About this sermon
David calls his own soul to bless the Lord with all that is within him and to forget none of his benefits. God pardons all our iniquities, redeems our lives from the pit, crowns us with lovingkindness, and satisfies us with good things. Forgiveness stands first among these blessings, and the cross of Christ grounds it. God’s people keep forgetting his mercies, so they need the gospel every day and the means of grace that feed them.
Sermon transcript
Well, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We are returning to our series in the book of Psalms. Forgive me, my voice is going to be struggling a little bit this evening, so bear with me in that. We’re going to jump ahead a little bit to Psalm 103. We’re going to especially consider the first five verses of this passage this evening, Psalm 103, but I’ll read the entirety of this psalm. I thought this would be an especially appropriate psalm to consider during this Thanksgiving season as we have Thanksgiving coming up this week. Psalm 103, it is entitled, A Psalm of David. Hear God’s word. The psalmist writes, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits, who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion, who satisfies your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
The Lord performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His ex, to the sons of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. For he himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust.
As for man, his days are like grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the loving kindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember his precepts to do them. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens. and His sovereignty rules over all. Bless the Lord, you His angels, mighty in strength, who perform His word, obeying the voice of His word. Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, you who serve Him, doing His will. Bless the Lord, all you works of His and all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Please join me in prayer as we ask the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we do pray that this evening your word would find a lodging place in our hearts and that by your spirit you would sow the seed of your word abundantly in our hearts, that it might bear much spiritual fruit in our lives. We ask that you would grant unto me, Lord God, I who am an unworthy servant, the grace to declare and speak forth your word with clarity and power for the building up of your saints, for the salvation of the lost, and for the glory of your holy name. Hear us now, we pray, in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said. Amen. Congregation, you may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is Forget None of His Benefits, and there’s quite a number of key words to listen for. that you can follow along with if you’ve got a copy of the of the sermon outlined words, thankful devotion, praise, blessings, forgiveness, redemption and grace, especially be listening for the word forgiveness and grace.
Well, dear ones, this evening we consider a beautiful portion of God’s holy word, a psalm that has brought great comfort and encouragement to the children of God throughout the ages. Matthew Henry begins his comments on this beloved psalm with the following words, he writes, this psalm calls more for devotion than exposition. It is the most excellent psalm of praise and of general use. The great Baptist preacher and evangelist Charles Spurgeon says of this psalm that quote, there is too much in this psalm for a thousand pens to write. It is one of those all comprehending scriptures which is the Bible in itself, and it might alone almost suffice for the hymn book of the Church. The superscription or title of this psalm tells us that its human author was King David, and contrary to what critical and rationalistic scholars of the Bible might say, there’s really no compelling reason to doubt that this psalm indeed was written by King David.
In fact, if you think about it, it’s really quite fitting that a psalm which so beautifully celebrates the mercy and the grace of God, like Psalm 103 does, should be penned by a man like David. After all, King David was a man who had deep personal experience of the love, the mercy, and the grace of Almighty God. Even though the scriptures tell us that David was a man after God’s own heart, indeed, he was the sweet psalmist of Israel, biblical history also reveals that David was a deeply sinful man, a man whose list of sins included even adultery and murder, especially in the affair of Bathsheba. Yet though David’s sins were great, God’s grace toward him was greater than all his sin, and God in sovereign mercy granted David repentance and salvation. How appropriate, then, that God should inspire such a man to pen this beautiful tribute to God’s wondrous grace and mercy.
Now, as we dive into our text for this Lord’s Day evening, and as I’ve mentioned, we’ll focus especially on the first five verses. Otherwise, we’d be here for a long time. This is a lengthy psalm, so we’re going to focus especially on the first five verses. But let’s focus right now on the first two verses, the introductory verses. And we learn in this passage that through this psalm, God summons us to wholehearted devotion and praise of him. In this psalm, God summons us to wholehearted devotion and praise. In these first two verses of this psalm, David summons himself to bless Yahweh, his God, with all of his being. Notice verses one and two. Bless the Lord. The word Lord, again, is in all capital letters, indicating that the translators through that are indicating that they’re translating the covenant name of God, Yahweh.
Bless Yahweh, O my soul. David summons himself to bless the Lord, to pronounce the Lord blessed, to praise him and so forth. And all that is within me, bless his holy name. What does God’s name represent? God’s name represents who he is, his character, his attributes. When it says to call upon the name of the Lord, to call upon the name of the Lord is to call upon the Lord himself for who he is and all that he is. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Wholehearted response to God. And why is it that David stirs himself up and summons himself to bless the Lord. What has the Lord done for him? Well, look at verse 2. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his what?
None of his benefits. Do you reflect upon God’s many benefits and blessings that he showers upon you? We all have a tendency to focus on the things that are wrong in our lives, and we live in a fallen, sin-cursed world. There are many things that are wrong, many things that we could rightly complain about, and yet we are summoned to thankfulness. In fact, David summons himself to bless Yahweh. This summons to himself to bless Yahweh both begins and ends this psalm. It begins at verse one, bless the Lord, O my soul, and then skip down to verse 22. How does David finish off this beautiful song. He says, Bless the Lord, all you works of his and all places of his dominion. He’s summoning the entire cosmos, the entire created order to join him in blessing the Lord.
But then he closes the song by saying, Bless the Lord, oh, my soul. And so that self summons to bless and praise the Lord serves as bookends to this song. Clearly, David is not a man to summon others to a task which he himself is unwilling to undertake. Since this psalm later summons all of creation, including all men and all angels to bless Yahweh for his covenant faithfulness and his grace towards his people, David applies this summons to himself as well. And though David in these verses addresses himself with this call to wholehearted devotion and praise, the Holy Spirit who inspired David to write these words clearly intends for us to apply this summons to ourselves as well. And so we must call ourselves to bless the Lord and to forget none of his benefits.
Dear ones, let us take to heart the fact that God is not interested in mere half-hearted devotion. He is not interested in mere lip service or mere formal external worship. Indeed, He desires for us to bless and to praise Him, not only with our lips, but with all that is within us, with our very own souls. Now, what does David mean when he says, Bless the Lord, O my soul? When you think of the soul, what is it that you and I tend to think about? Well, we tend to think about the soul in distinction from the body, the soul as the immaterial aspect of the human person. After all, the Bible reveals that we are body souls. And when God saves our souls, he also gives the promise that one day he will raise our bodies.
Salvation includes not just that our souls get to go to heaven when we die, praise God that is true, but the salvation that Christ has won for us is the guarantee of the resurrection of the body, that we will be raised up at the end of this age when Jesus returns in glory, in glorified bodies. Our glorified souls will be reunited with our glorified bodies. But it’s important to understand this term soul, it doesn’t always just refer to the immaterial aspect of the human person. In this particular passage, soul is not just being used to describe the soul in distinction from our body. Rather, soul here speaks of the entire person, including all of his faculties and energies. Mind, will, emotions, body and soul, the entire being is summoned to give praise to God, to bless him, to forget none of his benefits.
In Isaiah chapter 29 verses 13 and 14, the Lord Yahweh criticized his sinning people because they honored him with their lips, even while their hearts were far from him. The Lord Jesus quotes that passage, I believe in passages like Matthew 15, where he confronts the religious leaders for putting the traditions of men above the Word of God. Look with me, if you would, briefly at Isaiah 29, verses 13 and 14. Isaiah 29, 13 and 14. It says, Then the Lord said, Because this people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from me, and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote. Therefore, behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous, and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed.” Dear listener, think about it.
God is your Creator. Every good gift that you and I experience in our lives is ultimately a gift from his sovereign hand, an undeserved gift. As his creature, you owe him your total allegiance and your wholehearted worship and obedience. But as David will make clear throughout the rest of this psalm, as a believer who has experienced the Lord’s gracious mercy and amazing grace and forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ, the motivation for this wholehearted worship and obedience is gratitude for all of God’s gracious benefits and blessings. Benefits and blessings that he has freely bestowed to us in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. The one who died for our sins and who rose again for our justification. The one who died and rose for us that we might receive the gifts of redemption and forgiveness of sins, justification, and indeed all of the spiritual blessings that we receive in union with Christ.
Dear listener, let me ask you, have you received the blessings and the benefits that God freely and graciously offers to you through his Son, Jesus Christ, this offer given to you in the gospel? May God in sovereign mercy open your heart to turn to Christ in faith and repentance. Now, as we consider this summons to wholehearted devotion and praise, If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that so very often our hearts are cold toward our loving Heavenly Father. God has loved us so much. Jesus died for us. He abides with us. He intercedes for us. And so often we live our lives as if he’s irrelevant to us. Or we keep him, we kind of push him to the back of our thoughts as we get consumed by the things of this age.
Beloved in Christ, what can be done to stir up our inmost being with wholehearted devotion and praise to God, the kind of devotion and praise that this psalm summons us to? Well, believer, one means of stirring up your devotion that the Holy Spirit is often pleased to bless is the remembrance of God’s saving mercies and benefits to you in Christ. It would be an interesting thing to pull out your concordance and And consider how many times in the Word of God, God commands his people to remember. Kind of gives you the impression that we are prone to forget, doesn’t it? I think recently I’ve been reading, we’ve been reading, and I think it’s in Table Talk, we’ve been reading the devotions through, and they’re going through Exodus, and you think about the golden calf incident. how the Israelites, when Moses was up on the mountain receiving the law from God, the Israelites got impatient because Moses was taking too much time, and they pressured Aaron, and Aaron, in a cowardly way, caved into their pressure, and they made a golden calf, and they fell into idolatry.
This was not long after they had heard the very voice of God himself thundering from Mount Sinai and saying, You shall not make a carved image. You shall not worship me by images. God had been very clear they were not to do that, but they hardened their heart. They forgot his mercies to them. And so often we are like that. We forget. God says, remember what did Jesus say the night in which he was betrayed when he When he instituted the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me. It’s a memorial. We need to be reminded. We need the gospel time and time and time again. And I want to make sure I don’t go too much off the road here from my sermon. But, you know, the gospel is not just something that the unbeliever needs.
Yes, the unbeliever needs to hear the gospel so that the Spirit, if it be God’s will, might convert the unbeliever’s heart. But as Christians, we continue to need the gospel. We need the gospel each and every day because we continue to sin each and every day. But praise God, his mercies are new every morning. So let us continue to remember his mercies to us in Christ. And may that motivate us to continued repentance and a striving after a new obedience. But that leads me all to my next point, which is based on verses two through five. Believer, remember all of God’s blessings to you, especially this Thanksgiving season. But throughout the year, remember all of God’s blessings to you. Verse two, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget none of his benefits. And then David goes on to list some of those benefits, just a few of the many benefits that he and indeed that all of us believers have received through God’s grace.
He says in verse three, who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pits, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion, who satisfies your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. In these verses, David is remembering the personal benefits that God has blessed him with as an individual believer. Now, later on in this psalm, in verses 6 through 19, David will go on to reflect upon God’s wonderful mercies, which he has shown to his covenant people as a whole. And the climax of this psalm, in the climax of this psalm, David ends the psalm in verses 20 through 22 with a summons to the entire cosmos, the entire created order, including the angelic realm. to join with him in blessing the true and living God, Yahweh.
And so we see a wonderful blending of remembering God’s personal and his communal blessings, his blessings towards us as individual believers, and his blessings toward the covenant community of the church. It’s important to understand that these are benefits, not rights. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget none of what he owes you. No, forget none of his benefits. Oh, how many there are who imagine that God owes them his grace, his salvation, his forgiveness, who look upon God as well as he’s God. It’s his job to forgive. But God’s word teaches us that he owes us nothing. except wrath and damnation for our sins. One of the most dangerous prayers that you could pray is to say, Lord, give me what I deserve. Give me what’s coming to me. You should pray that God, you should hope that God won’t answer that prayer.
Because what we deserve because of our fallen nature and our rebellious hearts and our sin is nothing but God’s rejection and wrath and punishment for those sins. The God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and covenant faithfulness. He is long-suffering. Unlike us, he’s willing to suffer long and be patient. We so often get impatient with others, especially others, ironically, who are guilty of the same sins that we ourselves see in ourselves. It’s funny how that works sometimes. But dear ones, let us always remember that the benefits which are listed in these verses are undeserved blessings, blessings which God has given to us simply out of his sovereign love and grace. He doesn’t owe us any of these blessings. They are gifts. Remember what grace is. Grace is God’s undeserved favor. Indeed, it’s more than just his undeserved favor.
It’s his demerited favor. His favor and love given to us in Christ in spite of the fact that we deserve the opposite of his favor and love. We deserve his wrath and punishment and condemnation because of our rebellion and sinfulness. But God gives us freely in Christ by grace through God given faith. He gives us mercy, forgiveness, praise be to the God of all grace who condescended to us to shower such great benefits upon us. So let us understand some of these gracious benefits. And Paul lists a number of them. This is not an exhaustive list. It is a selective list, but it is a significant list. The first thing he mentions in verse three is forgiveness. Forget none of his benefits. Well, what are those benefits, David, who pardons all your iniquities? David was a man who was familiar with iniquity.
He was a man, as I mentioned earlier, who biblical history reveals to me. Yes, he loved the Lord. He was a true believer, and he was a great repenter as well. When he did sin, he did repent heartily by God’s grace, at least eventually. But David had experienced the covenant mercies and forgiveness of God. And he says of the Lord that the Lord Yahweh pardons all your iniquities. Who pardons all your iniquities? That’s the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins is the chief and central blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The root and foundation of that blessing of forgiveness is God’s merciful and gracious character. As we read, for example, in verse eight, where David says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. All of those words, compassionate, gracious, loving kindness.
Those are those are words that we could spend a lot of time delving into the depths of the significance of each of those words. We don’t have time this evening to do all of that. But the point being, beloved, God is merciful and thus in Christ we are forgiven. The saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was pointed forward to by Israel’s sacrificial system and ceremonial laws. That saving work of Christ is the ground and basis for this blessing. But think about it. If Jesus had not died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, if he had not satisfied the holy and righteous wrath of the Father, then God the Father could not justly forgive our sins. But praise God, our Lord has given us the benefit in Christ of the forgiveness of sins.
The next thing he mentions in verse 3 is healing, who heals all your diseases. Now, some scholars infer from this statement that David must have written this psalm after recovering from a physical illness. That is a possibility. However, notice the close connection here between the mention of pardon of iniquities and the mention of healing of all diseases. The close connection would lead us to the conclusion that David perhaps is using this term in a metaphorical sense. Here he seems to be using the term diseases in the metaphorical sense to speak of our sins as a spiritual disease. And sin is indeed a spiritual disease. But Jesus Christ is the great physician of that spiritual disease. He is our great physician. He heals all our diseases by his grace. We are healed from the spiritual disease of our sins.
And then it goes on to say, as he piles up benefit upon benefit, verse four, who redeems your life from the pit. What a picture of a pit. Imagine being stuck in a deep pit. And that’s what our sins do to us. They put us in a deep pit, but God redeems our life from the pit. Here is the blessing of redemption. And this is just another way of saying that the Lord has delivered him from death, death being the wages of sin. As I just mentioned, perhaps David had been close to death through his physical ailments and the Lord redeemed him from death by healing him physically. Though I think again, as I mentioned, that we’re probably to understand verse three, the healing there is a metaphorical sense as a spiritual healing meaning the forgiveness of sins.
But nevertheless, the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. And the only way we sinners can be delivered from this death, this spiritual and eternal separation from the loving presence of God, is by the redemptive work of Christ. Christ has purchased for us redemption and eternal salvation. Praise be to God. So there is forgiveness. There is healing. There is redemption. Not only that, he goes on to mention in verse four, a royal position who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion. Here is David, King David. We don’t know exactly when this psalm was written by David, whether he wrote it as the king or as one who is rising to the kingship. But here is David who wore the royal crown on his head. But as he reflects upon God’s marvelous benefits and blessings toward him, he thinks about the spiritual crown of God’s loving kindness and compassion that David has been crowned with.
Believer, not only has your heavenly father delivered you from the pit of destruction, the pit of hell through Christ, he’s also raised you up to the highest position. He has crowned you with steadfast love and mercy, with his covenant faithfulness and mercy he has crowned you with. Because of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul writes in Ephesians 1, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Indeed, we have been seated with Christ at the Father’s right hand because we are in union with him. in his death and resurrection. We also are in union with him when it comes to his reign. We are royalty in Christ. The final blessing that he mentions, and no doubt he could mention many more blessings, but the final blessing he mentions is satisfaction.
Who satisfies your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. Satisfaction. I’m reminded of that Rolling Stones song, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, right? And in this world, you will get no satisfaction, ultimately. The world promises great things. The unbelieving fallen world system promises you great satisfaction. It promises you health and wealth. It promises you comfort and peace. If you just go along, you know, the devil kind of whispers in your ear, if you just go along to get along and just Tone it down and just conform to the world. Everything will be well. You’ll be satisfied. No, you won’t. This world will greatly disappoint you if you put your hope and trust in it. But if you put your hope and trust your faith in the Lord and seek satisfaction in him, you will not be disappointed.
He satisfies your years with good things. so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. And because in Christ we’ve received the gift of eternal life, no matter what your age, you’re young in the Lord from the eternal perspective. Jesus Christ satisfies us. God the Father fills our hungry souls with Christ, the living bread. He satisfies our spiritual thirst with the living waters of his spirit. Not only does our Heavenly Father give us each day our daily bread in the physical sense. That’s a great blessing. Praise God for that. We are all blessed with food in abundance, especially in this country. We have food in our belly, a roof over our heads, clothing on our backs. If you have those blessings, be thankful for them. But even more significantly, he also satisfies us with the food of fellowship with himself.
And he does so through the means of grace, especially his word as well as the sacraments and so forth. And we receive this spiritual food by faith and prayer. In closing, dear ones, Psalm 103 goes on to speak of the wonderful covenant mercies that God has showered upon his covenant people and to extol many of his benevolent attributes. It closes with a call to the entire created order to bless the Lord. Will you join with all of creation In blessing and praising the great and mighty Lord, whose glory are extolled in this psalm. If you’ve experienced his benefits on a personal level, if you’ve tasted and seen that the Lord is good, then how can you help but praise and bless your Lord with all that is within you? Dear listener, have you experienced his grace?
His grace is offered to you in the gospel. Repent and believe in Christ. Rest in him alone for salvation. And then you will be able to take this psalm upon your lips and say, yes, bless the Lord. Oh, my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul. And forget none of his benefits. Let us pray. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, how grateful we are that you shower us day in and day out with so many rich blessings. Help us to remember this, Lord, especially, O God, as we find ourselves as pilgrims in this fallen world, this present evil age. Even in the midst of this present evil age, you continue to bless us day by day, and you continue to give us evidences of your covenant faithfulness and your steadfast love and mercy.
So we ask, O God, for thankful, grateful hearts, hearts that praise you even in the midst of trying circumstances. Be with us now and bless us, Lord. Make us a thankful people, a holy people, a people for your praise. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, Amen.
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