Before we turn to the book of the
Psalms, I'd like for you please to turn
to a passage in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, chapter 4, chapter 5, I should say,
Ephesians chapter 5.
Whenever I have a microphone like this before
me, I generally count on it, but if
you don't hear me, I'll try to raise
my voice a little higher.
Is everybody here now?
Thank you.
The fifth chapter of Ephesians, in verse 18,
Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess,
but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody in your heart to
the Lord, giving thanks always for all things
unto God and the Father, in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now this morning, I want to take a
psalm which I believe fulfills the very thing
that we're exhorted to do here.
And so we'll turn please to Psalm 103.
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, and here we find the psalmist
doing exactly that.
Because you'll notice here in Psalm 103, he
says, Bless the Lord, O my soul.
He's talking to himself, he's speaking to himself
in this psalm.
And all that is within me, bless his
holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine
iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth
thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with
loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfyeth thy
mouth, or rather, thine old age with good
things, so that thy youth is renewed like
the eagle's.
This lovely psalm divides up into four parts,
and we've just read the first of these
four parts.
There is something about this book of the
psalms which I'd like to mention before we
go into meditation itself, and that is the
fact that the book of the psalms is
divided up into five sections.
And these five sections are clearly indicated because
at the close of each one of them,
we have a doxology.
I know some people think that it was
Dr. Skopje that made this division, because that's
the only place they've ever noticed them.
But the fact of the matter is that
the Holy Spirit made these divisions for us.
And if you look carefully, you'll find at
the close of Psalm 41, there is a
doxology.
Psalm 72, Psalm 89, and again Psalm 106,
and then of course the closing psalm is
in itself a great doxology.
And we believe that these five books, these
five sections answer to the first five books
in the Bible.
In other words, this is referred to sometimes
as the Pentateuchal structure of the psalms, that
word Pentateuchal being taken from the name which
is usually assigned to the first five books
of the Bible, called the Pentateuch.
And, in a sense, these sections resemble the
first five books of the Bible.
In those first 41 psalms, we get things
that answer quite nicely to the book of
Genesis.
And certainly in the second book, that which
answers to the book of Exodus.
The third section, again, answering to the book
of Viticus.
The psalm that we're going to look at
this morning is found in the fourth section,
which answers to the book of Numbers.
Now, if one reads the book of Numbers,
he may painfully aware of the fact that
God's people do not always praise.
There seems to be a great deal of
murmuring, complaining, and so on.
But here is the psalm which comes in
the fourth book, and there's not one word
of complaint in it.
There's not even a word of prayer in
it.
This is a psalm which is praised from
start to finish.
And this expression with which the psalm opens
up, "'Bless the Lord' is simply a way
of saying, "'Worship the Lord, O my soul.'"
And this tells us immediately where true worship
has to come from.
It has to come from within.
Worship is not something that we make up
in our brains, but it's the overflow of
a heart, as it has been defined, the
overflow of a heart that has no request
to make.
That's real worship.
And we're going to see the reasons for
this worship here.
Very briefly, we're going to call attention to
at least five great reasons to make the
soul sing like this, making melody in our
hearts to the Lord for five great benefits
that he has bestowed upon us.
And actually, you'll notice that the first benefit
is where we all began when we got
to know him as our personal Lord and
Savior, for it says here in verse 3,
"'Who forgiveth all thine iniquities.'" And you'll notice
that in this word, iniquity, you have perhaps
the strongest word in the language for our
sins.
I know sometimes we try to tone this
down, as though the sins which we commit
were nothing more than mistakes.
I remember when I was on my way
to the mission field for the first time,
early or late in 1911, early 1912, before
the steamer arrived in Central America.
And I had been witnessing on the ship,
and a lady came to me.
She said, I understand you're going to the
mission field.
I said, yes.
She said, oh, I'm so interested.
I said, thank you.
I hope you'll pray for us.
She said, you know, my father was a
minister.
I said, that's nice.
She said, but Father had some rather interesting
definitions of biblical terms, and I began to
get suspicious.
I wondered what this was going to come
to.
She said, you know, Father never mentioned the
term sin in his sermons.
He would always just refer to them as
errors or mistakes.
And she said, I'd rather like that.
It didn't hurt so much.
I said, well, now let's see.
If that's a good translation, it ought to
fit in some of the text in which
we find the word sins.
So I quoted a few of the well
-known texts in the New Testament, that Christ
died for our mistakes, according to the Scriptures.
She said, well, that doesn't really sound quite
complete.
I said, no, lady, it doesn't.
It doesn't.
If Christ died only for my mistakes, God
help me for the rest.
You see, the word of God is very
plain, outspoken, but it doesn't go any further
than at least, and this word iniquity is
a strong word, but it hits the nail
right on the head.
It means out of equity.
The things that you know are not right,
things that you do in spite of the
fact that you know that they're wrong.
See, that's an iniquity.
And here the psalmist is using the strong
word in the language when he wants to
talk about God's wonderful, forgiving grace.
And notice that he doesn't leave out anything.
He says, who forgives all my iniquities.
And I take it that this enables me,
allows me to say, all my iniquities, past,
present, yes, and even future.
All of them.
I thank God that when the Lord Jesus
Christ died on the cross, he died for
all of my sins, all of my iniquities.
It made a complete job of it.
When he said, it is finished, that meant
exactly what he said.
Is there a soul in the house this
morning, and I trust you'll forgive an old
man for coming back again and again to
this, but I have learned this, that even
in an audience like this, where we can
almost assume that we have 100% Christians,
occasionally, like last year here in the morning
meeting for the remembrance of our Lord, we
had someone present who, until that moment, had
never yet confessed the Lord Jesus Christ, his
personal Savior.
It may be that you're here this morning,
my friend, a child of Christian parents, maybe
a parent yourself with a Christian wife or
husband, as the case may be.
I wonder if the Holy Spirit of God
would speak to you this morning and ask
you, have you had this blessing?
Could you praise the Lord for this benefit,
who forgiveth all my iniquities?
And then again, what do we mean by
the word forgive?
What does this word mean?
Does this simply mean that God has over
let us forget it?
Oh no, that isn't what it means.
The word forgive, in both the original languages
of the scripture, means to take away and
to put somewhere else.
And this is exactly what the Lord has
done with your sins and mine.
He laid on Him the iniquity of us
all.
Yes, that's the doctrine of substitution, as we
sometimes say.
He suffered what I deserve, and this is
the way God forgives.
No wonder the psalmist perched forth into praise
and said, Bless the Lord, O my soul,
who forgiveth all thy iniquities.
Blessing number one.
Sometimes I'm asked by well-meaning Christians, Brother,
have you had your second blessing?
I feel like saying, have you had your
first?
Do you know what it means to have
all your sins forgiven?
To have a clear slate for as far
as God is concerned, the precious blood of
Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleansing from all sins.
But now we come to benefit number two
here.
He says in the end of verse three,
Who healeth all my diseases.
Somebody says, now, I go along with you
on that first one, but I don't know
that I could on this second, because I
know that a good many fine Christian people
are still suffering a whole lot.
Are you telling me?
Friends, I know something about this from experience.
The dear one who has gone home to
glory from my home for the last twenty
-three years of her life suffered, suffered with
an incurable disease.
The doctors said when they discovered it that
she wouldn't live but two years, but she
lived twenty-three years.
And when I faced the doctor with it,
he said, well, there's only one way to
explain it.
She had the will to live.
But she suffered just the same.
And very often the question was raised, why,
oh why?
I believe I have some personal answers to
that question which I shall not disclose.
I believe God was speaking to me through
these very things.
But does this scripture speak of that kind
of disease?
Let us see, let us see the opening
of this psalm again.
The psalmist is not addressing his body, he's
addressing his soul.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and the
soul's iniquities, who forgiveth all thy and the
soul's iniquities, who healeth all thy but soul's
diseases.
Oh, you say, I didn't know the soul
had diseases.
Well, you sometimes think about them, don't you?
There's not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
no, not one, none like him could heal
all our soul's disease.
I dare say when I mention a few
of the symptoms, you'll recognize it.
You know, friends, when you and I lose
our desire to pray, we lose our desire
to read the Word of God, we lose
our desire to fellowship with the people of
God, we're sick, something's wrong.
These are symptoms that we need to watch,
and the moment we discover them, let's go
to him of whom it is said in
this psalm, who healeth all thy, that is,
the soul's diseases.
You see, grammatically this is so.
You know, you and I learned when we
went to school that pronouns were nouns that
stand for another noun, and so the pronoun
thine stands for another noun, and that noun
is found earlier in this psalm.
That noun is the word soul, who healeth
all thy, the soul's diseases.
And I might be speaking to some here
this morning who perhaps came to this conference
up here at Bristol in just that state
of soul.
Perhaps for some time back now, you haven't
found you had a real desire to pray,
a real desire to read the Word of
God, a real desire to be found in
your place, Lord's Day morning, for the remembrance
of the Lord.
That's a bad symptom.
But the moment you discover it, as I
said a little while ago, let's go right
to him who can heal all our soul's
diseases.
Let's get down in his holy presence.
I'm so glad that I was brought up
in a home where Saturday night was still
observed as a sort of a preparatory time
for the Lord's Day.
In fact, my dear father, it was so
strict that no shoes were shined Sunday morning.
That had to be done Saturday night so
that when you put your shined shoes on
to go to the meeting on Sunday morning,
there was no work to be done there.
Nothing unnecessary was done on the Lord's Day.
And that wasn't because my father was a
legalist.
He wasn't.
But he observed rigidly the Lord's Day.
We were brought up to this.
And that was a sort of a preparatory
service.
And then in my early boyhood days, observing
the way the Lord's Supper was served and
observed in the communion where I was attending
at that time as a boy in the
Presbyterian Church, they had a preparatory service, getting
ready for this service on the Lord's Day.
It's a wonderful thing.
I would suggest it to you, my dear
friend, if you have not done so, to
sit aside some time Saturday evening to really
get ready for the remembrance of the Lord
on the Lord's Day morning.
I found this a wonderful experience.
It enables one to get things cleared out
of his life and his memory and his
conscience on the Saturday night.
To come with a mind that is perfectly
free to commune with the Lord and with
his people on the Lord's Day morning.
Yes, he heals all our soul disease.
We learn in Psalm 107 how he does
this.
Just keep your bookmark here in Psalm 103
and turn over for a moment to Psalm
107.
And here you will see how he does
this.
He says here in verse 20, Psalm 107,
verse 20, he sent his word and healed
them.
This is the way of the Lord.
This is his medicine for healing us.
And so we find that not only do
we come into the presence of the Lord
to confess, to own up to all of
these things which have disturbed our communion, but
to read his word because this is the
medicine that heals me and prepares me for
the next thing.
So coming back now to Psalm 103, let's
look at benefit number three.
We find this in verse four, who redeems
us by life from destruction.
Just before the meeting this morning, Fr.
Phillips and I were having a little bit
of a conversation over here, and I referred
to a young Scottish lad whom we had
at the seminary in Dallas when I was
a teacher there years ago.
Dr. Chaffer, who founded the seminary, would get
some of us together, largely morning at seven
o'clock, for the remembrance of the Lord.
Fr.
Ironfield had a wonderful influence in those early
days, and as a result we were using
a little hymn book called the Little Flock
Hymn Book, and we had no musical instruments.
Dr. Chaffer was a good musician, but he
always, as we say here in the Southland,
he hearted the tune, and we all sang
a cappella.
Occasionally this Scottish lad would get up, and
in his baroque he would say, Reverend, let
me read you the paraphrase.
And he'd read us a paraphrase in Psalms,
and they were wonderful.
Well, I want to give you a homemade
paraphrase of this statement here in verse four.
Instead of reading, who redeems us by life
from destruction, let's put it this way, who
saves your life from going to waste.
You know, there are a lot of people
whose souls are saved and whose lives are
lost.
Oh, I've stood by so many bedsides, and
I suppose I've seen more people die than
most of you, because for ten years I
was honorary chaplain of a sanitarium in the
city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it seems
scarcely a week, and sometimes more than once
a week, we are called to sit by
the bedsides of those who are passing from
this life into the next.
It's interesting to hear some of the things
they said in those last moments, and I
can't tell you how many of them said
something like this, Oh, brother, if I only
had it to do over again.
How I wish now I had lived the
kind of a life that I would like
to have lived right up to now.
Friend, don't let that be your experience.
You don't have to come to the end
of life like that.
You can come to the end of life
like the apostle Paul did when he said,
I have bought a good life.
I've finished my course.
I've kept the faith.
Yes, he was sure of it, and you
can be just as sure of it, but
let me just point out to you that
this requires some surrender on your part.
Who regimeth thy life?
He buys it back and saves it from
going to waste, and he tells you and
me in the epistle of Romans how it
is done.
In the twelfth chapter of Romans we read,
and how sweetly the apostle puts it, he
doesn't say, I command you, he doesn't say
it.
He says, I beseech you by the mercies
or the compassions of God that you present
your body, present your body, an acceptable sacrifice,
a holy sacrifice to the Lord, your body
which is your intelligent or reasonable service.
God wants you to do that.
This is something which you do in addition
to putting your faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ as your Savior.
You surrender this to him.
I remember when that verse first struck me.
I went to a young fellow who was
baptized the same night I was, received into
fellowship, the same day I was received into
fellowship.
And I said to him, Sam, I said,
have you ever read Romans 12 and 1?
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies, a
sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God, which is your
reasonable or intelligent service.
Yes, and I've read it a lot of
times.
I said, have you ever done it?
He said, no, I don't think I have.
I said, do you know how it's done?
No, he said, I don't think I do.
I went to another fellow who likewise was
baptized in that same group that night.
I said, Arch, have you ever read Romans
12 and 1?
Yep.
I said, have you ever done it?
No, he said, I don't think I have.
I said, do you know how it's done?
No, he said, I don't think I do.
He said, you're no help.
So I went to his father, dear old
brother Archibald McCallum.
I said, Mr. McCallum, I've been reading in
Romans 12, 1 and 2 that I'm to
present my body as sacrifice to the Lord.
I said, will you tell me how this
is done?
Well, he said, I don't know that there's
any particular way in which it is done,
but I think I know a way in
which it is done.
And I was all ears listening.
He said, I would suggest to you that
you go to your room with your Bible,
close the door, lock it if necessary, so
you won't be interrupted.
Open your Bible to that verse, get down
on your knees, put your finger on it
and say to the Lord, Lord Jesus, I'd
like to do this.
I was a teenager, 17 when that happened.
I had been saved for two years.
And I thought, my, this is simple.
And I did exactly as Mr. McCallum told
me.
But you know what?
When I put my finger on that text
and said to the Lord, Lord, I'd like
to do this, a cold sweat came out
on me.
For I began to realize that in the
presentation of my body, this meant my brain,
that with which I think and sometimes think
things that I wish I could forget.
These eyes with which I looked at things
which I wish I had never seen.
These ears that took in things which I
wish I'd never heard.
This tongue which says things which I wish
I'd never said.
These hands which do things that I wish
I'd never done.
And these feet that took me to places
I wish I'd never gone.
Oh, a cold sweat came out on me
as I went into this transaction with the
Lord.
I was almost tempted to die, but I
realized this was a crucial time in my
life.
And how I asked the Lord that I
might be able to carry this through, realizing
that in my own strength I'd never be
able to do it.
But oh, how wonderful to have the privilege
of presenting this body as sacrifice, holy, acceptable
unto God, which is your reasonable or intelligent
service.
My dear friends, many years have passed since
then.
More than sixty years have passed since that
wonderful transaction that day in my little room.
I have never regretted it.
I've had many times to confess that I
haven't regretted it, but I've never regretted it.
Oh, who could regret giving to Him who
gave Himself for us to give to Him
His Spirit and Soul and Body, who redeemed
us by life from destruction, who saved us
from going to waste.
My dear friends, it is my earnest hope
that the Lord carries and I have to
pass through the article of death that so
many of my forebears have, that I, too,
will be able to say with the Apostle
Paul, I've had a good time.
I've finished, of course.
I've kept the faith.
Oh, let's come to a triumphant end like
this.
And then this brings us to blessing number
four, which we have right here in this
fourth verse, the latter part of the verse,
who crown Him with faith, with loving kindness
and tender mercy.
And notice how all of these verse are
in the present tense.
Who forgive us, present tense.
Heal us, present tense.
Redeem us, present tense.
Crown us, present tense.
This isn't something that waits until you get
over yonder.
This is something you wear now.
It's a kind of a crown that doesn't
weigh heavy on your head.
A crown of tender mercy.
Look at that.
Isn't it lovely?
Loving kindness and tender mercy.
You say, well, I don't know that I've
ever seen anybody wear a crown like that.
Well, maybe I dare to use my beloved
mother as an example here.
Mother was a mother of ten children.
Lots to do.
Not able to afford servants in the home.
A lot of work to be done.
Dressed to be baked.
Sewed to be washed, ironed, and mended, and
all the chores that go with it.
Yet, time to help the neighbors.
One day news came to us that a
little one was expected next door, and the
doctor's buggy had broken down.
We said, Mother, please come over.
And see Mother gathering a few things together
in a little bag and going over there
and helping to bring this little one into
the world.
And as she came back, my dear brother
Henry, up to whom I made reference last
night, we were watching her as she came
back from this home, having performed this errand
of mercy, and Henry said to me, Carl,
isn't Mama Queen?
And she was.
She was a queen wearing a crown as
we have described here, loving kindness and tender
mercy.
Don't you covet to wear a crown like
that?
This kind of a crown, as I said
before, doesn't weigh heavy on your head.
You're never going to get a headache from
wearing this one.
And I'll tell you this too, you won't
get a swell head from wearing this one.
This is the kind of a crown which,
I pray God, may adorn the heads of
most of us, if not all of us.
And then this brings me to the final
thing here, and that is satisfaction, verse 5.
This seems to be the climax of this
section here, who's satisfied.
And you'll notice that I altered the reading
to conform to other translations.
Mr. Darby tells us in his footnote that
it could be either Old Age or Mouth
or even another translation.
It's one of those words that's very versatile
in the original.
So we're going to use the Old Age
this morning, who satisfied by an old age
with good things.
You know, when I was a boy, I
heard this statement that the devil has no
happy old men.
And I've been looking at old men ever
since.
And I know that statement is absolutely true.
The devil has no happy old men.
But the Lord does.
It's a wonderful thing to grow old in
the grace of God and to have a
joy which increases with the days.
Friends, if there's one text I love in
the Bible, it's the one which says in
Philippians 4, Rejoice in the Lord, and again
I say rejoice, for the joy of the
Lord is your strength.
This is the way we give evidence of
what he means to us, that he really
satisfies us.
Really satisfies us.
Satisfies to the point where the things of
time and sense have little or no appeal.
You don't need them.
I've been asked very frequently, Why don't you
this?
Why don't you that?
I remember we moved into a home some
years ago in Dallas, and the neighbor lady
came over, the moving men were moving the
stuff in, and said to my wife, she
said, Y'all don't have your stove set
up?
Now come on over to my house, she
said, and get your lunch ready.
In fact, she said, I've got stuff in
the refrigerator.
Please come on in.
Real Southern hospitality, you know what I mean?
And so we accepted it and went in,
and I noticed after a while she got
into conversation with Mrs. Armerding, and she said,
Did y'all play bridge?
And Simon said, No.
Did y'all go to the theater?
And Mrs. Armerding said, No.
Did y'all play card?
And Mrs. Armerding said, No.
Did you play golf?
No.
What do y'all do to have a
good time?
And then my wife had to tell us
that we found our joy in a different
way.
She said, You know, we go down to
a little meeting down here on Fitzgerald, where
a group of Christians meet to remember the
Lord and the Lord's demands, where they meet
for the preaching of the gospel Sunday night,
and where they meet for prayer and Bible
study.
And this woman said to me, Please tell
her, you need to tell me, did you
get pleasure out of that?
My wife, I was listening to the conversation,
she said, Not only did we get pleasure
out of it, she said, it's the real
pleasure.
The real pleasure.
Oh, the satisfaction of being with the Lord's
people and enjoying the Lord.
So now, we're going to take a minute
or two more this morning.
I know the time is up.
But I would like to apply a few
measurements to this.
And these measurements are given us right in
this psalm itself.
I was trained to be an engineer.
I wasn't trained to be a preacher.
My profession was to have been mechanical engineering.
And so I'm still in the habit of
making measurements.
So I come into a room like this,
I wonder how wide it is, and how
long it is, and how high the ceiling
is, and whether this beam above me is
going to break down on me.
Verse 10, Will you please?
He has not dealt with us after or
according to our sins, nor rewarded us according
to our iniquities, for as the heaven is
high above the earth.
There's a measurement for you.
How high is that?
Our astronauts have been going up.
Yes, they've been right going up into the
arms of stratosphere.
Way up there they've been going.
They still haven't reached it.
As high as the heaven is above the
earth so great is His mercy toward them
that fear Him.
What a measurement that is, isn't it?
There's only one word that fits this, and
what is it?
It's the word infinity.
As high as the heaven is above the
earth.
I remember when they were planning that big
telescope at Palomar, in my student days, and
I remember saying to my professor of chemistry,
I said, Dr. Clark, I said, what do
you think they'll discover when they get that
big telescope in place down at Palomar?
He looked at me with a very sleeping
in his eyes.
He said, they'll discover how little they know.
How high is it?
Nobody can tell.
This is infinite.
But then there's another measurement given to us
in verse 12.
For as far as the east is from
the west, so far has been removed our
transgression from it.
How far is that?
Well, you say, that can be measured.
Can it?
If it had said from north to south,
you might be right, because there is a
place in this old globe where you couldn't
go any further north, and there's a place
in this old globe where you couldn't go
any further south.
But if you're traveling from east to west
or west to east, you can keep on
going even though you reach the same point,
you still go on.
Again, it's infinite, isn't it?
And here we have two lines of measurement.
One is perpendicular, the other is horizontal, and
you put the two of them together and
what do you have?
You have a cross.
This is the measurement of all these blessings
we've been talking about.
This is the measurement, measured by that darkness,
measured by those suffering because he endured on
that cross.
Oh, how deep God's love must be.
Then one more measurement, and this is found
in the 17th verse.
This is the time measurement.
You know, the philosophers are very fond of
talking about the space-time continuum.
Well, here's the time measurement in verse 17.
The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting
to everlasting.
So you see, that wherever you apply these
measurements, you have them in infinity.
There they are.
And in whom do we find all these?
We find them in one blessed person in
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge.
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, beloved friends, I trust that having looked
again at this wonderful inventory of our blessings,
our benefits, that we shall go away from
this conference not any richer than we came,
but more aware of the riches which are
ours in Christ Jesus.
Who, though he was rich, that for our
sakes he became poor, that we, through his
poverty, might be rich.
I'm satisfied that Fanny Crosby must have been
thinking about this psalm when she wrote this
lovely hymn number six in our hymnal.
She said, Praise him, praise him, Jesus our
blessed redeemer.
Sing o'er earth his wonderful love proclaim.
Hail him, hail him, highest archangels in glory.
Strength and honor give to his holy name.