Forget Not All Your Benefits Series

INTRO.- Forget not all your benefits. Have you counted up your benefits lately? Your benefits from the Lord?

ILL.- In a speech made in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.” AMEN!

We sometimes forget the gracious hand that blesses us every day with choice bounties! We in America need to wake up and look up, pray up and praise up!

ILL.- Waylon Prendergast, 37, of Tampa, Florida, committed a spur-of-the-moment robbery while on his way home from a late-night drinking session. A very drunk Mr. Prendergast forced his way into the house through an open upstairs window, filling a suitcase with cash and valuables before setting the living room on fire to cover his tracks. He then escaped through the back door and made his way home, chuckling all the way.

Only as he turned the corner into his own street, however, and discovered three fire engines outside his house, did he realize that in his drunkenness he had, in fact, burgled and ignited his own property. His comment was: "I had no idea I had so many valuable possessions."

What about you? Do you realize how much you have? And not just material possessions but in every way. We are blessed by God in many ways! Every good and perfect is from above!

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

PROP.- The Psalmist lists our benefits from God that we must not forget.

1- Forget not your forgiveness

2- Forget not your healing

3- Forget not your redemption

4- Forget not your crowns

I. FORGET NOT YOUR FORGIVENESS

2 Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—3 who forgives all your sins.

Matthew 26:28 “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Ephesians 1:7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace...”

ILL.- Not far from New York, there is a cemetery with a grave, which has inscribed upon its headstone just one word—“Forgiven.” There is no name, no date of birth or death. There is no epitaph, no elaborate eulogy—just that one word, “Forgiven.”

And this may well be the greatest thing that could be said of us or written about us. We are forgiven in Christ. Forgiveness of our sins is only possible in Christ!

ILL.- Philip Yancey (Christian author) tells the story of a prodigal daughter who grows up in Traverse City, Michigan. Disgusted with her old fashioned parents who overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, the length of her skirts, she runs away. She ends up in Detroit where she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. The man with the big car – she calls him “Boss” – recognizes that since she’s underage, men would pay premium for her. So she goes to work for him. Things are good for a while. Life is good. But she gets sick for a few days, and it amazes her how quickly the boss turns mean. Before she knows it, she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, and all the money goes to support her drug habit.

One night while sleeping on the metal grates of the city, she began to feel less like a woman of the world and more like a little girl. She begins to whimper. “God, why did I leave. My dog back home eats better than I do now.” She knows that more than anything in the world, she wants to go home. Three straight calls home get three straight connections with the answering machine. Finally she leaves a message. “Mom, dad, its me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, I‘ll understand.”

During the seven hour bus ride, she’s preparing a speech for her father. And when the bus comes to a stop in the Traverse City station, the driver announces the fifteen-minute stop. Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. But not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepares her for what she sees.