Christ Presbyterian Church is a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Visit us for morning or evening worship in Mobile, Alabama or on the web at cpcmobile.com. It's a privilege, kind of a scary privilege to be able to stand before you this morning and bring God's Word. I would ask that you would pray with me now for the Lord's help. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We thank you that it has power to change lives by your Holy Spirit. It's working in your people. We pray this morning that you'd give us ears to hear, not what I have to say, but what your word has to say this morning. That we may go from this place more and more conformed to that standard that you've given us. Help us, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. We are not continuing in Isaiah this morning, and I am going to be reading from the New American Standard Bible instead of the ESV this morning. But as we read the scripture, I ask that you would turn to Psalm 103. We will be considering this psalm this morning together, and I would ask that you would stand in honor of the reading of God's word. Let us give due attention. Psalm 103, a psalm of David. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits, who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion, who satisfies your years with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. The Lord performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the sons of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. For he himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. As for a man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the loving kindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember his precepts to do them. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all. Bless the Lord, you his angels, mighty in strength, who perform his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all you his hosts, who serve him, doing his will. Bless the Lord, all you works of his, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Please be seated. When I first looked at this psalm as a text for a sermon, my heart and my mind were just overwhelmed with the expansive wonder of it. My first inclination was, that we should do well to simply read it through and pause and meditate on it for a while, then read it through again and pause and meditate on it again, to allow our souls to just quietly rest in it and ponder with thanksgiving to the Lord the incomprehensible greatness of his mercies towards us. It is as if David is setting down a reminder for himself as he calls himself to action, so that he won't forget later what his heart longs to do at the present, in order to return to this posture of praise and thanksgiving again in the future. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he has captured for us an example of the attitude that our hearts should adopt regularly as well. We have here in this Psalm of David gospel promises. We have the good news of God's grace and mercy towards his people, towards all those who fear him. It puts into perspective God as our creator and our redeemer, the sovereign creator of all with dominion over all. It also reminds us that as God is forever eternal, we are only temporarily in this life, like the grass of the field. We are but dust. We would do well to meditate long on these words and find out if our hearts personally resonate with them. Can we find comfort here? But then I began to ask questions of the text and to try to better understand what the psalmist was calling himself and each of us to do. We will by no means exhaust the breadth and depth of this psalm here this morning, but I would like us to begin an exploration of this portion of God's Word together that hopefully you might continue on your own. Beginning with the first verse, David writes, Right away the question arose, what does it mean to bless the Lord? So I took to my Old Testament word study reference to find out. And it might be helpful to contrast the Hebrew word used here with the word that is used to call us to praise the Lord in another familiar psalm, Psalm 150. There we have Praise the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty expanse. Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Praise Him with trumpet sound. Praise Him with harp and lyre. Praise Him with timbrel and dancing. Praise Him with stringed instruments and pipe. Praise Him with loud cymbals. Praise Him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. The word praise repeated over and over again in Psalm 150 has the sense of glorifying the Lord. The word has the meaning of brightness or splendor and celebration. In our psalm this morning, where we are called to bless the Lord, this word has more of a submissive connotation. It carries the meaning of praise, but it can also mean to bend the knee, or to kneel down, or to pray to, in addition to our rendering here, bless the Lord. In Psalm 103, rather than perhaps the more raucous celebratory praise called for in Psalm 150, we're called to a thoughtful praising of our Lord that flows from hearts of gratitude, remembering the mercies of God, as the verses that follow elaborate. It is my soul that ought to praise the Lord. So then I asked, all right, what is my soul? Again, checking with my word reference, study reference, this word refers to a breathing creature or to breathe. Respiration, life, soul, spirit, mind, a living being, a creature, a person, self. It is the soul by which the body lives. In other words, it is that by which the body continues to live by drawing breath. So it is our inmost self, our core, our life force, if you will, that is to bless the Lord. We're to be fully engaged. Throughout this psalm, the term the Lord, who is the object of our thoughtful, thankful praise, is the word for the covenant name of God, Yahweh, the eternal one, the self-existent one, the great I AM. And it is not just my inmost being that is to bless the Lord, it is all that is within me that should bless his holy name. This leaves no part of me out. The fact that this is thoughtful praise is shown in verse 2. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits. David then, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, begins to recount for us just some of those benefits. Here we have the Gospel of Grace. This is the Lord who pardons all your iniquities. David was well aware of his own iniquities and his need for pardon. Here he acknowledges that God has done this for him, and if you are in Christ this morning, God has done this for you. This is so undeserved, so desperately needed, and so impossible for us to accomplish on our own. This is the Lord who heals all your diseases. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, Psalm 139 tells us, and the Lord intervenes to bring us healing, either in life or death. Sometimes God works miraculously to heal, beyond the comprehension of doctors. But most of the time, God uses means like doctors and medicine, and again, it is the way that the Lord has made us that causes our bodies to respond to such treatment. Sometimes we get sick, and it is only our God-given system of antibodies that fight off the illness, and we recover. But it is all the work of our Lord who heals all our diseases. In verse 4, this is the Lord who redeems your life from the pit. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 3 tells us that we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. We were all objects of God's wrath on a pathway to the pit. But God redeemed us in Christ as Paul goes on in verse 4 and following of Ephesians chapter 2 where he says, but God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Our psalm continues still in verse 4, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion. This loving kindness is, as may seem to be self-evident, an act of kindness done in love and proceeds from an established relationship between the parties, whether that relationship is mutual or one-sided. The word compassion is translated in the King James Version, tender mercies. We are crowned with these by our gracious Lord, but there's more to come. This is the Lord who satisfies your years, or alternately, satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. If we would more often stop to consider and thank the Lord for the good things he has given us, we would be more encouraged and renewed as we face the trials that also come our way. Too often, I fall into complacency and I come to take for granted the blessings that the Lord has given me. When I do that, I can easily become discouraged when it seems as if bad things are coming my way. David continues in verse 6, The Lord performs righteous deeds or deeds of vindication and judgments for all who are oppressed. God acts and judges in accordance with his perfectly righteous nature. That is why in order to make us the ungodly justified before him and to righteously judge us to be so, He had to satisfy the full requirements of his holy law by exacting the full penalty owed for our disobedience of that law. He could not ignore our sin as we might want to. It had to be dealt with. By the grace of God, Christ came into the world to live a human life without sin, to demonstrate and produce the righteousness required of the law. And being simultaneously both man and eternal God, he laid down his life as an offering, dying on the cross of Calvary as the only sacrifice that could fully satisfy the wrath of God on behalf of those who are in Christ. As 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 17 through 21 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were making an appeal through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And in verse 21, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Psalm 103 continues in verse 7. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the sons of Israel. God has condescended to reveal himself to us. Otherwise, we would never know him. Our sin has lost for us the right, or more correctly, the privilege of fellowship with God. In verse 8, The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness. How often have we failed to live as those who trust God? How often have we blatantly refused to submit to what we know is His will? How often have we blatantly sinned and displeased His commandments, which are plainly set forth in His Word? And yet, we're not consumed. We're not destroyed. We're not abandoned. Again and again, the Lord pours out his grace upon us who rightly deserve his judgment apart from Christ. Verses 9 through 13 tell us the way that the Lord deals with us and why. says, he will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, praise the Lord, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. In his commentary on this psalm, Charles Spurgeon says at this point, and I'll quote him, We ought to praise the Lord for what he has not done, as well as for what he has wrought for us. Even the negative side deserves our adoring gratitude. We have never suffered as we deserve to suffer. Every power of our being might have been rent with anguish, instead of which we are all in the enjoyment of comparative happiness, and many of us are exceedingly favored with inward joy. Let all that is within us bless his holy name. God's Word tells us that a loving father disciplines his children. He also sets bounds around them and does not let them go their own way. He knows better from his own experience the pitfalls that lie outside those bounds. Because he has gained some wisdom in his greater years, he also knows his own inclinations to test such boundaries. And this may cause him to strive with his children at times and become angry with them. But as verse 14 gives us the point of comparison of an earthly father, in order to help us understand something of God's love, we earthly fathers and mothers and sons and daughters can provide only poor examples of love towards one another. But God's love for us is perfect. How high are the heavens above the earth? As far as our technology can tell us, the heavens are infinite, and so is God's loving kindness towards us. How far is the east from the west? If you go in opposite directions in a straight line, not following the curvature of the earth, they are infinitely apart. So far has God removed our sins from us in Christ. They're not simply set aside. They're gone. Are you in Christ? Or are you still carrying the weight of your sins apart from Christ? Is the thought of surrendering the outcome of your eternal destiny to the one who formed you a terrifying thought? If it is, I ask you to seek the Lord while he may be found, even now. In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, verse 37, Jesus says, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out. So come to Christ. Now we have a sobering reminder of how temporary our place in this world is. But God knows us. He made us. But as temporary as our flesh is, God's loving kindness is eternal and without limits. Picking up at verse 14, For he himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the loving kindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember his precepts to do them. The psalmist has been repeatedly pointing out to us that the mercies, the compassion, and the loving-kindness of God are not universally applied to all mankind. It is specifically for those who fear the Lord. This is not the fear of terror. It is reverence and awe of the Lord. This fear of the Lord is a gracious gift from God bestowed on his children. It is a realization that the Lord is sovereign over all, that he ordains whatsoever may come to pass. The psalmist continues in verse 19, the Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all. Who should bless the Lord? David now extends his call to bless the Lord to all creation, to those both seen and unseen. He has up to this point been encouraging his own heart and our hearts as well to bless the Lord. And now, as he considers the Lord enthroned in heaven, he realizes that he's not alone in praising God. He speaks to those in heaven and on earth who continually serve the Lord. He says in verse 20, Bless the Lord, you his angels, mighty in strength, who perform his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all you his hosts, you who serve him doing his will. Bless the Lord all you works of his and all places of his dominion. And neither are we alone in our praise. As the writer of the book of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 12 beginning at verse 22, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel. As we're gathered here this morning to worship our God, we may be relatively few in number within these walls, but as we are united to each other by the one Holy Spirit who dwells within us, so we are united with other brothers and sisters in Christ who have gathered together in other places in the name of Christ this morning to worship our Lord. Deuteronomy Chapter 6, verse 4 says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. All those who worship the one Lord in spirit and in truth are joined in that worship by all the hosts of heaven. Verse 22 says, Bless the Lord all you works of his in all places of his dominion. The Lord's dominion is everywhere and over all, because he is the creator of all that is. The Gospel of John tells us this in John 1, verses 2 and 3. He, that is, Jesus, the Word, he was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. And again in Colossians chapter 1, verse 16 and 17, the apostle writes, For by him, again by Christ, all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. There is nothing and nowhere outside of the Lord's dominion. Finally, David returns to remind himself again as he concludes this psalm, Bless the Lord, O my soul. As I said when we began our look at this psalm, we would do well to read it through over and over and to give our hearts the opportunity to rest and revel in the gracious truth of God's unnumbered mercy towards us. If David perhaps wrote this at least in part to remind himself to bless the Lord, how much more do you and I need that reminder? I pray we will take to heart this admonition. If we do, I'm confident that it will be food for our souls. Let us pray. O gracious Father, sovereign Lord, creator of all that is seen and unseen, how awesome are your works, O Lord, and how little credit we ascribe to you day by day. Lord, take this psalm, I pray, and work it deep into my heart that I may more frequently bless your name, that I may consider the great mercies that you have bestowed upon me. that I may live as a worshiper of Christ. I pray this for all of us, in Jesus' name, amen.