Good evening, it's good to see
you all. I sent your love and greetings to the brethren in
Rocky Mount and wouldn't you know it, they sent it back in
return. They're all interested in the work here and asking about
the building and new people and it's my delight to get to tell
them what the Lord's doing here and certainly to be a part of
it. If you will turn with me for our message to Psalm 103.
Psalm 103. Psalm 103, we'll start in verse
one. This is a Psalm of David. And he writes, bless the Lord,
O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Is that not our desire? I know
when we come here specifically, that's our desire. We have come
here to worship, praise, honor, and glorify our God. And when
I looked at this, I thought, it shouldn't just be for when
we're here. I pray that that truly is our heart's sincere
desire every single day to bless the Lord, oh my soul. And when
I looked at the definition of this, the word bless there means
to adore. to a door with bended knees. And I love that. And what I thought
about when I started looking at this was of a song. I've been listening to Christmas
music for about a month now. Some of you might think I'm crazy.
You may already think I'm crazy. Now I'm even crazier. But personally,
I just really love Christmas songs. And I'm especially drawn
to ones that give our Lord all praise and glory. They don't
all, but the ones that really strike me do. And the song, Oh
Come Let Us Adore Him. Christ the Lord. I just love
that song. I keep listening to it. And then
when I saw that this, Bless the Lord, Oh Adore With Bended Knees,
I was already looking at this song for something else, and
I really wanted to preach from it. And again, we do this. We come here. Lord willing, a
few times a week. And it's such a blessing and
a privilege. And I pray that right now and always that we
truly come here into this house, His house, not to puff one another
up and be lifted up, but to lift Him up, to worship Him, the Lord
our God. We just read in that Psalm 145
that His greatness is unsearchable. And I love just looking at it.
I love considering it and talking about it. And I pray we'll do
just that tonight. There's something else I thought
about. You know, we're here. And a lot of times I feel like we
come here out of habit. We come here out of routine.
It's just what we do. And it's true. But I don't just
want to be here in that manner. I truly pray that my heart and
yours, my mind and yours, that our spirit might be here. And the Lord said, if we're going
to worship him, we must have his spirit. We must worship him
in spirit and in truth. Now, when considering why David
penned these words, to bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all
that is within me, why? Why did he want to do that? I
think the answer is very simple. The Lord had done something for
that man. The Lord had done something for him. And in return, he wanted
to praise and adore the Lord. with bended knees. And go ahead
and look with me at verse two. He went on to say, bless the
Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And again,
when I looked at that, I thought benefits seemed like kind of
an odd word here, but the word simply means dealings. Dealings,
forget not all his dealings. God had dealt very favorably
with David. In Psalm 13, verse six, he said,
I will sing unto the Lord because he hath dealt bountifully with
me. Can we not say the same thing
when we just take a moment and consider our Lord's dealings
with us? Are they not bountiful? His thoughts toward us, they
can't be numbered, can they? And when I find myself complaining,
I try to think of things like this and shut my mouth and praise
His name because He deserves to be praised at all times. God's
dealings with His people are truly beyond, we just sang it,
are comprehending His love toward us, all His goodness, all His
benefits toward us, incomprehensible. Now, for just a moment tonight,
I simply want us to do this. Adore the Lord our God. Come
let us adore Him. All right, now we'll consider
a few of these benefits here in this psalm. Look at verse
three. The first one here, he says, who forgiveth all thine
iniquities. And when I look at that, the
first thing I think is, I'm glad it doesn't say, who forgiveth
most of thine iniquities. That would not be good news to
me, and I'm certain it would not be good news to you either.
And I'm also glad it doesn't say, who forgave all thine iniquities,
though that is so. And there are scriptures that
speak on those terms, but it says he forgiveth. Now, I'll
just give you a quick example. I'm married. I continually need
forgiveness in my marriage, in my home. It was that way when
I was at home with my parents, and it's certainly that way now
too. I mess up. Now, think about in the sight
of God, how much more so do we continually, you know, if we
had a fresh slate this morning, well, I don't know about you,
but I've already messed it up. I continually need forgiveness
because I continue to sin. I don't know how not to. In this
wicked flesh, I can't not sin. So I'm thankful that he forgiveth
all thine iniquities, to be forgiven of all our sins by God Almighty,
who will by no means clear the guilty, who must punish all sin.
What a benefit, honestly. What kindness, what goodness.
Verse three goes on to say, who healeth all thy diseases. I'm thankful for that. I'm truly
thankful for doctors. Had one work on me about two
weeks ago, and he did a wonderful job, and I'm thankful. I'm thankful
for medicine. I'm thankful for these things
that the Lord has given us to heal and address our needs as
they arise. But we know there's just one
physician. We know that. And we rejoice
in that, in our Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ, and know this about
him. He has all wisdom. He is all wisdom. He has all
ability. You know, if there's one thing
we can gladly say about our God, it's just he's able. He has all
wisdom, he has all ability, and he has a perfect record. You
know, you think of doctors, and I think there's a way to find
out their success rates or something along those lines. Say, well,
they've got a pretty good success rate. Our Lord has much more
than that. He has a perfect success rate.
Not a single failure to his name. He shall not fail. He cannot
fail. And that encourages me when I realize who my physician
is. And I know that as we go through life, sickness comes.
Right now, I've only had minor illnesses. There are people I
know that have had sickness that we thought was going to lead
to death, but it didn't. But one day, it probably will,
right? That seems to be how we leave
this place. And yet, even that. is our Lord
being kind to us. We're sick, but he makes us whole,
eternally whole, eternally well. Our physician, he healed our
souls, and that's what we need, sick in our souls. And how did
he heal our souls? He took our sickness upon himself.
He took it and made it his own, and he gave us his health, perfect
health. You know, if you ever go and you get a clean bill of
health, that's exciting, isn't it? I'm thankful because so far
in my life, as far as I can tell, I've always had a clean bill
of health. But again, it's the spiritual health that we need,
whether we know it or not. And we have it in Christ. He
took our place and gave us his place. And now we can truly sing
the song. We love to sing, it is well,
it is well with our souls. Verse four says, who redeemeth
thy life, From destruction he redeemeth thy life. We have a
Redeemer. We have a Redeemer. The word
simply means deliver again. What do we need to be delivered
from? Our sin. Our sin. The death, the wages of sin is
death. We need to be delivered from that. And our Lord Jesus
Christ has done just that. And two, it doesn't even say
who redeemed thy life. Who redeemeth? Continual redemption. I don't understand it, but I
rejoice to read it. Rejoice to tell you about it. Now our Lord,
we know how He gave us life, don't we? He laid down His life
to give us life. He redeemed our life by laying
down His own life. Redeemed our life from destruction,
and I love the song we sing, redeemed how I love to proclaim
it, redeemed by the blood of lamb, the perfect spotless blood
of Christ, redeemed through his infinite mercy, his child and
forever I am. And on that note, I just thought,
do you need to be redeemed? It saddens me as I meet people
in the world, and it's obvious if you talk to them or listen
to them talk long enough about their belief, there's just no
need for it. You tell him about Christ, you
tell him about God and all his benefits, all his goodness. I
just don't need it. And that's what I don't want
to miss. I don't want to miss having a need of him. And that's
why this is good news to me and that it makes me rejoice is that
all these benefits we have in him, I find in my soul a need
for each and every one. And Christ fulfills and meets
every single one of these needs. Redeems our life from destruction,
from ruin in the garden, Adam ruined. Himself. We ruined ourselves
and we need to be redeemed from that. And we have that in Christ.
Verse 4 goes on to say, Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and
tender mercies. And when I read that verse, I
immediately was puzzled because I thought, don't we crown Him?
I thought we crown Him. He's our head. We say all glory
to you, Lord. All praise to thee. who reigns
above in majesty supreme. We crown him, don't we? We do. And yet he crowns us too. Amazing. Now the word crown here, it means
encircle. He encircles us, he covers us,
surrounds us. What does he surround us with?
It says loving kindness and tender mercies. He said I will have
mercy. I will have mercy. Who does he
have mercy on? Everybody that needs it. Every sinner with a
need. He said, I will have mercy. I
will no wise cast out. All that come to him. And His
mercies and His compassions, they don't fail. They're new
every single morning. You go to bed last night, well,
I need mercy. You wake up, you find it again.
It hasn't, you know, you run out of groceries, you don't run
out of mercy. Every week we have to go to the store. Oh, we can
just come to our Lord at any moment and find mercy and grace
in every time of need. Verse five says, who satisfieth
thy mouth with good things, and the word things there's in italics.
I like it better without it. It's not necessary. Who satisfieth
thy mouth with good. You know, our pastor just brought
a message Wednesday night about tasting and seeing that the Lord
is good. And if we haven't yet, I pray that we might. To taste
and see of his goodness. If there's one thing God is,
I mentioned earlier, he's able. Well, his name, his very name
means good. He's good. So good. Sometimes we call each
other good, don't we? Oh, there's only one good, and
that's Christ our Savior. As I go through this life, some
of you know, but I'll be 30 in less than a month. And I told
the brother in Iraqi about this, I feel like I'm getting old.
I'm climbing the ladder of life, if you will. I'm aging. And as
I'm aging, I'm realizing more and more that this world doesn't
satisfy me. That what satisfies me in this
world is that which the Lord has done for me, and that which
the Lord has given me a family to be a part of, and I'm so thankful
for that. Let me be a part of this church? Oh, I can't tell
you what a blessing that is to me. Giving me a desire for his
word? This world is not gonna provide
any satisfaction for us. You want satisfaction? Look in
here. This psalm is so encouraging
to me. Every time I get to come here and hear the gospel preached,
the good news of Christ and His finished work, that satisfies
me. He satisfies my spiritual mouth
with good. Oh, so much good. Don't you just
love to, don't you love to come here and worship Him? Don't,
I wish in my free time, I wish I would spend more time reading
His Word. I read a lot of junk. That is
not good news. And that's my own fault. I know
better. And yet, right within this one
book is all the good news we could ever desire. All the good
news we could ever need. Eternal satisfaction. The Lord
is my portion forever. I love that too. You know, we're
going to leave here. Whatever inheritance I might
leave behind, I can just about guarantee you it won't be much.
And that's all right. Because our Lord has given us
a vast, immeasurable, eternal inheritance. And that inheritance
is our Lord himself. I'm so thankful for that eternal
satisfaction. Look at verse five again. Who
satisfied thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is
renewed like the eagles. Thy youth is renewed like the
eagles. I mentioned, I'm getting older. Even my body is beginning
to ache. And as we ache and age and one
day die, know this, if we're in Christ, we're not becoming
old and frail spiritually. When I think about the body that
awaits us, I don't even know what to think. I can't, I love
thinking about it, but I can't really enter into it. I know
that it says we're conformed to his image, that's what we'll
be. Just like him, whatever he looks like, that's what we're
gonna look like. And I don't picture an old, frail, weak body. Youth, we're gonna return to
the days of our youth. What a blessing. What a benefit.
Eternal youth in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 6 says, And again,
we saw that in Psalm 145, and judgment. Our Lord must judge all. He's
the judge of all. We must stand before Him and
give account. Now, outside of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the mere thought of God executing judgment and righteousness,
knowing anything about our sin, is absolutely frightening. I
don't like to think about that. But what I do like to think about
is how that He satisfied judgment for me. He accomplished righteousness
and provided it for all His people. Again, all who need it. All who
need it have it in him. When he told Moses, this night
I'm going to pass through the land of Egypt and I will execute
judgment. And we read about it and that's
exactly what he did. Now, who was spared? Who had
hope? Those who had the blood of a
spotless lamb on the door of their house. Well, what do we
need? We need the blood. Oh, we need
the blood of Christ applied to us. I don't just want to hear
about it. I need to be covered in it. It's
the only thing that's going to wash away our sin. You know,
naturally, we want to get away from blood. We start to bleed
and we got to stop the bleeding. We need to be covered in blood
and not our blood, His blood, the pure blood of Christ. We who are oppressed, He executes
righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. Oppressed
means poor and needy. Anybody here fit that description? Poor and needy? We just sang
it. Look to the Lamb of God. Look
to substitution and satisfaction on Calvary's cross for sinners
like us. He cried, it is finished. And
that means it's finished. I mean, I don't have to do anything.
He finished it. We're complete in him. He's our
head. We're the body, he finished it. It's done, it's done. Verse seven, he made known his
ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. Just
mentioned the Passover, he made that known to Moses. When Moses
asked for the Lord to show him his glory, he said, I'll make
all my goodness pass before you. I'll be merciful, I'll be gracious,
have compassion. He said, I'm gonna put you in
the cleft of a rock. And then we also read about a
rock that followed them and Moses struck the rock and out came
water to fill their thirsty mouths. But that rock filled Moses' soul. That rock was Christ. When they
were hungry in the wilderness for all those years, where were
they going to find food? Well, the Lord just rained it
down from heaven for them and put it right there in front of
them. And we know that bread represents Christ. He's the bread
come down from heaven. He's the bread of life and the
water of life. And we who hunger and thirst, we have our hunger
and thirst filled in him. You remember the brazen serpent
on a pole. And all who were dying from the
fatal sting, representing sin, behold that brazen serpent. What
Christ was made to be, what was killing his people, And they
lived. And we read in John 3 that that's
Christ. We look to Him, see the Son of
Man lifted up, and there we see our hope of eternal salvation,
our hope of eternal life in Him, our Savior. When they were stuck
at the Red Sea and thought they were surely about to perish at
the hand of the Egyptians, I like thinking about, you talk about
a situation where you wish you could have been there or seen.
I mean, what a miracle took place. You just try to put yourself
there. And you know you're about to die. And then next thing you
know, you have the man of God tell you this, stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today.
The Egyptians whom you've seen today, you'll see them no more
again forever, which is our sin. And that sea represents the blood
of Christ, the fountain that was opened for sinners. And he
brought them right through, and they walked on dry ground. I
love that. Our Lord's work is perfect, absolutely
perfect. His blood is perfect, His righteousness
is perfect, and we are perfect in Him. The Lord made known His
ways unto Moses and His acts unto the children of Israel.
He's made known His way unto us, hasn't He? The Lord Jesus
Christ, the way, the truth, the life. The only way there is,
not just the way to God, He is God. He's the way of salvation,
He is salvation. He's all, all in all. Verse eight,
the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in
mercy. When I read a verse like that,
and again we saw it in Psalm 145, that gives me hope, honestly.
I know God is holy. Holy, holy, holy. I know God
must punish sin. He must. He has to. You read of all the called it
terrible acts. You read of all of these in the
scriptures where our Lord, he struck judgment down on many,
rained fire and brimstone, killed many rightly in their sin who
transgressed his holy law, which we've done too. How can we not
tremble hearing about such a God and calling upon such a one?
And yet he's recorded for us that he's merciful, gracious,
slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy." What a God. Seriously,
what a God. What a wonderful God we have. And that he has given us faith
in him, I'm so thankful. I want to read words of a song.
I love it when Gabe sings this. It says, when I was lost in sin
and shame, how thou let me take the blame. Blessed Lord, how
merciful thou was to me, when I could look down deep within
and see the sinfulness of sin. You know, when our sin's revealed
to us, it's not a pleasant experience, and it's also not a one-time
experience. When he lets us feel the, just the disgust of what
we are, it's not a good feeling. And yet, when he lets us look
down deep within and see the sinfulness of sin, that's mercy.
Blessed Lord, how merciful that was to me. Oh, how merciful. And I love, I love so much how
Gabe sings that. How merciful. So full of mercy. Blessed Lord, how merciful thou
art. He always is, continues to be,
and forever will be merciful to us. Wonderful. Verse nine says, he will not
always chide. That means rebuke, chasten, correct. Again, something painful is that. And I can enter into it a little
bit now as a parent that that's something that has to be done.
And it's hard because I want to do it right. I want to do
it in love. And the Lord corrects whom he
loves, he chastens. But it's painful. Whenever I received spankings,
it was painful. I didn't like it. Now, I needed it, I deserved
it, and so do my children. We all do. And yet, the chastening
of our Lord, it hurts, but we need it, and one day it's gonna
stop. He will not always, child. One day it's gonna stop. Verse
goes on to say, neither will he keep his anger forever. Now,
God's angry with the wicked every day. There's a verse in Isaiah
12, I believe, though he was angry with us, his anger's turned
away. Do you ever feel like God is angry with you? Anybody? Sometimes it feels that way.
Seriously, it's okay to feel that way. But just know this,
in Christ, God's anger has been perfectly appeased. His wrath
has been satisfied, okay? Now I want to close here by looking
at an account with David, a very familiar account. You go ahead
and turn to 2 Samuel 12. Things that we do may displease
the Lord. They certainly do displease the
Lord. But God is not displeased with
His people. He's well-pleased in Christ,
His only begotten Son, in whom He's well-pleased. He's well-pleased
with those in Christ, okay? But look here at 2 Samuel 12,
verse 1. And the Lord sent Nathan unto
David, and he came unto him and said unto him, There were two
men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich
man had exceeding many flocks and herds, but the poor man had
nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he'd bought and nourished
up, and it grew up together with him and with his children. It
did eat of his own meat and drank of his own cup and lay in his
bosom and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto
the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of
his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that was coming
to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for
the man that was come to him. And David's anger was greatly
kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the
Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely
die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did
this thing and because he had no pity. David, knowing who God
is, knew that's what the man deserved. death, eternal death. Now look what Nathan told him
in verse 7. And Nathan said to David, thou art the man. David, you just condemned yourself.
See that? Now look down at verse 13. And David said unto Nathan, I
have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The
Lord also hath put away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. Same man
there that wrote against thee, thee only have I sinned and done
this evil in thy sight. Same man who cried unto the Lord
continually, begging for mercy, and he found it. Look back in
our text, Psalm 103, verse 10. And again, David wrote this,
and I love knowing David wrote it based on what we just read.
Psalm 103.10 says, He hath not dealt with us after our sins. How has God dealt with you, David?
Remember, benefits, dealings. How have God's dealings been
with you, David? Not after my sins. Oh, what good news that
was to him. And what good news it is to me.
He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according
to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above
the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As
far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions
from us. Just ponder these things, brethren.
It blesses my heart. There are ten more verses to
this psalm, and it's all wonderful. And the psalm ends with blessing
the Lord again, all his works. Bless the Lord, O my soul. I
pray that tonight and every day that the Lord might truly enable
us to come and adore him wherever we are, and certainly when we're
here. Wherever we are, whatever time of day it might be, whatever
we're feeling, good or bad, oh, come let us adore him, Christ
the Lord. And may we truly call upon him
and thank him at the beginning of the day, the end of the day,
throughout the day. Lord, put it in my heart to do so, to just
praise your name, praise your, with all that is within us, bless
his holy name. All right, and Lord bless his
word.