to the fact that, yes, you're a good person in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of God, you're a sinner condemned. And He's shown you that. He's recognized that. I want you to do just what that tax collector did in your heart right now. Cry out. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. And God said, whoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you hear this morning, and God has shown you your state, and you cried out and prayed that prayer and asked God to save you, I want you to acknowledge that, but just slip your hand up real quick. OK. Anyone else? Seal the truth to our hearts, Lord, knowing that we can only preach the truth, we cannot open the hearts of people. Work in the hearts of those who are here without Christ, don't let them alone until they cry out to you, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.