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.
There in the bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty people: brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads – Welcome Home!
Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes and begins her memorized speech. He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. We’ll be late. A big party is waiting for you at home.”
Her story could well be our story except that our sin is different from her sin. And unlike her parents, God does want our apology in the form of confession of Christ and repentance! And this story reminds us of another story in scripture, does it not? The prodigal son who came to his senses and more importantly, the Father who ran to meet him and forgive him.
Luke 15:20-21 “So he got up and went to his father.“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
Thank God for His grace in Jesus Christ which enables us to be forgiven! Forget not your forgiveness in Christ and praise Him every day for it!
II. FORGET NOT YOUR HEALING
2 Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, Have you been healed? In some ways you have.
ILL.- I remember as a kid watching the faith healer Oral Roberts on TV. I was so fascinated by his crusades and by what he said about God’s healing. And when nobody else was in the room and Oral Roberts said, “Put your hand on the TV screen and be healed,” I did just that. Why did I do that? I was born with a lazy eye and with near-sightedness. I had difficulty seeing some things and that lazy gave me all kinds of trouble.
The eye doctor who was an optometrist back then simply put a dark covering over my good eye on my glasses, my dominant eye with the hope that my lazy eye would develop and get stronger. IT DIDN’T WORK. I thought if there was a possibility that God would heal my poor vision and I could get rid of wearing glasses, THEN WHY NOT TRY THIS?! So I put my hand on that TV screen, closed my eyes and tried to believe with all my heart that God would heal me.
He didn’t heal my vision but He probably did something in my heart that I didn’t even recognize. God is God and He put within my heart the desire to keep on seeking Him. That desire fluctuated at times, but it stayed with me or otherwise I would never have come to Christ eventually. There is power in the gospel no matter who is preaching it or how it’s presented!
Romans 10:17 “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”
I Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
Many Christians and preachers are quick to quote this verse and emphasize that Christ died to bring healing to our bodies. As we know, He came to bring healing to our souls more than anything, but there may well be times when He brings healing to our bodies.
ILL.- It was around 1984 that our high school football team in southern IL won the state championship. Nearly everyone in our small town went to the ball games and cheered the team. I did as well. That was the thing to do in a small town. Some months later I had a sharp pain in the right side of my neck which I ignored for several months. But it kept getting harder and harder to ignore, because it got worse whenever I would raise my voice too loudly in preaching or at those ball games. I finally contacted an ear, nose and throat doctor in Cape Girardeau, MO, who was considered to be quite good.
When I went to see him, I explained my problem and asked, “What do you think it is?” He immediately said, “It could be cancer.” I gulped and listened. He sprayed my throat with some awful tasting stuff and said he was going to put a scope with a light down my throat and take a look. He did and here is what he found. I had ulcerated nodules on my vocal chords. He said that singers often get them. He made out a prescription for a steroid pack and sent me home with this advice, “Be quiet.” It seemed like in no time that my pain went away and apparently my vocal chords healed.
I have since been to a doctor in our town and he found no more nodules or ulceration. DID GOD HEAL ME? Well, I want to believe He did with the doctor’s help. If God has ever healed you in anyway, miraculously or through a doctor or otherwise, then forget not your healing and praise Him! Thank Him for good healing and good health!
III. FORGET NOT YOUR REDEMPTION
4 who redeems your life from the pit.
Pit living. Have you ever been there? It’s like that Philip Yancey story of that young girl who ran away from home and ended up in pit living. Or the prodigal son in the hog lot. That’s pit living. Or Joseph of the O.T. whose brothers threw him in a pit. Of course, later we know that Joseph was accused to trying to seduce Mrs. Potipher who lied about him and he was thrown into another pit called jail. That’s pit living.
Have you ever said about something that happened to you, “Well, this is the pits!”??? That could well have been pit living. And I honestly think all of us have been there in some form. Something bad or negative happened to us in life and we felt like we were in a deep pit of some kind and needed to be lifted out.
ILL.- I know that Elaine was raised by parents who had 9 kids. From what she said, it was pit living much of the time, because they didn’t have much and sometimes had to scrape for food. And her father was a drunk and abusive. That’s pit living. She didn’t choose that life but she fell into it by birth.
Maybe you had a similar situation of pit living. Sometimes we don’t choose pit living, but it comes our way by birth, etc. But then there are times when we do choose pit living, like when I started to drive to Kansas when I was 18 years old because a person could buy beer at age 18 in Kansas. And Kansas was just about 10 miles from Joplin. I can honestly say that I chose pit living by doing that. I didn’t know it was pit living at that time. I thought it was the thing to do because many others did it, but it turned to be pit living. A life is drinking is never good!
Psalm 40:1-2 “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
It is highly possible that all of us have experienced some kind of negative, pit living, and if the Lord delivered you or redeemed you somehow then forget not to thank Him and praise Him!
IV. FORGET NOT YOUR CROWNS
4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, 5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Have you been crowned by God? Have you been crowned by God with love and compassion? I BET YOU HAVE. I bet if you took the time you could figure out many different times when God crowned you with love and compassion.
He satisfies your desires with good things. Has not God crowned you with good things? The house in which you live? The car, SUV, or truck that you drive? The clothes and shoes that you wear? The food that He gives you every day?
ILL.- Once a month they serve the residents in the main dining hall at the Craighead nursing center pizza from Pizza Works which is just down the road from the center. I remember one of the residents crinkled up her nose, saying, “Is this all I get for lunch today?”’ Whereas another resident said, “This is all want for lunch today!”
Many times we miss our blessings simply because we have the wrong attitude about things. Every day we are blessed by God with good things and obviously, may be more appealing to us than other things, but overall, we’re blessed with good things from God. And if He has crowned you with things from His loving compassion then forget not to thank Him and praise Him!
CONCLUSION--------------
Today upon a bus, I saw a lovely maid with golden hair; I envied her -- she seemed so happy, and how, I wished I were so fair; When suddenly she rose to leave, I saw her hobble down the aisle; she had one foot and had a crutch, but as she passed, a smile. Oh God, forgive me when I whine, I have two feet -- the world is mine.
And when I stopped to buy some sweets, the lad who served me had such charm; he seemed to radiate good cheer, his manner was so kind and warm; I said, "It's nice to deal with you, such courtesy I seldom find"; he turned and said, "Oh, thank you sir." And then I saw that he was blind. Oh, God, forgive me when I whine, I have two eyes, the world is mine.
Then, when walking down the street, I saw a child with eyes of blue; he stood and watched the others play, it seemed he knew not what to do; I stopped a moment, then I said, "Why don't you join the others, dear?" He looked ahead without a word, and then I knew he could not hear. Oh God, forgive me when I whine, I have two ears, the world is mine.
With feet to take me where I'd go; with eyes to see the sunsets glow, with ears to hear what I would know. I am blessed indeed. The world is mine; oh, God, forgive me when I whine. Stop whining!
1 Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2 Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
