Psalm 103

Perspective of full redemption.

And a vision of the final consummation of all things.

Ps 103:1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me,bless his holy name! 2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,

Psalms tell us to praise or bless the Lord.

Problem: Is this to boost His ego as if He were a dictator in the sky?

Lets think of another explanation:

·         When to we most naturally slip into real praise?

·         Joy.

·         Especially from a sense of wonder.

Man's Chief End …

Einstein:

`You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a religious feeling of his own...  His religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all the scientific thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.   This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire.

Einstein said that science has now reached the stage where it cannot be satisfied simply with describing how nature is what it is in its ongoing processes, but must press on to ask "why nature is what it is and not something else".

One Prof.: When I teach students relativity - I feel near to God - I can explain what it is but not why it exists ….

Another Prof.: Thermodynamics assumes that the universe contains such things as heat and energy but why?

Forget not all his benefits.

How easily we forget!

A. Absent-mindedness: sail through life as if....

Dr. Harold C. Urey, Nobel prize winner in Chrmistry, was walking along a sidewalk one day when he ran into another professor. They chatted for a few minutes, then, as they parted, Dr. Urey asked the other: "John, which was was I going when I met you?" "That way," said the other, pointing. "Oh, good. That means I've already had my lunch," muttered the professor as he walked away

The point is that we can be so busy thinking about some things we forget where our life has come from and where it is going

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

His love removes our sin.

2 ways of describing  it.

1. Immeasurable distances.

Can't measure either:

•        heaven above the earth - expand

•        east is from the west -

•        travellers across the sea always aware - more beyond the horizon.

•        always farther to go in understanding the love of God.

Ep 3:18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

FAMILY AFFECTION.

13 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

Word means `pity or affection'.

Coming back to god is returning home to where we belong.

Fear him - not soppy.

If God only loved us a little then he wouldn't mind that much if we rejected his little love.

It is precisely because God loves us to the cross that we dare not reject him.

 `Psalm 130: 4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

One thing we do not need to fear

-        we do not need to fear, that he doesn't understand our predicament.

You and I may think we have a uniquely difficult life - we don't!

The Lord understands only too well all about us.

14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

N.T. WILL SHOW HOW MUCH HE KNOWS ... EXPAND.

15 As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.

Jesus gave a new turn to this!

God's care for the fragile flowers - how much more us!

Another kind of happiness.

Pleasure.

Nothing wrong with that but …

Paul met the Epicurean philosophers.

·         Don't be concerned with these mysteries.

·         Don't ask.

·         There is just this material world.

·         Don't ask `Why?' question.

·         Just be practical maximise pleasure and minimise pain

Negative side of a pleasure without the joy that comes from wonder.

Woody Allen in a recent interview:

"It's hard for me to enjoy anything because I'm aware how transient things are.  Yes, there are strategies of surviving....  There are times when you think, 'My God, life is sweet, it's nice,' and thoughts of mortality are in abeyance.  You know, watching the Marx Brothers or a Knicks game or listening to great jazz, you get a great feeling of ecstasy.... But then it passes, and the dark reality of life starts to creep back in."  

Danger in separating pleasure from wonder.

·         Everything goes down.

·         Music, art, culture sinks.

·         Even the quest for learning and truth.

·          The very purpose of university education.

Recently I read part of the Forward to the American Academic Neil Postman's book `Amusing Ourselves to Death.

He contrasts the futuristic visions of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: 

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.  What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one.... Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.  Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture....  As Huxley remarked: the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."  In 1984,

Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain.  In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.  In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Not that life can or even should be all joy in the deepest sense.

Darker side to human experience -

- but by the grace of God even that can be used for ultimate good.

Malcolm Muggeridge was a great cynic about life and its purpose. Then speaks of what finally drew him to Christ:

Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful, with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained.  In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo...the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal or trivial to be endurable.  This of course is what the cross signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.

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To the Epicurean philosophers

·         Paul proclaimed something beyond the physical world

·         that nevertheless gives the physical world its hope.

It is that which takes us beyond

·         the cross,

·         human sin and evil

·         suffering.

·         death.

Brings us forgiveness, healing

- so that our true destiny is discovered.

Although mystery and wonder remain we know something of the answer to the 'why?' question of purpose.

The resurrection.

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Hollocaust.

One of the German leaders who was imprisoned by Hitler became Germany's post-war leader.

On day he met the evangelist Billy Graham and asked him this question: Mr. Graham, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead?"

Graham, somewhat surprised by his question answered,

"Of course I do."

Replied Chancellor Adenauer,

"Mr. Graham, outside of the resurrection of Jesus, I do not know of any other hope for this world."

·         Without that hope - when the day ends darkness wins.

·         With that hope - the end of this day is the beginning of that Day which shall have no evening.

And so the Psalm ends with great joy expressed in singing:

Ps 103: 20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! 21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! 22 Bless the Lord, all his works,
in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!

David wants all to praise him.

1. Angels

2. Servants.

3. Nature.

4. And lastly: my soul.

Our song is not a solo.

All creation is singing.

But your voice, my voice is needed in the choir

·         because it has its own part to add -  its own benefits to celebrate and its own access to the attentive ear of God.

·         Make sure you and I have our place in the choir of all creation.