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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Psalm 103
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 inequity,
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 your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
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 towards 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.
For 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 overall.
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.
Hey everybody, welcome to Christ Community
Chapel.
My name is Joe,
I'm one of the pastors here,
and I'm glad you've come.
If you're seeing me on the big screens
because I'm out in the tent preaching
or I'm in the gym,
but I'm so glad you're here as well.
All right.
This is the fourth and final message
of our series More Than Religion.
And we're looking at Psalm 103.
The Psalms, for the most part,
are collection of prayers
about what we experienced during life.
If you are struggling with doubt
or fear or stress or anxiety or shame
or guilt or anything you are experiencing,
there's a Psalm for you.
This psalm is a little bit unique
and that it's not about anything specific.
It's really about a way to approach life.
Which means then, that it's a psalm
for everyone.
It's a Psalm for you,
and it's a Psalm for me right now.
You know, Pastor
Zach and I work hard at preaching.
We want to try to take
the truth of Scripture
and make it applicable
and beneficial to your life.
But we also know that the
the half life of a sermon
is probably pretty short, like by tomorrow
you'll remember maybe a couple stories
about next week it's gone.
And I'm not,
I'm okay with that,
because I really look at preaching,
like giving you spiritual nourishment.
Like, you may not remember what you ate 4
or 5 days ago,
but you would remember
if you hadn't eaten anything.
So Zach and I look at this like we're
trying to give some spiritual nourishment.
But if you want this to last longer,
there's a way,
and the way is when you wake up tomorrow.
If you will just read the first
five verses of Psalm 103, and then
you read it every day for the next week
until it kind of you begin to memorize it.
It can actually have the power
to change the way you experience life.
Here are the first five verses.
This is what it says.
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 his benefits.
Who pardons all your iniquities,
who heals all your disease,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you
with loving kindness and compassion,
who fills your life
with good things so that your youth
is renewed like the eagle.
I've been
doing that for the last three weeks or so,
and the reason that it has the power
to actually change the way you experience
life is the the number one problem
that any of us have in staying
close to God in relationship
is that we forget.
We forget you.
I said that the Psalms are mostly
a collection of prayers, and they are.
This one was written by King David,
and he's actually talking to himself.
He's reminding himself of what is true.
It's like he's he's driving an anchor
into the ground that will help him
if he goes for any storm
that's coming his way.
And what he's saying is,
I want to remember the truth.
There are three things.
These are my three points.
He says. Remember God's gifts.
Remember God's character.
Remember God's power.
Remember God's gifts.
God's character, God's power.
First, remember God's gifts.
This is what he says right off the bat.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Forget not all his benefits
who forgives all of your iniquity.
Thank.
Forgiveness was one of those things for
King David that was first and foremost.
And if you know the story of David,
you know that he was doing really well
and then started to make some mistakes.
And those mistakes led to him
committing adultery and then murder.
Okay.
Those are big.
If you take
the Ten Commandments and you pick two,
you do not want to break in your lifetime.
Those would be the two.
He does them both, and he is crushed
by the guilt and the shame.
And then he experienced experiences
forgiveness,
which is just remarkable.
But he still says, don't forget,
don't forget.
I think, how could you ever forget?
Like if I had a crushing debt,
like my mortgage
was just just killing me
and somebody came and paid off my house?
It seems like
every time I walk into my house,
I would, I would remember and
I just be going, oh, man, this is so good.
I'm dead for you.
This is unbelievable. What a gift, right?
But I know myself well enough
that I'd forget after time.
And I was trying to think,
why do I forget about forgiveness?
And maybe you're like me.
The reason I think I forget is that I've
never done anything really, really bad.
Like I haven't killed.
I haven't murdered anybody yet, you know?
But I
was thinking, if God were to make a tape,
like a highlight tape,
kind of of Joe Coffee at his worst,
like one of those political ads,
that's a negative political
ad where, you know,
at the end of like, 30s, you're going,
man, that guy is awful, right?
I don't know how long that tape would be.
I know this, that if that tape
went up on the big screens
right now, in ten minutes,
there'd be nobody in this room,
but you'd all be leaving and just going.
That that guy is awful.
I don't know why I ever listened to him
in the first place.
Forgiveness is God saying,
I take that tape
and I wipe it clean.
There's
something just remarkable about that.
Even if you feel like you've never done
anything really,
really bad, you have a tape like that.
And the first thing that David says
is, don't ever
forget the wonder of being forgiven.
Right?
Then he says this.
He goes on and he says, who crowns
you with steadfast love?
I think that the love of God
is something that, you know,
you'll be watching a sporting event.
You see somebody who has a sign.
John 316 you think, oh, I know that verse.
For God so loved the world.
Yeah. God loves me.
And I just want to slow you up
a little bit,
because the fact that God is
love is so huge.
If if you take the most powerful
being in the universe and you get to pick
the the central quality
of that most powerful person
being in the universe, you could not pick
a better thing than love.
Like, I was thinking about all the science
fiction movies
where aliens are invading our world.
They never come in love.
You know, it wouldn't be a very long
movie, but I think if you could choose
to have the basic quality
of God, you would choose love.
And that's what the Bible says he has.
If you have a single person in your life
whose central disposition to
you is love,
you want to be close to that person.
Like I have grandchildren
and they feel like that about my wife.
They call her Gigi, right?
They know that her disposition toward them
is just pure love.
They can feel it.
I was in the kids area a while ago
and one of my grandsons came up to me.
I picked him up my arms.
He goes, hey, Papa, we're going to
Jesus house.
You should come.
I was like,
I live there.
He didn't even know
what he was doing.
Was like a very basic kind of evangelism.
What he was saying is, listen,
being close to Gigi is the best.
You should get
yourself some of that. Papa,
can I tell you something?
If you're here
because somebody invited you.
That's why
they're saying I know that
God's basic disposition to you is love,
and to be close to him is the very best.
I just want you to get close to him.
You can get yourself
some of that through Jesus.
And that's the second thing.
Then the the third gift that he says,
he verse five says,
who satisfies you with good.
The version that I memorized says,
he fills your life with good things.
He filled.
Every good thing that you have ever
experienced is because God gave it to you.
Do you know that it's so easy to forget?
You know, when my daughter,
one of my daughters, was a teenager,
she was getting kind of uppity.
And I remember telling her at one time,
listen, everything you have,
it's not yours. It's mine.
Like the car you drive,
you think it's yours?
That's my car.
The phone you're looking at that
you're holding right now.
My phone. The clothes you wear.
Those are my clothes.
They just fit you right.
You don't have to.
I mean, you kind of figure out why
my grandkids prefer my wife.
Yeah.
Every good thing that you have ever
experienced
is from the hand of God.
That's just true.
You know, I was thinking, you know,
he says this forgives all your iniquity.
Who heals all your diseases?
I remember when I read that
for the first couple of times
I was thinking,
but what about the diseases?
He doesn't heal?
But then I turned it around and I thought,
you know, every single thing I have ever
my body has ever healed of
is only because God did it.
I played basketball in college.
My roommate was also on the team,
and I remember one time he popped his
he sprained his ankle. It was
it was a bad sprain.
If you've ever done that, you know,
they blow up big like big and purple.
And he was laying on the bed
and he couldn't get out of bed.
And I went to a Christian college.
And there was a guy on our floor
who was very much into prayer.
And so he asked Joel, do you want me
to come in and pray for your ankle?
And Joel said, sure.
So every night this guy would come in
and he would lay hands on Joel's ankle
and he would pray for his ankle
to get better.
And after about two and a half weeks,
it it got better.
And I remember we kind of laughed
because we said,
you know, a sprained ankle gets better
in about two and a half weeks,
you know, without prayer.
But I was wrong.
The only reason I sprained
ankle ever gets better
is that God makes it so.
You only heal your body.
Nothing heals itself.
If there's a designer.
He designed it to heal.
I was reading a book about the wonders
of the human body, and I read a chapter
about blood clotting,
and I'll just make this quick.
You know, you
a human body is a pressurized system.
That's why you have blood pressure, right?
We are like balloons walking around,
you know, a balloon.
If you have a tiny pinprick in a balloon,
it will it will bleed out of it
may take all night,
but in the morning it's done.
The only reason you don't bleed out,
you haven't bled out yet in your life
is because your blood clots,
which is a a wildly complex 14.
It's it's a 14 stage cascading system
that allows your blood clot.
I learned that in the book.
You are alive to if you live out today,
it's because God did it.
Every good gift
and it's so easy to forget.
So the first thing the psalmist says,
we're going to change
just the way you experience,
you're going to get close to God.
You want to stay close to God.
Remember God's gifts,
right?
Forgiveness, love, every good thing.
Then he says, Remember God's character.
It's what he says next,
the Lord works righteousness and justice
for all who are oppressed.
He may know in his ways to Moses, his acts
to the people of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow
to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
He mentions two things right there
if you caught it, he mentions
justice and mercy.
Those are like
if you take love and break it
apart,
it breaks up into justice and mercy.
If you know how water breaks up
into hydrogen and oxygen, you take love.
You break it up. It's justice. Mercy.
Justice is love. Spread out.
Mercy is what you have to have.
If you're going to love
an imperfect being.
And what the psalmist says, God has both
and he holds both.
But the hard thing is to hold them
both in the same hand.
You know,
there's a story in Exodus chapter 34
where Moses is up on the mountain
with God, and he asked God.
He says, God,
I want to see your full goodness.
I want to see all of you.
And God says, you can't see all of me.
That would melt your face.
So I will stick
you in the cleft of a rock,
and I'll go by you
and you'll see just a glimpse.
But then this is what he hears as God
goes by,
says the Lord descended in the cloud,
and stood with him there.
Proclaim the name of the Lord.
The Lord passed before him
and proclaimed the Lord,
the Lord, a God merciful and gracious.
There it is slow to anger, abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping
steadfast love for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin.
That's mercy.
Then he says this,
but who will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers
and the children,
and the children's children
to the third and fourth generation.
That's justice.
And the big question
is, which one do I get
if I have that that tape?
That's the very worst of Joe Coffee
do I fall into
he does not let the guilty go unpunished?
Or do I fall into the mercy
where he forgives iniquity?
So we're Christian.
This is where Christianity has
the only logical answer.
I think of any religion
because Christianity says you can.
The only way it can do both is you have to
have someone to stand in the middle.
Who is Jesus
who says, if the guilty must be punished,
I will be punished for the guilty.
Then the guilty will receive mercy.
It just makes so much sense that for me,
I need a God who has both.
I need a God who's just.
Absolutely you do to write.
Fairness is important to me.
Justice is important to me.
But I need a God of mercy,
and only Christianity gives me both
because of Jesus who stands in the middle
and says, I'll take the punishment
of the guilt that he deserves
so that he can receive mercy.
The psalmist says, don't forget
God's character.
And finally he says, don't forget
God's power.
I'm just going to give you two.
Verse 17.
It says, but the steadfast love of the
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.
You know, I got married when I was 21.
We just celebrated their 46th anniversary.
And a lot of you know that
because I gave a shout out to my wife
in the pre-service video
a couple weeks ago.
I don't know how many more anniversaries
I'm going to have,
but I know this there won't be enough,
right? It just won't be.
If I may have 50, 60, 70,
it's not going to be.
And I say that not because I'm a romantic.
Although my wife was here last service
and I said I was romantic,
it just wanted to get those points.
But I say that because we all realize
that, you know, that
deep down, to be loved
til death do us part is wonderful.
But it's not enough, right?
That's why there are so many popular songs
that have to do with Love
That Lasts forever.
I just find that fascinating.
I actually asked ChatGPT,
who knows everything I said,
how many popular, not religious songs?
How many popular songs
talk about everlasting love?
This is what it says.
It says there's no exact number,
which I was shocked by because ChatGPT
usually gives me an exact number, he says.
Music databases log hundreds
of thousands of tracks on this theme.
I asked for, for for ten years
of popular songs
that say everlasting love.
It said there are hundreds of thousands.
You know why?
There's a little verse
tucked away in in Ecclesiastes
that says, God has placed eternity
in the hearts of men.
You long for someone to love you
not just till you die, but forever.
And here the psalmist says,
you have a God who is so powerful
it can love you from everlasting
devil lasting.
There was a commercial years ago.
I don't know
if you're old enough to remember it.
It was for iced tea and it was it.
It like had the nest T plunge,
which was a man who would be staying
and be a hot day.
He would grab an iced tea,
he'd be standing at the edge of a pool
and he would take a sip.
And as he did,
he would fall back and just into the pool.
It was all refreshing.
You know, the best thing about dying
is going to be for me
is that the moment I die will be
plunged into the everlasting
love of a God who has loved me
since I was in my mother's womb,
and will never stop loving me.
Such is the power of God.
And then he says this.
He says,
the Lord has established his throne
in the heavens and his kingdom rules.
Overall,
I love that
that you know, when when Jesus was born
in Bethlehem, the angels announced,
Glory
to God in the highest and on earth peace.
Jesus taught us to pray,
pray thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
And then at the end of the New Testament
it says, someday every knee will bow
and every tongue will confess
that Jesus is the king.
And when that happens, there will be
what the Bible calls the Genesis,
which is a renewal of all things
in the world, will finally
be everything we wanted it to be.
It will be what it's supposed to be,
because it will be under the rule of God.
The power of God is from everlasting
to everlasting.
The love of God is from everlasting
to everlasting.
Because God is who.
Don't forget, don't forget.
Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and all that is within me.
Bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Forget not his benefits.
Who pardons all your inequities, heals
all your diseases, redeems
your life from the pit, who crowns you
with loving kindness and compassion,
who fills your life with good things
so that your youth is renewed.
Like the eagles.
You want to be close to God.
You want to be close to him.
Remember.
Remember his gifts.
Remember his character.
Remember his power.
There's
nothing better than being close to God.
Would you pray with me?
Father in heaven,
thank you for this Psalm.
Thanks for reminding us.
I need to be reminded all the time
of who you are, what you have done.
I pray that this day, tonight will be
a night that you will remind all of us.
I pray for those who are here,
who are just now starting to
to want to come
to your drawing them to you.
I pray that they will make that step,
because there is nothing better
than being close to the God whose
disposition toward us is one of love.
Thanks for your gifts, for your character,
for your power.
We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.