Exaltation: Bless The Lord O My Soul (October 22nd, 2017) - Todd Dugard

If you would take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 103.

And I want to start with this kind of warning.

The preaching of the gospel, which is obviously the thing that we're supposed to be doing as the followers of Jesus Christ, the preaching of the gospel comes with a couple of pitfalls.

So even though it's a very positive thing and it is our mission, we should recognize that there are some dangers attached to preaching the gospel.

The first one that I want to tell you about is emphasizing the confession of sin, which is absolutely important.

It's essential, in fact.

You can't understand the gospel if you don't first recognize that you are a sinner, that sin has gripped this world, and that that is the issue that stands between us and God.

But in preaching the confession of sin, we can see life in terms of only what's wrong with the world.

That's a pitfall.

We see everything that's wrong, and we preach against all that's wrong, and we fail to see that there's some pretty awesome things in life, that God has brought so many wonderful blessings to us, and that God actually intends that we would live life to the full and enjoy all that he has for us here on planet Earth in this creation that he created, even though it's marred by sin.

He still wants us to enjoy his creation and all that he's given to us.

And so, danger number one, emphasizing the confession of sin, but seeing life only in terms of what's wrong with the world.

And then, second, very closely related to it, that we focus so intently on heaven.

That's an awesome thing, isn't it?

Focusing, are you there?

Just nod your head a little bit when I ask a question.

Just I won't ask for much, but just a little bit, okay?

So um awesome to think about heaven, isn't it?

Okay, New Market, just nod your head just a little bit.

All right, work with me.

It's gonna be it's gonna take a lot longer if you don't give me something.

Okay?

So obviously emphasizing heaven is awesome, but then we can uh again forget that God has given us so much in this life to enjoy.

And and God wants us again to think about the glories of eternity.

Honestly, as fun as it is to be with you here today, I'd rather be there.

I'd rather be there than anywhere.

As awesome as God has been to me, but we can focus so intently on heaven that we forget that God has blessed us with much that is good in this life.

And yes, there's so many things to lament in this life.

And honestly, some of you have come in here today and dragged yourself in, and it was a tough week, and it's after another tough week, and the pressures are mounting, and there's a lot in your life, maybe right now, that you would just say there's more lament than joy in your life.

And I get that that is all there, but there are also a good many awesome blessings that God has brought into our lives.

And that's what I want the focus to be here today.

Psalm 103 actually takes us there, exalting God for what's good, what's great, what's awesome in all of our lives.

And I hope that you can see that.

I hope that you've come in here today, and even as I'm just even saying this first part, that you're already rehearsing.

Yes, God has been awesome to me.

God has blessed me in so many extraordinary ways.

But if you're struggling with that in any way, if you're having a hard time getting to that place where you recognize all the great things that God has done for you, then let this psalm be a reminder of these things with its strong exhortation to us to exalt the Lord.

And those are that's really the whole point of the message: just exalt the Lord, a command and exhortation to each one of us to lift high the name of Jesus Christ.

And are you doing that?

Is that the I know that we just did it in a corporate sense, but is the whole fabric and and tenor of your life the exaltation of Jesus Christ?

Do you exalt the Lord in how you live?

Well, that's really what we're gonna go after.

And uh maybe you've already noticed, looking at your watch, that we've kind of front-loaded the message a little bit in the service.

We sang a little bit less to start, and so we're a little earlier.

And the whole point of that is because at the end of this, the way that we're gonna respond to a message about exalting the Lord is by.

I'll give you another run at it.

That's fine.

So the way that we're gonna respond to this message about exalting the Lord is by exalting the Lord.

That's what we're gonna do at the end, and so we've got a few extra songs there.

John's gonna lead us through all of that as our response to all of this.

And so let's um we're gonna we're gonna uh look at the text as we go today in Psalm 103, but let me pray for us before we uh start working through these verses.

Uh Father, it is um an absolute joy uh to be here.

I'm excited about what you're doing in the city of Newmarket and in this area.

Uh, Father, I uh pray that you would um do extraordinary things here.

I pray that you would do do that you would do a thing here in Newmarket that's not been done before.

That God, you would bring um a spiritual awakening to this city, that you would bring revival to this people, that you would knit their hearts together in such a strong way around uh the values of this church, the mission of this church.

I pray for Mike and uh his team.

I pray, God, that you would give him great wisdom and uh the strength, the power from the Holy Spirit to lead this church well.

And God, as we look at your scriptures now, God, I pray that you would open up our minds to understand, our hearts to believe, and our wills to be conformed to what you're telling us here today.

God, this we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, I'm gonna get it out of you.

Exalt the Lord.

Let's start here.

Exalt him with all that you are and all that you have.

All that you are and all that you have.

Let's look at uh Psalm 103.

The first verse says, uh, very familiar, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.

Uh bless his holy name.

Now I want to spend a little bit of time on this first verse, actually, and uh let's break it down.

Let's start with the word bless.

If you're carrying a new international version, you're gonna see the word praise there, and it's actually more than just praising, uh, but it means uh to bless the Lord is to um exalt him.

That's the word that's common here, to exalt him or to lift his name high.

But I've always struggled a little bit with this word as it applies to God, because I understand the word when it applies to me or when it applies to you.

I know what it means to be blessed of God.

What it means is when God blesses me, it means I have more of something I didn't have before.

It means I'm further along in the path than I was before he blessed me.

I have something I didn't have because God blessed me.

And the same thing for you.

If I say to you, um, I pray God would bless you.

And and that blessing infers that I want you to have more of something.

You don't have it yet, I want you to get it.

That you advanced in your Christian life in in some way, or God poured out his spirit uh for you in a new way.

That's I get that when it comes to you and me, or me and God.

But but in this verse, you can see now it we're blessing God.

And what I understand about blessing God is this God cannot be enriched in any way.

God can't have more of anything.

God can't go from here to there as if he made progress in some way.

And so when I think about blessing God, I understand that when I'm saying it to God, it is not because I think he needs more of anything.

And so, what exactly does it mean when we bless God in this way?

Well, you might want to jot down a few of these things.

To bless the Lord certainly is to express gratitude to him, it's to express admiration of him, it's to express adoration of him.

To say bless the Lord is actually, this is what it is, it's an exclamation of what already is and what I'm only now coming to know.

An exclamation of what already is, but what I'm just now coming to realize.

In other words, I'm in the scriptures and I'm reading something and I see something about God that I just didn't even know before, or I'm going through some experience and God is using that in my life to kind of bring me to a new place, a new understanding of who God really is.

And in that moment, now I know something about him I didn't know before.

And in that moment, there's this exclamation: Bless the Lord! I know something about him I didn't know before.

I'm not really enriching him in any way, I'm just coming to it.

Really, it's like saying, You are blessed, God.

You are blessed in every way and in all the fullness of what that means.

John Piper said it this way: to exalt the Lord, to bless the Lord is to joyfully announce all these good things about God.

And so while we were just worshiping a few minutes ago and singing these songs to him, what we were doing, and we weren't discovering any new revelation or anything like that, but we were declaring to one another in our singing these things that we know about God, and in that respect, we were blessing the Lord.

And so we magnify him, we exalt him, we recognize his magnificence, we recognize his glorious status as the King of Kings, and we recognize his status as the one and only provider of all these blessings that we desire.

And so it's awesome to think about him in this way.

You feel like you've got that now, what it means to bless the Lord.

You feel like you got it?

Would you like me to go over all of that again?

Or do you feel like you've got it?

Okay, you've got it.

That's super.

All right, so when you've got that figured out, notice now you're gonna bless the Lord.

This psalmist is saying, Bless the Lord, oh my soul.

Now we understand when we use the word soul, it means like the deepest part of who we are.

In essence, what we're saying is, all that I am is going to be brought to the table in the exaltation, the blessing of God.

So I understand it's not simply outward singing, clapping, hand raising, what we did a few minutes ago.

It's not simply that.

That's part of it.

It can be part of it if our heart is aligned with the Lord.

The singing, the raising of hands, the clapping, whatever expression of worship uh you brought to the table today, that's part of it.

That can be part of it.

But it's not first, understand, it's not first physical.

Though that follows the part that comes from my soul.

It's not primarily physical, though that's the part we often think of first.

But this worship is coming from deep within.

Psalm 130, verse 1 says that it comes out of the depths of our soul.

Psalms 130:1

And so you can hear in just exactly what he says here, you ought to be able to hear that it's not just physical, but it's very, very emotional.

Notice what he says.

Bless the Lord.

Oh, my soul.

Do you see that?

Capital O.

Oh! You want to do that with me?

Bless the Lord, my soul.

Now you're getting it.

Now that's for all the grammar nerds in the in the room, the O is an interjection.

That's the part of speech that it is, and it always communicates sudden, strong emotion.

So so, in other words, as we read this, bless the Lord, oh my soul, the O tells us that this is not only something physical that we're doing, but it's emotive.

It's flowing out of the depths of who I am and every part of who I am.

So it's physical, it's emotional.

Our worship is also well thought out.

In other words, the mind is fully engaged in the process of exalting the Lord.

Now, uh, Psalm 103 is a poem.

We all understand that.

It's a poem or a song.

And um, is this a high school that we're in?

We're in a high school, right?

Brings back a lot of bad memories going back to high school, right?

In high school English class, and the worst unit of all in high school English was the poetry unit.

How many people are with me on this?

It was like six weeks in the semester, you just had to endure.

And out of a class of 30 students, there were three kids, exactly three kids in the class who understood the poem.

And 27 of us who didn't get it at all, and we were down at the bottom looking at those archaic words and words we never used to see the meaning, and then we were, you know, trying to find out exactly what this image is, and we didn't get it, and really it was just about survive the six weeks, write the test and pass, and get on from the poetry unit and just sweat it out until next year's English, right?

That's the whole thing with poetry.

And even though I don't understand it, and I was one of the 27 in the class who didn't get the poetry, even though that is true, here's the thing I understood about poetry.

The poet didn't just sit down at a table and scratch out the poem on a napkin first draft, and there was the poem for publishing.

In other words, the poet, even though I may not get poetry and all the figurative language, I understand that the figures were very carefully considered and then put in or not put in.

I understand that for every word that appears in the poem, that 10 or 12 words hit the cutting room floor and didn't make the poem.

That there's a definite theme to it, that there's meter, there's structure.

And all I'm trying to say by all of this is that even though I don't get poets, I do understand that he or she who wrote the poem spent time thinking about him, carefully considering every part of the poem.

And God wants us just as engaged, our minds, our intellects, fully engaged in the exaltation of his great name.

We're to think about this.

We're to think about whether or not what we're singing and what we're saying is aligned with the word of God.

We're to know the word of God, having studied it and considered it, to make sure that everything that's coming out of our mouths in praise to God is theologically correct.

And so we worship him physically, emotionally, intellectually, and then we do it as an act of our will.

We want to be here.

We want to be here now.

A group this size, I get that some people don't want to be here today.

I get it.

Some of you are here because you were raised with this and it's your tradition, your heart's not really super into it anymore, but it is the thing that you've always done.

Sunday mornings, you wake up, you get ready for church, and you go.

That's that's tradition, that's family heritage, whatever it is, and you're doing it still.

And I think we could all agree without a show of hands, I think we could all agree that's not the best reason to be here.

I'm glad you're here, but it's not the best reason.

It's just my tradition.

I always go to church.

Now, some of you are here because um you're uh living in somebody else's house, i.e.

your parents, and they make you come to church because you still live in their house.

And so you're not super fired up to be here either, but you're here.

Some people are here because you were invited here, and this really isn't your gig.

It's not something you normally do.

Now, listen, whatever your reason is, uh the hope would be that you would get to the place where this is where you want to be.

That of every other place on planet earth that you could think of right now, there's no greater place to be than with God's people exalting his name.

Now listen, we would we would we would all agree right now that these um great weather days late in October are bonus days.

Wouldn't we agree with that?

And and I could think about, you know, I'd rather be uh, you know, out cleaning up my yard or or outside taking a hike or or going somewhere with friends and taking advantage of 20-degree weather in October.

Blue skies and sunshine.

And yet, even though I know that that's what's happening outside these blinds, my will, this is where I want to be.

This is where I want to be.

This is where I want to be.

And every person in the room, I would want for you the same thing that of all the places you could be, this is where I want to be.

And when and when that's true for you, when you can't think of any other place, then you know that your will is aligned in exalting the Lord as part of everything that you are, everything that you have being brought to the table.

Now I know the objections that come right now, primarily this.

People don't generally have a problem with intellectually engaging with God, and they don't generally have a problem with the will part of this, but they do have a problem with the emotions and the physical expressions of worship.

And some of it is because of the backgrounds that we've had.

And I didn't necessarily come here to offend people, but I'm willing to do it because I'm leaving in about an hour to go back up to Barry.

So um, you know, some of us, could I just um of us um were raised brethren, and some of us were raised Christian Reform, and some of us were raised Baptists.

I'll just pick on those three for now.

And I was one of those for a while.

And in in most of those traditions, we were taught the emotions need to be turned off, and you better not move a muscle during worship.

And somehow, some way with that background, that in their mind was the exalting of the Lord, even though everything you see about worship in this book tells you something different.

See what I'm saying?

And so we have these objections about oh, we don't want our worship to become too emotive.

And I get that, we don't.

Nothing to an extreme, nothing that draws attention to self.

We want to be able to express ourselves in some way physically, but we don't necessarily want dancing in the aisles, correct, Pastor Mike?

No dancing in the aisles, correct?

He said, correct.

No dancing in the aisles, but but because we don't want to draw attention to ourselves, but there needs to be something, some physical expression of worship to God, because that's what we see modeled for us in the scriptures.

So not being swept up by emotion or physical expressions, not giving in to peer pressure about all of this, but listen, all that is within me, the verse says, all that is within me.

Bless his holy name.

And we have this in us.

I know we do.

I've brought along some examples.

Let's look at this.

They made it to the Stanals.

Nashville, Tennessee.

Hockey, put those together.

Weird, right?

They finally made it to the cup final, they're out of their minds, they're they're celebrating their team, they're jumping up and down, they're screaming.

19,000 fans in their arena, 50,000 fans around it in the downtown, all cheering for their hockey team.

All that is within me, cheer for the predators.

Or how about this uh picture right here?

This is Grant Park last October when the Chicago Cubs broke a 108-year World Series drought and finally won.

108 years.

The city was out of its mind.

Everything shut down, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets.

People weren't working, they weren't going to school, then they all made their way to Grant Park.

Cheryl and I, our son Luke, is a moody student.

He skipped out of class, he's in the back left.

All that is within me.

Cheer for the cubs.

You see where uh this is going now?

How about this uh next one?

These are Believers.

I'm a little ashamed I even know that word.

These are young female devotees of Justin Bieber, believers.

And they're they're crazy for this pop star.

Every generation has its own pop stars that they go just insane for.

In 1964, when I was born, the Beatles came across the ocean for the first time, and we remember the news reels of this and watching this.

In fact, there are likely some late 60s, early 70s women here in this church who were like that back then, but who probably would not admit it today?

Every generation has this, and you look at the intensity on their faces, and you just go, all that is within me.

Scream for Justin Bieber.

Or how about this one?

This is the square in front of Buckingham Palace a few years ago.

Why has this crowd gathered on this particular day outside the gates of Buckingham Palace in London?

They're awaiting the announcement of the birth of Prince George.

Nothing's gonna happen.

There are no events planned.

There's no concert, there's no game, there's no parade.

Not one of these people is gonna be invited into the nursery to see him when he's born.

They're just gonna wait there until an announcement is made that they're probably gonna know about on Twitter, and they could have found out about it at home.

But they want to be there.

And they made the sacrifice and they braved the crowds and they're crushed in together.

All that is within me, welcome the new prince.

Or this woman, 91 years old, chained to a tree that she's trying to save.

She is literally a tree hugger.

91 years old.

All that is within me save the tree.

Or this crowd outside of a Best Buy on Black Friday.

All that is within me by a flat screen.

Or more seriously, this past June we commemorated again the D-Day landings that liberated Europe.

And what does it take for a young man or a young woman to enlist in the armed forces and to devote their life and to say, I am willing to give my life for the defense of freedom?

What does it take for one of those soldiers to break out of a landing craft under enemy fire and to have as their objective taking the beach?

All that is within me, storm the beach.

Well, all of those examples to drive us to one key point when it comes to the exaltation of God.

We have it in us and we prove it in so many different ways.

But would that describe your exaltation of the Lord?

Is that what you're bringing to the table?

Would you say, all that is within me is exalting the Lord?

And if not, what could get it there?

Well, how about this little chart?

We'll build this in our notes.

I will exalt the Lord with my mind, will, emotions, and body.

Maybe you could just sketch this out and just come up with some ideas.

Here are some ways that I think that I could apply myself better to the exaltation of God.

You're gonna give yourself a check mark if you already engage and already think through your exaltation of God.

If you think that your mind's already pretty engaged in this, give yourself a check mark.

But if not, if you feel like there's room for improvement, then maybe you're gonna jot something over on the line.

Think of one way you could improve your exaltation of God in this area and write it down.

So I will exalt the Lord with my mind.

Maybe you're just not into the Bible as much as you should be, or you're reading it, but you're not studying it, not meditating on it, not memorizing it, not really allowing the Word of God to soak and saturate your lives.

Maybe some of you, this is the first time your Bible's actually been opened since last Sunday when you were here.

Maybe some of you are on this reading program, and I totally want to affirm the fact that it's great to read through the Bible four chapters a day for a year, and you'll get through it.

And I get that, but how many of us have done that reading program, read the four chapters, notched our the little notch in our belts over having done that, but don't remember or know anything about the four chapters we read?

So I think the goal of reading through the Bible is awesome, but the goal of actually learning the Bible and having it saturate your life and change you, way more important.

So something that could go in that line there.

How about um your will?

Again, I'm not being forced to be here, I really want this.

And um, I would just say that uh probably the best way to align your will with God's is through prayer.

When you're face to face with Him and you're speaking to Him and He's speaking to you through the Word, and you're getting centered on the things that are truly important, you're gonna find your will much more readily aligning with His.

How good is your prayer life?

Emotions The full range of emotions should actually be expressed here, by the way.

There should be anger at injustice, the fact that uh there are people that you know whose marriages are being wrecked by the pressures of this world, that should make you angry.

Not just sad, but angry.

The fact that people are being gripped by addictions, the fact that the devil is just having his way in this city, and so many people don't know him.

It should make you angry, righteously indignant.

But beyond that, there should also be joy and laughter.

That was the part that Mike always brought to our staff team.

I fear we're just a little bit too serious now.

I love laughter.

There should be so much joy at serving Jesus.

When God starts to do ridiculous things for you, I mean, we've gone um, I think you already know this story, some of you know this story, but we were planted in 2001 up in Barrie, the first harvest here in Canada, and we went 16 years without a building.

16 years of what you guys just did here this morning, setting up and tearing down.

16 years.

You guys have been going for two years now, not quite two years?

Almost three years.

So, what that means is that if you were to match us, you wouldn't have a building until 2031.

I'm pausing for dramatic effect.

Somebody, ooh, or ah.

Right, exactly.

You don't want to break our record.

So, but but now it's so sweet in this moment having gotten the building we have and seen what God has done, and seen the numbers and how God has blessed us in such an extraordinary and really just kind of stupid way, far beyond anything we could ever think or imagine.

And most of the time, the reaction that I have is just to laugh, just to smile, just to have joy at what God has done.

And that should be a big part of it.

And then there should be tears, there should be sorrow, there should be lament, there should be brokenness.

I have a really good friend and mentor.

Um, he's uh in his 70s, he was at our former church before we planted up here in Barrie, and very often when we would get together, one of the questions he would ask me would be, have there been tears?

That's all he would need to say.

Have there been tears?

And what he meant by that is as you've been reading the scriptures and considering God and thinking about the plight of the world, have the pages of your Bible been tear-stained as you're reading?

And as you've prayed over the plight of the lost and the brokenness that are in families in your church, and the trials that people are going through, is your journal tear-stained?

And I get concerned in my own life when I go a period of time, he doesn't even ever need to ask me the question anymore because I ask it of myself.

And when I go a period of time where there's been no tears, I get very concerned that my heart is getting hard.

So, what can you do?

What can you put on the line to just say, you know, I need to amp up the emotion a little bit more in my life?

And then uh physically with your body, um clapping your hands, uh raising your hands, uh singing out.

Um I would just say, as far as clapping hands go, if you have rhythm, clap away.

If you don't have rhythm, sit somewhere that the worship team can't see you because it can throw them off, see, and you don't want John not looking at you during worship.

Um, so um express yourself a little shuffling of the feet.

We're not again, we're not talking about all dancing, but we could try this.

I would think about getting you up, but you know, just a little swaying, a little motion in your worship of God.

Try raising your hands.

Now, none of this is hard for me, first of all, because I'm a very fidgety person.

In fact, I became a preaching pastor uh because I can't sit through church.

I thought it was funnier than that, but that's all right.

I'm called by God as well, both of those things, those are the two reasons called by God and can't sit through church.

So so I'm this this comes easy for me, but it didn't come easy for me at first.

And so maybe you're just saying, you know what, I'd like to raise my hands and worship.

And by the way, that's not a command in scripture, it's just one of the ways people do worship, but not a command.

Okay, that's important.

But say you're say you're in the place where you're just going, you know, that's one of the things I would love to have the freedom just to be able to lift my hands and worship to God, but I just don't feel it.

I don't feel the freedom to do it.

Then you just do what you do with your kids when you're teaching them to ride a bike.

You just start with training wheels, just down here, just keep it down here.

Like no one around you needs to even know you're doing it.

Just you and Jesus know that you're lifting your hands and he's giving you points for this, okay?

And then just like with your kids, when they start to get a little bit more accustomed to it, okay, then you got your big boy wheels right here, okay?

You're riding the big boy bike, okay?

Just uh worship the Lord in that way.

Well, hopefully you found something in all of that.

And that was a long time on point one, and I promise we won't take as much time on the rest of all of this.

And so uh let's look at this secondly, the rationale now for blessing him.

Exalt him for all that he is and all that he does.

Exalt him for all that he is and all that he's done or is doing.

Let's read a few more verses here.

Verse 2: 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.

Now notice the repetition in verse two.

He essentially says the same thing he said in verse one bless the Lord, O my soul, repeats it for emphasis, and then adds this forget not all his benefits.

And we start to think about the benefits that God has given to us.

This is gonna drive us toward exalting him.

And he actually goes on here.

We're gonna build a little list, you could jot these down, a list of God's seven benefits.

God's seven benefits.

And at the end of this, tell me if you should not be exalting him for what he's given you.

That's where we're going.

God's seven benefits, number one, he forgives me.

We saw that in verse three.

Uh notice he forgives all your iniquity.

And of all the seven that we're going to look at, not a not a mistake that this is number one.

Because of all of the needs that we have, this is number one by far the biggest need that we have.

Because if we're not forgiven of our sins, then the gap between us and God still exists, a gap that we have no way of bridging ourselves.

Apart from the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, his blood shed for us, his life in place of ours, him taking our sin upon himself.

Apart from that, the gulf cannot be abridged.

We need him to forgive us in order for us to have the possibility of being in relationship with him.

And so we we need this.

He forgives all of your iniquity.

All of it.

The stuff you did in the past, the sins you're committing right now, the sins you're gonna commit in the future, all of it.

Forgiven.

And he draws you into a relationship with himself.

That's pretty awesome, all on its own, isn't it?

Isn't it?

And so we should exalt him just for that alone.

But then, secondly, notice he heals me.

Verse 3 continues, who heals all your diseases.

Now, of all the lines in Psalm 103, and it's such a well-known and and beloved Psalm by so many people, this is the line that causes people some trouble.

Because they look at this, who heals all your diseases, and they go, wait a second, does God really do that?

Because God hasn't healed my disease, or he didn't heal my mom's disease, or he didn't heal my child's disease.

And I know people who have died with diseases, obviously, and I know people who have been afflicted the entirety of their lives, though they loved Jesus with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength, they were afflicted the entire length of their life.

So, what gives with he heals all your diseases?

Well, ultimately it comes down to this if if we're um desiring that and expecting it right now, we have a problem of timing.

It's just a timing problem.

You see, um, I think we would believe, those of us who have trusted Christ and we understand anything about how God works, we all understand that at the last day, when we are brought into his presence, that at that very moment God will heal all of our diseases.

Amen?

He will.

He's gonna heal it all.

And we're gonna have these perfected bodies and no more pain and no more sorrow and no more death, and it's gonna be awesome for all eternity.

God will heal all your diseases.

But listen, the awesome thing about our God is that along the way, in this world that's still tainted by sin, and every single person in this room is gonna die.

I hope that's not news to you.

Every person in this room is gonna die.

But along the way, when people are afflicted, once in a while, God in his mercy reaches down and heals a person.

Just because he can.

It's not gonna happen for every person, it's not gonna happen all the time.

Ultimately, we're gonna be healed.

But all these little surprises along the way where God might heal somebody.

And we have to have faith to believe that he works that way.

What a benefit he gives us.

He forgives me, he heals me.

Thirdly, look at this, he protects me.

Verse 4 starts who redeems your life from the pit.

Now I get this in the strictest interpretation of this, he's talking about the pit of sin that we needed to be rescued from.

But I also understand that living in this sin-tainted world, there are a lot of little pits that we can fall into, trials that happen in our lives and difficulties that we face all along the way.

And I think about all the times that God has protected us.

Maybe you have the same kind of story.

It's it's it's so common.

You know, we were headed out on a trip and we had prayed just before we went that God would be with us and that he would protect us along the way.

And as we were going down the highway, there was this tire and it flew off a truck and it skipped right in front of our car and over.

And we were so grateful that God protected us.

We had prayed for him to protect us, and he protected us.

And those are the stories we know about.

But what about all the things we don't know about?

All the times that God has sent his ministering angels to protect us, all the times that God has kept us from harm that we didn't even realize was gonna happen.

All the times he watched out for our kids or he watched out for us.

Then I start to think about it when I get there on the last day, and I'm gonna look back on my life, I'm gonna see how many times the angels wrapped me in bubble wrap and kept me safe, you know.

God protects us every step of the way.

He redeems our life from the pit, from all of the pits that we might face.

Fourth, he esteem me.

Verse 4 continues who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.

He crowns you.

You but forget Prince George, he's cute, but forget him for a second.

This room is filled.

If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, this room is filled with princes and princesses, whose father is the king of kings, and who owns everything, and who has promised to us as his children, his princes and princesses, the inheritance of his very kingdom for us to enjoy for all eternity.

That's amazing.

Some have walked into this room today, still struggling with identity issues, still wondering who they are, still running after things in the world, running after notoriety, running after awards, running after achievements, running after relationships, running after sexual fulfillment, running after all of these things in an effort to make your life make sense and to find some kind of identity for yourself.

And all of those paths are dead ends.

With steadfast love and mercy.

We don't have to go out into the world to find anything.

He's given it all to us.

He steams me.

He provides for me.

Verse 5, who satisfies you with good things.

My wife, my kids, the uh significant others that those kids are bringing into our family, the house we live in, the cars that we drive, the neighborhood we get to live in, the city that we get to live in, the money that's in our bank account, the vacations that we get to take, the friends that we have, the church that we get to be a part of, the health and strength, the relative health and strength that we are both experiencing.

I mean, that's like a partial, partial, partial list of all of the ways that God provides for me every day.

Forget not all his benefits.

Verse 5, he provides for me so that your youth is renewed like the eagle, so that whatever you're gonna go through, okay.

Some of you, your life is great right now, and it's gonna blow up on Wednesday.

Some of you, your life is already hard.

You're going through the valley of deepest darkness right now.

And every step of the way, God will strengthen you.

If you seek Him for it, He will strengthen you, He will give you what you need, the wisdom in the moment to know what to do, the courage to make the right decision.

God will provide all of it for you, he will strengthen you in the midst of it.

And then, seven, he vindicates me.

Verse six, the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

I'm certainly understanding that that would refer to the marginalized and the vulnerable of our culture, but I think it refers also to just anyone who has suffered wrong at the hands of another.

And um, most people at some point in their life experience wrong, they've been wronged by someone else.

And and and we want to defend ourselves.

We want people to know, I want them to know the truth about this.

And we start to speak in our own defense, and it doesn't really get us anywhere.

God says that He's gonna vindicate everybody who's oppressed.

At the last day, all the truth will be known.

Truth and time walk hand in hand.

We don't need to vindicate ourselves.

We don't need to defend ourselves.

God will do that.

So be comforted by that.

That God vindicates you in time.

Okay, so then here are those seven benefits, and having stated them for us, he then uses an example to illustrate it.

He made known his ways to Moses.

In other words, Moses had the seven benefits.

His acts to the people of Israel, this is verse 7.

Israel knew the seven benefits.

And I don't know if you've thought about this before.

You have it individually.

Your family can enjoy the seven benefits, and Harvest Newmarket as a church can enjoy the seven benefits of God.

And God does all of this as an act of his mercy and his grace.

That's what we see in verse 8.

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

He's so patient with us, and he loves us so much that he just wants to give us these seven benefits.

It's an act of his mercy.

Mercy and grace.

You know how to tell the difference between these two words.

Mercy is not getting what I do deserve.

That's mercy.

Not getting what I do deserve.

What do I deserve?

I deserve condemnation, I deserve judgment, I deserve death, separation from God.

That's what I deserve because I'm a sinner.

And in his mercy, God doesn't give me any of those things because I'm his son now.

Grace then is the opposite of it.

Grace is getting what I do not deserve.

I don't, namely in this context, I don't deserve these seven benefits.

I don't deserve to be forgiven or to be healed or to be protected or to be esteemed or to be provided for or strengthened or vindicated.

I don't deserve any of those things, but God freely gives those things to me as an act of his grace.

And all of this is because of his steadfast love for us.

This sense of the agreement or the covenant that he has with us, this covenant faithfulness for his people, the what the Hebrew word is, the chesed of God.

That God just does it because it flows out of his character.

It's not at all what we've done, but it's entirely about what he has done for us.

And he describes the mercy and the grace of God in verses 9 through 12.

He will not always chide or condemn us, nor will he keep his anger forever.

But a day of judgment is coming.

He does not deal with us according to our sins.

That's awesome.

He doesn't deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

That's mercy.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.

That's his grace.

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

In all of this, we see the mercy and the grace of God playing out toward us, and the reason why God is doing all of this.

It's an affirmation of his covenant.

He's not going to bring our sins up against us again.

It's not that God, God can't forget anything, so it's not like God forgets the sins that you committed.

He doesn't forget them.

But it's almost better that he chooses not to bring them up against us since he remembers them all, but he's never going to bring them up against us again.

He's going to take them and move them as far as the east is from the west because it's his nature to actually forgive us.

Now, as we work through that list, were you thinking about that really personally?

About how that list of seven benefits is playing out in your life.

Are you enjoying the mercy and the grace of God?

And are you exalting him as a result of all of that?

With all that you are and all that you have.

One final word here: Exalt Him for loving you deeply and holding you fast.

Loving you deeply and holding you fast.

Now, of everything that I've said, and we've been through a lot, there's a lot of content that I've communicated here, but this could be the one thing that someone is here to hear today.

That you need to know that you're loved and that God has you in his grip.

Verse 13 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, for he knows our frame and he remembers that we're dust.

As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like the flower of the field, the wind passes over it and it's gone, and its 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.

We have this image of a father showing compassion to his children, and it points to the Lord showing compassion to us or to those who, the text says, those who fear him, one of the descriptors.

You have a reverential awe of God, that your life is laid bare before him.

Is that a descriptor of your life?

This is for the true followers of Jesus Christ.

This is 100% directed at those who actually have a commitment to Christ and are walking with him.

And I say that because there might be some here this morning that don't have a relationship with God.

And I need you to know that nothing in this psalm applies to you.

If you haven't yet begun to follow Christ and found the forgiveness of your sins, that's the first step.

And then all of these benefits can be added to your life.

And I would plead with you to do that before you leave here today.

I want these benefits.

I want to live my life in this way.

I want to exalt the Lord.

I want his grace and mercy.

I want to feel his love for me.

And if you do have a relationship with God, then you have some rock solid assurances that are coming your way in the text.

He knows our frame.

He remembers that we're dust.

Our days are like grass.

Flourish is like a flower of the field, a wildflower.

The thing about wildflowers is they just grow up spontaneously and they're there and they last for a little while and then they fade and they're gone.

And then you can't even find the space where they were before.

We just come and then we're gone.

God is saying here, He knows our frame, He knows our mental, emotional, physical makeup.

He knows that we're very weak and very vulnerable.

He says that we're dust.

We're mortal beings.

Medical science has come a long way since I was a kid.

I was born 53 years ago, and so there's been a lot of advances, obviously, in both drugs and in procedures that can extend our life.

But what's really curious to me, now that I've been alive for half a century, is that we haven't really made huge progress on life expectancies.

Some, but relative to the amount of money we're investing and the amount of research that's going on and the amount of time that's passed, we really haven't moved the needle very much on life expectancy.

Not in the last 50 years.

Not in the Western world.

And in some parts of the world, of course, we've regressed and life expectancies haven't gone up at all.

And in some cases, we're inventing drugs and procedures to extend life, but then we're creating other problems that are actually reducing life.

And we don't know how to attack these things.

That we're vulnerable and we're weak.

We we think of our police or armed forces, and we think about them protecting our borders and our cities.

And um Cheryl, I sometimes watch that.

It's a little cheesy, it's not in high def.

It's hard to watch.

And and and the stories are always kind of we we watch it, and uh sometimes we go, you know, um the big stories are about an eight-year-old who lost a balloon or a pothole on Ann Street.

I mean, that's really like the big news in Barry.

And sometimes we make fun of it.

You know, we'll watch it every once in a while, and we just make, oh, you know, it's and you could cut and paste the news from 2016 and drop it into the same slot in 2017, and you wouldn't notice any difference.

And so we mock that, and then I step back.

I always step back and say, I'm so glad I live in a city where, for the most part, the most important story is about potholes on streets.

You know what I'm saying?

Because there's a larger city just south of here, and and that's not the way the news is on any day.

And all the hardship and all the heartache of a sin-tainted world is seen in full death, full color every night.

And I'm so grateful for the city that I live in because of the relative peace.

But this is what I understand.

The minute, and it's not that it doesn't come our way and it doesn't come your way, I know that it does.

The minute that we thwart the criminals in one way, they find a new way to hurt us.

The minute we thwart the terrorists in one way, they find a new way to inflict their terror.

And we're just barely keeping up with this, if we are at all.

Because we're weak and we're vulnerable and we're mortal.

And God says He's looked at our frames and we're dust.

For the third time in the Psalm, he reminds us about the covenant.

Remember the promise I made, God says, verse 17, but the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.

Nothing is ever gonna change his love for you.

And even though life is exceedingly difficult in both the global sense, the community sense, but also in our own lives, our own families, our own marriages.

God says in the midst of that, I love you, and nothing's ever gonna change that.

It's from everlasting to everlasting.

Again, for those who fear him, for those who keep his covenant, for those who remember to do his commandments, for those who love him and have committed their way to him.

And if you want to know that you're loved, that you have a God who will keep his promises and bless your life with good things, then give your life to him right now.

Follow him right now.

And experience his love and get him to hold fast to you and your life.

Well, the grand conclusion comes as the psalmist really busts out in praise and worship.

Verse uh 19: the Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all.

You can just hear the orchestral music beginning to build as the worship and the exaltation of God increases.

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.

This is an all-out appeal for all of creation to exalt the Lord with all that they have and all that they are.

This psalm has a threefold structure throughout it, a structure of praise.

Bernard Anderson said it this way: it is God's faithfulness that endows the individual's life, the history of the people, that's the community, and the whole cosmos with ultimate meaning.

There has been an appeal here for you as an individual to exalt the Lord, for Harvest Newmarket as a community of people to exalt the Lord, and for all of creation to exalt the Lord.

Made me think of Luke's Gospel, chapter 19.

And on this particular day, his ministry was coming near to an end when he it would end with his crucifixion and resurrection.

But he was riding into Jerusalem.

You remember there was the donkey, and he sat on the donkey and he rode through these crowds who were laying palm branches down in front of him, and they were shouting praise to him.

Nobody was missing the message, by the way.

The kings of Israel would ride a donkey into the city at their anointing.

And so here's Jesus riding in, and the people are shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

And it's a party atmosphere, and nobody's holding anything back.

They're exalting him with all that they are and all that they have.

And of course, for every party situation in the gospel, there's a Pharisee there who's a party pooper.

And this Pharisee breaks out from the crowd, and I can just picture him walking alongside Jesus as the donkey is making its way, and he says to him, These people are blaspheming by exalting you in this way.

And Jesus said to him, If these do not praise me, remember what he said?

The very rocks will cry out.

The creation will cry out in praise to God.

If his people will not.

This is the first person plural pronoun, a singular pronoun.

It's meant for you and me individually to consider.

Whatever anybody else would do, I need to decide if I'm going to, with my life, exalt the Lord.

So will you?

Will you say, bless the Lord?

Oh my soul and all that is within me?

Bless His holy name.

I want that to be me.

Because I don't want any rocks, any rocks within my hearing ever crying out to God.