Please turn with me in the Word of God to Psalm 103. Let us give careful attention to the reading of God's own Word. A Psalm of David. 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 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. He will not always chide, nor will He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field. Then the wind passes over it, and it is 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. The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, O 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, O my soul. So far the reading of God's Word. I was thinking it might be interesting to do a survey of the congregation to ask, what is your favorite psalm? We might get a variety of answers to that question. And I wouldn't grade you on your answer. You're allowed to have your own favorite psalm. You're allowed even to change your favorite psalm from time to time. We know that whatever psalm Pastor Gordon preaches on is his favorite psalm for that week. And that's a lovely thing. As a historian, I look at history and find that different groups of people in the history of the church, as a group, maybe as a nation or at least as a national church, have had favorite psalms. I read once that the French Huguenots, the French Reformed Church, had as their favorite psalm Psalm 114, not a psalm that we think of very much or tune to very often. They loved the Genevan tune to Psalm 114. I tried to get someone to sing that psalm once and found it almost impossible. So, there's a mystery to why certain people like certain psalms and others like others. We know that in the English-speaking world, it's been Psalm 23 that's been the favorite of many, many people and many churches. In Dutch Reformed churches, historically, the favorite psalm was Psalm 103. And it was often sung at communion or read at communion. It was often used at funerals. It was a psalm that sort of permeated the spirituality and faith of Dutch Reformed people. So, I thought it would be good to look carefully at Psalm 103. Sometimes the psalms that we know well, we don't pause as much as we should to meditate on and consider, and we just think we know them. So, if you think you know enough about Psalm 103, I hope you'll listen anyway, maybe learn something, and maybe one day I'll try to preach on Psalm 23 because I think there are two there things that we don't always notice that are very important. But we want to look at this psalm, Psalm 103 today, and see that it's a psalm of praise. It's a psalm that blesses the Lord for His blessings to us. That's part of the attraction. It gives words to us to express to God our thankfulness for all that He's done for us. it begins with those, or near the beginning, are those powerful words that we should not forget all His benefits. How easy it is to take God's blessings for granted, to think that His doings, His workings are just inevitable, just automatic. And this psalm calls us to pause and to think and reflect on all the workings of God, all the benefits of God that He has done in our behalf. And my wife was saying on the way over to church today that probably all of you have been missing chiasms this summer without Sunday school. And the good news is this is a chiasm, but I'm not going to highlight that to weary you. But it is important to notice that at the very center of this psalm is the declaration of the character of our God. All the ways in which we bless God, all the ways in which we thank God, really radiate out from this heart of the psalm where we are told about His character. And what is the essential character of God at the center of this psalm? It's verse 13. who is our God? The very heart of the character of God, this psalm says, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. Our God is a compassionate God. And the psalmist wants to say to us, if you think of the most loving earthly father that you know. We know that not all earthly fathers have been what they ought to be. But if you think of the most loving earthly father to his children, that gives us a feeling, a taste of the compassion of the Lord. This is a word that is very much tied up with feeling. It is how the Lord feels towards us. And it's often translated as mercy. It's His feelings of mercy to those who need mercy, to those who need His compassion, His love, His care. And so here's the central reason that we bless our God for who He is. And the psalmist declares, we know that compassion because he revealed his ways to Moses. And I think probably what the psalmist particularly has in mind, no, it's not probable. I'm certain what the psalmist has in mind is that great moment in Exodus 33 3, when Moses prays to the Lord, Lord, show us your glory. Show me your glory. Let me see you as you are in yourself. And it's interesting how God responds. Do you remember? Go home and read Exodus 33 and 34 this afternoon. It's really powerful. The Lord responds to Moses, and he says, I'll show you my goodness. It's kind of interesting, isn't it? Moses has wanted to see the fullness of God's glory. And it's as if the Lord says to him, you can't really bear to see the fullness of my glory. But I'll let you see what you really need to see. And that's my goodness. And then the Lord summarizes what that goodness is. Exodus 33, 19, God says to Moses, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And that word translated mercy there is the same word that's translated compassion in Psalm 103, 13. Our God is merciful. That's His goodness. our God is compassionate. That's His goodness. And what a glorious thing that is to know that character of God. And then you remember God takes Moses and puts him in the cleft of the rock to pass by him so he can see something of that goodness of God. And as God passes by, He declares to Moses, the Lord, the Lord, a merciful, or we say the same word again, or compassionate, the Lord, the Lord, a God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. Here is the goodness of the Lord, the Lord who is compassionate. And if you keep those words in mind from Exodus 34, you'll find them echoing through the Old Testament and the New Testament as God's people have reflected on the very central goodness and character of God as a God who loves and is compassionate. But this very revelation of God, of course, raises a bit of a question. How can God both be compassionate and merciful and by no means clear the guilty? And the answer, of course, is those two themes come together in our Lord Jesus Christ, don't they? God is merciful to us because He has placed our guilt upon our Lord. God has compassion for us because He has provided Jesus to take away our guilt and sin and bear that penalty. And that's why in Jesus we know the goodness of God, the steadfast love of God, the mercy of God. And so this psalm is wonderfully speaking to us about this central character of God, that He is merciful and compassionate toward His people. And part of the broader implication of that, that is so important for us today in particular, in the world in which we live and in the face of dominant ideologies that are more and more powerful in this world. This psalm says, at the center of the universe is a God who cares. One of the tragedies of contemporary time is the number of people who have come to think that this world is purely material, this universe is purely material, that this universe is purely impersonal. And when you believe that, it begins to affect your behavior. It's profoundly impacting that people think they never will have to give a count. There is no sovereign in charge. There is no purpose. There is no direction. There's only my little time, and then it's all over for me. And if you really believe that, why wouldn't you just seek to live to indulge yourself? but the fruit of such belief is calamitous turns person against person but when we remember that our universe is governed by a personal God a God of justice and of mercy a God who directs us in the way in which we should walk everything changes and that's why the psalm so appropriately calls us to bless the Lord for all of His goodness and mercy to His people. And this God then is not only blessed for His character, but He's blessed in this psalm for His care. He cares for us. He's active. He's involved. And this psalm declares He cares for us in relation to the two greatest needs of our lives. I'm feeling sort of professorial today. You know, I wanted you to write down your favorite psalm. Now I want you to write down what you think are the greatest needs of human life. Someone came up to you on the street and said, What are the greatest needs that we face today? Well, there are apparently political pollsters out all the time telling us what our greatest needs are, or at least claiming to listen to us, what we think our greatest needs are. The economy, climate change, on and on the list goes of our greatest needs. But none of these are our greatest needs. The psalm focuses on the two greatest needs of all people. And the first is need to have our sin dealt with. And the second need is to have our mortality dealt with. Sort of intriguing how those are the two themes to which the psalm returns again and again in a variety of ways. the problem of sin and the problem of death. It's sort of interesting that the world, in a way, recognizes the problem of death. Death has a way of impressing itself upon us. It's, in the long run, unavoidable. Strangely, the world, nevertheless, in a variety of ways, at times tries to avoid that truth have you noticed that no one dies anymore they pass away it's not that it's so terribly wrong to say pass away but it's not actually true we die pass away originally originated amongst Christian scientists who deny that we die. The Christian scientists still have a little problem with that body, but even that you can think away, apparently. We die. That's a human problem that's unavoidable, inescapable, grounding us in reality and truth, in the difficulty of life, in the fact that there are serious questions that have to be faced. And so this psalmist beautifully faces that question. But first, it faces the other problem, the problem of sin. And that problem, of course, the world works very hard not to think about at all. Sin, huh, just a way of holding people in bondage and restricting behavior. But this psalm takes sin very seriously because it takes God very seriously. There is a God to whom we must give account. There is a holy God who has declared His holy will. And the great problem of sin is not in the first place that it corrupts us. It does. The great problem of sin is that it separates us from God. And so sin is this profound problem that has to be faced. Since all people are sinners, what will become of us? And the psalm wonderfully addresses that in a variety of ways. Right near the beginning, verse 3, Psalm 103, Who is our God? How does He show His compassion? He forgives all your iniquity. He forgives all your iniquity. Isn't that a glorious promise? Isn't that a glorious assurance? He doesn't forgive some of your iniquity. He forgives all of the sins that His people commit. It's interesting, in these opening verses of Psalm 103, the psalmist seems to go back and forth between God's blessing in the face of sin and God's blessing in the face of death. So, in the face of sin, we're told He forgives all your iniquity. He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. There again is that word that can also be compassion. He crowns you. He doesn't just take your sin away and do what less than perfect fathers do, keep bringing it up. Well, I've forgiven you, but I remember what you're like. He doesn't do that. He doesn't just take the sin away. He crowns you as His child. He puts a crown on your head, and the crown He puts on you is the crown of steadfast love and mercy that flows from your heavenly Father. What a glorious thing. What a great work. And then He develops this theme of how He deals with our sin in verses 8 through 12. God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide nor will He keep His anger forever. There is going to be a day of judgment, but He does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities as He would have every right to do, but rather as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him how high are the heavens above the earth now this is a good thing about living in the modern world preachers seem seldom to have good things to say about living in the modern world but living in the modern world we know that you can go millions of light years up from earth and not reach the heavens. So how high are the heavens above the earth? An immense distance, the psalmist is saying. And that distance still does not fully measure the greatness of His steadfast love to us. There is no end to His steadfast love. There is no measurement possible of His steadfast love. And as that steadfast love is high above the earth, so too He has removed our transgressions as far as the east is from the west. now I've done a fair bit of traveling in my life and if I went to the airport and went up to the airline counter and I said I want a ticket to the east because I'm living apparently in the west and the person at the counter would say so how far east do you want to go? Do you want to go six hours to New York or ten hours to Europe or way too many hours other places further east? And I would say, no, I just want to go east. I want to go to the east. Well, how many hours in the plane would you have to spend? you'd never get to the east, would you? You'd still be traveling from the west. It's an immense difference. That's what the poet is talking about here. His love is an immense distance, if we try to measure it. And it's an immense difference that He takes our sin away and removes it from us so that it is not with us, so it is not seen by God, so it is not counted by God, It is not measured by God. It is removed. And that removal comes out of the abundant character of His steadfast love. That's why verse 8, looking back to Exodus 34, is so important. The steadfast love of God for us as sinners is abundant, is full, is overflowing. And that's what we need to be blessed by knowing. That's what we need to be encouraged by. And it's Jesus who has done that for us. It's Jesus who has brought to us the righteousness of God by taking our sin upon Himself. And that's the hugeness of our debt to Jesus. That's the hugeness of Jesus' love for us. And that's why we rejoice in the greatness of His mercy. Look at verse 17 of Psalm 103. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children. He takes away our sin and gives us His righteousness. That's His saving work. That's how He deals with our problem of sin, and that's why the promise of the abundance of the steadfast love of God is so important. And then secondly, the problem that we face is the problem of mortality, the problem of death. And in this chiastic structure, before the center, he deals with the problem of sin. After the center, he deals with the problem of mortality. And verse 14 is so wonderful. for He knows our frame. He knows who we are. He knows how we're made. Of course, He knows how we're made. He made us. He remembers that we are dust. What a huge amount of biblical truth is in that little phrase. He remembers that we are dust. Where did we come from? Well, Genesis tells us he made us out of the dust of the earth. And after our fall into sin, he told us to dust we would return. He remembers we are dust. He remembers our origins. He remembers where we're going. He remembers that our days are like the grass or like a summer flower. this spring my wife had a wonderful idea. Why don't we drive up 15 to Lake El Sorn, a little bit beyond, and see the wildflowers? This was a great year for wildflowers. This was a great year for poppies and for lupine. I remember my mother saying that in her high school days, one of the projects of the spring in every California high school was to go out and pick poppies and lupin to put in a press in a book. And she recalled how this was so successful as an educational enterprise that the poppies were almost eliminated from California because they had been picked and pressed in so many high school books. But this year in particular, the poppies came back with force And we discovered that a lot of other wives had similarly had good ideas of driving up the 15 to see the flowers. There was a terrible traffic jam. So we had plenty of time to see the flowers. The hills were green with grass. The flowers were orange and purple in glorious array. To talk to my wife, she has a lot of pictures. A lot of pictures. And if you drive up this afternoon, you'll see only brown mountains. The grass is gone. The flowers have withered. You'll even have trouble finding the place where they once grew. The place thereof remembers it no more. That's the way life goes. the psalmist says. Those of you who are young don't believe it, but ask any of the older people in this congregation and we will testify how quickly the days pass. And how does the Lord respond? Verse 17. The steadfast love of the Lord. As the answer to the problem of sin is to be found in the steadfast love and mercy of the Lord, so the problem of death, of mortality, is to be found in the steadfast love of the Lord. And as the steadfast love of the Lord is abundant to take away sin, the steadfast love of the Lord is everlasting to take away the problem of mortality. If the Lord loves you with an everlasting love, what does that mean? It means you're going to live everlastingly in that love. There cannot be everlasting love for those who are gone. There can only be everlasting love for those who are living. And that's what's really gloriously promised here in this psalm. The Lord heals all your diseases, the psalm says. What that means, of course, is the Lord heals all the diseases He heals. If you have ever been healed from a disease, it's the Lord who did that. When I got my pacemaker, I thought, we ought to do a survey of the congregation and see how many of us would be dead today without modern medicine. What a great blessing we have derived from modern medicine. But the deliverance that modern medicine brings is only temporary, I hate to tell you. But every healing any of us have experienced is a blessing from the Lord, for which we need to bless Him and thank Him. But the psalmist immediately goes on, verse 4, to say, Who redeems your life from the pit? Now, Joseph's life was redeemed from a pit. You remember his brothers put him in a pit, and they didn't know for sure what to do with him, so they lifted him out of the pit and sold him into slavery. That's not what God does with us. The pit from which He promises to bring us is the grave. This is a verse that really, when you meditate on it, teaches the resurrection of the dead. The Lord will draw us out of the pit. And so in forgiving our sin and in promising us eternal life in His love, He satisfies us with good, and we should bless Him for that. He satisfies us with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Eagles soar in the sky with energy, and they were an ancient symbol of youth and strength. As I thought about preaching this morning, I wondered if I have enough energy. Because, although I believe everything the Bible tells me, I don't always find my youth being renewed like the eagles. The wonderful promise is that it will be one day, even if it's not true now. What a blessed God we have. What glorious promises we have. Disease cannot control us. Death cannot control us. But we will live everlastingly in the love of our God. And that directs our life. That must characterize our life. God is praised in this psalm for His character. He's praised in this psalm for His care. And He's praised in this psalm for His covenant, which is revealed to us and which calls on us to respond. Several times in this psalm, God's people are described as those who fear Him, those who stand in awe before Him. those who recognize His greatness and His glory, those who live for Him. But this psalm is just filled with the sense that we don't earn His compassion by the way we live, but His compassion determines the way we live. Our fear is one of His gifts to us, but He does require that we be His people. in everyone who has truly experienced the mercy of God, in everyone who has taken sin away by the steadfast love of God, in everyone who has hope for life beyond the grave because of the steadfast love of God in Christ, God has worked a new life. God has brought us into His covenant family as those who will live for Him, who will fear Him, who will strive to obey all His commandments. And so God's covenant calls out to us. Are we those who fear Him? Are we those who look to His Word? Are we those who trust Him in every circumstance? This is what God calls to us so that we will enjoy the richness of these promises. And the God who has promised can do it. The psalm ends moving away from just my soul, blessing God, comes back to that right at the end, but it draws our attention up to the heavens and tells us that God is enthroned in the heavens and God is surrounded by the holy angels who always do His will. and the God who rules over all things says to you today, says to me today, as my people, I love you with an everlasting love. I love you with a superabundant love. And you can have confidence that in all the trials of life, the compassion of your God will care for you and sustain you and bring you home. May each one of us have that confidence in our God. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we thank you for the treasure of this psalm, for its promises, for its word of blessing, for the hope that it brings. O Lord, fill us with the faith that rests in these promises, with the faith that looks to you alone, with the faith that rests in the finished work of Jesus Christ for us. O Lord, fill each one of us with hope in believing and put a song of praise and of blessing on our lips and in our hearts. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.