Today we’re starting a four-part series on “The Lavishness of God.” To lavish means to be extravagant; to pour out; to shower. And God throughout the pages of His Word is described as that kind of a God…one who pours out to His people; one who gives. One who displays His grace and His righteousness and His goodness upon His people. And we’re going to be examining that.
I’m so thankful for my wife, Stephanie…so happy to be married to her. We have a great time together. And I’ll never forget how we first met. I was leading the youth ministry at Bethlehem in Morris at the time and Stephanie was a sophomore in high school. And so we got to know each other in that time and she had a crush on me, of course, so that was nice. But I knew she was a student and only I was 19 years old, but going into this I said, “Lord, this is your ministry here and I don’t want to have any relationships of any nature that aren’t just strictly a youth minister to the kids so, she was just a friend…but I thought she was cute. I did think she was cute.
But then it was later on when she was in college and I was in seminary that we started dating; started seeing one another. And I remember the excitement that I had going to pick her up…driving out to DeKalb on I-88 and getting excited because I was going to see her and I was going to pull up to her little apartment there and she was going to come out and we’re going to go out and maybe hang out together and get pizza down the road and awww, I just had that excited feeling. You know what I mean?
Do you remember that feeling that you had…those who are married? Do you remember that feeling…you’re getting ready for the night and you can’t wait to see your girl or your man and it’s just exciting? And I remember when we got married. It was awesome. It was one the greatest days of my life and we got married. My dad married us and it was wonderful and it was emotional and then we went on our honeymoon. We went down to Missouri for a week – stayed at a cabin. It was wonderful just to relax and just kind of unwind after all the preparations that go into weddings nowadays. Big deal.
Then we got to go to Rome. We went to Rome, Italy. We went back to my roots…and uh, ....a quarter of my roots – and went back there to Rome, Italy. And I remember the feelings of being in Rome and looking around at this ancient, ancient buildings and being in the places that the Apostle Paul probably walked and thinking this is amazing. My heart just overflowing with excitement and passion to be with my wife, Stephanie. You remember that feeling?
Maybe you’re not married, you’re single, but no doubt you’ve had maybe that feeling of excitement over someone. Do you remember what it was like when you first became a Christian? When you were saved? Do you remember when you came to know the Lord that excitement and that passion to know the God of this Book and the God of the universe and you knew Him personally and you knew Jesus and you knew His forgiveness. Wow! You were so fired up to serve Him and to know Him and to talk about Him and to live for Him and to pray and to fast and to get into His Word. Maybe you say, “Well, I’ve been a Christian as long as I can remember.” Well, that’s the same with me. But do you remember a time when you rededicated your life to the Lord? And maybe you were going down the wrong track and you knew it. God convicted you of sin and you said, “I’m recommitting my life to Jesus today.” You were filled with that joy of salvation and you were overwhelmed and you couldn’t wait to live for him. Your joy to know Jesus as your Savior and Lord was so vibrant and so passionate.
I want you and I, believer, today and for the next few Sundays to just dwell and to just think on and to just remember and to praise God for who He is - His wonderfulness, His beauty, and His righteousness and His goodness, His grace.
We’re going to be looking at Psalm 103 and we’re going to talk about the Lavishness of God. You know that God is so wonderful. His being unbelievable. He calls His children, those who believe in Him, have their faith in Jesus, His children…He calls you friend. One of the Psalms says “I am a friend of God.” You can call God a friend. He is great, and He’s wonderful, and He’s extravagant, and He showers blessings upon His people. That is what we’re going to be looking at for the next few Sundays.
So if you have your Bibles, turn to Psalm 103. I’d like to read the first five verses. This is what we’re going to be looking at today, Psalm 103: 1-5. Here’s the King James Version. Many of you are probably familiar with hearing these words:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
And for those who are maybe of a younger generation, listen to the New Living Translation:
“Praise the Lord, I tell myself; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, I tell myself, and never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He ransoms me from death and surrounds me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!”
This is the God that we are here to serve this morning. Please pray with me – “Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your goodness and your extravagance…your blessings that you pour out. We’re not worthy of them God and I’m not worthy to even be here in this place at this moment. It is only by your grace. Jesus, thank you. We love you. Amen.”
I want to look at some of the benefits that God bestows upon His people. I read to you from the King James and the New Living Translation, but I’m not going to be using either one of those today. I’m going to be using the English Standard Version. It’s a very literal translation. I’ll be using that to talk about the benefits of God.
Verse 1 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits…” God, for His people and for those who come to him broken, has benefits. “Do not forget His benefits.” And we want to talk today a little about the benefits that God bestows upon us.
Our health is an issue. Today millions and millions of dollars are spent on health care. But just one of the benefits that I thought about this past week as I was thinking about my own health, I was so thankful for my health and we take it for granted today.
Do you know that if you need a coronary artery bypass surgery, it will cost you from $15,000-20,000?
Heart transplant - $210,000
Gastrointestinal Surgery - $15,000
Fertility Treatment - $40,000
Kidney Transplant - $42,000
Liver Transplant - $115,000
Bone Marrow Transplant - $106,000
Lung Transplant - $105,000
We have a lot to be thankful for - even for our health. Maybe we have ailments and maybe we have certain things, but God has given us and has created us with great bodies. I’m thankful for that. That’s one of the benefits that I’m thankful for. And I just wanted to share that with you this morning because I was thinking about that this past week.
But scripture goes on in Psalms. It lists five benefits that we receive from the Lord:
First, forgiveness. God forgives all of our iniquity…verse 3. Forgiveness is found in God. Maybe you feel that you are too far gone and you’ve messed up too many times and I feel that I’m a sinner. But the truth of God’s word is that God provides forgiveness for those who come to Him. It’s a wonderful thing. Our hearts can be hardened, but God extends to all people forgiveness if they so receive.
I read of a story about a pastor who was visiting a guy. He was talking to him and he said, “Come back and meet with me over at my house – the parsonage – come over and meet with me. I want to talk to you a little bit more about the Lord. So he came over and he picked up a book that was there in the pastor’s study over at his house. He started reading and he said, “Glory, praise the name of the Lord.”
The pastor asked, “What’s the matter with you?” The visitor said to him, “This book says that in certain places that the ocean is 5-7 miles deep.
And the pastor said, “So, so what?”
“Well, I read in God’s Word…I read that God takes our sins and he casts them to the depths of the sea. That’s how far he casts them away. And I know, in my studies that 5-7 miles deep nothing can survive that’s man made. A ship down there will be crushed like an egg shell because of the all the pressure. So I know that if my sins are buried under 7 miles of water, the pressure is so strong and so great, my sins will never come back.”
The pastor said, “Yeah. That’s forgiveness. And you know what else…as far as the east is from the west. How far is that?” The man was blown away.
That is the forgiveness that God provides through Jesus Christ. He says, “I forgive all your iniquities.” Everything that you’ve ever done wrong…everything that you’ve ever made mistakes on, God forgives. Think of that! I want you today to be encouraged, believer that you’ve been forgiven of your sins if you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you have a question and you haven’t been forgiven. It’s simple. It’s to come to Him. “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”, the Bible says. Confess your sins to Him, come to Him and say, “Jesus you died in my place. I believe in you. I have faith in you. And your sins are taken to the depths of the ocean.”
Wonderful promise of scripture…one of the benefits of God, of being one of His children, is forgiveness of sins.
Then the scripture goes on. It says that not only forgives all of our iniquities, He heals all of our diseases. God is Jehovah Raphe. He is the one in Hebrew that heals everything. Heals all of our diseases. Scripture here doesn’t say that He heals everyone’s disease because we might know of some in our own lives who have prayed for healing and they haven’t received it. But it says here that he heals all of our diseases. In general, God does not bow to disease and sickness. He can heal all disease. He can heal every sickness. Now we cry out to Him for healing and God sometimes in his grace and mercy does answer because he can. Other times He says no. Maybe there is something that we need to learn in our life, but He heals diseases. This is the God who heals.
I think of my sister Heather…and even as I’m sharing, I know there are some that have cried out for healing and you haven’t received it. I want to encourage you to keep crying out to Him. Scripture says that the prayers of a righteous person avails much. So keep crying out to Him.
In the case of my sister, Heather, she was on death’s door. And I remember 6 years ago, crying out to God for her. I remember thousands, literally thousands, of other people crying out to God for her as she faced brain surgery because of a brain tumor that was bleeding. God healed her. He touched her. And she’s well today and she’s strong. She’s doing well. Six years still living with an inoperable brain tumor.
God can heal. He can. So call out to Him. But if He doesn’t, don’t think it’s not because He can’t. That’s not the reason.
Verse 4, “who redeems…God redeems your life from the pit.” God is our redeemer. I read a story about the governor of Texas some years ago, Governor Neff, was his name. He went to some of the different penitentiaries of the state to tour them; to see how they were doing and to meet with the inmates to see how they were treated and so forth. He talked with them and he finished and he said that if any man would like to speak to him he would remain and they could come up to him and talk to him. So they did. A large group of men remained. They came over. Many of them were serving life sentences. One by one they came up to him. Each one of them had the same story, “I’m innocent. I’ve been wrongly accused. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m wasting my life away. I shouldn’t be here.”
Finally one man came up and he said, “Governor, I just wanted to tell you that I am guilty. I did what I was convicted of and I’m serving a life sentence. But I believe that I’ve paid for it. I’ve been here many, many, many years and I want to contribute again to society. I want to be freed. And if I am freed, if I ever get out, I’m going to go out and tell people that this is not the right kind of life to live and what I did was wrong.” You know what happened? The Governor pardoned this man. He gave him a pardon and released him. Why? Because he admitted his guilt and this man then was redeemed. God redeems people. But he doesn’t just redeem everybody. He redeems those who admit their guilt. They say to him, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.”
God gives great gifts and He also satisfies. Verse 5, “He satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” God is one that satisfies. He brings satisfaction. We all hear that we all have a God-shaped hole and it can’t be filled with anything other thing except God. We might try to fill it with material possessions; we might try to fill it with relationships; we might try to fill it with certain substances that we can get addicted to. But the only thing that can really fill us is God and can satisfy us.
I love the last part of verse 5… “your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Today, we’re all looking for youth. We all talk about the young people and the younger generation. Even church services and church style, I mean, they’re talking about ‘we want to reach young people.’ And I’m all for that. I’m agreeing with young people.
I had a guy in seminary, a professor at the time, he said to the class, “I always wonder why churches always say, ‘we want to reach the young generation so we’re going to change our service and different things to reach the young generation.” He said, “Why don’t churches try to reach my generation. I’m the baby boomer. I mean, we’re the biggest group of people and we’ve got the most money, so why don’t people try to reach us?”
But people like youth because in youth you think of vitality; you think of strength; you think of vigor; you think of innovation and ideas and the world is there for the taking. Scripture says here that God satisfies and he restores our life. He gives us our youth back like the strength of an eagle. It’s a wonderful thing that God in His mercy and His love and who He is – that for His believing children they can actually have youth for all of their days. The greatness and the goodness of youth. But also blessed by the wisdom of age.
Have you ever been in the presence of a believer – an old believer who has walked with the Lord for many years? You can see that youth and that vitality and the joy of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit in his eyes.
Don’t forget today what you have in the Lord. Don’t forget all His benefits. David here in the Psalms says to himself, “Bless the Lord. I’ll tell myself that. Bless the Lord. I can’t do it my own, but I’ll keep telling myself praise Him; Praise His name. Look at all the things He has done for me. He’s forgiven me. He heals all diseases. He satisfies me. He gives me all of these things. Bless the Lord. Praise Him, O my soul.”
The Lord God forgives sin. Remember that today. He heals diseases. He redeems our lives. He crowns us with everlasting love, lovingkindness, and He satisfies us. He restores our youth. Remember that today. Be encouraged of what you have in the Lord. If you don’t have that, it’s for you. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Be encouraged today of God’s goodness.
