I would like to share with you this
evening a few thoughts that arise from the
perusal of the first five verses in the
psalm which we have already heard, read, and
sung in part, Psalm 103, verses 1 to
5.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all
that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine
iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth
thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with
lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy mouth
with good things, so that thy youth is
renewed like the eagle.
This psalm has earned the reputation of being
one of the most exquisitely beautiful compositions in
the entire Psalter.
Poets and linguists alike have so spoken of
this very remarkable psalm, this theme of praise
that fell from the inspired lips of the
ancient psalmist.
And well may it deserve such a place
of preeminence in the estimation of men.
It's a remarkable psalm.
It is remarkable alike for its logic, its
spiritual tones, and its heart-warming spirit and
influence, and indeed for much else.
And I'm sure you will have noticed that
there is not a single request made throughout
the body of the psalm.
The psalmist is not here asking for anything.
He's already received so much, he's forgetting now
about his own needs.
And he is before God in contemplation, in
meditation and in song, simply remembering the goodness
of the Lord.
Do you know there are times and occasions
when every Christian man and woman should do
just that?
Oh, there are times when we should make
our requests known unto the Lord, and he
has told us so to do.
But there are times when we should forget
even our own fundamental and sometimes pressing needs
and problems, and simply remember the goodness of
the Lord to us, and pay tribute, and
bow the knee, and render prayers.
I believe there is a wealth of psychology
behind, as well as theology, behind that simple,
lovely old hymn, Count Your Many Blessings.
Name them one by one.
Don't gloss over them.
Name them.
Look them in the face.
Remember what they were in the context in
which they were given.
And then just let your soul go out
in praise to God.
And as I understand it, our harvest Thanksgiving
occasion ought to be such a day and
such an occasion as that.
Well, now, we have specified as a title
to our theme, to our message tonight, Feeding
the Flame of Praise.
And that's really what we have here.
It's a man who, in his heart of
hearts, is already determined to praise God.
As he remembers things in general, his soul
is engaged in praise and thanksgiving.
But then he moves to particulars, and he
feeds the flame of gratitude with this memory
and that memory.
It's almost like a man putting a new
brick or a new log in the fire.
And when the one has burnt so far,
he puts another one on, in order that
the flame should be fed and fanned.
And it would be wonderful tonight if, by
the grace of God, we could have some
such picture in the heart of every man
and woman among us.
Well, now, let's turn then to two main
things that are brought out in these five
first verses of Psalm 103.
I want to speak in turn of the
praise that he ardently renders, and then the
provisions that he personally recounts.
We begin, first of all, with the praise
that he is determined to render.
The first and immediate impression made upon us
by the reading of the opening verses of
this psalm is that he was unquestionably a
spontaneous man of praise and of prayer.
Praise and prayer spontaneously spring and wholeheartedly emerge
within his soul, within his heart.
He was not a conscript.
He wasn't made to sing.
The man's soul is in it.
The man's heart is in it.
The man's whole being is involved.
Now, I just want to spell this out,
and I would like you to notice in
turn, first of all, this is a praise
that is intentionally personal.
Praise the Lord, bless the Lord, he says,
O my soul, and all that is within
me.
You notice the personal pronoun.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, all that
is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine
iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth
thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with
lovingkindness and tender mercies, and so forth.
You see, the man is talking about God's
goodness to himself.
It is intensely personal.
Later on, from verse 6 to verse 14,
he thinks wider afield.
God has been good to the nation, God
has been good to his people at large,
but even then there is this personal undertone
to it.
He has benefited also as a member of
the nation, and he's glad that the nation,
like himself, has known something of the goodness
of the Lord in the land of the
living.
It is a personal psalm, a personal gratitude.
And then, of course, in another sense, it
is most intensely personal.
The psalmist is addressing his own God.
Does it seem strange to tell you that
there are 22 verses in this psalm, and
of the 22 verses, 11 of them, 11
times he mentions the name of the God
he would pray against.
What I'm getting at is this.
He knows who is the author of his
every good and perfect gift.
He knows who has blessed him.
He knows who has done this, that, and
the other for him, and so it is
personal, intimately personal, in this sense.
It comes from the heart of the man
himself.
It's not a song put on his lips.
It isn't just a composition that he's learnt
from somebody else.
He's not singing somebody else's hymn.
It's his own.
And it's his own that he's singing to
his own God.
Now, I love hymns.
I was brought up on hymns.
You know, there is one danger about singing
the hymns that express the thoughts and the
gratitude of other people.
And the danger, of course, is this, that
we are simply mouthing phrases.
And if the hymn is allied to a
lovely tune, that we're just going through the
emotional aspect which the music enables us so
to do.
We are on the wings of the music
or on the wings of the words, but
they're not necessarily our own.
This is why it is necessary for us
to read the words of the hymns that
we sing and read them well.
Otherwise, we are simply going through the formalities
of worship and the heart may be lagging
far behind.
Not so here.
These are not words that the lips are
merely uttering.
Here are sentiments that emerge from the man's
own deep soul.
It's personal.
Moreover, the praise he desires to render is
most wholeheartedly rendered.
You notice this.
This is a continuation of the thought we've
just expressed.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all
that is within me.
All that is within me, bless his holy
name.
And just to make sure, he says it
a second time over.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
And the soul, of course, refers to the
whole of the inner being.
In contradistinction simply to the lips, the mouth,
he wants the praise, he wants the gratitude,
he wants the worship of almighty God to
come from the whole of his united and
concerted soul.
All the energies of the soul functioning in
concert.
Now, I hardly need to say this, because
we all know it in some measure.
One of the consequences of sin in all
our lives is this.
That we are so divided even within our
own hearts.
We are a disintegrated people.
And sometimes when the mind goes one way,
the heart goes another.
When the will wants to go this way,
the emotions want to go another way.
Don't we know something about this?
Sin has divided us against ourselves.
Paul puts it in his great text.
Listen to the Romans.
When I would do good, he says, evil
is present with me.
O wretched man that I am, he says,
who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?
I want to go this way, but then
something draws me that way.
We're divided against ourselves.
Even when we know what is right.
And the psalmist knew something of that.
And he knew it especially when he came
to God in prayer.
And when he wanted to praise God, and
you notice what he says here.
Now Lord, he says, in order to praise
you arise.
O give me the grace.
I think this is how we are to
understand these opening words.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all
that is within me.
Everything must be harnessed.
All the energies of the soul must be
harnessed.
I'm not content simply to make a noise,
joyful though it may be.
I want the whole of my being.
The mind, the imagination, the heart, the whole
being.
In the psalm.
My dear friends, I believe it would be
a great day in the history of the
Christian church.
When we got here.
When we could honestly say to ourselves at
the beginning of every service, Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and all that is within
me.
Bless his holy name.
The soul of true praise is the praise
of the soul.
And if it is not the praise of
the soul, it is in vain the praise
of the lips.
For God seeth the heart, and it's the
heart that he reads.
This is a praise that is intensely personal.
It is wholeheartedly offered.
And another thing, he is desirous that the
praise he renders should be adequately comprehensive.
And forget not all his benefits.
Now that's only another way of saying, don't
forget anything.
I think it's a Hebraism, and that that
is really significant.
Don't let's forget anything.
Don't let's leave anything out.
The danger of forgetfulness was always a peril
in the psalmist's day, as in ours.
The memory is like a basket.
It doesn't hold water.
None of you good people would try to
collect water in a basket.
There's something of that nature about our memories.
We don't remember the things we need to
remember.
Of course, on the other hand, we remember
the things we don't need to.
And the things we shouldn't.
But there are some things that slip through
so easily, like water flooding through a basket.
You've noticed, I'm sure, those of you who
read the Old Testament carefully, how over and
over again God had to remind his people
to remember certain things.
We are always in danger of forgetting the
very things we ought to remember.
Take heed, says the Lord to Israel, lest
you forget the Lord who brought you out
of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.
If you know that's repeated, I don't know
how many times in the Old Testament.
Take heed and remember, remember, remember.
Blessings that are individually bestowed upon us should
be individually remembered by us.
Blessings that are consistently given to us should
be consistently praised.
We should consistently praise God on their account.
Now, that's the first thing that I want
to bring to you tonight.
It's the portrait of a man who really
wants to bless God.
Can we not at this stage, in our
heart of hearts, pray God to give us
a heart like this?
That we should know something of this tremendous
sense of gratitude in our soul.
That we shall want to say, with all
that is within us, Bless the Lord, O
my soul, every bit of me, every inch
of me, every aspect of my life.
Bless his holiness.
But now, having so determined, the psalmist begins
to put the logs on the fire.
And he begins to feed and to tend
the flame.
And he brings certain things.
He puts his hand, as it were, into
the basket of memory.
And he takes out a number of logs.
There are six here, actually.
But if you notice carefully, there are three
pairs of two.
And I want to bring them before you
tonight, just to see how the flame of
gratitude was fanned until it was a sizzling
thing in the great of his heart.
Now, the first divine provision that calls for
praise is the removal of the curse of
sin.
Look at verse three.
Look at it carefully.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Why?
Well, he says, who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases.
Now, don't dismiss this.
There is something in it right at the
beginning, I'm quite sure, which will startle you.
But don't be caught with a mystery, first
of all.
Just let's get this.
Bless the Lord.
Why?
The first log he puts on the flame
is this.
Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all
your diseases.
Why should I praise God, says the psalmist?
Well, for this reason.
He forgives all my sins.
He heals all my diseases.
Now, let's start with the first.
They're two sides of the same thing, and
I put them under this one title.
They refer to the removal of the curse
of sin.
Who forgives all your sin.
Now, forgiveness, in and of itself, is a
most precious experience.
If you've been forgiven, then you know something
of the sweetness and the peace and the
joy of it.
I don't need to tell a forgiven soul
anything of its benefits.
You know it in your heart.
If you're a forgiven man or a forgiven
woman here tonight, there is obviously something of
this sense of wonder and amazement and consequent
peace and hope in your heart.
A forgiven soul.
But now notice this.
The psalmist says that God forgives all sin.
And it's that little word, all, which makes
it even so very wonderful.
Ever so wonderful.
Who forgiveth all your iniquity.
Now really, when we go on into the
body of the psalmist, we can't do that
tonight.
In verses ten to twelve, the psalmist proceeds
to enlarge upon this.
And he brings in three different names for
sin.
Three different words describing three different aspects of
sin.
And what he tells us there is this.
It's so wonderful, it's so remarkable, he says,
that as far as the East is from
the West, so far has God removed our
transgressions from us.
Have you got that picture?
We'll never meet them again.
They're so far away from us, says the
psalmist, that they'll never catch up with us,
nor shall we catch up with them.
For East and West never meet.
As far as the East is from the
West, so far, so far, have he removed
our transgressions from us.
Oh, blessed soul.
Now, my friend, if we had a couple
of minutes extra tonight, you know what I
would like us to do?
Of course, it would be too daring to
do, and I might never have a congregation
again.
I'd like to give us all a piece
of paper, and I, the chiefest of sinners,
to start off.
And write down some of the things we
know God has forgiven.
Write them down.
And remember the mercy, the potency of the
blood, the grace.
There are many that we can't remember.
And yet God, says the psalmist, has forgiven
all the sins of his people.
All.
A-double-L.
All.
Now, from time to time as a pastor,
I have encountered men and women who believe
that God can forgive almost every sin but
one or two.
But there are one or two that are
so dark and so dismal and so terrifying
and so haunting and so what have you,
they just can't believe that the blood of
Jesus Christ covers them.
The psalmist knew God forgives all.
And I want to ask someone here tonight
who may be in that predicament, I want
you to put your both arms of faith
around this little word, all.
For God means what he says.
When you receive God's pardoning grace, you receive
forgiveness for all your sins.
A-double-L.
Now look at the other side of the
same coin.
The curse of sin is totally removed.
Who says the psalmist?
He lives.
All thy diseases.
Now, this is the problem, isn't it?
You wonder what on earth is this, because
this is not true, is it?
Can I read your faces all right?
It's not true.
God heals some diseases.
God heals many diseases.
But what man is there who can say
that he healeth all thy diseases?
Well now, let me say this, that there
will be a day when it will be
true that God will have healed all our
diseases.
We have to make reference to it in
another context this morning.
But when we shall receive our new body,
it will be like to the glorious body
of our Lord.
And you know, sin cannot touch it, and
disease cannot harm it, and death cannot draw
near to it.
And when, alas, the task of redemption is
completed by him, as it surely will, then
he will have healed us from all our
diseases.
But actually, this is a very special word
that is used here.
And it is such a special word that
the theologians and the commentators really have a
jolly good time here, arguing the one with
the other, and there's been a little bit
of bickering and bantering if you read them,
and they really are not quite sure what
to say about it.
Well now, how can we be sure?
Well, I can only tell you what I
believe is the right answer, and I ask
you kindly to consider it before you take
it from me.
But I want to tell you what I
think it is.
I have discovered in my reading of the
Old Testament that the word used here for
diseases is only used when disease is the
consequence, the immediate consequence of sin.
Now, in one sense, all disease is the
consequence of the fall of man.
Had we not fallen, had Adam not sinned,
had we not fallen, there would be no
disease.
But sin, disease rather, in the individual life,
is not necessarily indicative that that individual has
sinned and therefore is sick.
It is not only sick people who have
disease.
Now that, I think, is fairly clear.
Sin was the cause of the disorder in
the universe which has brought sickness upon us.
But it is not true to say that
we are physically sick only and always because
we have individually done wrong in the sight
of the Lord.
That is not so.
Job was said to be upright at the
very beginning of the epic, the drama of
his life depicted in his book.
He was upright in the sight of God.
He was blameless in the sight of God.
Blameless at the beginning.
But there are times when God, in his
chastisements, comes in upon a man in sickness.
Paul speaks of it in 1 Corinthians chapter
11 and verse 29 following.
We were considering it a few weeks ago
in our preparatory service for the communion.
There are times when, as Paul says, some
are sick among you and some have even
slept.
That is, some have died.
And the reason they are asleep, the reason
they have died, says Paul, is this solitary
one.
They would not judge themselves.
And therefore God has judged them.
And he has had to step into a
church, into a congregation, and he has removed
men by death.
It is a challenging thought, you know.
There are men who are such a menace
to the church of God.
But if they do not judge themselves, says
Paul, God takes them away.
He is sovereign.
And there are limits beyond which a holy
God will not accept the frustrations of sinful
men in relation to his church.
And he removes them.
Now, oh, I am glad I can come
to this.
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities.
Who healeth all thy diseases that have been
brought upon you because of your sin and
your disobedience.
That is what the psalmist said.
In other words, what he is doing is
telling us that God takes away the whole
consequence of the curse.
One day he will finalize it when he
gives us a new body which is likened
to his own, which will know neither weariness
nor pain or any such thing in the
new Jerusalem toward which we go.
The Lord must be praised then for the
princely and primary dressing of pardon in which
he sovereignly removes the entire curse of sin.
When is your sin removed?
Then, my good friends, you ought to be
a praising soul tonight.
He is an enigmatic figure who can be
silent and unsinging in his heart, mute in
his spirit, whose sins have been forgiven through
Jesus Christ our Lord.
No, no, the way the psalmist would tend
the flame is just to remind himself that
the Lord had removed every sin, even the
sins that had been brought upon him because
of his disobedience, even those sins and the
diseases that accompanied them.
Then, likewise, he would bring another piece of
coal or whatever you have to put on
the flame, and he would seek to praise
God further because of the reversal of certain
consequences of sin in his life.
I think these words are simply wonderful.
I would love to be sitting where you
are sitting and listening to someone else preach
about them.
Who redeems your life from destruction?
Who crowns you with loving-kindness and tender
mercies?
Oh, for the words and the thoughts of
the seraph to expound such amazing truths as
these.
God should be praised because of the reversal
of certain consequences of sin by him in
his sovereign grace.
Now, the life of a sinner is a
life that is being destroyed, destroyed.
Sin is a great destroyer.
Some of your translations will put it like
this, who redeems your life from the pit.
Well now, all right, even if it's in
the pit, it's destroyed in the pit, and
the concept of destruction is there, whatever the
language here.
And I think the word destruction better describes
what the psalmist really said, who redeems your
life from destruction.
Sin destroys.
Sometimes it destroys the body.
At other times it destroys the mind.
It destroys the individual.
It destroys relationships.
It destroys the home.
It destroys society.
It'll destroy the whole world.
Sin is the destroyer of mankind.
Now, the God who pardons our sins and
heals all the diseases that come as a
consequence of sin, that God reverses some of
the consequences of sin.
And this is the first thing he does.
He redeems our life from the destruction that
is going on.
He rescues us from the process of being
destroyed.
You know, there is so much here, I
just don't know where to start and where
to stop.
There is a word that is used here,
for example.
Students of the Old Testament will be very
familiar with it.
It's the Hebrew word goel, and it's a
very special word, and it is sometimes in
the Old Testament related to the concept of
redemption.
In Jewish usage, if a man died, if
a Jewish person died, then the next of
kin was responsible for the family.
He was expected to, shall we say, as
in the case of the husband of Naomi,
Elimelech, who died, the next of kin would
be expected to come alongside the widow and
to care for the widow and for the
children, if there were any, and to try
and put the family standing on their feet
again.
The next of kin, the goel.
Adam's race fell.
The whole race.
And there was not a man, there was
not an next of kin to stand alongside
of us.
There was no one to come to our
rescue.
O loving wisdom of our God, when all
was sin and shame, a second Adam to
the fight and to the rescue came.
And who is this second Adam?
Not a son of man, but the Son
of God.
He became our next of kin to take
our burden, to redeem our loss, to put
us on our feet again, to reverse the
consequences of sin in us.
Doesn't this make you thank God?
It makes me, I tell you.
Isn't the flame getting warmer?
He breaks the power of canceled sin.
He sets the prisoner free.
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction.
Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender
mercies.
Now notice, as I said, some of the
translations said that sin takes you down to
the pit, down to the depths of destruction.
He who forgives all your sins takes you
up to the place of the crown.
Can you see the opposites here?
Sin takes you down to the grinding mill
of destruction and to the place of ultimate
destruction.
But the one who forgives all your sin
and heals all your diseases takes you up
and he crowns you.
In other words, the picture here is of
a prince being crowned.
He makes kings of poplars.
He takes us to the throne.
He lifts us up.
He elevates us.
He ennobles us.
And he crowns us.
And crowns us with what?
What is gold and what is silver compared
with this?
He crowneth us, says the psalmist, who crowns
you with his steadfast love and with his
mercy.
What a crown.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whom I'm sure many of
you have been acquainted with for years, he
has a word about this.
Now he was a remarkable man in many
respects.
He had a poetic turn of mind and
an imaginative turn of mind, too.
So there's a little bit of imagination behind
this, but may I quote it to you?
What a crown, says he.
Cleansing, healing, redeeming.
They're not enough for him with love like
his.
He must needs make them kings and crown
them.
And the crown must be far more precious
than if it were made of corruptible things
such as silver and gold.
It must be studded with gems of grace
and lined with a velvet of lovingkindness.
It is decked with a jewelry of mercy
and made soft for the head to wear
by the lining of tenderness.
Now, if ever there was a scholarly interpretation
of the Hebrew of this verse, there it
is.
For all the thoughts of that remarkable utterance
of Charles Haddon Spurgeon are there right in
what David said.
A crown, says he.
A crowned sinner.
Give praise to God tonight.
Who has brought his lovingkindness and his tender
mercy and crowned you, son of perdition, to
be a king and a priest with right
of access to his presence and the hope
of glory.
Can you withhold your praise?
The first log on the fire was the
reminder of the removal of the curse.
The second, the reminder of the reversal of
the consequences of sin, or of some of
them.
And the last, the last log tonight, he
speaks of the renewal of soul that follows.
Who satisfies you with good, or with good
things, as long as you live.
Or rather, who satisfies you with good as
long as you live, so that your youth
is being renewed just like the ego's.
Perhaps the emphasis in the first half of
the verse should be upon the sheer satisfaction
that is now assured.
You see, the point is this.
A man that has been saved from destruction
is a man who has been changed completely.
And his palate has been changed.
His taste has been changed.
This is one of the characteristics of forgiven
men.
God changes their tastes.
Their desires.
So that now they desire different things from
what once they did.
They no longer find satisfaction in the same
places and in the same kind of habits.
No, no.
They've been changed.
And the remarkable thing is this.
Though they've only begun to feast upon spiritual
things, they have a satisfaction.
Do you sing that in here?
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but other
waters failed.
Even as I stooped to drink, they fled
and mocked me as I wailed.
Now none but Christ can satisfy.
None other name for me.
There's love, there's life, there's lasting joy.
Lord Jesus founded me.
Oh, do you sing this?
Yes, you do.
I know.
It's in the hymn book.
Solid joys and lasting pleasures.
None but Zion's children know who satisfy it
by mouth.
The things of grace are so wrought and
so made and so prepared, they soothe the
palate of the pardoned, rescued, redeemed child of
God, and they bring with them a satisfaction.
And in consequence, a man is rejuvenated.
He's just like the eagle that has got
new wings.
And he's renewed in life.
Now, I know full well that there is
an old story about the eagle diving into
the depths of the sea, going down in
one mighty swoop and coming up as a
new creature.
Well, we don't need to think of that.
I think that the image is far simpler
than that.
God gives us such a satisfaction, such a
contentment, such a fortest of glory divine, that
in consequence, we are like new creatures.
We've begun to live again.
The age of it will become young.
Eternity has invaded the soul, and we've been
lifted from the dust and the ashes and
the grime of the pit.
Coverdale's translation is this, making you young and
lusty as an eagle, enabling you to climb
the heights, look into the face of the
sun as only an eagle can, and with
your mighty pinions, swish down circumstances and mount
over them.
One of the saddest poems I think I
ever, ever remember reading spoke of a bird
with a broken pinion.
I don't know whether you know it here.
I can't put my finger on it anyway,
and I don't want to, actually.
I've lost all track of it, but I
don't think I want to read it again
because it had one refrain recurring, the bird
with a broken pinion will never fly again.
And I met it in a Christian setting,
in a Christian context, in a Christian book,
but I can't tell you where.
And I was a little bit taken up
with it at the beginning, and then I
thought, decent poetry it may be, but it's
very, very indecent theology.
A bird with a broken pinion may never
fly again, but that's not true of sinners.
If that were true, where would Moses be?
If that were true, where would David be?
If that were true, where would Peter be?
If that were true, where would you and
I be?
Haven't we broken our pinions?
Haven't we fallen like a swallow on the
roadside?
But the wonder of redeeming grace is this.
He renews your life, so that thy youth
is renewed like the eagles.
He mends the broken pinions of men and
women that have lost the capacity to fly,
and he enables them to climb again.
That's grace, you see.
When I recognize this and see this for
myself, it makes me dance with joy.
But when I begin to experience it, the
fire burns.
It was some little time before I came
across the Atlantic here to live, I was
reading a Canadian periodical, a Christian periodical, published
here.
And in it, there was a little incident
retold.
I have the cutting before me here of
a wedding at which the writer had been.
It took place in New York.
The bride was the daughter of a millionaire,
and they were now at the wedding breakfast.
And when the father of the bride got
up, he made a very appropriate speech.
And he said, now I want to give
my gift to my daughter, the bride of
today.
And he took out of his pocket a
little key.
And everybody was bewildered.
And he thought he made a speech about
the key, which came to nothing very much,
but he said a lot.
And he said, I'm now going to ask
her to take the key.
She seemed very pleased, but no one else
couldn't understand it.
The fact of the matter was this.
He had had a home built for her
with all the gadgets and machinery and furniture
and what else can you put into a
home to make it happy and all right.
You can't make it happy by these things,
but to make it comfortable.
She knew about it.
He knew about it.
And it was at the wedding breakfast that
he handed over the key and said, Darling,
it's yours.
My friend, I hold in my hand tonight
a key to all these precious benefits of
divine grace and much, much else.
Will you take it from my hand?
For that key is Jesus Christ alone, who
forgiveth all thy iniquities, who healeth all thy
diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who
crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies,
who satisfies thy mouth with good things, so
that thy youth is renewed like the eagles
and you're raring to go.
And all these things emerge when Jesus Christ
is made yours and crowned as the Lord
and Savior of your life.
Will you take it?
And if you do, I promise you next
Harvest Thanksgiving will be far too distant for
you to wait.
You'll be back next week, if not here,
somewhere else.
And you'll have to join with the people
of God in the praise and the worship
of the Lamb that was slain and in
bringing glory and honor and in singing the
songs of Zion somewhere.
Bless the Lord.
Oh, my soul.
And the psalm ends with the same words.
Why?
Because the man means what he said.
My friends, where do we stand?
Do you see the windows well dressed?
I haven't told you the how.
But the goods are here to be discovered
by the man or the woman that comes
to God through Jesus Christ.
Don't just spy the window like the shopper
going around the streets at Christmas time looking
at this and examining that and saying, that's
wonderful, that's beautiful, that would be a grace,
a great present for grandma or grandpa or
somebody else.
Come in and receive.
Oh, come and receive tonight the benefits of
divine mercy that make you sing.
Let us pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we feel as if we
are but children in the kindergarten of the
school of our Lord in this matter of
praise.
And when we look at the example of
this psalmist who though he was living in
the distant days of Old Testament times yet
was so sure of thy grace and of
thy mercy that he could so sing and
he would so sing.
We who live this side of Calvary and
of the resurrection and of the ascension and
of the coming of the Spirit and of
the giving of the Bible and of the
emergence and continuance of the church.
Oh, Lord, forgive us, we pray thee, that
we are so blind.
We ask that thou wouldst feed the flame
in every heart where it is found in
any measure and so fill thou our lives.
Oh, Lord our God, in every part with
praise that our whole being and our days
may proclaim thy being and thy ways through
Jesus Christ thy Son.
Amen.