It is a pleasure to be here once
again. And what a good song we sang,
especially the second song revived us again because that's the purpose
of the Meeting House. We who are of the people of God
are the most troubled people on the face of this earth. We've
got so many problems that can easily overwhelm us. and a world
that absolutely despises those who love Christ. And it's just
the truth. We have so much evil surrounding
us. What a blessing it is to be able
to come into our little peaceful village, if you will, where we
can gather together, lift one another's spirits, and do the
thing that we're called never to do, but we often do it. Tonight I'm going to speak about
The call not to forget the benefits of our Lord. You turn over to
Psalm 103. I'll read the first five verses.
This is probably one of my favorite psalms. I preach out of it all
the time. I may have already preached here on this, but it
doesn't matter. It's really one of my favorites.
We had a funeral over the weekend and I preached a very small,
short message out of these five verses, but tonight I wanted
to expand it a little bit for you. Psalm 103 is a psalm of
David. Verse one, he says, Bless the
Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy
name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all his benefits. who forgiveth all thine iniquities,
who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction,
who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies,
who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth
is renewed like the eagle's." Amen. So we see the psalmist
here doing what we need to do. And there's a reason the psalmist
is doing this. He is forgetful. We're forgetful. He is forgotten and he's got
to remind himself, don't forget. Don't forget these things. He
speaks directly to his own soul. Preaching to ourselves is an
essential activity, an essential part of this battle that we have
going on. You have a flash that is of the
world that's dying, it's corrupt, it's falling off. And it seems
to revive itself as soon as you think you've got it conquered.
And many of us go through these things. You think no more of
that and it's back the very next moment, the very next day. But
we've got to keep preaching to ourselves. And in this sense,
In this sense, we're all preachers of the gospel. We need to preach
to ourselves first and foremost, and we need to speak truth, like
what we just read out of the second epistle of John, that
truth is really important. We need to know the truth, and
especially those simple, truths which we really have built all
of the foundation of Christ upon. We need to keep repeating these
things to ourselves. I mentioned one of the times
I preached a few months back that I didn't really appreciate
all these little signs that Kathy likes to buy, which are usually
something biblical or just a word praise or word grace or something
like that. And now I understand them a little
better. They're there for me. To remind
me that I do need to think on the Lord. To think on Him and
to be blessed by all that He has done for me. That is not
an invitation to go buy anymore. We do have a stockpile of them.
Might have to put up a few more walls. So I thought about that as I
was saying it. I should clarify that one. David is here speaking directly
to his own soul. He desires to stir up, as he
says, everything that is in himself to bless the holy name of God. And when we see this phrase,
we see it in multiple different ways. His holy name, the name
of the Lord, when it's speaking about the Lord and we see name
connected to it everywhere in the scriptures. Not just in the
New Testament, everywhere in the scriptures. It is speaking
of Christ. The name of God in this sense
is Jesus Christ, which is Jehovah is salvation or God is salvation. Christ, the anointed Messiah
of God. That's the name. That's the name. And then there's all sorts of
names that go along with it, and they're beautiful, and these
are. things that we have to keep remembering. If we're going to
bless His holy name with everything that is in ourselves, as David's
calling us to, as the Holy Spirit calls us to, we better do it
in truth and we better do it in what we can say is simplicity. A simplicity that every one of
us can grab a hold of. Because obviously, some people
know a little more than others of biblical terms and these sort
of things. One of the best stories I ever
heard from somebody, he was a well-read man. He understood the doctrines
of grace well. He could explain a lot of things.
And he was talking one night and this older lady, who might
have been his grandmother or his mother, I can't remember,
said to him, I just don't understand all the things you understand
about the Lord. And he said, I can tell you this,
I have never loved like you love. And he said that to her as a
simple encouragement, because it takes all of us. Isn't that
true? There are people who know a lot about the Lord and can
encourage you with it. But how about the hug? How about
the hug that just says, I love you. I care for you. I'm praying
for you. Those are simple words that we
all have. And don't they help? They really
do help. The kindness that we can have
towards one another is part of this great battle. First Chronicles
16. You don't need to turn to these.
I just want to read these very quickly. It says, Glory ye in
his holy name. Let the heart of them rejoice
that seek the Lord. Psalm 106 47 says, Save us, O
Lord, our God, and gather us from among the heathen to give
thanks unto thy holy name and to pray, excuse me, and to triumph
in thy praise. We see when we do these sort
of things, when we bring up and bless the holy name of the Lord,
there is a benefit to us in doing this. We can triumph in thy praise. We lift up God, we're lifting
Us up, too, because of the hidden man that's in our heart. That
is, of course, if you're in Christ. This is the recipe for us battling
through all the woes that we go through. Listen to what one
John says in chapter three. I've mentioned this many times.
One of my favorite verses, he says, and this is his commandment
that you should believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another as he gave commandment. And he said, and
he that keepeth his commandment dwelleth in him and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth
in us by the spirit which has given us, which he has given
us. See, we are Christians on earth
need to desperately know about this name of the Lord and keep
pressing into this idea of his name. It's just not like mine,
Patrick. You can look it up and it means
nobility. I don't feel noble at all. You can look up the meaning
behind your name and it may not apply to you. But this applies
to Him. And it's so deep and wonderful. And we just keep looking and
looking at Him. And we can tie it to this. This
is what we want to look at when we think on His name. Remember
what we're told to do. Not forget The benefits. So it seems to me that our goal
in praising the Lord and that word means to magnify him. That's what praise means. It's
to magnify him. When people say praise the Lord.
Like they do on those little things that I say should go ahead
and hang around the house. Praise the Lord like it's dropped
all the time. Most people aren't doing it.
When you praise the Lord, it is to magnify Him. It is to make
much of Him. It is to magnify Him into your
mind and your heart and your spirit. We're the only ones who
can do it. We're the only ones who have
given that benefit. But it seems to me that if we're
going to magnify His holy name to the deepest inward parts of
our soul, It is also the same thing to proclaim His benefits
because they're one and the same. I'm going to give you an example.
Jeremiah 23, verse 6 says this, In His days Judah shall be saved
and Israel shall dwell safely. And this is His name whereby
He shall be called the Lord our righteousness. His name is the
Lord our righteousness. And He is our righteousness.
All of it. Not some of it. It's not a partial
righteousness. It's all of it. The only source
of righteousness on all the earth is found in His name. We need
to magnify His name and the benefits of His name. So, because of this
ongoing war that we have between the flesh and the spirit that
is never going to cease until the glorious day. that you leave,
that the Christ comes and gets us. We are called not to forget
all His benefits. Forgetting actually is a shameful
act. This is why man's condemned.
Talked about this a few weeks ago in Romans 1. I think I talked
about it here as well. Man sees God and hides from Him
and says, Oh, I don't know God. They're lying. There's no such
thing as an atheist. There's such a thing as a magnificent
liar. You're lying. If you say there
is no God, you're lying to yourself, which is the worst thing that
man could do. In the book of Deuteronomy, you
can go do a little word search in that and see how often it
brings up this idea of not forgetting. The Lord repeatedly warned them
not to forget what he has done. or the covenant that He made
with Him. Of course, they forgot it. They
forgot all His blessings that He gave over and over and never
kept that covenant. Not in the first moment. They
never kept it and they were exposed in the end. And what happened
to them? They all but a few perished in the wilderness. And that's
exactly what we tend to do. Forgetting is actually not A
good thing to do. It is sinful. James warns us
that a person who is a hearer only of the word and not a doer
is likened unto a man who can see his face in a mirror and
then walk away and forget what manner of person he is. So forgetting
the Lord is a form of sin for the Christian. It really is.
But we're so forgetful. There's a big problem. We've got this broken vessel.
We have this weeping clay pot. You ever had a pot that you look
at it and there's just water seeping out the side of it. It's
not a big leak or anything. It's kind of like what most of
us are. Clarence, you and I might have
a blown head gasket. We're weeping out all sorts of
coolant. I did that for him since he's
kind of a mechanic. We have a problem, don't we?
We have this seeping out of knowledge every time we put it in. Every
time we have an issue, a problem that comes up, it seems to me,
at least in my case, I forget his benefits, at least for a
moment. And then I recover myself, and sometimes quickly. And then
I want to pat myself on the back. Am I speaking truth to anybody?
Because this is just the sadness. of it all. If I could just do
what David says, to the inner part of my soul and stay there,
what glorious thing that would be. And I think that's what Paul
speaks about when he says that you cannot do the thing that
you wish to do over in Galatians. But it's not just me. I've got
to remind myself of this. I just looked these things up
in Scripture today. Second Timothy 1, Paul's telling
Timothy, telling the preacher Timothy, stir up the gift of
God which is in you through the laying on of hands. He reminds
him to stir these things up. Why do you stir up? Why do you
remind? Why do you need a reminder? Why do you have them on your
phone? Why do you need an alarm clock? Why do you have all these
things? Because you're forgetful. Paul
knew that. Paul probably, though it's not
really spoken this way, needed constance during, no doubt he
had troubles right and left. We don't hear a lot about him.
By the God's providence, we didn't hear a lot about his. We sure
did hear a lot about this next fellow though. You want to turn
over to 2 Peter chapter one. Let's look at something here.
I love this, by the way, what Peter writes here. Peter had to be a forgetful fellow,
didn't he? Did he forget, you think, when
he went and visited Paul and was hanging out with all the
Gentiles? And then those fellows came, the Jews came, and who
was it? I think Paul Mahan or something
said he threw his barbecue sandwiches up and ran out to the Jews. That's not remembering the benefits
of the Lord. That's an act of forgetting.
2 Peter 1. This is verse 12. He says, For
this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these
things, though you know and are established in the present truth. I think that's a mouthful. You
know these things. They're in you. They are you. But we're forgetful. Yes, I think
it is right as long as I am in this tent to stir you up By reminding
you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our
Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover, I will be careful to
ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decrease. Isn't that what he left for us
in this word? I'm reading it today because we are forgetful
people. We need to be reminded. And he
was so worried about it, takes you all about five minutes to
read 2 Peter, that over in the third chapter he had to do another
reminder. He said, Beloved, I now write
to you this second epistle in both of which I stir up your
pure minds by way of reminder that you may be mindful of the
words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the
commandment of us, the apostles of our Lord and Savior. It's
a it's a desperate and needful thing that song revive us again. Same thing. That's for us, right? It's not a lost man's song. It's
for us. We need to be revived again and
again and again. So here we are. Wednesday night,
what, about 80 hours since somebody preached in this church, Brother
David, right? And we all need to be stirred
up again in this community, this village of peace, where we are
here to praise the Lord. Why? Well, we got trouble outside
these doors. We got woes. We got heartache. We buried somebody. Well, we
didn't bury him, but we had his funeral on Saturday. As I'm preparing,
I go to the church. We find out a young man that
used to be in our church was killed. And I don't know if it
was either an accident or it was murder, and they're still
figuring it out. But how heartbreaking is it?
He was 12, running around, making trouble like 12-year-olds do,
and then just a few, 17, gone. His grandmother, Came into church
that night and collapsed in my arms. It's just heartbreaking. But what was she there to do?
I need to hear something. And that night she heard a funeral
message, short, and I'm sure it stirred her heart. Wednesday I've got to preach
this young man's funeral, so pray for me. I did not sleep
at all Sunday night thinking about him. It's just heartbreaking
to hear that. So this is what we need to do.
What the psalmist said, he said, Bless the Lord, O my soul, back
in Psalm 103, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all His benefits. That's what we're going to try
to do tonight. First off, we see this word forgiveness. Forgiveness means pardon. But
this isn't like the pardon you might receive from the governor.
This isn't a pardon you might receive from any mankind. This
is 100 percent complete and total forgiveness. So much so that
in another psalm it said, Blessed is he whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered. Go on. It's a gone. It's a forgiveness
that remembers the sin no more. This is what our Lord has done. This is a benefit of the Lord
that we have total forgiveness. Colossians 2. If you want to
turn there, you can, but I'm going to read these quick. Colossians
2 says this and you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision
of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven
You all trespasses blotting out the handwriting of ordinances
that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he took it
out of the way, nailing it to the cross. All trespasses blotted
out. Nothing could be ever said about
these transgressions before the kingdom of heaven. The only one
who would ever bring it up. of those, if you're in Christ,
who have forgotten the benefits of the Lord. But God will never
bring these things up. God will never, ever bring them
up if He has blotted out your sins. And then Ephesians 4 says,
let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be
put away from you with all malice, and you be kind one to another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's
sake, hath forgiven you." See, what an example we have. We have
an example in Christ. We're called to forgive one another.
We are, aren't we? And we struggle to do it because
we were forgiven for Christ's sake. This is the wonderful thing
about these benefits. You know, if a man gets a job
somewhere and it's got Good benefits, like health benefits. Well, it
doesn't just benefit Him, it benefits His family. So when
Christ died on the cross, honestly, it was for Christ's sake that
we were forgiven. It went through Him. The benefits
were given to Him and He dispersed them to us. This forgiveness
comes from Him and Him alone, through Him and Him alone, and
it was for Him. This is the benefit. We make
too much of ourselves, don't we? It was for Christ's sake
that we were forgiven. How about healing? Our psalmist
wrote about healing. Luke 17. Why don't you turn over
there. Take a look at it. Healing. We
see all sorts of people having healing services on TV. smacking
the forehead and whatever problem is gone. Then along comes the
man with the bucket. You throw money in. If you really
want to be healed, that is. Luke 17. Let's take a look at
our Lord Jesus Christ, the healer. Verse 11. This is the 10 lepers. And it came to pass as He went
to Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee
And as he entered into this certain village, there met him ten men
that were lepers, which stood afar off. And they lifted up
their voices and said, Jesus Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said
unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priest. And it came
to pass that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them,
When he saw that he was healed, turned back and with a loud voice
glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving
giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. And Jesus
answered and said, were there were there not ten cleansed,
but where are the nine? They are not found that return
to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him,
Arise, go thy way. Listen to this. Thy faith has
made thee whole. The rest were outwardly clean,
but not inwardly. This healing benefit is obviously
not a physical one. God is the only So if you've
been healed from a cut, if you've been healed from a bad tooth,
if you've been healed from a cold or even worse, God's the only
one that could do that. And He's the only one who won't
heal. Sometimes He doesn't heal. Sometimes
He doesn't heal. And people go through a lifetime
or a long period of pain and He's got something for you if
you're in Christ. Very difficult to understand.
But this isn't the healing that you need to look at. It's this
one that the one leper looked at. The one that he came back
and did what all men everywhere are called to do. Honor God through
Jesus Christ. He fell on his face and worshiped
the Lord, not just for the physical healing, but for the real spiritual
healing. This is true. This is true and
a true statement for anybody. You see, Jesus Christ is worthy
of our worship. He's worthy of our every thought
and intent. He is worthy of these things.
This physical healing made this man whole. This physical excuse
me, spiritual healing made him whole and the spiritual healing
he gave you. Made you whole. That's complete.
It's done. It's finished in Him. There's
no more work. You're complete in Him. You're
accepted in the Beloved. When you go on to that judgment
where God says in His Word, He's going to judge every man by his
works, your works are finished. Done. Perfect. And beautiful
before Him. And you're just going to walk
on in. It's done in Christ. You have been made whole, completely
forgiven, transformed by Christ into one who now can worship
Him. Maybe you want to worship Him
more, and maybe you should worship Him more, but the day is coming
when that's all it's going to be. You are going to do exactly
as the hidden man of your heart wants to. You're going to do
that soon. But for now, you have to have
this benefit The knowledge that you are absolutely complete,
a saint in heaven. And one day you can ask this
man, isn't that going to be kind of interesting? Do you ever think
this way? I don't know if it's right to think that way or not,
but you want to talk to some of these people? I do. Do you
ever think that way? All those thoughts go through
my head. I want to speak to this man. Why? Why was he the only
one who returned when he was hanging out with all those fellas?
Otherwise, and I know it's all of God's sovereignty, but it's
just so interesting. They should have all come back.
He was worthy to be worshipped, but only one dead. So you've
got spiritual healing. Number three, the psalmist speaks
about redemption. Redemption speaks of the action
that is done by one of A close relative to buy back, in a sense,
another relative who has been sold into servitude, indebted
into servitude. He owes a debt that he cannot
pay. And one comes along, the closest
relative. and buys them back and buys them
back. We have multiple examples of
this in scripture, and I'm not going to go into Ruth because,
boy, that's a good one. And it takes far too long just
to mention it. But and the fact that I don't
quite understand it to the degree that I want to explain it. But
see, all of us were in this position. Every last one of us were slaves
without hope within ourselves. We had no hope of ever repaying
this debt. Every one of us was doing this
as well, accruing interest on this debt. You know how we were
doing that? Many of us were doing it in dead
dog religion. which is just compounding sin
upon sin upon sin, all your religious activity. The fact you did not
come to Christ was just sin upon sin and grievous sin. You were
attempting to cover up your pile of sin with religious activity,
and God says that's the worst kind of sin. You just added an
unbelievable interest to your debt. You will never repay this. One Peter says this, for as much
as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things
as such as silver and gold from your vain conversation received
by tradition from your father, but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot who barely was
foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest
in these last times for you. Isn't that awesome? I love that
verse. He was foreordained before the
foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times
for you. A benefit. He came to you, not
with gold and silver, but with His own precious blood that He
buy you back, serving justice on your behalf. That's exactly
what He did on the cross. That's exactly what he did in
giving his life over to the Father as a man in perfect keeping of
the Mosaic Law in ways we'll never understand. Earning righteousness
in the flesh. He did these things for you.
And it was revealed in these last times for you. You should
read that and rejoice that these things were done for you. Not
the whole group, yes, but it's got to meet you individually.
This is the salvation. One of the benefits is it's an
individual relationship with God through Christ, and it's
got to speak to you. You've got to know it and believe
it. Psalm 71 says, I will praise
Thee with the psaltery, even Thy truth, O my God, unto Thee
will I sing with the heart O Thou Holy One of Israel, my lips shall
greatly rejoice when I sing unto Thee in my soul which Thou hast
redeemed. My tongue also shall talk of
Thy righteousness all the day long." Now, I know the psalmist
didn't do it, but he wanted to. You see that they were even redeemed
in that day because it was from the foundation of the world.
Isn't that amazing when we know this? They believed on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Maybe they didn't know His name
was going to be Jesus, but they knew His name was Jehovah's Salvation. Isn't that amazing? Because the Bible speaks that
way. Past tense, hundreds of years before Jesus ever came
and manifested on this earth. All the day long, He desires
to talk of what? Thy righteousness. Not mine. Activity, not my good things
that I supposedly do, but the righteousness of Christ. Redemption. The psalmist in 103
also speaks about crowns. Crowns, the Lord's benefits includes
many crowns for us to place upon our spiritual heads. Isaiah 28
speaks about a crown of glory. It is so amazing that Jesus Christ
is our crown of glory. And we should put this crown
on. How about a crown of knowledge? Proverbs 14 speaks about a crown
of knowledge that you're to put on to know the Lord, to learn
of the Lord and to keep learning of the Lord. But the crown that
the psalmist speaks about in Psalm 103 is the crown of his
loving kindness and tender mercies. Loving kindness is a particular
kind of kindness. It is a kindness especially given
to those who are lowly, poor, destitute, broken, miserable
sinners that have no hope within themselves and they have no ability
to repay the loving kindness and tender mercies. It's different. Lots of people are kind and we
know that. It's kind to help people. Someone's
in need. It's a good thing to help them.
We should never look at somebody who wants to do good things for
somebody and chastise them for it, even if they're not in Christ. The Lord's going to take care
of it if they're lifting it up for their own name. The Lord's
going to take care of it because you never know what benefit down
the road it's going to be to somebody who may be a Christian,
may be soon to be a Christian. We don't know how the Lord works
in these things. But that's not the loving kindness
that we're talking about tonight. It's for us who were just this
absolutely out of control sinners who despise God. And then one
day he pulled us to the ground and said, enough, you're mine. I give you this my blood, my
righteousness. Now, I declare you pure and perfect
before my eyes in heaven. And we have to know these things.
We are just absolutely, completely lost without Christ. There is
no hope that we have. His tender mercy speaks of his
compassion, which is not a superficial compassion, but one that is deep
rooted in the love that he has towards us. A love that took
our Lord to a place where he put on another type of crown.
While we're putting on this crown of glory and knowledge and loving
kindness and tenderness, He put on a crown of thorns. It was
a cursed crown. Cursed is everyone who hangs
on a tree. In being this type of King for
us, He took on the propitiation. He took on that work that propitiated
our sins. Did so on a magnificently cruel
cross. Just to think about what it would
be like to take that type of whip with those hooks and have
it ripped through your flesh like he did for us. For Christ's sake, the benefit
came to us. The thorn. Just to think. I mean,
have you ever gotten a thorn in your hand? It hurts. Have
them shoved on your forehead. And then to endure. that cross
of suffocation. It's essentially how people died
on that cross. They fell into themselves and
suffocated. Yet he turns around and says
to us, you are a royal priesthood. What do we do to deserve it?
Nothing. It's of His loving kindness and
tender mercies towards us. It's of His forgiveness, His
healing, the redemption that we have in Christ. That's what
it's about. And then our psalmist in 103
says this. What happens? He points to this
idea. What happens to us when we remember
these benefits? Well, we begin to soar like eagles. Eagles, it's what he mentions
at the end of the fifth verse, who satisfy thy mouth with good
things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. What does an
eagle do? An eagle's known for flying high. An eagle's known for a magnificent
flight. Almost an effortless flight.
They flap their wings and can go for a very long time. Eagles
can fly so high that those pesky little crows, they'll just go
up a little higher and those crows will fall off. They can't
fly as high. These eagles fly high and that's
what we're called to do. And this is the benefit of putting
on the holy name of Christ Jesus and remembering these things
as you begin to soar above this broken earth. You soar far above
storm clouds. As you know, eagles can go above
storm clouds. They can soar also for hours
and hours. But you know what they have to
do? They gotta come back down at some point. And that's what
happens to us. We come and hear a message. We
get filled with hope. Then we leave. Sometimes you
get out of the parking lot before you land. Sometimes you can go
on for a little bit, but you land. Don't you land? You get
back to the earth. You have to deal with the things
of this earth as long as the Lord has you on this earth. Our souls are lifted, though,
in those times when we remember His benefits, which once again
we're called to never forget. We have none of this noise and
pollution of the world. We are so filled with the love
of Christ and our heart is soaring. And again, eventually we have
to come back down. But our psalmist mentioned this
other word. He mentioned this word, satisfy it. Again, we have
to come back down to this ground. We've got to deal with this world. We've got to deal with our sinful
flesh. We've got to deal with a world that hates God. We've
got to deal with loved ones, oftentimes, who hate the Lord.
And we've got to deal with one another. Sometimes we don't always
get along. But this is the battle. Here's
our battleground, is it not? Does this satisfy you? Are you satisfied that this is
what the Lord has for you, that you can soar at times like an
eagle? But there are times that we've
got to come down and do what the psalmist says and be satisfied
who satisfied thy mouth with good things, because we need
to speak things to people. We need to speak the truth to
this broken world, which causes what? More problems. and causes
a greater need for this, I've got to get back up there. I've
got to get up there more and more often. Because it's hard. When you start opening your mouth
about who Christ is, and you start speaking this even in love,
the world doesn't like it at all. And it takes God's work
in them to be converted, but we have to do it. We have to
open our mouths about it. The love that we have about the
Lord. Is it even possible to know if somebody's a Christian
if they don't do this? No, you're supposed to confess
the Lord with your mouth. Romans 10. If you do not do that,
nobody will know that you're a Christian. It has to be a part
of our mouth or just a language of our heart. Now, we're not
perfect in this, and I know that. I know that about me. We're not
perfect in these things. But we are called to speak often
of Him and be satisfied. This is where the Lord has me. This is what the Lord has me
doing. And when you have those opportunities,
go fly. Go fly like that eagle. Go fly
high on the benefits of the Lord. And remember this. What a blessing
it is for when a Christian leaves, when a Christian dies. There's
a day coming, you're going to take off in flight for the last
time. You're going to soar so high
and you'll never come back down. You're going to go to new heights
and land right into the arms of your beloved Savior. It's
not very long off. He's there, He's with us, and
He's waiting. The day's coming. Waiting patiently,
He is. The day's coming when you will
do that final flight into the arms of our beloved Savior. So
keep doing what Scripture says, what the psalmist says. Remember
the benefits of the Lord. Amen? Let's go ahead and pray
in cross. Father in Heaven, thank You so
much for all Your benefits. There are so many, Lord. We could
go on for hours mentioning them. You are lovely. You are wonderful. You are magnificent and worthy
of our constant praise, Lord. Help us. Help us, Lord, to daily
put on Your great name, to lift it high, to tell the lost, this
dying world about You, Lord, that they would come like Like
the man said, like one beggar telling another beggar where
we got bread, Lord. Let us be a voice in this broken
world, Lord. Help us. Help us to remember
your benefits and to encourage one another all the day more.
All the day more as this one great day approaches, Lord. Help
us with these things. We praise you and ask you to
bless us in Christ's name. Amen. David, let him take them back.