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[0:00] Well, let's open to Psalm 103. We're studying Richard Phillips' book on the Psalms, Walking with God, Learning Discipleship in the Psalms.

[0:11] ! If praise is the happy business of heaven, then we'd better start practicing even now. We're going to be doing a lot of it for all eternity.

[0:25] And as I studied this psalm, I realized I don't praise my God nearly enough. I need some help here. And how kind of God to have put this psalm in the Scriptures for me.

[0:41] A psalm on how to praise the Lord. Now, in teaching through Psalm 5 a couple weeks ago, I apologize, we never even read through the psalm.

[0:54] So I'm going to be sure that we at least read the entire psalm. So let us read Psalm 103. How to praise the Lord.

[1:05] Praise the Lord. It's a psalm of David. Praise the Lord, O my soul. All my inmost being, praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul.

[1:17] And forget not all His benefits. Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.

[1:32] Who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

[1:44] He made known His ways to Moses. His deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding in love.

[1:57] He will not always accuse. Nor will He harbor His anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. Or repay us according to our iniquities.

[2:09] For as high as the heavens are above the earth. So great is His love for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west.

[2:21] So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children. So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

[2:33] For He knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass.

[2:44] He flourishes like a flower of the field. The wind blows over it and it is gone. And its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting.

[2:57] The Lord's love is with those who fear Him. And His righteousness with their children's children. With those who keep His covenant. And remember to obey His precepts.

[3:11] The Lord has established His throne in heaven. And His kingdom rules over all. Praise the Lord, you His angels. You mighty ones who do His bidding.

[3:23] Who obey His word. Praise the Lord, all His heavenly hosts. You His servants who do His will. Praise the Lord, all His works. Everywhere in His dominion.

[3:36] Praise the Lord, O my soul. Now this psalm starts and ends with the same refrain. Praise the Lord, O my soul.

[3:48] Many psalms start or end with praise the Lord. But this one is a bit different. It's not just praise the Lord. But praise the Lord, O my soul.

[4:02] Now what is David doing here? When he says, praise the Lord, O my soul. What's he doing? He's stirring himself up to praise the Lord.

[4:14] He's stirring himself up to praise the Lord. He's talking to himself, isn't he? And why? In order that he might stir himself up to praise the Lord. You come early to the orchestra concert.

[4:26] And you hear a horrific sound. Everyone's playing different notes on their violins and cellos and dissonance. What are they doing?

[4:39] They're warming up. They're tuning their instruments. It's been some time since they've played them. The strings have gone loose. They're tightening them up. They're getting ready to play.

[4:50] So that when the conductor lifts his baton, all will be in tune and ready to make harmony together. Well, David is being honest enough with us to let us know that he didn't always walk around in a praising mood.

[5:06] Do you? Do you always walk around just ready at the tip of a moment to praise the Lord? David says, no, that's not me. Wish it was.

[5:17] What is and what ought to be are two different things. There are times when he needed to stir himself up to praise the Lord. To get his heart in tune with God and with spiritual realities.

[5:31] And so he needs to take himself in hand. He says, self, get busy and start praising the Lord. Now he's dead in earnest about this, isn't he?

[5:45] Because he repeats it three times in a row. He charges himself to praise the Lord in verses one and two. And notice he's not just interested in outward praise, isn't he?

[5:56] Is he? He's not content with a praising lip, a praising tongue. He wants a praising heart. He wants a praising soul. All my inmost being.

[6:09] All that is within me. Wake up and praise the Lord. You know, it is very possible, as Isaiah and our Lord himself quotes Isaiah, it's very possible to draw near to God with our mouths, even while our hearts are a thousand miles off.

[6:29] Our hearts are far from him. David knows this, and he won't let his soul rest with mere outward forms. He wants everything within him to praise the Lord. Recently, a first-time visitor to our church said it's the first time that he's actually seen people worshiping God in a worship service.

[6:48] Now, I don't know what exactly he observed, but he sensed that more than formalities were going on here.

[6:59] May God save us from that. We have a proneness in it, in every one of our hearts, just to come and to worship with the lip and with the mouth. But David is our example here. We need to stir ourselves up.

[7:11] More than lip, John. More than heart. Or more than mouth. All my inmost being. Well, here's how we do that. We get our soul prepared to praise.

[7:24] We give some time to tuning it. So this whole psalm becomes a wonderful lesson to us in how to prepare for worship. Whether you do it as you wake up in the morning and you get ready to come, as you sit here for a few moments before the service begins.

[7:40] Here's a psalm to get us ready to praise the Lord in song and in prayer and in the hearing of his word. So we get to listen in to David tuning his heart.

[7:50] He's with his instrument, you see. And he's tuning it up and we hear him say to himself three times, praise the Lord, oh my soul. Now Phillips draws out from this psalm three components to a praising heart.

[8:03] And this is three things that David is wanting to stir up and get right in his heart that he might be ready to praise. Gratitude to God for all of his benefits. Love to God for all of his love to him.

[8:16] And awe before God for his greatness and glory. And so if you would get a well-tuned heart ready for praise, you need to get all three of those. Gratitude, love, and awe in your heart.

[8:28] That's what this psalm teaches us. He starts with gratitude to God for all of his benefits. Gratitude is a powerful motivation for praising God.

[8:39] And David wants his heart filled with gratitude. Well, how does he do it? How does David proceed? How would David find his heart swelling with gratitude to God?

[8:51] What's his method? Memory. Okay. And what's he remembering? His blessings from the past.

[9:05] Good. His benefits, isn't he? He recounts the many reasons that he ought to praise the Lord. And he charges his soul, doesn't he?

[9:17] Forget not. Forget not. Forget not. And in doing so, he's revealing his own tendency to forget them. He must be told not to forget.

[9:29] Now, Derek Kidner says that more often, there are other things behind our forgetting than just absent-mindedness that cause us to forget the benefits of the Lord.

[9:45] It's said of Hezekiah, he did not make return according to the benefit done him, for his heart was proud. When our hearts are proud, we just expect these things, don't we?

[9:56] And so Hezekiah had a proud heart, and so he didn't make a return to God for the benefit that was done him. No, a proud heart will forget benefits.

[10:11] But a heart that knows we deserve nothing but wrath from this God will take every one of his benefits as a precious mercy. This God has been good to me.

[10:23] So remember, don't forget. Now, that's an exercise of the mind, as Tom has reminded us. An exercise of the mind.

[10:34] Some people say that, you know, the thing that gets in the way of heart religion, they're all for heart religion, they say the thing that gets in the way of heart religion is head religion. As if the way to truly worship God from the heart is to put your mind in neutral and just be carried off with your emotions.

[10:53] And worship services can be designed to manipulate the emotions with music and lights and other things. And the mind can be completely switched off, but oh, they feel so close to God.

[11:09] David couldn't disagree more. Listen to Philip's commenting. Psalm 103 demonstrates clearly just how much the heart depends upon the mind.

[11:21] It is the light of God's truth shining from his instructed mind that warms David's otherwise reluctant heart. Here we see David reasoning with his heart.

[11:31] He's preaching a sermon to his own soul, which is something we frequently have cause to do. He reminds himself of truths that he expects will cause his heart to rise in warm and fervent praise to God.

[11:46] Derrick Kidner adds, David rouses himself to shake off apathy, using his mind and memory to kindle his emotions. So here we have the divine order. Not set the mind on neutral or check it at the door as you come to worship, but use your mind to stir your emotion, to say to your soul, your inmost being, here's the reason you ought to praise the Lord, my desires, my will, my affections, and lay out the reasons.

[12:19] There's a lesson here then, that only those, or to remember that we must be prepared to think if we would come to praise the Lord.

[12:34] Look, soul, what God has done for you. Notice now he goes through his benefits. What's the very first benefit David mentions?

[12:48] Sins what? Sins forgiven. Who forgives all your sins? There's so many benefits to recount, isn't there? Sometimes we're just boggled when we come to praise the Lord.

[13:00] So many things. Our health, our families, our houses, our jobs, church building, freedoms. It's significant where David starts.

[13:15] Forgiveness of sins. Because everything pales in comparison to this blessing. Without the forgiveness of sins, what worth would it be to gain the whole world? If you're going to lose your own soul.

[13:29] So in remembering sins forgiven, we think of the cost. What did it take to forgive my sins? And we go to Calvary, and we see there the awful price that was paid by the Son of God to forgive us our sins.

[13:44] And it's as we see the enormity of the price, we see the enormity of our guilt, and our shame, that we then have a sense of gratitude to God for the forgiveness of sins.

[13:58] It's guilt, grace, gratitude. If you're not willing to face your guilt and your sins, you'll never know the wonder of His grace. And you'll never know the wonder of being stirred with gratitude to praise the Lord.

[14:12] The lesson is only those who remember their sins will really praise the Lord with thanksgiving as they ought. Regular confession of sin, you see, is part of getting the heart well-tuned with gratitude.

[14:30] And He heals all your diseases. Now, all the way through here, we have a tension going on. Are these physical blessings, or are they spiritual?

[14:44] And I'm not sure myself. I would say probably both. But surely they're more than just the physical blessings. Even as the very first one shows us, who forgives all our sins, there's a spiritual blessing that's ours in Christ.

[15:03] Who heals all your diseases. We've been sick. We've been diseased. And God has touched us and healed us. Why is it that every one of our sicknesses does not lead to death?

[15:14] He heals all of our diseases. You say, No, I went to the doctor. He gave me some penicillin. No, He heals all of our diseases. And one day, that will be true in its fullest sense, won't it?

[15:27] When He raises us from the dead, and there will be no more disease, and no more death, and no more sickness. He, and we will say, Praise the Lord, O my soul. He heals all your diseases.

[15:41] But I think David is probably referring here, perhaps more so, to spiritual healing. Because it's a line right after who forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases.

[15:58] Sin is, as we saw last week, I believe it was, from Psalm 51, is not only a transgression to be forgiven, it's also an iniquity, an inward corruption that needs to be healed.

[16:11] How many times in the Gospels do we see people coming to Jesus to be healed? Well, His healings were signs of mercy and power, but they were also demonstrations of a spiritual reality.

[16:23] Jesus presents Himself as the light of the world. He takes away darkness, and then He heals a man born blind. You see, He's saying, in the physical healing, I'm showing you something that is true in the spiritual realm.

[16:38] You're all born blind. You can't see. You don't understand God aright. You don't understand yourself, your sin, the world. Oh, but in the light that I give, you see all things clearly.

[16:50] And whoever comes to me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so, David is here thanking the Lord for healing all his inward corruptions, those spiritual diseases, that leprosy of the soul, which is sin.

[17:12] Rock of Ages recognizes both of these aspects of sin. And be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me from its guilt. There is forgiveness.

[17:22] And power. There is the healing. Who forgives all your sins. Who heals all your diseases. The next benefit.

[17:34] Who redeems your life from the pit. Again, here we're torn. What's he referring to? There were many times that David was redeemed from death. The pit of death.

[17:44] He was that close to death. And the Lord redeemed him. The spear of Saul missed. He ducked just in time. Several times. And so on goes his life.

[17:54] Who redeems my life from the pit of death. The grave. But ultimately, he will redeem David from the grave altogether.

[18:08] For he will raise him incorruptible to die no more. He delivered him from the pit of hell. He redeems us. He purchases us out of misery.

[18:20] We were slaves of sin headed to hell. And he redeemed my life from the pit. Just as he redeemed Israelites from their slavery in Egypt.

[18:33] Redeemed. Purchased with the blood of Christ. You see, from the New Testament perspective, we pour in so much more into David's words than perhaps what he himself saw as we're stirring ourselves up to praise him.

[18:48] Who crowns your soul, who crowns you with love and compassion. Crown, symbol of honor. The crown is not made of gems and gold and silver.

[18:58] But love and compassion. What is the honor of the man who is specially loved by God? David. David. He's filled with gratitude.

[19:10] Sin had dragged us down to the misery of slavery. God elevates us to the highest honor being one of his loved ones. Crowns you with love and compassion.

[19:22] Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Satisfaction. Phillips refers to the song I think in the 60s can't get no satisfaction.

[19:37] Never have we had more in our world to enjoy and never less satisfaction. People are like bees that go from flower to flower.

[19:49] They do not find satisfaction in any one thing. They're not satisfied and David recognizes that's true of this world but he satisfies me.

[20:01] Jesus said to the woman at the well, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again but whoever drinks of water of life that I give will never thirst. You see, I satisfy the soul, the soul, the cravings of man.

[20:14] Men are made for God and only as they come to know me will they find their soul satisfied. Yes, he satisfies and he satisfies your desires with good things.

[20:26] Again, you could start with the good breakfast you had this morning and go right through the week of all the good things that he satisfied your desires with but spiritually as well he satisfies our desires to know God, desires to draw nearer to God, to walk with God, to grow in grace.

[20:48] Those yearnings and desires that he plants, he satisfies such that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

[20:58] the eagle is legendary for its strength. It seems to soar effortlessly in the sky and that's the picture. Isaiah says whoever waits on the Lord will renew his strength.

[21:11] He will soar on wings like eagles, you see. Power, strength. David's thinking, oh, I've been brought down to the weakness of weakness itself and oh Lord, you've satisfied my desires such that my youth has been renewed like the eagles physically but spiritually as well.

[21:33] I've been ready to toss in the towel that you came and strengthened my desires and strengthened my determination and strengthened my graces. You have done it so that even though the outward man is perishing, wasting away, the inner man is being renewed day by day.

[21:53] He's piling up benefits, you see, that he's received from the Lord the accumulated weight of which ought to draw from his inmost being true praise to the giver. The hymn writer puts it this way, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, who like me his praise should sing.

[22:17] So we take a page from David's psalm and we learn to stir ourselves up to praise. so fresh remembrance of all his benefits stirs up gratitude.

[22:32] Don't just stop at the physical blessings or you'll miss the strongest motivations of all, those spiritual blessings that are in Christ. Phillips cites an illustration of something that happened shortly after the end of the American Civil War provides us with a wonderful illustration of such gratitude.

[22:53] A man in farm clothes was seen kneeling at a gravestone in the Soldier's Cemetery in Nashville. An observer came up and asked, is that the grave of your son? The farmer replied, no, I have seven children, all of them young, and a wife on my poor farm in Illinois.

[23:11] I was drafted, and despite the great hardship it would cause, I was required to join the army. But on the morning that I was to depart, my neighbor's older son came over and offered to take my place in the war.

[23:28] And the observer solemnly asked, what is that you are riding on his grave? And the farmer replied, I'm riding, he died for me.

[23:42] And the application comes home that if a man will be moved to such gratitude for a fellow man who lays down his physical life for him, that he might live to see his children born and grow up.

[24:01] What should be our gratitude, folks? That this great God would give his one and only son, and he would come willingly to die the death that we deserve, that we might live forever in heaven with him.

[24:16] Well, that's what we're doing. We're stirring ourselves up with gratitude. Second ingredient we need, not only gratitude, but love to God.

[24:27] And what is it that stirs up our love to God? Question? His love for us.

[24:41] We love because he first loved us. His red heart, white heart, his hot, hot love, as we get close to that coal and that fire, we find our love growing toward his.

[24:59] So, this is David's philosophy. If I want to get my heart moved with the love of God, with my love for God, I've got to meditate on his love for me. Verse 8 is a key verse.

[25:14] We don't have time to look at all of these, but verse 8 cuts to the quick. The Lord, this is how God demonstrated himself to Moses and to Israel in the wilderness. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

[25:31] Almost word for word, God's own self-description to Moses in Exodus 34 when Israel had made the molten calf. And it reminds us of the ingratitude of the Israelites to this great grace of God in redeeming them from slavery in Egypt.

[25:49] They forget all his benefits, their hardness of heart, their rebellion, yet it's in that very context that this self-revelation of God's love stands.

[26:03] I am the gracious God, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love. Now put that in the context, slow to anger.

[26:16] Israel's bowing down and dancing before a golden calf, slow to anger. His love then is seen in response to our sin.

[26:29] That's what David is showing. His love is seen in contrast with the way men treat other people who sin against them. God is slow to anger, so patient in his dealings with us, even in our sin.

[26:52] And even then when angry, he does not continue his anger forever like some men who love to nurse a grudge. you never let a person forget what they've done against them.

[27:06] Keep bringing up the grievances. Keep the quarrel going. Always charging them with their wrong. Not God. His slowness to anger is matched by the shortness of his anger for his people.

[27:21] Verse 9, He will not always accuse like some people do. Nor will he harbor his anger forever and hold on to it forever. There would be only hell for us if that's the kind of God he is.

[27:38] He doesn't constantly berate us nor harbor grudges against us. And that moves right into verse 10. He does not treat us then, does he, as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

[27:51] This is unheard of love. To be filled with love for God, we need to remember what our sins deserve. My sins of this week. My sins of yesterday.

[28:05] If I got what I had coming, I'd be in hell today. Condemned. Damned forever. That's what my sins deserve. But he doesn't treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

[28:19] That word repay is the word of vengeance. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. Yes, he does repay the wicked, but for those who are in his son Christ, he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

[28:37] How is it that he, the righteous judge, intent on punishing sin wherever it's found, how is it that he can get by with not repaying us according to our sins?

[28:53] Someone like to answer that? We enjoy that benefit? Alright.

[29:05] He paid out his wrath on another. Jesus bore the full brunt of the wrath of God that I deserved. So that that wrath that should have been mine has been propitiated.

[29:17] It's been turned aside from me. It's been satisfied on Jesus there on Calvary. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. That we in him might become the righteousness of God.

[29:30] And so now God treats us as Jesus deserves. Not as our sins deserve, but as Jesus deserves. He who is perfect righteousness deserves all favor and blessing.

[29:41] And God treats us that way because he treated his son according to what our sins deserve. Oh, he disciplines us for our sins, but it's always much less than what we deserve.

[29:52] praise the Lord, oh my soul. So we've noticed something. We've noticed forgiveness of sin is still really not out of sight. We saw it in the first list of benefits, of things to stir up our gratitude.

[30:06] We're finding it again when we're looking at the way to be filled with love for God and how God expresses his love for us. Here's that nasty word sin again coming back.

[30:17] you'll never appreciate the love of God until you see what it costs to forgive you your sin. Then you'll come to love him. David uses immeasurable distances to celebrate the immeasurable love of God for him.

[30:34] Verses 11 and 12. How do you speak of this love beyond measure? Well, he uses the biggest distance he can think of.

[30:44] For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. Well, how high are the heavens above the earth?

[30:55] It's unmeasurable. The farthest observed object in the heavens that we have observed in our day is some 25 billion light years away from us.

[31:07] As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. It's unmeasurable. And then another immeasurable distance, as far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our transgressions from us.

[31:29] Immeasurable distance. If you're going north, it's only so long before you're going south. You can measure that distance. And as you're going south, it's only so long before you're going north again.

[31:40] But how far can you go east before you find yourself going west? Well, you can go forever in the east, and you'll still be going east, and you'll never be going west.

[31:54] And as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. David's using the language to its limit, stretching his mind.

[32:07] What's he saying? Our sins are gone. They're gone. They're nowhere to be found. That's how far he removes our transgressions in Jesus Christ. We saw it last week in the offering for cleansing in the two doves.

[32:23] The one dove, its blood was shed, and some of its blood was put on the other dove, and then, remember, that dove was released, and it flew away, out of sight, gone. Picturing how the blood of Jesus takes away the stain of our sin.

[32:37] Completely gone. The same picture was in the Day of Atonement with the two goats, wasn't it? One goat was slain, and after they put their hands on that goat and confessed their sins upon it, transferring in a symbolic way all of their sins to the head of that goat, then that goat is viewed as deserving of death, and it's killed, its blood is shed.

[33:04] Some of its blood, or the other goat, is taken out into the wilderness and released, so that it never comes back.

[33:15] And again, it's that picture, the blood of Jesus not only cleanses us from sin, but it also removes our sins from us, takes them away from us entirely.

[33:28] So when you confess your sins, you need that picture of your sins being as far removed from you as the east is from the west. God is saying, I'll never bring it up against you again.

[33:39] Never. You'll never hear from me about that again. You confess your sins, I'm faithful and just and we'll forgive it. They're gone. Oh, praise the Lord, oh my soul, I have such a God who forgives my sin.

[33:52] Another way to express this amazing love, not only the way he forgives our sins, is to find its closest parallels on earth. And he turns to a father-child relationship.

[34:04] Verses 13 and 14, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. For he knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust.

[34:18] You fathers know the special pity of a father for your children. Phillips illustrates this special compassion by telling a story about Philip Yancey, another Christian author.

[34:31] Philip Yancey, when he was just a baby, his father died of polio. And so he grew up without a father and never really felt a father's love. Years later, Yancey found at his mother's house a crumpled photo of himself as a baby.

[34:48] He asked her why she held on to such a mangled picture when she had others that were so much better. She explained that this was the photo that she had wedged inside the iron lung that encased his father during his dying weeks.

[35:05] She told of how his father spent his last months gazing upon this photograph, praying for his upbringing, delighting in just a picture of his son.

[35:17] Yancey writes, someone I have no memory of spent all day, every day, thinking of me, devoting himself to me, loving me, as well as he could.

[35:30] The special love of a father for his son. As a father has pity and compassion upon a son, a child, so the Lord has compassion upon those who fear him.

[35:47] Doesn't that make you want to love him in return? Father-like, he tends and spares us. Well, our feeble frame, he knows. In his hands, he gently bears us, rescues us from all our foes.

[36:01] Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him. We may forget what he is like, but he does not forget what we are like. He remembers that we are dust, and he treats us accordingly.

[36:16] One final contrast between man and this great God, here in Psalm 103, is in verses 15 and 16. How does he describe man? Well, in verse 14, he says he's just dust.

[36:27] Now, in verse 15, he's grass. So mortal, so weak, so passing, soon gone. As for man, his days are like grass.

[36:38] He flourishes like a flower of the field. The wind blows over it, and it is gone. And its place remembers it no more. But, here's the contrast, from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him.

[36:52] There was never a time when he did not love you. child of God. There will never be a time when he does not love you. From everlasting to everlasting, even when your body is reduced to dust in the earth, he'll still be loving you, and still be watching over your remains, waiting for that day when he will join soul and spirit, soul and body again.

[37:19] So great is love, from everlasting to everlasting. You know, we're all trained to seek love by trying to make ourselves lovely, or lovable.

[37:32] And that's the way the world thinks. If we want to be loved, then we have to earn someone's love. But, we can't get away from the nagging remembrance of our sins throughout this psalm, can we?

[37:45] That's not the way to earn love with this God. Our sins have spoiled us. We're unlovely, we're unlovable, but God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, unlovely, Christ died for us.

[38:00] This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son to be a propitiation, to turn away God's wrath for our sins. And so we know and rely on the love that God has for us, for us, the unlovely us.

[38:17] What can I do in response to such love but love him and praise him for his love? Love, gratitude, the last ingredient is awe before God for his greatness and glory.

[38:32] He's a God to be loved, he's a God also to be feared. Not cringing with fear of one who's still guilty before this judge, but a fear that is the beginning of wisdom, a fear that trembles at his word, a fear that is afraid of displeasing him.

[38:49] And already David is referred to believers as those who fear the Lord three times. His love is upon those who fear him.

[39:01] Those who fear him, verse 11, 13, and 17. We need a sense of awe, a sense of amazement, of the greatness and glory of our God.

[39:11] Verse 19, the Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all. He's established, his throne is not tottering, he's not threatened, he's not worried, he's not biting his fingernails.

[39:27] His throne is established and he rules over all. That ought to give us a sense of profound awe, reverence, before this great God.

[39:39] As Jerry Bridges says, we need to be struck with the infinite gap in worth and dignity between man the creature and God the creator and supreme ruler of the entire universe. What happens when we lose a sense of awe before the greatness and glory of our God?

[39:54] Well, we trivialize his love. It becomes little more than some weak emotional love that we see on this earth. We're not moved with gratitude as we ought to be.

[40:07] Oh, but when God is awesome to us, then his love is amazing. We can't get over the fact that he so loved us as to forgive us of our sins and his benefits. Everyone come dripping with mercy and stir our hearts to praising this God.

[40:23] My God, how wonderful thou art. Thy majesty, how bright, how beautiful thy mercy seat in depths of burning light. Yes, how I fear thee, living God, with deepest, tenderest fears and worship thee with trembling hope and penitential tears.

[40:39] Yet I may love thee too, O Lord, almighty as thou art, for thou hast stooped to ask of me the love of my poor heart. Awe plus love plus gratitude equals the praising heart.

[40:56] You can read the conclusion for yourself, but what you'll find is the link between worship and witness. David is running throughout the universe to find other people to praise him, other creatures to praise him.

[41:10] Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemers. angels, you praise him. You heavenly beings who serve him, you praise him. All that's made here on earth, you praise him.

[41:21] And then he ends with that charge the fourth time. He charges himself. Praise the Lord, O my soul. May the Lord help us even as we come now to worship him to begin to stir up true praise in our hearts to our great God.

[41:39] We're dismissed. We're going to memorize this chapter as our next memory pack, so trust that the Lord will bring us to make good use of Psalm 103 and how to praise the Lord.

[41:51]  Amen.