Welcome to Walk in the Truth podcast. How do we know where to find answers to the toughest
questions in life? While the simplest answer is the Bible, where do we start this search
and how do we discover this truth? Today, in this teaching podcast, John Metter, lead pastor
of Cross City Church, takes a specific text of the Bible and helps us find truth for the life
we're searching for. If you have your Bibles, take them and turn to Psalm 103 if you would today.
Today, I'm going to talk to you about the life of blessing. The life of blessing. This is not part
of the series that we just concluded this last week and it's not part of the Christmas series,
but it's kind of an in-between time. We can just take a few moments and talk about what it means
to bless God and live in the life of blessing. Psalms 103 if you would. How many of you had a
great Thanksgiving? Raise your hand if you had a great Thanksgiving. Man, we had such a great time.
I think we had more than 30 people at one of our meals and then we came back for our house for
dessert. There was about 25 or so. We were glad when they came in. We were glad when they left.
That's what my wife and I conclude. They were there with us for several days and we had a good
time, but we are really glad to be here with you this morning, our church family. Please stand with
me if you would as we open up God's Word. Psalm 103 beginning in verse 1. I'm going to read the
entire Psalm and it's one of the greatest in the Bible. I consider this the Psalm that probably
directs our attention to praising God and blessing God more than any other Psalm in the Bible. It is
not only an exhortation to praise God, but gives us reasons why. Reminds us of all the things that
God has done for us in our lives. This is probably one of the first chapters of the Bible I ever
memorized as a young man growing up and I believe it's really affected my outlook in life. Just like
I believe all of God's Word affects us in the way we view life, this Psalm has that potential for
your life today. Here's what it says beginning in chapter 103 and verse 1. Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
none of his benefits. Who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who
redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion, who satisfies
your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. The Lord performs
righteous deeds and judgments for all those who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the sons of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger,
and abounding in loving kindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger
forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our
iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward
those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west so far, has he removed our transgressions
from us? Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who
fear him, for he himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. As for man,
his days are like grass, as the flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed
over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the loving kindness 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 his precepts to do them. Now we're in
verse 19. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his sovereignty rules overall.
Bless the Lord, you his angels, mighty in strength to perform his word, obeying the voice of his
word. Bless the Lord, all you host, you who serve him doing his will. Bless the Lord, all you works
of his, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Man, what an incredible,
expansive chapter that deals with blessing God. Today, Father, in Jesus' name, we ask you to
allow us to know what it means, to see the difference between praising you and acknowledging you
and blessing you. And Father, my prayer today is that you will allow this chapter in this Bible
to affect us in ways that nothing else on this planet can affect us in. Help us to have the
perspective and the outlook and the viewpoint of having you in our lives in a dominant way.
Father, speak to us, each of us. I ask this in Jesus' name, and all God's people said,
amen. Please be seated if you would. Well, if you begin to track Psalm 103 from verse 1 all the way
through verse 22, you have a very clear picture where David is talking about him personally
blessing God for all the things God has done in his life. He moves from there to talking about
how God has dealt with all the people of Israel in verses 60-14, corporately, how God deals with us.
And then finally, he has all of creation blessing God and praising God. So you move from the
individual to the group to the whole creation, blessing God and praising God. That's kind of
where this is going. But in reality to that, not only that, but you have a difference between just
praising God and blessing God. The word bless is not a word we use too often when it comes to talking
about God. We talk about praising the Lord. We're talking about worship the Lord a great deal. But
blessing God is a different word. It's a different phrase. Blessing God basically is the wholehearted
embrace of him as the center of our lives with our attitudes and actions. It means that we have
experience with God that lets us say something more than an observation about God, more than saying
God is a great God or more than saying the man upstairs has been good to me in a general way.
We talk about God in a specific way. We bless God in a very emotional way even because we have
experienced great things that God has brought into our lives. I've got a brother-in-law who a few
years ago went through a very, very tough time in his life where he discovered that he had a brain
tumor. And in discovering that it was called terminal by the doctors that began to examine him.
Of course he had all the examinations. He had all the imaging and scans and all those things
and ultimately decided to go to MD Anderson Hospital for surgery. And after the surgery,
even the surgeon said, you know, you're not out of the woods yet. We got the tumor out of your brain
and if we got it all, then there are some good days ahead but there are going to be some challenges
ahead as well. You're going to have to have all kinds of treatments and all kinds of things that
will follow up with this in order to secure a quality of life for you that you hope to have.
But he never did remove the word terminal from his diagnosis. Well one side piece of information,
before my brother-in-law went into this surgery, he was just in his mind thinking through his life
and what was ahead of him and he felt that he heard a voice behind him saying, all is well.
He turned around, of course no one was there and just began to discuss or determine that God has
spoken a word to him. All was going to be well. Now my brother-in-law is a believer in Christ.
And he speaks about God in good terms. He would praise God with us if he was in the room today.
But something happened after his surgery and after his later prognosis which said he's now
cancer free and in the years since that time when the doctor said you're completely healed,
you need no more treatment, you need no more surgery, you are in fact basically a walking
miracle. Something changed in the way he talked about God. And I would say it's the difference
between praising God in the sense of saying I know who he is to blessing God in the sense of saying
I know he rescued my life. I know he changed my future by his actions in my life. And that's
probably the best way I can illustrate or describe the difference between praising and blessing.
Because when we bless God, we bless him with the wholeheartedness of everything that's in us
because we've experienced him in amazing ways. Look at verse one here in Psalm 103 and David
starts it off well. He says, bless the Lord, oh my soul. And then he says, and all that is within me,
bless his holy name. In other words, he's speaking with affection and he's speaking with gratitude
and there's that wholehearted definition. All that is within me, bless his holy name. Now think about
what's all that's in you. That would mean in David's life, all of his intellect, all of his
emotion, all of his sentiment, all of his feeling, all of his brain, all of his heart, all of his
lungs, all of his tongues. He's blessing God in a way that's not casual in any sense of the word.
He's thinking about God, he is praising God and he's blessing God and honoring him in an accurate
way that God deserves as the object of our affection, the object of our worship. And it's
interesting that when we bless God in this way that's so personal, it brings change to our own
lives. It's not just that we bless him because he's worthy of our blessing and praise and
adoration, but it's when we bless him, we change our whole perspective about who God is, about who
we are and what's going on in our lives. And Psalm 103 helps us do that. And we're going to
break Psalm 103 down into three different portions for you today because I believe it's speaking
about three different things that blessing God changes about our own life. Number one, blessing
gives focus, blessing gives focus. Look at verse two with me. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and
forget none of his benefits. Now the psalmist is not saying, just remember a lot of the things that
God has done for you. He's not saying that. He's saying bless the Lord with all of your soul and
don't forget one thing God has done for you. Forget none of his benefits. That means that you
remember and you rehearse and you think through all the things that God has done in your life.
And that's part of what it means to bless the Lord with your whole soul. I love the book of Psalms
and I know that you do too. And as you read through the book of Psalms, they connect with us so
well. Sometimes we read Psalms and we see like this one where David's heart or the psalmist
has a lifted heart, where he's blessing God, where he's grateful, where he's thankful.
But there are other Psalms where we see just an authentic grief going on in his heart,
where he's downcast, where he's worried, where he's fearful. The human element plays into some
of these Psalms and quite frankly, some of these Psalms that we read in the book of Psalms,
that we read in the book of Psalms are self-focused. In other words, the psalmist is expressing where
they're at in their own life. And you read this in the Psalms, I'm afraid or I'm alone or I'm weary
or I'm being hunted down or I'm downcast. Another psalm says I'm all alone. No one knows where I am.
And when we're hurting and when we're drowning and when we're sinking, it's easy for our lives to be
about our pain and our disappointment and our disillusionment. And that's what some of the Psalms
really connect with us about. In fact, when you're down, go to the book of Psalms and you'll find
that you are identifying with someone else and someone else is identifying with you in the toughest
times of life. And I love that part of the book of Psalms because it's real and because it's authentic
and because we really, really do have hard times and because it's real truth. But I also love the
book of Psalms because it does not leave us there. It doesn't leave us in the pit. It doesn't leave
us in the darkness. Let me give you a good example of that. In Psalm 42 verse 5, we read this,
Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him for the help of his presence. Another translation of that
same verse says, Why so downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God. It's almost like the psalmist is
talking to his soul, to his mind, his will and emotions and saying, Why are you so weary? Why are
you so worn out? I know the circumstances are not great at this moment, but put your hope in God.
And that's what Psalms 103 does for us. It helps us know what to focus on when things aren't going
the way we want them to go. I can remember a few years ago when I was first in ministry,
I was probably 30 years of age or so. And I was definitely overwhelmed by some of the things
going on in ministry. I was a pastor of a church, a small church at the time, and lots of, lots of
tough things were happening in people's lives. And I just remember being worn out, so tired,
so downcast is a good word for it. It was a dark time of my life. I just couldn't see
the optimistic side of that at the moment. And that's not like me. I usually see the glass half
full. I usually look at things with some optimism and a large degree of faith. But at that particular
time, I didn't have that at the moment. And I remember just not knowing what to do. And I came
across a collection of songs on a tape. I began to listen to those songs. And many of them were
outright Psalms that had been put to music. And as I found the lyrics to them and began to listen
to them and began to sing those lyrics, as I drove along in my car somewhere, only in a safe spot do
I sing out loud. And it's in my car with nobody else there. My mind began to change. It began to
change from my circumstances to the power of the God that I was worshiping. And I began to move off
this darkness moment and feeling like I was in a pit. And I began to focus on the God who pulled
people out of the pit, the God who brought light to dark circumstances and dark situations, the God
who made the impossible possible because of his power. And I noticed that the more I praised him
and worshiped him, the more I was lifted up out of that dark moment in my life. And I realized
that focusing on blessing God can change the way you view your circumstances. It doesn't necessarily
change your circumstances. You may still be in a struggling time, but it changes the way you view
life and the way you view the God who is at worship, who you're worshiping. You know, that's why we
worship. We come together to worship him because he's worthy. We come together because he is the God
who has our affection, who has redeemed us, who has rescued us. But we also come to remind ourselves
that this is the one that we pray to, that this is the one we trust in, that this is the one that
we can count on and only he can be counted on. So important for us to learn our focus in blessing
the Lord. So I want you to think for just a moment about what that means because life is a war.
David's life was a war. He knew what it was like to be attacked and to be betrayed, to be
stabbed in the back. He knew what it meant to be in dark places. But David the Psalmist also knew
that this part of life would pass. It wouldn't always be this way and it wouldn't be always this
discouraging and he wouldn't always be this downcast. So in writing Psalm 103, David is giving
us a prescription of how he got out of that part of his life. It helps us to focus on God instead of
ourselves, to change the focus from the circumstances that we so often rivet our minds on and help us
see how God has acted in the midst of those circumstances. It helps us to give thanks to God.
It helps us to focus on the reason for life. And I'm convinced of this. We're prone to forget to
give thanks to the God who saved us. And I'm also convinced we're prone to not give thanks to people
around us that God has put in our lives for many, many reasons. We just forget to give thanks. But
here the Psalmist says learn to bless God for all the things that he's done in our lives.
So let's look at the focus of what he does in Psalm 103. He gives us several verses that will be
applicable to every person in this room. First of all, verse three. This God, he's a blessing.
He says about this God who pardons all your iniquities and heals all your diseases. Now I
for one, I'm going to be the guy that says I am so grateful that God forgives us for our iniquities,
our sins. You know what iniquities are? They're trespasses, they're sins. They are times when we
have disobeyed God in some way. And David knows something about that, doesn't he? Because David
though was a king, but he was also a man after God's own heart at the same time. David was the man
who fell so publicly into sin. He had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, probably one of the most
public acts of adultery in human history. He later sent her husband to the front lines where he was
killed. He literally conspired with his army so that he could have Bathsheba. And when he finally
was exposed and confessed his sin to God, God forgave this man. So this man knew something about
what it meant to have his iniquities pardoned. I love the idea of the scripture all the way through
that God forgives our sin. You know what sin does, don't you? Sin separates us from God. It keeps us
from God's favor. It keeps us from the intimacy that we should be having with God. When someone
sends against God, they need to be forgiven. That's why when the disciples asked Jesus to teach him
how to pray, he gave them what we know as the Lord's Prayer. And part of that is forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. But here the psalmist says God
pardons all of our iniquities. Even later on in Psalm 103, he gives us a picture. Go to verse 10,
if you would. We read through it a moment ago. He's talking about that sin that God is pardoning
out of his life in verse 10. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us
according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving
kindness towards those who fear him. Imagine David thinking these thoughts about God after God
forgave him for all he did. Verse 12, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed
our transgressions from us. And think about that as well. If the Lord takes our sins away from us
as far as the east is from the west, they never beat us again. God forgives us, it's completely
forgiven. It doesn't come back on us ever again because his loving kindness and his mercy removes
our transgressions from us that far. Verse 13, just as the father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him, for he himself knows our frame. He is mindful
that we are but dust. I'm here today to say I am grateful, I praise the God and I bless the God
who pardons all of our iniquities and heals all of our diseases. Today, I want to share with you
the story of Joseph. The next verse says this, who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion. In other words, this God he's blessing does lift
us out of the pit. Now David knew Joseph's story. Everybody remembers Joseph, the life of Joseph,
who was the object of jealousy by his brothers and he was later sold into slavery, but first they
left him there. Remember, and left him there until later on they did sell him to the slave traders.
The story of Joseph was well known to all of the people of Israel and certainly well known to David
and the pit was a place where people are left to die, where they're abandoned. And yet here David
is using this phrase to remind us that he redeems our life from the pit. If you read the life of
Joseph, you'll see very quickly God redeemed his life. He rescued him out of the pit. He allowed
him to be sold to Egyptian slave traders. Later on, he was number two in the land of Egypt. He
actually redeemed his life and then used Joseph to redeem all of Israel. So David says this in Psalm
103, God can redeem your life even if you see no purpose for you being in the pit. You have no
reason why you're there. You don't understand it anyway, but he will redeem your life from the pit.
I'm grateful for the God who redeems people's lives from the pit and all the isolation and
all the difficulty they go through. The second part of that verse says he crowns you with loving
kindness. He places a crown on your head of loving kindness and mercy. You remember Psalms 23?
Psalms 23 says, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. I want you to
do an exercise with me for just a moment. It won't take you long, but in this exercise, I want you to
focus on God's forgiveness that we talked about a moment ago. What has God forgiven you from?
And how far has he removed that out of your life? You don't have to say anything to anybody. You
don't have to raise your hand to spend a moment thinking about what God has forgiven you from.
After you've taken a moment to do that, I'm going to ask you another question. What pit has God
removed you, redeemed you out of? What hopeless situation did he at some point in the past remove
you from that you can give thanks to him, that you can bless him for today? That's the purpose of
Psalm 103, to forget none of his benefits that he has bestowed on your life. Then look at the
next line of scripture, verse five, who satisfies your life with good things so that your youth is
renewed like the eagles. You'll love this. In the Hebrew language, this refers to being fully
satisfied as in a meal where you ate all you possibly could or should have eaten. I think it's
perfect timing that this happens Thanksgiving week, where we all ate. I think most of us all
ate a meal where we ate all we possibly could and maybe more than we possibly should have. How many
of you would say, that happened to me this last week, would you raise your hand? Okay. Some of
you are telling the truth and some of you are clearly not. I want you to use that imagery for
a moment because that's the image of this word. This word says that God satisfies your life as
though it's a full meal that you couldn't possibly eat anything else at. When you come to the table
of the Lord, and by the way, this was spoken to a group of people who did not always have full meals,
they did not always have the blessing and the abundance that we have at our tables today.
David is saying, you know what a satisfying meal is like. You know what it means to be full
and satisfied with the things that you're eating. I want you to know that God is
satisfying your life with good things. But I want you to bless the Lord because what he's done is,
he's satisfied your life with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
If you're not satisfied with good things, come to his table because he's the one
that satisfies your life with good things. So in forgetting none of his benefits, David walks
through all these things, the forgiveness aspect, the aspect of redemption from the pit,
and the aspect of life. See, when I begin to focus on that, that changes the way I view life.
I really focus on blessing God and I'm not distracted by the giants attacking me anymore.
I'm seeing the God who defeats the giants. I am not distracted by the problems I have.
I'm seeing the one who solves the problem. I'm not being weighted down by the impossibilities
of the world. I'm looking at the one who makes all those impossible things possible in his power.
And I'm not focusing on me anymore. I'm focusing on God. And that's what David is saying.
Bless the Lord with all of your soul and forget none of his benefits. Blessing brings focus.
And may I say to you that when you've lost your focus and when you've lost your balance
thinking about God in any particular situation you're in, take a step back and bless the Lord
with all of your soul and forget none of his benefits and it will change the focus of what's
going on in your mind at that moment and you need that change. It's an incredibly important
principle that David lives out. Now secondly, blessing does something else that helps us
remember. In verse six and seven it says the Lord performs righteous deeds and judgments for all
those who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the sons of Israel. And it
continues like this all the way through verse 14. Now I won't read all those verses again,
but I do want you to realize that all these verses say something about what God has done
in the lives of those who follow him. This was a reference to the children of Israel,
David's people, God's people, and it applies to us today as followers of Christ. And so really
the question I want to ask you is when you read the Bible did you really read it in such a way
that asks the question what does this passage say about God? Because when you read verses six
through 14 you find all kinds of amazing things that God did historically for Israel and it says
so many things about God. It reminds us of who he is. Let me read some of those to you and you'll
see them on the screen at the same time. It says that God is righteous. It says that God is
compassionate. It says that he is gracious. It says that God is patient. It says he's graceful,
that he's merciful, that our God is a purifying God, that our God is gracious to us and abounding
to us, and that God is filled with loving kindness and God is mindful of our state.
And I ask that you look at that screen and ask yourself what one of those qualities of God
have I seen in my life in recent days? And take the moment to say bless you God because you're so
patient with me, because you're so compassionate with me, because you're so gracious for me,
you're so forgiving to me. I bless you with everything that's in me because that's who you
are. Verse 6-14, take us through that. And it reminds us that we need to remember the things
that God has done for us. What do you need to remember right now about God? What do you need
to recall about God? Are you alone? This passage tells us that he has the compassion of the Father.
Are you guilty? This tells us that God is a forgiving and gracious God. Are you failing?
This tells us and reminds us that he abounds in loving kindness. He helps us. Are you frustrated?
It tells us that God is mindful that we're just dust. He's aware of the struggles that we have in
life. There are so many reasons it's important to remember these things. But number one is for you
to remember that no one else, no other being, no other person would treat you this way, that God has
treated us by his character. When we remember how God has acted towards us, we realize allegiance
and loyalty to be, should be to him alone. I'm not saying we shouldn't be loyal to close friends,
to loved ones, to spouses, to family members, but I'm telling you none of those people can compare
with the goodness of God in their life. No one can be as faithful to you as God is. No one can be as
loving to you as God is. No one can be as merciful to you as God is. He deserves our
unreserved praise. He deserves our blessing with everything that's in us and our allegiance and
our devotion. There's something else this reminds me of as well. It reminds me that there will never
be people who love me the way God loves me, show patience towards me the way God shows patience
towards me. There will never be a time in my life where people can treat me the same way God treats
me. Now if you were being honest today and you were part of this survey that I'm about to take,
how many of you would say at some point in your life you've been disappointed with people,
disillusioned with people at some point in your life? Would you raise your hand? Mine's up.
People will always disappoint you because they're people, but may I remind you that God will never
disappoint you? Can I remind you that God's character never changes? He never stops loving
you. He never stops being patient with you. So it's important that when we bless, we remember
all the things that He's done for us and that He alone deserves our praise and our adoration.
Now what that means is that we learn to be grateful with God, grateful for God,
and the more grateful we are for Him, the better relationship we have with Him.
Recently I read a very interesting study of a couple of researchers. He were researching marriage
and specifically they researched the topic of gratitude in marriage. They were looking for
the number one indicator that a marriage was going to fail. But here's a practical application
on gratitude in marriage as an example. So we're going to be grateful for God. We're going to be
grateful for God. One of them discovered from a separate study that he could identify the trait
that caused divorce in nine out of 10 marriages. And that trait he called contempt. That is
criticism with a sense of arrogance or superiority, where one just was super critical, hyper critical,
and literally had contempt for the other. And he said, this is the relationship killer in almost
all marriage. The other study looked for the antidote for that. And the conclusion was that
gratitude was the only antidote for contempt because you can't have gratitude and contempt
at the same time. And their solution was this, learn to bless that spouse that you may have had
contempt for or were seen as contemptible in their sight. Bless them by telling them what you're
about them. I'd sit down together and go back and forth being grateful for each other, one after the
other for about three minutes at a time. They call this gratitude tennis, a very corny name.
One of them serves up a comment of gratitude. The other knocks it back over into the other court.
You go back and forth for three minutes and repeat as needed. And in their research, they saw that
contempt could change to Thanksgiving when they remembered the good qualities that was in the
relationship. Now I share all this with you, not just for the purpose of marriage advice, even
though it's great marriage advice, but I share this with you from the perspective of your gratitude
towards God, being able to help you see him in that light of always responding to you with goodness
and loving kindness and mercy so that you're never holding God in contempt. You're never angry at God.
You're never upset with God because things aren't going the way you want them to go.
David knew what it was like to have things go bad and that he says, bless the Lord, oh my soul,
all that is within me, bless the Lord and forget none of his benefits. All right, so that's number
two, blessing makes us remember. It causes us to remember the good times. Thirdly, blessing brings
perspective. And in one sense, we're learning to change our perspective all the way through Psalm 103,
but this really goes a little further into further down the road in an eternal way.
Because once you get to verse 13, or rather 15, 16, and 17, he begins to change his tune just a
little bit. In verse 15, he says, as for man, his days are like grass, and he begins to talk about
the brevity of man. But then he says in verse 17, but the loving kindness of the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. Now the ancient fathers of faith saw this as a
reminder of how short life is. Like the book of James chapter one, your life is like a thin vapor
of air that appears for a little while and then vanishes quickly away. And sometimes we're aware
of that, and sometimes we're not. But life is brief, and the whole spectrum of eternity,
life is really brief. You don't have a large dot on that long timeline of eternity. And those
saints that have gone before us would say something like this. They would say, the greatest link to a
full satisfying life is not to be exclusively anchored here, but to eternally anchored with God.
In other words, don't put all your hopes of joy and contentedness and peace in life on this planet,
because it'll be a mixed bag at times. It'll be tough at times, but place it all on the eternal
side of life. And we're not good at doing this. In fact, when I read verses 15 through the end of
the chapter, I struggled to grasp literally what was being said. Psalm 103 and verse 16 even goes
further. When the wind has passed over, your life is no more, and the place acknowledges it no longer.
And I'm struggling with this when I'm reading this verse. Not only will I be gone, but my footprint
won't even be there. I don't even know that I've left any impact on anybody else's life. That's
what this Psalm says. And it says it to set up the next truth. And the next truth is, from everlasting
to everlasting, the loving kindness of the Lord is on those who follow him, who fear him. Stay with me
here. I call these the bookends of life. Before you came along and showed up on the, at the dot on
the timeline of eternity, there was eternity past before you ever got here. Now God knew you in
eternity past. He had foreknowledge of you, but you showed up at some point in history, just like I
did. And we live our life for a short period of time. When I die, that ends the dot that we're on
the timeline of our lives, but then beyond our death is eternity future. So proceeding me with
eternity past and following me is eternity future. And what David is saying is this. I want you to
remember that your life is very brief, but I also want you to remember as you think about the
goodness of God, if God is able to bless you in this life the way he has, what must eternity be
like for you? How much better will eternity be when you get there? So therefore look ahead to
eternity, the other side of the bookend of your life, because God has even greater things for you
there. What you thought good on earth is going to be greater in heaven. What you thought was a
blessing on earth is even going to be more of a blessing in the future in eternity past.
And that's going to be the future for you. So David, in spite of all the things he had experienced
that were great, was now looking into the future saying, it'll even be greater than. Eye has not
seen, ear has not heard. We haven't even seen in our minds all that God has for us in the future.
Look ahead to that while you live here on this planet. That means that we have to endure the
worst. We rejoice in the fun things, but look forward even more to the one who blesses us on
this earth will bless us in the future in eternity. So think about this with me if you would.
Pain in your life that you have now will not be in existence in eternity.
Hardship will no longer be there in eternity. Difficult stuff is gone. Even amazing things and
says will be swallowed up by something greater. The highest of the highs and the lowest of the
lows will be swallowed up in that one moment. And we'll be looking into the doorway of the
eternal future that God has for us to endure the difficult times, enjoy the rejoicing times,
but something better is coming. David wants us to remember that when we bless the Lord with all of
our soul. Now Psalm 103 ends the way we talked about. He starts with a personal praise. He moves
to a corporate praise and he goes on to what we would call all of creation. I've worded it like
this. You get this right. Your voice will join the angelic leaders, the host of celestial angels
around them and all of creation and blessing the Lord individually, corporately and creation-wise.
We bless the Lord with our whole soul. Now why is this Psalm here? It's here to help us
as we look at life, to look at life through God. No one loves you more. No one has more plan for
you, better plan for you than God does. Look at life through the lens of God. Now we're going to
end our service a little different today. I want to ask you to stand with me right now if you would.
And as you stand with me, I'm going to lead you to read these last three verses out loud in unison
we'll have on the screen. But before we do that, I'm going to remind you of the way we end our
services every week. We have our decision stations that are available. We would love for you to stop
by and talk to someone about placing your trust and faith in Christ if you've not done that.
I also want to invite you to come to the guest reception room. I'd love to meet you and talk
with you about Cross City Church and about faith. Any way that I can help you, I want to see you then
if you'll come to the guest reception room right outside the center exit doors across the hallway.
And as you leave, I want you to pick up an invite card. We start our Christmas series next week,
expectant, where we're looking with expectancy about Christ coming the first time as a child.
And I want you to invite someone to come with you to hear the good news of the gospel because
it's amazingly, amazingly good news. So we're going to end the service this way. We're going
together, recite these last three verses of Psalm 103, and then our worship leader will lead us
in a song of a song that we sing together. And we're going to end the day blessing the Lord.
Give it your best. Give it your enthusiasm, not your Sunday morning tepid mood. I want you to
give it all the gusto. I want you to bless the Lord with all that is within you. I want you to
all that is within you. All right. Think about what that means. All of your brain, all your intellect,
all your emotion, all your memories, everything that says I have reason to bless the Lord. I'm
going to be loud in this. I put the microphone down, but I'm going to be loud with this. All right.
Because I believe God is worthy by praise and our adoration. Do you see the verses on the screen?
Let's put them up there. Are you ready? Let's say it together. Bless the Lord, you his angels,
mighty in strength, who performed his word, obeying the voice of his word. Say it. Bless the Lord,
all you hosts, you who serve him, doing his will. Bless the Lord, all you works of his,
in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Let's sing it now.
Your name is great and your heart is kind.
For all your goodness, I will keep on singing.
10,000 reasons for my heart to cry. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, oh my soul. Worship his holy name.
Sing like never before, oh my soul. I'll worship your holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul,
oh my soul. Worship his holy name. Sing like never before, oh my soul. I'll worship your holy name.
But I'll worship your holy name. Amen, you're dismissed.