An Aperitif for the Soul

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being. Praise His holy name.

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. We're so glad to have you with us this morning as we come together to thank the Lord for His goodness and for His grace. And if you can hear me amidst the competition, we're going to be raising our hymns of thanksgiving to God for all that He's done for us.

Later on we're going to be dedicating a little girl and her mom and dad as they take vows as parents. We've got another number of visitors here and whether you're a regular attender at the Tabernacle or whether this is your first time of coming, we're very glad to have your company, and we hope that you'll experience the presence of God. Our opening hymn speaks of praise.

Indeed, all our hymns speak of praise. One of the things that John Wesley tells us to do is to enjoy every stanza of every verse of every hymn as we sing it. Not wait until the end of the service to pick up enthusiasm, but to sing heartily and well right from the very beginning.

So with percussion as well as organ, we're going to turn to hymn number nine. Praise my soul the King of heaven to his feet thy tribute bring. Number nine.

Praise my soul the King of heaven to his feet thy tribute bring. That some King his own forgiver would I give his gracious seal. Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, praise the everlasting King.

Praise him for his grace and favor to our fathers in his test. Praise him till the same forever, so to joy and sin to rest. Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, glorious in his We are going to enjoy reading Psalm 103.

A beautiful Psalm of praise to our Lord and Savior. Psalm 103. Praise the Lord, O my soul, O my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, but abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. As far is from the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him, for he knows how we are formed.

He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field.

The wind blows over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children, with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.

Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. Now I am sure you are bursting to join me in the last verse.

Praise the Lord, all his works, everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Amen.

And let's turn to God's Holy Word, the psalm that's already been read. And you will have discovered in notes and news as it was handed to you, some program outlining our prospective ministry from the pulpit as far as Bible exposition is concerned during these next two or three months up to Christmas. And it's with great delight that we look forward, those who share the pulpit with me, in a morning to speaking about the greatness of our God, under a series entitled, Behold Your God.

Now, sometimes the old Puritans, when they were traveling around, not in their motor cars, but on their horses, going from village to village, often in the wintry months, felt very cold. And sometimes they'd call before the service into the inn, and there they'd warm themselves by the fire and they'd take a drink of ale. And that would help to enliven them for the service so they didn't feel the chill of the weather.

And some of the Puritans in a daring fashion referred to the Scriptures in the comment that I've given you at the top of notes and news, has been a warm cordial, something that just causes a burning sensation within the heart. I understand it's done in some circles before you actually have your main meal, to take an aperitif. And that helps to prepare your taste buds for what is to come.

Well, as I had this spare Sunday, so to speak, in terms of our preaching program before commencing on this series, Behold Your God, I thought if you would allow me, with my Puritan preamble as a justification, to speak to you from this lovely psalm, and I call it an aperitif for the soul. Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being, praise His holy name. The old-fashioned English preacher, known lovingly by Bible students of historical theology as Mr. Trap, he comments on this psalm in the 18th century, and says of David, which he wrote when carried out of himself as far as heaven.

And that's lovely, because that really does encapsule the emotion of the psalmist. You can ransack this psalm. No need to check it through, because I promise you I've done my homework thoroughly.

You will discover that it's chock-a-block full of praise. There is not the vestige of a petition in it at all. It's the soul warming in the presence of God.

Somebody has said, if we worshipped as we should, we wouldn't worry as we shouldn't. So, let's look at this psalm. And there are quite a number of verses to get through, but I won't stay too long on any of the several sections that I've subdivided it into.

Some of you will remember that the BBC years ago used to have a program at 10 to 8, which has now been succeeded by another that they entitled Lift Up Your Hearts. You remember that? Smile. Takes in about two-thirds of this congregation, I would think.

It was a good program. It was always very Bible-centered with a lovely prayer at the end. Now, I'm suggesting that this is exactly what our psalmist does as he introduces us, as he warms to, and as we warm with him to his theme.

Here is a man who's talking to himself. It's a soul with all soul, talking to his soul. Praise the Lord, O my soul.

All my inmost being, praise his holy name. There is a distinction between having your soul in a game of football and just praying in a sort of perfunctory and artificial fashion. If you really are doing a job well, it demands your soul.

And that's one of the reasons why, despite the competition earlier on in our service, I was then joining you when we went to that lovely ninth hymn from Hymns of Faith to sing it with enthusiasm. Sing it with all your soul. Here is a man, I say.

A soul with all his soul, talking to his soul. Here is a mini preacher speaking a maxi sermon. Because there is David addressing himself.

And before any preacher can address a congregation, he has to address himself. If the word does not warm him, then most certainly it will warm no one else. So here I say as our psalmist, who lifts our hearts in an anthem of praise.

Praise is said to be one of the highest functions of life. The ancient said that the angel of praise was the greatest of all angels. Now, he who gets us to sing this particular anthem, does so by repeating in the second verse almost what he's told us in the first.

There is reason to praise the Lord because of the faithfulness and the fidelity of our God. Someone has said this, listen. He who has a song on his lips is a blessing to everyone he meets.

He does better work himself, paints better pictures, is a better teacher, a better lawyer, a better merchant. No one should ever visit the sick without having joy in their heart. No man can ever be fit to be a preacher who is not a joyous man.

No one, unless they're outside the Christian family, should enter Worthing Tabernacle without a desire, despite what their feelings are, to praise the Lord. And this is what our psalm tells us to do. It lifts up our hearts.

But, beyond that, it proclaims, or if you like, it awakens our memories. It awakens our memories. Look again at the third verse.

Who forgives all your sins? Just before the third verse. And forget not all his benefits. What are they? Why should we be praising the Lord? John Dixon and another Puritan says there are seventeen reasons in this psalm why we should praise the Lord.

And being a Puritan, and not bound by the clock, he preached a lot of them. Do you know there was one Puritan preacher who got to the sixty-fifth list in his points. Whether the congregation ever remembered the previous fifty or the last fifteen, well, that is not recorded.

But the Puritans really did enjoy the psalms and enjoy preaching. In fact, they used to have a time glass. And through the glass poured sand.

And at the end of the glass full of sand, as it had run through, an hour would elapse. And one Puritan preacher in my native county of Sheffield, having waxed eloquent for an hour, says, brethren, there is so much in this text, let's have another jar. Our psalm awakens our memories.

Forget not all his benefits. There is reason for praise. Because of the way that God deals with us in the surgery.

He heals all our diseases. Backtracking for a moment. The way he attends to us in the confessional room forgives all our sins.

The way that he ministers in the mine shaft of life, who redeems your life from the pit. The way that he clothes you in the anti-room before the coronation, crowns you with love and compassion. The way he writes into your biography so that he can satisfy your desires as life goes along with good things.

The way he meets you in the beauty salon so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. I've just given you four or five and only little comments on each of them of the reasons why we ought to be praising the Lord. There are a heaped up number of factors within this psalm which should stimulate our praise and add to them all those facets that cause you this morning to be grateful to the Lord.

And then spread it around the whole of our congregation and you will see my point, why it is that we should be a thankful people. There is a story told of a couple of angels who each day would visit the dead earth armed with an empty basket. One was known as the angel of thanksgiving and the other in this apocryphal story was known as the angel of prayer.

And as the angels went around their task during the day they collected the thanks and the prayers. And at the end of the day when they arrived back into heaven you can imagine what their discovery was. The basket of requests was laden and overflowing.

The basket of thanksgiving barely had a covering on the bottom. It is our want to ask the Lord for things. It is not our habit so much to praise God from whom all blessings flow.

And thus this aperitif for the soul reminds us that we ought to be doing just this. It lifts our hearts, it awakens our memories. What's more it proclaims God's deeds.

Look at the sixth verse and on to the seventh verse. It tells you the Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He makes known His ways to Moses, His deeds to the people of Israel.

What is this God like? Well He's a God who's on the side of the poor and the impoverished. He's a God on the side of the unfortunate. He's a God who understands people when other people do not understand the folk who require their affection and their sympathy.

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. You remember the Hebrews who were slaves in Egypt? Open up your Bible later on today at Exodus chapter 1 and 2 and there you will discover a lot of folk who were terribly distressed because of the slavery that had encased them. And we are told that their cry comes up before the Lord as the cry of all the poor and all the suffering always comes up before the Lord because He is not like us.

He has a comprehensive vision and He has a heart that is filled with sensitivity to the needs of ordinary people. And our psalm tells of God. He made known His ways to Moses.

He had Him there in the backwaters of Midian and then for forty days on the slopes of Mount Sinai making His ways known, revealing to Moses, revealing what? That essentially God is a compassionate God, a long-suffering God, a God who does not want to visit the sins of one generation upon the children of the next generation. A God who is quick to be merciful and slow to be angry. This, my brothers and sisters, is our God.

And this God demands, should have by sovereign right, our prayers. The Apostle Paul will sometimes butcher the Greek language as his heart too is warmed with the ale of the Spirit, with the cordial of God's Word, and as the Holy Ghost impresses upon him fresh truths that other writers have not seen so clearly. And so he speaks about God and what He has done for His own in the thirty-third verse of Romans 8. Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.

Who is He that condemns? Christ Jesus who died. More than that was raised to life is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. And so the Apostle backtracking to the thirty-first verse, if God is for us, who can be against us? In all these things we're more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else, in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. A man cannot coin such language as this. It does not trip off the tongue.

It does not readily flow from the pen. A man who is so inflamed is a man who has been warmed by the thought of the greatness and the grandeur of this God. And don't you see? This is all embedded within our psalm.

It's a psalm which lifts our hearts. It's a psalm which awakens our memories. It's a psalm which proclaims God's deeds.

What's more? It's a psalm which affirms God's character. The Lord is compassionate and gracious. Slow to anger.

Abounding in love. The ninth through to the eleventh verses are in my estimation the most mind-blowing verses in the whole of the Old Testament. They affirm what God is like.

Read them with me if you have the NIV. Verses nine through to eleven. Thinking of this God.

We'll transfer the noun God for the pronoun He in the ninth verse. He will not always accuse. Nor will He harbour His anger for ever.

He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him. I ask you is there anything more precious than that? The Koran tells of two angels who come down to the world and to each individual person in the world at the beginning of the day.

And they stay with that person to the end of the day. One of the angels has the duties of recording all the good things that that individual did. The angel on the right has the responsibility of recording all his sins.

And at the end of the day likewise in the other apocryphal story that I told you, they return to heaven. And the interesting thing is even from the Koran that the angel who records the good things gives immediate testimony to them. The angel who records the bad things is asked to stay his report for several hours in case the offending person has apologized for and requested forgiveness for the sins that he has committed.

He will not always accuse. He does not treat us just as our sins deserve. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him.

Brothers and sisters, this, this, this is your God. And our Scriptures lift our hearts as a result. Awaken our memories.

Proclaim God's deeds. Affirm what God is like. And moreover, I argue this, that our Scriptures also cause us to assess His love.

To assess His love. It seems as though the psalmist has a compass, does it not? In that verse that we read and following through onto the next verse, as high as the heavens are above, so great is His love. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

There is hardly any more wonderful comment in Scripture than this one. Each verse seems to vie with the previous verse for the majesty of its truth and for the consolation that it brings to its reader. Imagine this, as far as the east is from the west, what is He doing? He's removing your sin.

The load of sin. The accumulated load of human sinfulness is borne along, along, along, mile after mile, furlong after furlong, until you can get no further with human understanding. Surely such a movement of that will mean that all the scent and all the memory and all the recall of the load of sin will now no longer be able to be brought back to mind.

And that's exactly the mind-blowing thought that the psalmist has. As far as the east is from the west, as far as sunset from sunrise separates one another. So He, this God whom we serve, has moved our sins.

And even death and hell and the principality of the power of evil cannot retrieve that forgiven sin and hold it against you. Hold it against me. He assesses His love with compass points.

He does it as within the family circle. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. He's forever the father of the prodigal.

He's forever wanting to relate to his children who have gone astray from Him. His arms are always open. So our psalmist assesses His love.

And over against that I argue He contrasts our frailty. This God knows all about us. He knows how we are formed.

Verse 14. The psalmist has at the back of his mind the words God disclosed to Moses about the creation of man and woman. He takes man from the dust of the earth.

He fashions him. He breathes into him the spirit of life. He gives him a soul so that he can enjoy intercourse with God.

But he always remembers our frailty. He remembers our frailty. I recall going across the Syrian desert some years ago and in the distance there was a dust storm.

It seemed to have substance. It certainly caught my attention as it moved nearer and nearer. But there was nothing solid about it.

It was there for a moment. A phenomenon of nature. But then it disappeared.

That is what you and I are like. He remembers our frame. He knows that we are dust.

But though for man his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field. The wind blows over it and is gone and its place remembers it no more.

But but from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. Don't you see? The frailty of man is subsumed into the sovereignty of God. This is why I had to start my address last Wednesday speaking on healing.

Not with the physical body but with the soul. Because of the two the soul is of infinite importance. Your body will not be around forever.

And it's a plague on modern evangelicalism that does not place sufficient import on the saving of the soul and the realization of the remarkable miracle that it is that anyone should come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We are here for a moment. We're children of time.

We are as the dust cloud in the Syrian desert. But subsumed into the purposes of God is our eternal destiny. From everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear Him.

His righteousness with their children's children. With those who keep His covenant and remember to obey His precepts. He assesses His love.

He contrasts our frailty. And as though you hadn't guessed. Once more He compels our praise.

God is Trinity. Here is a Trinity of praise which is enjoined by the psalmist. The Lord has established His throne in heaven.

His kingdom rules over all. He will not shift. His purpose is fixed.

Therefore what? Praise the Lord. And each time the psalmist asks for praise to be uttered He widens the net. Praise the Lord you angels.

Praise the Lord all His heavenly hosts. You His servants His ministers who do His will. And then taking in the whole of intelligent beings the psalmist says praise the Lord all His works.

Everywhere in His dominion praise the Lord. Oh my soul. He takes us back to the opening comment.

Listen to C.S. Lewis. Listen carefully. Heaven is a state, writes Lewis, in which angels now and men here after are perpetually employed in praising God.

Now he says this is not like being at church. For our services both in their conduct and in our power to participate are merely attempts at worship, never fully successful. Often 99.9% failures, sometimes total failures.

To see what the doctrine really means we must suppose ourselves, listen, this is rich, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God. Drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which far from remaining pent in within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scots Catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him God is inviting us to enjoy Him.

Brothers and sisters here this morning is an aperitif for our hearts. An aperitif for the soul. It lifts our hearts.

It awakens our memories. It proclaims God's deeds. It affirms God's character.

It assesses His love. It contrasts our frailty. It compels our praise.

I ask you then, why are we sometimes so reluctant to praise our God? Do you know what it is in Lewis' words? Sometimes to be so lost in wonder love and praise that it becomes the most delightful experience in the whole of the world. We don't always achieve it at the tab. No Christian community always achieves it.

But I tell you we go through life as men and women impoverished when we do not have this generous praising element in our attitude to the Lord. The man who praises his God is a better husband. The woman who worships this God is a better wife.

People who worship this God are better teachers, are better lawyers, are better painters, are better pilots, are better drivers. People who know what it is to praise this God have tapped into the reason their raison d'etre. They've begun to understand why they are here.

We're not here for time alone. We're here for eternity. We're men and women that have an eternal destiny and we should be looking forward to heaven and our time with the Lord and in degree experiencing heaven on earth during the wearisomeness and sometimes the suffering of our sojourn this side of eternity.

Come, let's read that final verse again. The final three verses again. Let's stand and read them from verse 20 through to the end on the number of three.

One, two, three. Praise the Lord you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word. Praise the Lord all His heavenly hosts, you His servants who do His will.

Praise the Lord all His works everywhere in His dominion. Praise the Lord O my soul. Remain standing and let's go to what should be our next hymn and we've got the wrong number there.

Can I have the hymns of faith number? We've got the songs of fellowship. Sorry, 33. Thank you.

Number 33 in hymns of faith. When we get to the third verse you stop singing because there's an additional verse which I want some men to sing at that point. So verse 3 for you as the Irishman says becomes verse 4. Alright, number 33.

Relax. You sing the first two then pause for a moment. Praise the Lord all the almighty Lord in all creation O might of grace in glory inspire and salvation All ye who live Brothers and sisters join in Praise the Lord all the almighty Lord in O might of grace in glory and salvation All ye who live Brothers and sisters join in Praise It's not in your hymn book but listen.

Praise to the Lord who doth nourish thy life and restore thee fitting thee well for the tasks that are ever before thee then to thy need He like a mother doth lead doth speed spreading the wings of grace are thee. Let me read those last few lines which I messed up again. Then to thy need He like a mother doth speed spreading the wings of grace are thee.

Let's sing your verse three. Praise to the Lord who doth take myself away from religion from religion and from the of religion of religion and and and and and and and and and and and and and and O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art O, how great Thou art, O, how great Thou art