Why Bless the Lord? (Fathers Day 2024)

I love to take time out on these Father's days to think about the character of God. When I think about my character as a father, I don't find a whole lot to be encouraged about, unfortunately. But when I think about the character of my father in heaven, I find a lot that encourages me, everything that encourages me. In fact, it even encourages me to be a father more like him and to turn in dependence to him for the power I need to be that kind of father. So we're gonna think about the character of God as Pastor Jeremy and the worship team have done such a beautiful job of leading us to consider through song this morning from Psalm 103.

Well, my children, when they travel with their dad can count on one thing: at every airport we ever go through, their dad is going to be pulled out of the line and taken through airport security through that little tube that you have to stand in and hold your arms like that. And then the thing goes around in the circle, and somebody over here watching a monitor is going to see everything about my insides, and what's in my pockets, and all the rest. That's going to happen to me every single time we fly in an airport. And if you know me, you know I hate nothing more than that: feeling exposed, feeling singled out, feeling like you're being kind of looked over and pawed over by these strangers while others watch on thankful that it's not them. You know, I just absolutely despise that scenario of being just seen right through, you know?

Well, Psalm 103 is a beloved Psalm for a lot of us. It's inspired a bunch of great hymns of the faith through the years. It's inspired one of our favorite Psalms songs to sing here, 'Bless the Lord, O My Soul,' "10,000 reasons." We're gonna sing that at the end of the service today. We love Psalm 103. But I'm not sure we always appreciate that it is a spiritual X-ray. It's one of those Psalms that is pulling each of us out of the crowd, out of the big swarming assembly of the people of God, getting us alone before the Lord, and looking past the surface, the public presentation. to the inside, all the way down to what's going on in our souls before the Lord.

This song was written by David as you can see, but it was first collected for and sung by the people of God during a really difficult time, during the exile, when they've been taken from home, and they've been forced to live in a strange place. It's first sung by God's people during a hard time when things aren't working out the way that they had planned. It's being sung by God's people during a time where every single day they are reminded of their sin, their bad choices, and the harsh consequences that they're now being forced to deal with. It's being sung by God's people at a time when they are constantly reminded of wasted opportunities and broken dreams. It's being sung during a difficult time.

Now these people during this season, they're still showing up for church, they're still dragging in, you know, with their little Bible and the leather cover with the zipper on it, and their Sunday school material. And they're giving their offering, and they're standing up and sitting down, they're doing the whole thing. They're coming to church with their bodies. But if you were to pull them out and make them go through a spiritual X-ray to look to the inside of them to what's going on in the deepest part of who they are, what's happening in their souls, you probably wouldn't see a lot of "blessing the Lord." You wouldn't necessarily see all of them worshiping and praising God from the inside with sincerity and with all that is within them. Instead, you would probably see things like bitterness and disappointment and regret and self-pity and grouchiness and distraction and indifference and impatience. When is this going to be over with? You'd probably see all of those things if you look down into their souls. And I think probably one or two of us could relate to that this morning, couldn't we?

If you can see what's happening not just on the outside, but on the inside, we understand what that's like. More importantly, God understands what that's like. God knows that about us, and in his kindness he gave us Psalm 103 for occasions just like this, for people just like these exiles, for people just like us who find it hard some days to "bless the Lord," to literally speak well of him, to speak out and to overflow with praises about how good he is, how holy his name is, how he is in a category all by himself, separated from everything else special, different than anything or anybody, more valuable to us than anything this world affords. That's what it means to bless his holy name! God gives us Psalm 103 to help us in those moments when life is hard to still bless the Lord.

I want you to notice that this psalm, Psalm 103, is very personal. "Bless the Lord o my soul." This is something for each of us to deal with before God and no one else can do it for us. It's personal. It's also internal. It doesn't say "bless the Lord by showing up for church or by you know, doing the external things of religion," it says "bless the Lord, oh my soul, all that is within me." It's total! And not just some of what's in me, but all that's within me to bless the Lord and to declare that he is good. But that's hard to do sometimes. And the Psalm begins and ends with this call to bless the Lord, to speak well about him. But in between this magnificent psalm, God in his mercy gives us this litany of reasons why we can and why we should bless the Lord no matter what's going on. Whatever the circumstances, whatever our feelings, we can as the people of God, and we should, and y'all by the help of the Holy Spirit, we will bless the Lord.

So let's look at some of those reasons. Why should I bless the Lord this morning if I belong to him? Here's the first reason. Because:

Now, Lord willing, on this father's day afternoon, this dad's gonna take his family down to that boat ramp down there, and we're gonna get on the water. And we're just gonna enjoy the Tennessee River. I'm not Kenneth Copeland or anything. We just have like a 20 year-old ski boat. So it's nothing to get all worked up about. But we're gonna get on that water today. And one thing my kids know about me is that once we're out there, man, I'm super relaxed. We're having a good time. It's a wonderful thing. But it's at the boat ramp that we don't ask dad lots of questions. It's at the boat ramp that everybody needs to get quiet and really just exit the vehicle honestly and step away. Why? Because I know that a split second of forgetfulness at the boat ramp will lead to a very expensive consequence for dad. So we've got to remember. We gotta make sure that the trim is up at the right time, and everything's got to be latched the way that it's supposed to be latched, and the little top needs to be down. We have to remember all of these things. And if I forget just one of those things, I could be looking at a very expensive bill and a very unhappy day at the water. And so they know dad can forget stuff. And so we just need to be quiet and let him try to remember everything that he's supposed to remember.

And God gave us Psalm 103 because we're actually all very susceptible to forgetfulness. We're all very susceptible to spiritual forgetfulness. Look at verses 1-2, "Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, o my soul," and what? "Forget not(!), all his benefits." The reason we don't bless the Lord from the bottom of our souls is not because God hasn't been good to us. It's because we've forgotten just how good he's been to us. We forget the benefits that God has poured into our lives when life gets hard like it has for these exiles. Let's get real. We forget the benefits God's poured into our lives when life gets really good, because we forget it all comes from him and we are distracted. We forget all the Lord has done for us in Christ! We forget all of the benefits that he's constantly, still pouring into our lives moment by moment! We're a lot like Israel in the wilderness grumbling against God five seconds after the last miracle he just performed for them. We forget the benefits of the Lord and that's why we don't bless him like we should!

So what's the solution for a forgetful people? The Bible's answer again and again, just like in Psalm 103, is we have to remind ourselves constantly. Constantly we have to remind ourselves of what God has done, "What He's Done," just like we sang. That's really what these Sunday mornings are for. They're not so much for you to show up and get some thrilling new information, week after week. Really, what these Sunday mornings are for is to get some vital reminders of what God has done for you that you have forgotten all week long. That's what church is for. But I mean, you don't want Pastor Jeremy and Pastor Eric following you around all week long reminding you of what God has done. So we've got to learn, Psalm 103 says, we've got to learn to start reminding ourselves.

In fact, all of Psalm 103 is not David talking directly to the Lord, it's David talking to himself! It's God's people learning to talk to themselves, to preach to themselves the truths of what God has done for them. This whole psalm is all about learning to preach to ourselves. I remember the old preacher Martin Lloyd Jones saying that, "most of your unhappiness in life comes from listening to yourself, instead of talking to yourself," listening to your feelings, instead of preaching to your feelings the truth about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ! If I just listen to my feelings, in about five seconds, I'm going to be wallowing in bitterness and self pity and anxiety and all of these things that we spend our week flailing around in. And that's why I've got to learn to stop that and start talking to myself, not just passively going for a ride with wherever my emotions wanna take me, but getting active and preaching to my soul, "hey soul, don't forget all that God is and all that He's done for me."

And so look at verses 3-4. David takes out his benefits package as a covenant child of God and reviews all that God has done. We'll just do them quickly here.

1 - He forgives all your iniquity. God sees all of your iniquity. Let that sink in: past, present future, not just the stuff you do on the outside. Iniquity is that inside twisted stuff going on in your heart, in your motives, even when you're doing good stuff for the wrong reason. God sees all of that and God has forgiven all of that. He's forgiven all my iniquity.

2 - He heals all your diseases.
He is in the process of turning back the effects of sin in my life so that he will eventually heal all my diseases. And I may not be able to see all that going on in my body and in my life at this moment, but I know by faith that 2 Corinthians 4 is true: day by day, the outer man may be wasting away, but the inner man, it's being renewed day by day. And I'm getting stronger, and I'm straining toward total redemption that Jesus has purchased for me in his death and resurrection. He heals all my diseases.

3 - He redeems my life from the pit. How many pits have I blundered into in my foolishness and waywardness? And God not only brings me out of those pits again and again, but then he redeems them, he turns them for my good! He somehow does the 'God thing,' and he makes my pit into this platform for his grace and his glory!

4 - He satisfies me with good so that my youth is renewed like the eagles.
5 - He crowns me with his "hesed" steadfast love and mercy. 

We're gonna unpack all those ideas more as we go along. The point is I've got a really generous benefits package as a child of God. This is what God has done for me in Christ. And it's true all the time, whether I am thanking God and acknowledging him for it or not. He is still being faithful to forgive my iniquities, to redeem me from my pits, to be healing me of all my diseases. He is always doing that for me, even while I'm grumbling about all that he's not doing for me.

When I'm forgetful, he is faithful. So I've got every reason to "bless the Lord," amen?

I've got a better benefits package than Bobby Bonilla. You know what I'm saying? So you might know Bobby Bonilla, a great, great player throughout the 1990s in major league baseball. He ends up taking retirement in 2000 and the Mets buy his contract out. It's like a contract for $5 million or something. They buy his contract out, but because of the nature of the organization at that time, they put together this deal where they delay payment to him for like another 10 years, but they're gonna pay it with interest. Here's what this means. Let me boil all this down.

Every single year on July the 1st, from 2011 to 2035, when he's 72 years old, every July the 1st, Bobby Bonilla walks to his mailbox and pulls out a check from the New York Mets for $1.2 million. It's called "Bobby Bonilla Day" for the initiated. That's a pretty good day to not have played a game of major league baseball in decades to walk out to your mailbox and get $1.2 million. That's a pretty good benefits package. But it can't compare to Psalm 103:3-5. This is what God is doing for you all the time. Why can I bless the Lord for my soul today no matter what's going on? Because even when I'm forgetful, he is faithful. Amen.

Number two, why should I bless the Lord today? Because:

I love the story that Ruth Graham, daughter of Billy Graham, tells, just a little bit after her father's death. sShe wrote an article for one of the Graham publications and said, "Everybody has got a Billy Graham story who's ever known him, but I want to tell you my Billy Graham story." She goes on to relate how after a number of years of a very difficult marriage, she and her husband get a divorce and everyone in the family understood the reasons why. But of course, she was very concerned about her father's public image and the scrutiny that that was going to bring to him. And then a little while longer, she goes on to share that she meets this widower in her church that her pastor introduces her to. And very quickly she decides that she's going to marry him. And it is really against the family's counsel and guidance. They're very concerned about this guy. They thought that it was moving too fast, but she said, "I'm not gonna listen to that. I'm just gonna go ahead and go for it." And not long into that marriage, she realized this is not going to work. This is a horrible decision.

And the story that she goes on to tell is the feeling of shame, the feeling of embarrassment, not only for herself, but what she thinks she's caused to her family. And she drives back home to see her parents for the first time after (in her view at least) these two failed marriages, just carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. And she says, "when I pulled into the driveway of Billy Graham's house at Montreat, there was mom and dad standing with their arms literally stretched out wide saying 'welcome home.'"

It's a lot like that Randy Travis song, you know?
Fathers don't just love their children every now and then / It's a love without end. 

Amen.

And that's what Psalm 103:6-12 is telling us about. This is why we can bless the Lord whatever is going on. Because whenever I fail, God meets me with forgiveness. And the way that the psalmist gets into this idea of God's forgiveness in verses 6-8 is taking us back to the story of God with his covenant people all the way to the beginning, when God heard the cries of his people in oppression and slavery in Egypt, and he came for them. He delivered them. He worked a righteousness for them. That's verse 6.

But then God was just getting started. Because then he led them out of slavery and into the wilderness and brought Moses upon Mount Sinai to deliver his law to them, to teach the people how they could live in covenant relationship with him. It's this incredible holy moment. And while Moses is on the mountain face-to-face with God getting the law, all the people are down below throwing a keg party around a golden calf. They have completely forgotten who God is and what he's done for them. It is an ugly moment of betrayal. It's an embarrassing moment of failure for the people of God, after all he's done, while he was literally in the act of teaching them how to live before him. And Moses gets so angry that he breaks the tablets. Y'all remember when Charlton Heston did that right? He breaks the tablets in two. He wants to be done with them! And God should have been angry too. God should have been done with them. He should have abandoned them in the wilderness and started all over again with a new people.

But that's when God was just beginning (verse 7) to make his ways known, to make his heart known to his people. Because God calls Moses back up on the mountain, he gives him the law again, and he promises that he will go with this undeserving people. And then God causes his glory to pass by Moses, and he reveals himself, the deepest part of who he is by saying, (the words of verse 8), "the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," or "hesed," covenant love.

You may have run into those words before because the Old Testament quotes them again and again. It is the essence of God's relationship with his people, to show loyal unwavering love to sinful failures. That is who God is. And Psalm 103 brings this old story up because that's who God still is to his people. That's what these exiles need to remember. That's what we need to remember. We are bound to God through "hesed" love that is unchanging even when we are so inconstant in our own love to Him. That's what he's saying in verses 9-12: If you need a reason to bless the Lord today, just review verses 9-12. Think about how many times God has met your failures with unfailing forgiveness!

When you sin, when you rebel against Him, when you run away, he's gonna chide you, because he's gonna train you up and he's gonna mature you. But your whole relationship with God is not him chiding you. Your whole relationship with God is not defined by spankings and lectures and groundings. And if that's what you think a relationship with God is, you've been lied to. No, God will not always chide. That is not what he's all about. Now, he wants to save your crazy tale from killing yourself so he's gonna intervene sometimes and chide you. But God delights to show mercy. He is not in heaven after you sin and repent and y'all have been restored, he is not in heaven nursing anger about what an idiot you were last week, or last year, or in the last seven minutes. That is not God's heart! He's not keeping his anger forever. No. In fact, he never gives us what our sins deserve. He never repays us according to our iniquity. Psalm 130 says, "Oh Lord, if you were to mark iniquity, oh Lord, who could stand?" If he gave us rigid 1-1 justice for everything, your sin against a holy God who loves you and has purchased you, If he gave you everything your sin deserved every time, none of us could stand before him. But that's not what he does, because of his "hesed," his steadfast love.

Instead, what does God do for us? The psalmist tries to get like into the dimensions of God's steadfast love: "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear Him." In other words, you cannot measure it. Look up above your head when you go outside. How high is the sky? That's how high God's covenant steadfast love is for you, his child, at your worst! That's how great his steadfast love is. This has got to be in Paul's heart when he's writing Ephesians 3 and voices that prayer about, "God, give us the strength just to see how deep and how high and how wide and how long is the love of Christ for us." It's got dimensions that we cannot measure.

He goes on with this kind of spatial language. He says, "As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." I heard a pastor say one time that when God forgives us, he doesn't take our transgressions and put them in a jar and set them on the kitchen table so that we're both just kind of looking at them, as if he removed them from me, but I mean, there they are. And so we're always thinking about it and we're always talking about it, and we're always bringing it back up. No! He separates your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west. If you start walking east on highway 64, and you keep going all the way around the world till you get back to the rock crusher, you will not find your transgressions, because God has removed them from you as far as they can be removed. You will never find them! How could he do that? Because He laid them on his beloved son Jesus. He did give Jesus what sin deserved, though Jesus deserved nothing but blessing and glory and that crown of steadfast love. Jesus received the penalty for my sin so that I would not have to, so that the "hesed" of God could come flowing into my life. So that from the fullness of Jesus Christ, I could receive grace upon grace upon grace. So life may be hard for me in any given moment, but whatever may be going on, I can bless the Lord from the bottom of my soul. Because when I fail, he forgives through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Number three, why can I bless the Lord this morning? Because:

My kids and I watched a funny video yesterday that was kind of poking fun at classic dad things, you know? So, there's the dad at the grocery store who has to call his wife 17 times because he doesn't know where anything is, and he's forgotten what she asked him to get. And there's the dad who's so sweet and gentle and encouraging to all the other kids on the little league baseball team, and he is absolutely ruthless to his own child off to the side. All these classic dad stereotypes were poking fun at the weaknesses that kids see in their dads, right? Kids can see their dad's weaknesses really clearly because they're just right in front of them every single day. Right? Amen, kids? This is a good time to say amen. You see your dad's weaknesses, right? It's easy. It's easy to do impressions of your dad. It's easy to tell goofy stories about your dad. It's true for every kid.

And dads can also see the weaknesses of their kids really clearly because we're with them all the time. And we know the things that they're good at, and that they're natural at, the things that they excel at. But we also see the things that are really hard for them, the lessons that they don't seem to pick up as quickly as we want them to. We see the things that they struggle with. And in our worst moments as dads, we can get really frustrated with those weaknesses. Those weaknesses of our children can be sources of irritation. And we can think to ourselves or maybe say out loud in a not so nice voice, "When are you gonna get it together? When are you gonna get with the program? I'm tired of addressing this with you over and over again." We can have some intense fellowship with our children over their weaknesses. But at our best, with a big shot of the grace of God through the Holy Spirit, when we see our kids floundering in weaknesses, we can step back and say, "you know what, I'm full of weaknesses too. And when I see that weakness in you, it doesn't draw anger from my heart, it draws compassion from my heart. And it doesn't make me want to run away from you. It doesn't make me want to strike you. It makes me want to help you and love you and uphold you in your weakness." That's a dad at his best.

And when you see that, you're seeing a little picture of the love of God for his children. That's why verses 13 and 14 are some of my favorite in the whole Bible. If you need verses to memorize to encourage your heart about the character of God, it's verses 13 and 14, "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." Sometimes earthly dads can be really severe with their kids because we hold them to unrealistic standards. We're expecting them to act like fully-matured adults with all the same life experience and training that we have as 40 or 50 year old men. And that's unrealistic, isn't it? We don't remember what it's like to be a child, growing up learning these things, maturing, developing, and growing. God never makes that mistake with his children.

I love this verse. What it tells us is that God who has no weaknesses, no flaws, and sees all of mine, he does not hold me to this rigid, unattainable standard, just looking to pour out his wrath when I don't meet it. No, he always looks on me knowing that he made me from the dust. He knows that even as a born-again sinner, my spirit is often willing, but my flesh is so weak. He knows this is hard for me: obeying His word, living before him, loving other people, serving. That is hard. And God, instead of looking for an opportunity to smash us when we fail, is in fact looking for opportunities to cheer on the least, little bit of progress, the least little effort, the least little attempt to glorify him and to please Him. When God sees your weaknesses, it doesn't move him away from you, it moves him to you. When God sees your frailties, it doesn't draw anger from his heart, it draws compassion. It makes him want to bring you close so that he can forgive you, and train you, and grow you, and help you, and celebrate the little stumbling steps you make as his child seeking to please him. That's who God is all the time.

And so if you're looking for a reason to bless the Lord from the bottom of your heart today, try this: though I'm frail, he's my father, and a perfect father."

Here's the last one. Why bless the Lord? Because:

I mowed the grass on Friday night. Over the course of a week, you know, several new sprigs of grass popped up. They had their little moment of glory in the sun at 415 Breckenridge Lane. And then I chopped them all down. And I don't know any of their names. We didn't hold a memorial service for them. I'm not gonna be telling my grandchildren, "man, that one blade of grass, he was really showing out on, you know, June 16th or whatever." It's not like that. It's just grass, right? It's just here one day, it's gone the next. And Psalm 103 says that's really what we are. That's what human life is like. Even at our best, our strongest, our most accomplished, our most impressive, we are like grass! We spring up. We have a brief moment in the sun and then we are cut down, and we are forgotten.

It also compares us to dust. I'm sure none of y'all have any dust on your ceiling fans or bookshelves or whatever at home. But just imagine that you do, just a little insignificant speck of something that kind of floats down and rests on it. You're not thinking about that dust, you're not gonna show your guest that dust. If you see that dust, you're gonna wipe it up as quick as you can, and not mention it.

Dust and grass are the comparisons that the psalmist makes to us. That could be a little discouraging if it were not for the fact that God loves dust. And God loves grass like us. Here's this amazing truth. I wish we had more time. We don't, I know. This is unbelievable: God wants to take my small fleeting insignificant life and bind me to himself, the king whose throne is established in heaven and that rules over all and will endure forever. So he takes dust and grass and wraps it up in steadfast love that is from everlasting to everlasting. When I know God in a relationship of saving faith through Jesus Christ, my little dusty self gets wrapped up in the steadfast love of Jesus Christ. And I am drawn into this amazing story of God's glory and God's grace.

The psalmist goes on to tell us that when I make even imperfect attempts to fear the Lord, to remember to do his covenant, and to keep his commands, God gives me (grass/dust), he gives me a legacy that far outlasts my little life. It lasts into generation upon generation. Because when I fear the Lord and seek to keep his commandments, God visits his righteous blessing on my children and on my children's children. Now, I don't pretend to understand all the ways that that works out. But I do know that the decisions my grandparents made to love the Lord and to pursue him, they had ripple effects far beyond what they could see. And the fact that it makes sense to me just to love Jesus and to pay attention to his word, to fear the Lord, that is a reflection of God's gracious activity through the choices that my parents and grandparents made. There's something to that. Now, certainly you can wrench yourself out of an unbelieving family situation. You can make a new decision. You can start a new legacy. By the grace of God that happens every single day. But I think a lot of us are also walking in the legacy of God's grace, his covenantal grace, generation by generation, passing his righteous love down from one child to children's children to their children. Isn't that an amazing thing?

And so I know this hadn't really been all about dads today, but I think it's a good reminder as we close. Dads, I know we want to give so much to our children. But the very best gift that you could ever give your children is not a college fund, not a car when they're 16, not opportunities to play competitive sports, not, you know, opportunities to make social contacts. And all those things can be great. Those can be great things to do. But it's not taking them on awesome vacations, not giving them new trendy clothes or whatever. There's nothing wrong with any of those things. But the very best thing that you could give to your children is to let them see you fear the Lord and keep his commandments, and to keep his covenant. If they know that you just love God and take him seriously and want to walk with him, that is the greatest gift you could ever ever give them. And it will have an impact far beyond your little grass-like life. Does that make sense?

Well, how do we close? Verses 20-22. We close with the camera zooming out like one of those Google Earth type scenarios. The camera zooms out from this church service up to where we get a view not only of the galaxy, but of the heavenly realms. And we get to see what's happening all over the creation right now. And what we find is that the angels are blessing the Lord, speaking well of him, declaring his praises, worshiping him. And then we go on to see that all of God's created works (that's everything he's made, that's everything that's not God) worshiping him, blessing the Lord, everything in the universe doing just what God made it to do, simply recognizing the truth that he is worthy to be praised!

And then that Google Earth camera zooms in at breakneck speed down to me and my soul, and what's going on in here. And what we find is the one thing in all of God's creation that should be leading the celebration of blessing the Lord, God's redeemed child, the recipient of all this good stuff we've been talking about. The one thing in the universe that should be the first to say, "let's all bless the Lord now," looks like Branch the troll in that Trolls movie. You know what I'm saying? Arms crossed, sour expression, walking through this musical, everybody singing, and dancing, and throwing a party, refusing to join in! This is God's covenant child not getting with the program: blessing the Lord!

And so Psalm 103 ends the very last line with an invitation. Will you bless the Lord now from your soul? You've heard who he is. You've remembered what he's done. Are you ready to say, "Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name?"

We're gonna give you a chance to do that right after we pray.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church