Psalm 103

0:00 Good morning, all right, that was great, thanks. Good morning everybody, it's a joy to be with you this morning. If you don't know me, my name is Chris Game and I'm one of the lay elders at the church here and I have the great privilege of preaching the word of God to you both this week and next week. So this morning we are going to be in Psalm 103, I think that is on page 502 in your pew Bibles, in the red pew Bibles if you want to turn there, you're going to want to turn there because we are going to be looking at this psalm. So what I am going to be doing over the next two weeks and maybe spinning into the future is setting up a short series on sort of different types of psalms.

0:37 So I wanted to kind of have something I could return to if I preach again in the future. And so the psalms have been divided over the years into different types like psalms of praise or psalms of repentance, lament, imprecatory, different types of psalms. And I thought it would be good for us just to go through some of those, to be instructed by them. The psalms are very soul-searching, to be both instructed by them and hopefully to help us in our own individual lives of prayer, to have the language of prayer that we bring to God. The psalms are so instructive to us in that sort of way. So that's what we're going to be doing this week and next at least.

1:09 This week we'll be in a psalm of praise, Psalm 103. It's got to be one of those beautiful psalms of praise in the Bible. It's an incredible psalm. We'll be looking at that this week. And then next week in Psalm 130, we'll be looking at a psalm that deals more with repentance towards God. So that's what we're going to be doing over the next two weeks. This week, though, we are in Psalm 103. So I think there's a book by a guy named A.W. Tozer. It's called The Knowledge of the Holy. I've never finished the book. I think I've started it like 30 times.

1:40 And every time I start it, on the first page, he has this amazing line that just grips me every time. He says, what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. It's not your marriage that's most important. It's not your job. It's not your bank account. It's not your children. It's not even your church. The most important thing about you is who you conceive God to be.

2:12 What you think about who God is. And it's my contention this morning, it's what I want to argue and show you from this text, that we do not think highly enough about God. We are not amazed enough at God's goodness, his kindness, his steadfast love, his forgiveness to sinners. And that's what we're going to be looking at this morning in Psalm 103. Let's start by reading the Psalm. Psalm 103 of David. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

2:46 Bless the Lord, O 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.

3:17 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He doesn't 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 towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame.

3:48 He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower in the field. For the wind passes over it, and it's gone. This place knows it no more. but the steadfast love 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 to do his commandments the lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all bless the lord oh you his angels you mighty ones who do his word obeying the voice of his word bless the lord all his hosts his ministers who do his will bless the Lord all his works in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, you who are our rock and our great redeemer. Amen. Main idea that I want to explore with you from this text this morning is this. God is always, always worthy of praise because of who he is and what he has

4:53 done. God is always worthy of praise because of who he is and what he has done. So praise the Lord. Bless the Lord. Now I'm going to break this psalm up. Let me tell you a little bit about the structure, how I'm going to do this. You probably noticed at the beginning of the psalm, it says, bless the Lord, O my soul. And then the last line of the psalm is, bless the Lord, O my soul. And verses 1 to 5 there is him stirring up his soul and calling his soul to bless the Lord. The last three verses, 20 to 22, is him turning to all of creation and saying to all of creation, bless the Lord. So you have these beginning and end sections of a calling to bless the Lord, whether individually or to all creation. That center section there, six down to 19, is this densely packed, wonderful, deep theology of who God is to us in the midst of our sin.

5:42 And that undergirds everything else. So I want to break this psalm up into those two things. We're first going to deal with that center section there from six to 19. We're just going to talk big God theology. We're going to talk about how amazing God is. The first point will be the God who is worthy of all praise. The second point, then we'll jump to those outer sections, the bless the Lord, O my soul. And you can just call that point, bless the Lord or bless the Lord, O my soul. So point one, the God worthy of all praise. Point two, bless the Lord, O my soul. All right. Point one, verses six down through 19. The meat of this passage, bracketed once again by those bless the lords at the beginning and the end is this densely packed theological lesson about god and his disposition towards his people even in the midst of their sin this passage is dense and it is deep if you're going to if you're going to build a building you first have to you first have to lay a foundation right uh i you know i went on the wikipedia rabbit hole this week you

6:43 know i was looking at the burt khalifa which is the tallest building in the world if i didn't say that right. I'm sorry. But anyway, this building is like over half a mile high. It's huge. If it was sitting here and it fell over, I think in that direction, the top would be in like Central Park. So if you know how far that is, like this is a big building. This is really, really, really tall. Sometimes Tom Cruise like jumps around it, you know, on the outside. You know, if you're going to have a building that tall, that huge, what do you first have to do? Well, you got to dig deep. Like, you've got to go really deep.

7:16 And the foundation, you can, you know, go on your own Wikipedia rabbit hole, but the foundation of that building is absolutely insane. It has like 12 million gallons of concrete, and it's just, it's insane. They had to dig deep. They drove these pillars deep into the ground. They poured concrete on top of it and were able to build. If you want your praise of God to go high, if you want to see the Lord change more and more in your life, if you want your praise to ascend to the heavens, You have to go deep. You have to go deep into who God is.

7:47 You have to know who he is. You have to know his nature and his character. And that's exactly what this center section is. It is driving these pillars deep into our soul. So that's what I'm going to do with you this morning. What I want to do is give five points from verse 6 down to 19 of who God is. But this section isn't just David abstractly thinking of, you know, things about God. notice that this section is deeply, deeply rooted in the Old Testament, in the Old Testament stories and Old Testament theology. So, for example, look at verses 6 to 8 there. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses. That's a historical person, not abstract. This is this world we're dealing with. His acts to the people of Israel, once again, historical. And then verse 8, as Debbie read this morning, is a quote from Exodus 34, verse 6.

8:44 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Now, I think what David's doing here is that he's reading, honestly, I think he's just reading the book of Exodus, and he's reading it really, really, really well. He comes to 34, 6. He sees that line about that, about who the Lord is, merciful and gracious. If you back up to verse 7 there, he made known his ways to Moses? That sounds like the giving of the law, his acts to the people of Israel. That's him maybe doing the deliverance of the Exodus itself. You back up another verse to verse 6, the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. Well, who's oppressed in the book of Exodus? It's the people of Israel in Egypt. And so I think 6, 7, and 8 is just David walking through the Exodus story culminating in this great revelation of God. The point here is if you want the pillars to go deep, if you want to build a huge foundation on which to build praise, then you have to do it based off the Word of God. You have to get into the Word of God and learn who God is. And that's exactly what David does here. So like I said, I want to pull out five big theological points about

9:51 who God is from these verses, from 6 to 19. And that will cover our first point. Okay, so theological truth, big God truth, number one, the Lord delivers the lowly. The Lord delivers the oppressed. Verse six there, we already read it. It kicks off this section where David reminds us that God works righteousness and justice for the oppressed. Now, I argued a second ago that I think that this is a callback to the Exodus. David is intending to use the Exodus scene where God delivered his people to make a broader point about who God is and who God is interested in. He's interested in the lowly.

10:31 He's interested in the oppressed. The problem, when we were reading that, you probably like, of all the lines in the psalm that you're like, oh, that's good, you probably didn't think much about this line, right? We're so inundated with this. We already kind of think this. The problem is that we've all been, to some degree, Christianized already to think that God is actually interested in the lowly, in the poor. But if you were around the time when David was writing this, this was not the view of the gods in any sort of way. If you traveled around the ancient pagan religions of the time, you'd be very hard-pressed to find any idea like this at all. Most pagan gods just look down upon humanity. They created them as servants and serfs just to do their bidding.

11:16 At best, they might say, oh, Achilles is pretty cool. We might get on his side for a little bit. But the gods don't care about the lowly. The gods don't care about the oppressed. There's nothing like that in ancient literature. In other words, nobody believed in a god or gods who took an interest in the lowly, an interest in the impressed. But David says Yahweh does. David says our God does. And our God's not just interested in the oppressed. He works for them. He does something.

11:48 He works on behalf of them. he acts on behalf of them. To put a point on it, if you're going to come to know who the God of the Bible is, if you're going to come to him, you have to come helpless. You have to come low. You have to come humble. See, God isn't fighting for the strong. He's fighting against the strong. He isn't catering to the proud. He humbles them. God doesn't stoke your ego. He exposes your ego. It is the poor in spirit, according to Jesus, that gain the kingdom of heaven. And that exact same theology is right there in verse 6. This honestly should shock you. God is not expecting anyone here to clean themselves up before they come. God is not expecting anybody here to figure out their life before they come to him. God has an interest in those who can't help themselves. God has an interest in the slave who cannot free himself. So if you're here today and you're low, if your

12:52 sins are more than you can handle, which they actually are for everybody, but maybe you're one of the people who's willing to admit that, if you're willing to admit it, then the Lord fights for you. He's on your side and he will work righteousness and justice for you. That's theological truth number one. Theological truth number two from this passage, the Lord reveals himself. He makes himself known. Debbie prayed about this brilliantly earlier. This is verse seven. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.

13:28 So even if you could scour ancient history and find an example of a God who shows interest to the oppressed, which would be hard-pressed to do, you certainly will not find an example of a God who does that for the sake of then entering into relationship with those people and revealing himself to them. That's completely foreign, and yet this is what David, once again rightfully reading the book of Exodus, that's what he sees. God has delivered the people out of Egypt, and then what does he do? He gives them the law, the Ten Commandments, and then he's like, I want to move in.

14:03 here's plans for a house, because I want to dwell with you. This is completely foreign. Who does this? He makes his ways known to Moses and his acts to the people of Israel. You see, God is a self-revealing God. He's a God who makes himself known to us. And pound for pound, I just don't think we appreciate this enough. We don't worship God enough for this truth. Most of us, if we're honest, take it for granted that God would reveal himself. But once again, this is unique.

14:38 Like Christians are this unique group of people that go around the world and we look at people and we're not joking and we say, did you know you can know God? Like you can know the God of the universe. Not just a list of things about him. You can know him because he's told us who he is. He's not hiding from us. This flies, obviously, in the face of our world. Everybody in our world is constantly creating God in their own image and then claiming that they know God, which isn't hard because they just made him based off of who they are, claiming that they know him.

15:13 But all of that is ultimately, that's an affront to God. If somebody speaks, they want to be listened to, they want to be known. Like, for example, imagine I go to my wife and I say, Sweet Pea, because that's what I call her. I say, Sweet Pea, what do you want to do tonight? And she says, Honey Bunny, because that's what she calls me. It's true. She says, Honey Bunny, I want to go on a walk with you and hold your hand and talk about life. And I say, okay, I hear you saying that you want to go bowling and eat greasy pizza. And she says, wow, you're bad at this.

15:46 I want to go on a walk and hold your hand and talk about life. I'm like, so you want an 8-pound or a 10-pound bowling ball? It's insulting to my wife to listen so badly. And yet this is all of us. This is what we do. God says, I am holy and righteous. And we're like, not that righteous. He says, I will forgive you if you come to Christ. I'm not so sure. He says, I love you. It's like, you know, he says to you, Christian, I love you with an eternal love. You're like, oh, probably not me. We are so bad at listening to God tell us who he is.

16:20 The first thing that we need to do with a line like this is that we need to start again with the wonder and the amazement that God tells us who he is. We're not left in the dark on who God is. We're not left in the dark on how to live life. We're not left in the dark, praise God, on salvation. God speaks. He tells us who he is and how we ought to be. He speaks and tells us to embrace Christ. God is a self-revealing God. Theological truth number three, down in verse eight, the Lord is merciful and gracious.

16:59 This is the culminating passage of this whole psalm. It's the passage that spurs David to write basically the rest of this psalm. David here comes to God's actual self-revelation. It's one thing to say that God reveals himself. It's another to say, okay, well, what does he say about himself? And this is what God says, that he's merciful and gracious. So not only does God fight for the oppressed, not only does he show himself to us, show his ways to us, he tells us what he is like, who he is. And especially, notice, he shows us that in the midst of sin. Now, why do I say that? Well, because of what Debbie read earlier, the Exodus story in Exodus 34. Now, I don't want to steal too much thunder from Ethan's message tonight, so hopefully this sets him up more. But if you go back and look at that story, God has delivered the people from Egypt. He's delivered the law to them. He's told them he's going to build a house for them, or that they should build a house for him to move in. And all the while, Moses is up on the mountain

17:59 getting all of this from God. The people are down there building a golden calf, right? God gets angry about that. He tells Moses. Moses goes down the side of the mountain. He throws the Ten Commandments on the ground breaks them. He basically forms a brute squad of Levites who go around and start killing people because of their sin. And the whole thing is just a mess. It's just miserable. It's sinful and rebellious and terrible. Well, it all comes to an end and Moses goes back up on the mountain to talk to God. And God says, look, I'm not going to go with you to the promised land. You guys can just go on your own. And Moses intercedes and says, God, if you don't go, we're not going to make it. And so God relents. And then Moses says to him, God, would you show me your glory?

18:41 Would you show me your glory? And God says, you can't see my glory. I'll show you the backside of it. But when he does that and shows Moses the backside, this verse is what he says. In other words, Moses, if you really want to see my glory, if you really want to know who I am, this is who I am. I am merciful. I am gracious. I'm slow to anger. I'm abounding in steadfast love, and he delivers that line right after the worst sin of the people in all of the book of Exodus. This is who God is in the midst of sin. You see this line about his patience, his kindness, his long-suffering is not delivered when the people are spotless and cleaned up and obedient and righteous. It's delivered when they're guilty, when they're shameful, despicable, dirty, defiled, rebellious. In other words, this is the promise given to sinners, not to the righteous. And David's blown away by it. He picks up on it, and it moves him so much that he spends

19:46 the next six verses expounding on this idea, giving multiple illustrations and expositions of how wonderful this is. He ends up penning some of the most beautiful and soul-stirring language about God's disposition towards sinners in all of the Bible. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He doesn't 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 towards those who fear him.

20:19 As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. This language is amazing. probably worth a sermon on its own. David is rightly seeing in this Exodus story that although the sin of the people was so awful, the Lord actually relented and didn't give them what they deserve. And David, once again, is just blown away by this. I mean, David knows, as we all ought to know, that it would have been right and just for the Lord to just have wiped that generation from the face of the earth. It would have been right and just for the Lord just to put to death Adam and Eve in the garden when they sinned. It would have been right and just for 10,000 legions of angels to actually descend upon Golgotha, crush Rome, take out all the religious leaders, and get Christ off the cross. It would be right and just for the Lord to punish every person in this room for their rebellion against him.

21:20 And yet, David here says, the Lord doesn't deal with us according to our sins. He doesn't repay us according to our iniquities. He says something as crazy as, the Lord is going to find a way to separate his people from their sin as far as the east is from the west. How can he say that? Well, I think the answer in the psalm is found in a little word.

21:53 It's translated as two words in your Bible, but it's the word steadfast love. It's said three times in the text. It's said in verse 8, he's slow and abounding in steadfast love. Verse 11, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. And verse 17, but the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. somehow for David, God's steadfast love for his people is going to somehow, someway overcome his wrath and his judgment for his people's sin. You see it right there, the super high love of God, this love that's as high as the heavens are above the earth, is going to do something to separate sins as far as the east is from the west. You see, everything is extreme, like as high as that can be, And so the sins will be separated so far away from each other.

22:42 Somehow, the steadfast love of the Lord will do this. Now, David might not know exactly how that lands, but we who have the benefit of the New Testament do. The answer to that problem, how that happens, is ultimately revealed in the death and resurrection of the Son of God in the New Testament. How can God forgive and yet not be a bad judge? How can you do that? If he lets us off the hook in the midst of all of our sins, if he lets us off the hook, then he's not just. And we have judges in our nation today that are getting these cases of clear wickedness. And they're like, oh, you had a rough childhood, just go. And all of us should rightly say, that is unjust. That is wrong. But if we were to stand before the holy judge of all the earth, he would need to be just over us as well. If he lets us off the hook, he's not just.

23:37 but there's another problem if he condemns us then where is his steadfast love that he promised to his people there's no way that you can say that if we are suffering in eternity in hell that God's steadfast love his covenantal steadfast love is upon us how do you solve this dilemma what do you do well the answer is Christ Christ on the cross it's on the cross that God placed your sin my sin placed the sins of his people on Christ, so that it can be rightly said that as Christ dies and takes the punishment, the wrath of God for that sin, your sin is now separated from you as far as the east is from the west. He does even more because in the resurrection, Christ justifies us. He gives us his own righteousness so that Paul can say in an amazing line in Romans chapter 3 that God is both just, meaning he's right in everything he does. And he justifies sinners. He makes them right as well. This is the

24:42 answer to the massive dilemma of the Bible. In other words, God can remain just by justifying sinners, by making them righteous, by giving them the very righteousness of his son. And that's what we call the gospel. That's the good news. That's the good news. You can be saved. You can be forgiven because Christ died on the cross to take your sins and rose again to give you new life in him. So if you're here this morning and you're new to Christianity, you don't know what we think, well, for all the things that we think, and we think a lot of things, this is like the big thing.

25:15 This is like the center thing. Christ suffered and died on the cross to save sinners. And if you come to him in faith, trusting him, you too can be saved. Your sins can be removed from you as far as the east is from the west. David moves on from this massive bigness of God as far as the heavens are above the earth and our sins as far as the east is from the west. He moves from this big image to something so incredibly intimate, so incredibly tender, something as close as the love and compassion of a father for his child or the understanding of God over our frames, over our frames over our own frailty. This tender and intimate illustration of the Lord being merciful and gracious is, it's a treasure to you. If you are one of his people and you struggle with sin, this image is a treasure to you. For all the terrible dads out there, and they're numerous and honestly shameful, we can still all of us see in our mind's eye a father who tenderly has

26:22 compassion for his children. And the image is breathtaking in its beauty. A man who has all the power, a man who can basically do whatever he wants, and might even have some right or duty to discipline a son, and yet is restrained in how he does it because of his love and his compassion for his child. Or take that line that God knows our frame. God knows you. God knows your sins. God knows your thoughts. He knows you.

26:52 You're not going to pull a fast one over God. You're not going to excuse yourself out. God doesn't have to squint to see your deeds. He knows you. But the tone of this verse is not him peering into your life to see your faults and then lord it over you. I told you if you do that, it's not going to be miserable. That's not the tone of this verse. It's in fact him peering in and seeing all your wretchedness and thoughts. And it awakens in him compassion and graciousness and mercy towards his people. He remembers that we're just dust, born of this earth with all its failings, faults, born under sin.

27:30 Look, hear me here. I am in no way saying that God is excusing sin or overlooking it in this text. That is not clearly what the text is trying to say. It's certainly not what the Bible says. You want God to take sin seriously. You don't want him to be flippant about sin, just as any father would be a bad father if he just casually writes things off and doesn't care and discipline his son. But it is trying to say, these images are trying to teach us, that God's disposition towards his people, even in their sin, is one of mercy, graciousness, and compassion.

28:02 He wants what's good and right for you. He wants to see you flourish. He wants to see you grow up into the image of his son. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. fourth theological point. These will go a little quicker. The Lord's love is everlasting. This is verse 17, but the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. So I mentioned before that the idea of steadfast love comes up three times in this passage. And here in verse 17, against the finiteness of man, as for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower in the field, here today, gone tomorrow, as opposed to man, which is so fleeting, the steadfast love of the Lord is eternal. David has already mentioned how high the steadfast love of the Lord is. It's as high as the heavens are above the earth. But now he answers the question, well, how long does it last? I mean, it'd be great to have the steadfast love of the Lord that high, but if it ends next Thursday, what's the point? How long does the

29:04 steadfast love of the Lord go for? He says it goes from everlasting to everlasting. It's an eternal love for his people. You see, God's love for you, if you are a Christian, is not a temporary love. It's not a fickle love. It's not here today and gone tomorrow like you. It's an eternal love. You cannot outrun it. You can't exhaust it. You cannot undo it. You can't get under it. You can't get over it. You cannot get around it. When the Lord sets his affections on a people and covenants with them, hell would need to conquer heaven to stop his love for his people. It's just not going to happen. And it's so different from our loves, right? Our love is so finite. We wake up in the morning, I love God. And by the afternoon, we're complaining and whining. This is who we are.

29:51 God's love is not like ours. God is love, according to the New Testament. It's his very Trinitarian nature to be love. And he bases your salvation and my salvation on his love, not yours. he bases your salvation on his affections, not yours. The steadfast love of the Lord is everlasting. Fifth theological pillar that we're trying to drive into our souls. The Lord is enthroned over all. That's verse 19. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all. David ends this incredible theology of the Lord and his forgiveness and love towards his people with the reminder that God sits in throughout, that he's sovereign overall. So not only is God filled with love, his love is high, not only is his love eternal, it goes forever, but God also rules over all things. Or to say it a different way, his love has teeth. It can actually do something. It's not just emotion. God is sovereign over all things.

30:56 he can act on his love and bring his love to fulfillment. It's not a helpless love. It's not a limp-wristed love. So going back, can God actually rescue the oppressed? Well, yeah, he's the king of the universe. He can. Can God actually remove your sin from you? Yeah, he rules overall. He can make a plan and see it to fulfillment that Christ would take your sins. Who we worship, in other words is not impotent. He is omnipotent. He is the sovereign one behind all things, and he will bring all his promises to fulfillment for those who he loves. Five theological truths about God from Psalm 103. God shows favor to the oppressed. He reveals himself. He's gracious and merciful. His love is everlasting, and he is enthroned in the heavens. You take those five pillars, and you start beating them down into your soul. You start beating them down into your heart and into your mind.

31:54 And they will result in high praise to God. Two quick points of application here on this first point. First, realize your frailty. I kind of skipped over it a bit. Verse 15 there, as for man his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field. As opposed to God whose love is high and his love is eternal, his love is strong. We are weak. We are short. Our lives are short. We're here today and gone tomorrow.

32:26 But his saving, steadfast, covenantal love that we see in this text is, sorry, I skipped a line. We are man. God is God. We are dust. He is eternal. And if you want your praise of God to go higher, this is a good reminder for you. This is a good reminder. You are not God. He is God. Know that you are but dust. He is the enthroned one over all. Secondly, fear the Lord. You might have noticed that three times in this passage we're told that God's eternal love is only for those who fear him.

33:02 Verse 11, verse 13, and verse 17. So his love is high, his love is eternal, his love is strong, but his saving steadfast covenantal love is also particular. It's for a particular people, and that people, according to Psalm 103, are marked by fear of the Lord. Even, you might have noticed there, even the children's children are narrowly defined as those who keep his covenant, and that's important for you. If you're a child here this morning of Christian parents, like, pay attention to me. Listen to me on this one, okay?

33:39 Just because your parents are Christians, just because you're hearing the gospel does not mean you have eternity with Christ. You must fear the Lord. You must come to him. It doesn't just come to you because you were raised in that home. But maybe you're also here today and you're not a Christian. You also need to know that this is a particular covenantal love for his people. And if you haven't trusted Christ, this isn't for you. The promises and the glory and the wonder of this passage aren't yet for you. You're kind of like Kevin in Home Alone when he's walking down the street and all the people are like showing up for Christmas and they're all hugging each other and he's alone, he's outside of it all. And that's true of you if you haven't trusted Christ. You must come to him and fear the Lord. To oversimplify what the fear of the Lord is, because you could say a lot about it, I just want to say that it's to give God and his word the weight that it's due.

34:35 We're going to say it another way, it's just to take God seriously. It's to take his revelation seriously. When he says that he is holy and enthroned, you agree. When he says Christ is the only way, you agree. You don't argue. You don't push back. The fear of the Lord is to say, you are God, I am not, and I believe you. If you want some great application for that, you should go back and listen to Justin's two recent sermons from the book of James. Those sermons exposed, I trust all of our hearts to sin, and hopefully that caused in you fear of the Lord. I want to take those sermons. I want to take the book of James seriously. That's what it is to have fear of the Lord. Well, the first thing that you need to do if you're not a Christian to fear the Lord is to take him seriously that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one will come to the Father except through him. But for those two applications, our frailty and fear of the Lord, the thing that David really wants to get to, what he really wants to get to, is praise. And that brings us to our second point, bless the Lord. As I said at the beginning of the sermon, this psalm

35:39 starts and ends with blessing the Lord. The first few verses, you can't see it in the English translation, but the first few verses say, pick up verse three, who forgives all your, that you there, that your is singular, who heals all your diseases. He's talking, it's singular. It's talking about one person, you. It's very direct. It's you who forgives you, individual. The last three verses 20 to 22, the you's become plural. If you're in the south, it's y'all. If you're where I'm from in the north, it's you-ins. So we would say, bless the Lord, O you-ins his angels, which if they make that translation, I'd buy it. I think that sounds kind of good. It's plural. It's all you, all of creation, right? And so this psalm moves from something intensely individual to the corporate language of we and our to the command to all creation to praise the Lord. So let's just look at that individual level and then the corporate level to finish up.

36:35 David starts the psalm by attempting to stir up his soul to praise, and notice that that's a command. Bless the Lord, O my soul. That's a command. This is helpful. This is helpful to you, it's helpful to me. Praise sometimes must be commanded of us. Or to say it another way, praise is not always natural to you, and so it must be stirred up. Like a coach telling his team to drop and do 50, the Christian must at times grab his soul by the collar and say to it, praise the Lord, bless the Lord, worship God. You see, for most of us, most times we do entirely too much listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. We listen to ourselves complain and nod along obediently. We listen to ourselves tell ourselves how miserable everything is and agree. We listen to temptations and yield to them in sin. And David's just saying, when are you

37:38 going to grab yourself and say, and start speaking to yourself instead? When are you going to do what David does and grip himself and tell himself to shut up with all the complaints and the temptations and praise the Lord. Bless the Lord. God is that great. Take some time to praise the Lord. In other words, praise of God is going to take some discipline. Everybody that you know in this church that has a vibrant relationship with God has, to one degree or another, disciplined themselves towards it. Now, all of that is ultimately under the graciousness of God. If you ask any of those people, they will say, it's all God's grace. It's like, okay, I knew you were going to say that, but can you help me anyway? Can you tell me, like, what does the discipline look like? They made decisions to read the word. They made decisions to come to God and make the request known to him. They made decisions to not forsake the gathering of the assembly and sit underneath the preached word. They called their souls to worship God and then obeyed. David shows us that right there. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. At any rate, he stirs himself up with a rapid fire

38:40 of truths that stir his soul. He says that God forgives, he heals, he redeems, he crowns, and he satisfies. Now, I'm not going to go into details on this for sake of time, and in many ways those ideas are played out through the rest of the psalm, so I'll just be repeating myself in many ways, but I do think there's a couple things to notice. First, this psalm is directed towards God-fearing persons who still struggle with their sin. David assumes that sin is affecting the lives of his readers. Some have even read this psalm as David calling the shot that the exile is going to happen. So he's looking back to the exodus. He sees how God has delivered. He's aware of the promises of Deuteronomy, that the people go into exile. And so he pens this psalm to say, God's not always going to chide. God is not always going to keep his anger forever. He's not going to deal with you according to your sins. In other words, God is going to redeem you back even out of exile. That could be what he's doing. But in using that second person singular, the you there, he is making this

39:41 intensely personal to you. God forgives individuals. He strengthens and crowns individuals. Christian, this is a great psalm of praise for you, even in your fight and struggle against sin. Maybe you're here this morning and you feel like you're under the weight of sin. This psalm is a massive reminder that God fights with you and for you. He has not, in other words, taken the devil's side against you, accusing and demoralizing you in your sin. No, he takes his covenantal side with you, and he is determined to forgive, heal, redeem, crown, and satisfy you for eternity.

40:21 Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and don't forget that. Secondly, there is always something to praise the Lord for. I needed this psalm this past week because of certain events in life. And what I found as I kept on reading this is that there's just some things that this world cannot touch. There's just some promises that the world cannot get to. You might be here with financial difficulties, but the Lord will satisfy you with good. You might have relational difficulties, but the Lord crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.

40:55 You might have an absolutely no-win scenario in life. But you know the Lord redeems from the pit. You might have incurable sickness, but the Lord will heal all your diseases. You might struggle under the weight of sin and temptation, but the Lord forgives all your iniquities. This psalm causes us to lift our eyes off of the temporal and set them on the eternal. And what all this should ultimately result in is praise. It's praise, bless the Lord. Have you ever stopped to wonder how confusing it must be for Satan to see this church sing on a Sunday morning? Like he's got his little fingers in all our lives. He's trying to pull a Job. What he wants for all of you, all of you Christians, is to ultimately shake your fist at God and curse him. That's what, that's what Satan wanted Job to do. And he's, and he's working on all of us to do that. And yet, and yet, week after week, month after month, year after year, by God's grace, we come into this place and we praise the Lord.

41:57 We lift our hands and we praise the Lord. The sick stand and praise the Lord. Sinners stand and praise the Lord. The suffering stand and sing and praise the Lord. The poor stand and praise the Lord. You gotta imagine, Satan's gotta be like the Grinch. He's like, they're singing, they're singing. I don't understand. I'm trying everything. I'm throwing the whole book at them. And yet they still praise the Lord. Some of them even through deep pain and tears. Listen, Christian, God is always worthy of your praise.

42:32 His eternal promises, his eternal works, his eternal nature, his eternal character, his eternal love for you are always worthy of your worship. So bless the Lord. He has moved on behalf of you and your eternal joy with him. Weeping may come with the night, but joy will come with the morning. Bless the Lord. Lastly, just finishing up this psalm, look at that corporate section at the end, verses 20 to 22. David ends this psalm with a call to all creatures and works to praise the Lord.

43:05 So the one who started the psalm by calling himself to bless the Lord individually, now turns to everything else and calls it to praise the Lord. It's like David is so convinced of the goodness and glory of God that he must call everyone and everything else to join him in his praise. of the Lord. So he stands up like at the threshold of heaven and earth, like a conductor. And he raises his baton, and he starts conducting. And he says, you angels, get up, start praising the Lord.

43:36 Which seems like he might be punching above his weight. I mean, I don't know if you've read descriptions of angels in the Bible, but they're fearsome. And David's like, I don't care. God is worthy of praise. Get up, praise the Lord. All you his ministers, bless the Lord, all his works. Bless the Lord. Everybody, get up and praise the Lord. God is worthy of all praise and honor and adoration. Bless the Lord. In other words, if the Lord is this good, then the praise of the Lord needs to spread throughout the cosmos, throughout everywhere. So Christian, the Lord has been more good to you than you can imagine. He has forgiven you of sins that you don't even know that you committed. His steadfast love for you is eternal. Don't you want the whole earth to praise the Lord? Like even this week, go to work and tell somebody, praise the Lord publicly to somebody. Tell them that they should love Jesus Christ and come to him. Get the angels involved if you must, right? Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name.

44:44 Let's pray. Father, we corporately here this morning want to bless you. We corporately want to say that you are worthy of all of our praise. We want to say that you are good in all that you do. That your love for us is steadfast, eternal, unmovable, unshakable, and strong. And that your promises will not fail for us. Oh God, we praise you for these truths. We pray that they would even encourage us and shape us and transform us this week.

45:17 We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.