Forget Not

Well, I know that this week, Thanksgiving was on everyone's mind. And it's good that we have a holiday in America called Thanksgiving because we think about things that maybe we should think about every single day of the year. But certainly this week, we remember the things that we have, how blessed we are to live in this country, and to have the very many things that God has given us as well as the calling that He's given us. I wanted to start off today with a story that we'll talk about Thanksgiving, but in a different way than maybe you have thought of before. But before I read you the story, and I'm going to read it to you verbatim, let me tell you how I came about this because I didn't even know this story existed two or three weeks ago. One night, when we came home, I believe it was a Saturday night, sometimes we're so tired when we get home. I don't know if you've ever been to the fact that you're so tired you can't even fall asleep. It's like your mind is racing, but you're exhausted and whatever, and coffee doesn't help. Nothing helps, but the one thing that sometimes will get me to go to sleep is if I sit there and just mindlessly flip channels. I hate to even admit that, but the one thing I find that works is TV can't put me to sleep. Well, this one night I was flipping channels and they came across a movie, and it's one of the things I always have found fascinating. It was three men and two rafts in the middle of the ocean. They were just stranded. You could tell as soon as you turned on what the story was about. I stopped there and listened to it for a while and knew what I was going to see. Obviously, these guys were in distress. They'd been out there for quite a while. They looked awful. They looked hopeless.

I knew as I watched, I would see sharks come by. Sure enough, sharks came by and shook their boats. I knew I'd see a storm. Sure enough, there was a storm with the raging winds, and they survived that. But as the time went on and they were counting day after day after day, they just looked worse and worse. There was absolutely no hope. There was no land in sight. They'd been out there. One of the men said, 28 days. 28 days, he counted the calendar and said, there's no documented evidence that anyone would survive more than 28 days out in the ocean like this.

They just looked like a forlorn group of people. You thought, what's ever going to happen? They saw one plane once while I was watching. It turned out to be an enemy plane. So what that plane did was turn around when they saw them and just fire at them. Everything just seemed lost. But then one day, they were just all sitting there looking absolutely miserable, and you knew that it was just a matter of hours, if not a day, that they were going to die just of starvation.

That something happened in the movie, and I looked at it, and it turned everything around. It turned literally everything around for them. I sat there and I thought, I didn't really know. I didn't even know what the title of the movie was at that point. I thought, is this a true story? Because it better be. Because if an author came up with this, it would be unbelievable. So anyway, after that happened, I kind of drifted off to sleep. It was obvious their whole spirits were revived, and they were going to survive. So the next morning, I got up, and I thought, I've got to find out if this is a true story.

So I just kind of typed in what happened. I'm not going to tell you what happened. I thought, if it's a true story, it will pop up. It did. It did. So I read about it. I guess the movie was kind of based on a true story, but the story itself was a documented event from World War II. Apparently, back in the 50s, everyone had heard about this event. There was a movie specifically made about it. It's a long story, but as I pieced it all together, I didn't watch another movie, and I didn't want to read the whole book that was written about it.

I came across something from Paul Harvey. You all remember Paul Harvey, right? The radio guy who had the rest of the story. He did a small piece on it, and he did it around Thanksgiving time. I want to read that to you, just verbatim. I wish I had a Paul Harvey imitation for you. I don't, so I'm just going to do it in my fashion, and you can run with it. I'm just going to read it the way he has it here. About sunset, he said, it happened every Friday evening on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast. You could see an old man walking, white-haired, bushy eyebrow slightly bent. One gnarled hand would be gripping the hand of a pale, a large bucket filled with shrimp.

There, on a broken pier, read in by the setting sun, the weekly ritual would be reenacted. At once, the silent twilight sky would become a mass of dancing dots growing larger. In the distance, screeching calls would become louder. They were seagulls, come from nowhere on the same pilgrimage, to meet an old man. For half an hour or so, the gentleman would stand on the pier, surrounded by fluttering white, till his pale of shrimp was empty. The gulls would linger for a while. Perhaps one would perch comfortably on the old man's hat, and a day gone by would gently come to mind.

Eventually, all the old man's days were passed. What he was doing and why he was doing it is a secret that might have died with him. But that secret is the rest of the story. Anyone who remembers October of 1942, remembers the day it was reported that Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was lost at sea. Captain Eddie's mission had been to deliver a message of the utmost important to General MacArthur. MacArthur was headquartered in New Guinea, and Rickenbacker was given a B-17 and a hand-picked crew to take him there. But there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.

Somewhere over the South Pacific, the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean. The B-17 stayed afloat just long enough for all aboard to get out.

Then slowly, the tail of the Flying Fortress swung up and posed for a split second, and the ship went down, leaving eight men and three rafts and nothing else except the horizon. For nearly a month, Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water and the weather and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was 9 by 5, the biggest shark, 10 feet long.

But of all their enemies at sea, one proved the most formidable—starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them, and a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie's own words, Cherry—that was this B-17 pilot, Captain William Cherry—read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.

This is still Captain Ritterbacher talking. Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a seagull. I don't know how I knew. I just knew. Everyone else knew, too. No one said a word. Appearing out from my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. That gull meant food, if I could just catch it.

And the rest, they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. His flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained, and their hopes renewed, because a lone seagull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from any land, offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it, and you also know that he never forgot. Because every Friday morning about sunset, on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast, you would see an old man walking, white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls, to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle. He never forgot that he was still alive. It's quite a story, isn't it? Quite a story. That she could be drifed for many days, and then out of nowhere, something like that would happen. That's why when I saw it on the movie, I thought, that has to be a true story. You know, because no author could just imagine that that would occur, I wouldn't think. I know, I'm hoping that every time that this Captain Rickenbacker went out to feed the seagulls, that God was in his mind, that he knew. And they did, if you read more of the story, they did have a Bible with them and a hymnal. So they did turn to God during that time, because they knew he was his only hope. But as he went to feed that seagull, that he was really thanking God. But the key to the story is, he never forgot. He never forgot why he was still alive. Because of that seagull that came, that turned their lives around, that gave them hope because at a time when all hope was lost.

You know, Captain Rickenbacker and his men were no different than we are today. We, at one time in our lives, were adrift on an ocean, and we were going nowhere. Our lives were pointless, they were futile. No matter what success we might have had in life, they were empty. And we were all destined to death. There wasn't us, there wasn't anyone who could save us. It was only God who could give us a future, who could give us hope, that could give us a reason for living, and that could give us the motivation to go on and to fill our lives so that they had meaning. If Eddie Rickenbacker and his men, or if he himself just never forgot, and spent the rest of his days going out to feed those seagulls so he would never forget what had been done for him, I have to ask myself, how could we ever forget what God has done for us?

You know, as the years went by, he could have just taken everything for granted. He could have just trucked it up and said it was God's will that he would go on, gone on with his life, and just gone on and forgotten what had happened. But I'm sure every time he went out to feed those seagulls, it was fresh in his mind and it reminded him. He owes everything to God. He owes everything to the one who looked down on him and rescued him from just an abject, awful death.

We should always be reminded that everything we have, everything we are, we owe to God. And we should never, ever, ever forget it. Let's turn over to Psalm 103. You know, the great men of the Bible, they never forgot what God had done for them. You read about Moses and you read about ancient Israel, and God reminded... or Moses reminded them, don't forget what I've done for you. Don't forget that you were slaves. Don't forget that your life was going nowhere. Remember what I've done for you. And Moses did. And Joshua did.

And Caleb did. And the men of old did. And the men of the New Testament did. And before you read what he wrote, he always remembered who he was and why he had a life worth living and why he had a future. David, a man after God's own heart, never forgot who he was either. He committed some horrible sins and he was on a collision course with death and nothing but.

But he recognized that God was the one who rescued him and gave him a reason to live and changed him into a different man that God would be pleased with. And he says that here in Psalm 103, verse 2. He says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Forget not all his benefits. Don't forget what he's done for you. You know, as we think about Thanksgiving, it's very good to say thank you.

And when something happens to us or someone does something for us, we say thank you immediately. And that's good. We should do that. We should recognize that. But you know what is really meaningful? If months and years down the road, if you run into something that you did something for them, maybe it was the time of need and they needed money to pay a mortgage.

Maybe they were your employee and you were able to promote them to a position that their education wouldn't necessarily have given them, but they did a good job. And then you run into them and they remind you of what you did. That's kind of nice, isn't it? Maybe that's been some of us, and we've reminded people of what they did for us and what a difference they made in our lives.

There's a way to say thank you years later that we never forget. And if we would do that for people, how much more for God? That we would never forget, and day in and day out, would be part of our very being to forget not what He has done for us. What a way to say thank you. To always, to not forget, to never take it for granted, to never let it just become commonplace or something that becomes something we never think about.

And that's what David is saying here in this verse. Let's pick it up in verse 1 here, Psalm 103. And as David goes through here some verses, we're going to see some of the things he tells us we should be thankful for. That we should forget not about God. And he's pretty eloquent in what he says here.

But let's pick it up in verse 1. He says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Now, a lot of people will say, bless God, praise God, glory to God. And they're words. They're not bad words.

You can probably turn the TV on and hear a lot of people saying, Praise God, glory to God, bless God. Maybe we've said it. Maybe we say it a little too often. It becomes too commonplace for us. David wasn't saying it just to say the words. Notice it says here, he says, All that is within me, bless his holy name. O my soul, bless the eternal. Everything that is in me, all my heart, all my mind, all my being, thanks God.

All my being recognizes that his benefits have sustained me, that his benefits have provided, that his benefits have made life worth living, that his benefits have provided life instead of a sure death, that have provided a future instead of a very empty existence that passes after a short lifetime. All that is within me. And I have to ask myself, do I praise God with all that is within me? You know, we're admonished to love God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul. He wants to know he has all of us, and we've talked about that. He also wants us to bless his name, to praise him with all our being, to know to the very depth of our being that we are because he is, and he looked down and chose us. Something we should never, ever forget. Sometimes, maybe you think back to who you were before God called you, before you repented, before you were baptized, and you kind of know the type of person you would be if you just look at it. You can look back to your college years, maybe look back to sometimes, maybe you weren't an awful person that was going to end up on the news or on the news or on the front page of any paper, or something bad you did, but just not the person you are today. We all kind of know who we are on the inside and what direction we would have gone if God had not reached down and rescued us from a raft that was just floating on the ocean, a drift with nowhere to go, just sitting there waiting for death to come. Do we? Do we thank God? Do we feel in the utmost of our being the praise for him that we should, and something that we should feel all the time? You know, Paul says, pray without ceasing. And we know that we don't kneel down or pray to God 24 hours a day. We go to work. We have other things to do. But what he means is you always have that attitude and you're in constant communication with God even if you're not voicing the words at that time. And that's what David is saying here, too. You always are in a state of thanksgiving, of blessing and praising God because you just know and you don't forget what he has to say. You know, very in verse 1, I'll spend just a minute on it because a question came up on it a few weeks ago. In Psalm 103, verse 1 there, it says, Bless thee, Lord. It says, Lord, there. I would usually say, Eternal for that, or many times say, Eternal for it.

L-O-R-D, when it's all capitals like that, comes from the Greek, or I'm sorry, the Hebrew, YHVH, name for God. It shows up a number of times. And some people would ask, well, God is saying, Bless that name.

Well, you know, that is the name, one of the many names for God. And it does show up a lot in the Bible. But there are many, many names for God, not just YHVH.

In fact, back in Exodus 6, verse 3, some people would even ascribe. No one here. But some people would say, if you don't use that name, you're none of God's. But you know, back in Exodus 6, verse 3, God says, Abraham didn't know me by that name.

Here's a name you, Israel, can call me, because you are coming from a land that has the gods of many, many names. You have to have a name to identify me. But Abraham didn't know me by this name. Abraham knew him by El Shaddai.

Does that mean Abraham is lost because he didn't use YHVH? Not at all. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ never referred to God the Father as YHVH. And back in Revelation 4, we see the angels in heaven, the hosts of heaven, praising God's name. As the end of time draws near, and they know that Jesus Christ returned to earth as imminent, they praise His name. Let's look at Revelation 4, verse 8.

Revelation 4, verse 8.

We see the living creatures. Verse 8, the four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes, surrounded within. And they don't rest day or night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

Lord God Almighty. Greek words. Lord Kyrios, K-U-R-I-O-S, means supreme in authority, which God is. God comes from Theos, the Greek theos, meaning a deity. And Almighty comes from Strongs, number 3841, too hard to pronounce for me, means the all-ruling, absolute, universal, and sovereign God.

God has many names. If I was to assign an essay for next week and say, When you think of the name God, tell me what it means.

You know, it would take you many, many pages when you think of what God means. When I say God, it means more than just eternal. It means more than just provider. It means more than just creator, more than sustainer. And when I say that to you, you think of everything that God does as well. He's too big for just one name. And when David says, Bless his holy name, it means, Bless him for all he is, the very many things he is to all of us.

Because the name is just a label, but it represents everything that God is, and he's not limited by one name like you and I are. So when David says, Bless his holy name, he's praising the entire existence of God back here in Psalm 103. He's saying, Praise God! Bless him! Everything that was within me, praise him! Bless him! And all that he represents, he's the one who saved me from obscurity, has saved me from death.

Verse 2, back on Psalm 103, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Don't forget them! Don't just take them casually! Don't just be oblivious of them! Give them the attention they deserve! Think about them! And let God know that you appreciate what he has done. Because, you know, when we forget not, when we forget not all his benefits, it's a good motivator.

We can think back, maybe to people we've known in the past, who sat among us, even 15, 20, 25, 30 years ago, who would be sitting with us today.

You know what? Somewhere along the line, they forgot his benefits. They forgot the things that God had done. They began to take it for granted. And they began to do the things their way, rather than God's way, because one of the ways we show God that we forget not is by the way we live our lives. And if we forget not, we will do what he wants. Now, let's go further here in verse 3 and see some of the things that David tells us. You know, in this Psalm, he doesn't say, Thank you for food. Thank you for shelter. Thank you for my health. Thank you for all these things. He gives us the very, very core things of what God has done for us that defines our life and tells us who we are. Verse 3, Psalm 103. First thing he says, He or who forgives all your iniquities. Now, we have said that how many times in our lives. We know that God forgives our sins. We've heard it over and over and over again. It rolls off our lips. But do we really, really forget not the fact that forgiveness is absolutely crucial for us to even have a future?

It's not a light thing. Jesus Christ gave up being God, came and lived as a human, lived like you and me, gave up His life, and not in an easy way, but in a very painful and agonizing way. Just so that your sins and mine could be forgiven, so He could pay the death penalty. Because every single one of us had the death penalty on our head. Every single one of us.

Romans 3, 23 tells us the wages...everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. 1 John 3, 4 tells us the wages of sin is death. Every single one of us. And there wasn't a thing we could do about it.

Not a thing. No medicine, no doctor, no minister. No one could save us from what we brought upon ourselves.

Only one being could do that. And that's God. And without that forgiveness, without what Christ had done, we're all just like those men in the raft, just floating along and eventually death would come.

The slow, painful death, a meaningful existence, a meaningless existence, and then we would just die.

But God forgave us. He provides forgiveness. Without that, we were all just dead men walking.

We owe it all to Him. David recognized that. He looked back, and if you read Psalm 51, you see where He recounts the sin, the tremendous sin that He committed. And He knew who He was. And He knew He needed God's forgiveness. And He never forgot.

Never forgot what God had done for Him.

Back in Matthew 6.

Back in Matthew 6, Jesus Christ was instructing His disciples in the model of a prayer to pray to God.

He addresses several things here. But in Matthew 6, verse 12, in the middle of that model prayer that He gave that we could all recite, He says, forgive us our debts.

Present tense.

Because God's forgiven our sins in the past. When we were called and we recognized who we were, and we repented, there was a lot. A lot that He forgave and a lot that we recognized that needed to be forgiven. And He forgave.

They didn't forgive just once.

And David as he wrote in Psalm 103, he says, He forgives all our iniquities. He didn't say He forgave all our iniquities because God forgives us on an ongoing basis. It's a continual process. For the rest of our lives, we will need God's forgiveness. We need it at once, but we need it over and over and over again because we all sin.

When we were baptized and we received God's Holy Spirit, we didn't become perfect that day.

We continue to sin. We continue to need His forgiveness.

One of His benefits is that He continues to forgive us.

Continues to forgive us.

And Christ says here, forgive us our debts. Forgive us our sins. And then He says in the second part of that verse, As we forgive our debtors. The old King James says, As we forgive those who transgress against us.

An important principle there. Forgive us our debts. As we forgive our debtors. He explains it down in verse 14. The one part of this model prayer that He comes back and addresses again. He says, For if you forgive men, their trespasses. Your heavenly Father will forgive you.

Well, there's that big word, if. If you forgive men, their trespasses. Your Father will forgive you.

Verse 15, But if you don't forgive men, their trespasses. Neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So one of the ways we recognize and forget not His benefits is that He has forgiven us much.

And we have the responsibility to forgive others. And if we won't do to others, why would God do to us?

We forget not all His benefits when we are willing to forgive and not let grudges exist and grow into some kind of problem.

When we don't let divisions stifle us, but we forgive each other, realizing we're all imperfect.

There isn't a perfect person in this room. There isn't a perfect person alive today.

Nowhere in this church will you find a perfect person. Only the head of this church, Jesus Christ, is perfect.

So we all have things that we need to forgive each other.

And Christ says, If you forgive, God will show the same to you because He wants us to learn those things.

Back in Matthew 18, Peter. And I always appreciate Peter because he just says what he's done in his mind.

And he'll ask a question because he just wants to know. And that's a very good thing. At least Christ knew what he was thinking about.

Matthew 18, verse 21 says, Peter came up to Christ and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me? And I forgive him. Up to seven times? To that, Peter, that was a lot to him. You mean seven times? Even seven times they would do this against me and I'm supposed to forgive them?

Christ, I'm sure shook his head and thought, you don't even know. You don't even know, Peter. He says, I don't say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

Seventy times seven. How many times says, God forgiven us for the things that we fall so easily into? The sin, the weaknesses, the faults that we have that just keep coming back again. And when we ask him to forgive, he forgives.

Well, we genuinely ask him. Not just seven times. If it was seven times, I have a feeling none of us would be sitting here. We'd all be in that raft and we would have already expired. We wouldn't have any life, any future.

Peter goes, even seven times? Yes, Peter. Over and over, because God, one of the benefits is He continually forgives us. He continually watches over us. He wants us to live. He wants us to survive.

Even up to seven times. And then you have the ensuing parable that you know well, I'm not going to take the time to read through it, about the man who had so much that had to be forgiven.

A debt that he had incurred that was so large and he needed relief from it. And that debt was forgiven him. Remember that story?

And yet, when someone who owed him some money, a much lesser sum by comparison came and said, forgive me my debts, I can't pay. He refused to do it.

He refused to do it. What kind of thanks is that to someone who would forgive what you have done?

What kind of thanks and gratitude and not forgetting his benefits is that?

That when someone else comes and asks us for forgiveness, that we would say no and yet expect God, who has done that for us.

And so we find down in verse 32 of Matthew 18 here, what the pronouncement or verdict on him is.

Verse 32, his master, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me.

Shouldn't you also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?

And his master was angry, delivered him to the torturers that he should pay all that was due to him.

Verse 35, so my heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses.

Forget not all his benefits.

And when we forget not all his benefits, it means that we do unto others as we would have God do to us.

We expect him to forgive. We absolutely need his forgiveness. We need to forgive when we're asked to forgive as well.

Now, I'm back in Matthew 25 in the chapter that talks about the end time when Christ is dividing the sheep from the goats and he says to the sheep, you know, you go to my right hand.

And they go to his right hand because, you know, the whole group before him knew his words. They understood the Bible. They even understood who he was.

But this group that was sent to his right side did what he had to say. They took the words to heart. When they saw someone hungry, they fed him.

They didn't just walk by. When they saw someone in need, they saw the need, they took care of it. Just the way God does for us.

Because when they saw and knew and recognized his benefits, they knew God would have us do the same thing to others. The way he does it to us is part of his nature living in us.

And they didn't just say the words. They did. It works.

But to those on the left who had the same knowledge, he said, no, you go to my left.

You saw me naked and you didn't bother clothing me. You saw me hungry and you just walked on by. Maybe you even said the nice words, but you didn't take care of the needs.

What if God handled us that way? Saw our needs, saw what we needed and then said, you know what, let him get himself out of this trouble.

I'll just let him know that I know he wants us to live the life that we've been forgiven. And if we forget not all his benefits to us, we will.

Let's go back to Psalm 103. One of the big benefits that we forget not is the ongoing forgiveness of our sin.

Back in Psalm 103.

Second part of verse 3 here. The second point, David says, he forgives all your iniquities and then he heals all your diseases.

He heals all your diseases. Now, that's a big benefit, isn't it?

I know many, many of you have had diseases that were terminal.

Chronic diseases. And I know that I've been heartened by hearing the stories of how God healed you.

It's a tremendous blessing, a benefit that he has. That if we have absolute faith in him, he says he will heal us.

And David says, don't forget that. And I hope none of us who have been healed of a serious disease ever doubt that it was God.

And I hope we never forget it. No matter how much longer your life goes on and how well you feel that you never forgot what God had done for you.

Because, make no mistake, it was him who healed you. And we should never forget what he has done for us.

Because if we do, that would be not a good thing. Not a good thing to have happen.

Let's go back to Luke 17.

Luke 17. I know this series of verses was read to you last week, but I'm going to look at it in a different little light here this week. In Luke 17, in verse 12, we find a group of people who were healed of a disease that was absolutely incurable.

There was no medicine, no doctor, no treatment that could heal this disease.

If you were ever afflicted or diagnosed with leprosy, you had a death sentence on you. Only God could heal.

There is no recorded evidence of anyone being healed of leprosy unless God healed them or Jesus Christ healed them, as we see in verse 12 here.

Verse 12. As he entered a certain village, Luke 17, there met him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off.

And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. So when he saw them, he said to them, go show yourselves to the priests.

And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.

Now, a couple things we can notice from that. Jesus Christ didn't say when they asked to be healed of leprosy. He didn't say, be healed.

And he didn't say, your sins are forgiven, be healed. What he told them was, you go show yourself to the priests and you'll be healed.

Or just go show yourselves to the priests, is what he said.

Now, we've talked in the past that we are obedient. We follow what God's commands are. We pay attention to what he says because we have to pay attention to detail.

Suppose those men had said, what? You forgot to say we were healed. He said, you go show yourselves to the priests.

They did. They were healed. And it says so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.

Correctly and obediently, they did what Jesus Christ did. They headed off to the priest and as they went, they were cleansed. They followed what he had said.

Verse 15, one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned. And with a loud voice glorified God, fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.

Well, rightfully, here they were having left Jesus Christ. They were on their way to the priests, on the way they were healed. Ten apparently were healed.

Only one took the time to turn around, come back to thank him and glorify him for what he had done.

Now, if he had said, be healed, and as they were standing there in a row before him and all of them had snow white skin after that, all ten of them would have said, thank you, thank you.

But they went and they were on their way. It would have taken some effort to come back. Only one made the effort to come back.

The rest of them just took it for granted. I'm sure they were very happy. I'm sure they were very pleased with what God had done. But they didn't take the time to come back and thank him.

So Jesus answered, verse 17, and said, well, weren't there ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?

Do we take the time to thank God, even when we have to go out of our way to remember what he has done to not forget?

And maybe go back time and time and time again and remember what it was like when we were afflicted. Remember what it was like when we weren't feeling so well.

Remember what it was like when our only hope was Him to then go back and remember and forget not all His benefits.

Out of these ten, only one did it. And many of us could say we've been healed, and God has given us life from what would have been a terminal illness.

David says, forget not all His benefits. But you know, not every one of us has had a terminal illness. I've never had a terminal illness. Hope I never do.

Is David only talking about physical healing when he said in Psalm 103, forget not all His benefits? Let's go back to Psalm 103.

While you're turning back there, let me give you the definition of disease that a doctor would give you that you could find on the Internet.

It says that the disorder of function, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.

Untreated chronic disease leads to death.

And so when you go to see your doctor, they may tell you, you need to take care of this. Untreated, this could lead to death.

And that's the case for many physical illnesses. Some have had terminal illnesses, some of us haven't. Physical. All of us. All of us have a terminal illness that God has healed and is healing us of.

Every single one in this room has a terminal illness, and that's a spiritual illness. Every single one of us was sick.

Every single one of us was on the road to death. And untreated and unrecognized, death would have been the only result. Only God rescued us from the disease that was killing us.

There were symptoms, and there are people who are in the church, and sometimes you can see the symptoms that they talk about here.

And we'll talk about some symptoms and some sermons coming forward of a spiritual illness that will lead to death if not corrected.

All of us were spiritually ill unto death. And it was only God who could heal us. No doctor, no medicine, no group of men, no minister. Only God.

No one else had the power to heal us except God. And for everyone in this room, He's offered that benefit. All of us.

Because without that benefit, we're dead. Simply put, we're dead. No future, no life, no kingdom, no eternal life. Nothing with God has promised us.

You know, when you look at the Psalms, and as you read through the Psalms, you see that many of them, all of them, are in verse form. They're poetry. Much of the Old Testament is written in poetry. And there's various reasons for that, and various things that the scholars have been able to go back and see. There's a reason for this Hebraic verse that's there in the Psalms, and in the Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, even in much of Isaiah and some other chapters. Because God is making a point. It's the way the Hebrew people would talk and the way they would reason, reason or understand, I guess is a better word than reason.

So if you look at verse 3, we see that God is clearly talking about a spiritual condition. He forgives all your iniquities. He heals all your diseases.

So, well, physical illness can be there because Christ did say when He healed some physical illness, be forgiven and be healed.

When He forgives, He's healing our diseases because sin is a terminal illness. Sin is a terminal illness.

We can see that there's many, many places in the Bible we can see where God is talking about spiritual illness and diseases that can kill us. But let's go back to Hosea. Hosea 14, right after Daniel. Hosea 14. We'll pick it up in verse 1. Hosea 14.1. God speaking to Israel. That had a real spiritual illness. They were dying. They were dying and He wanted to heal them.

Hosea 14.1. Return to the eternal, your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, take away all iniquity. Receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips.

Assyria won't save us. We won't ride on horses, nor will we say any more to the work of our hands, you are our gods. For in you, the Fatherless finds mercy.

We recognize our spiritual disease. We recognize that we are dying. Assyria can't save us. The work of our hands can't save us. Nothing can save us, God, except you.

In verse 4, God says, I will heal their backsliding. I'll heal them of that. I will love them freely, for my anger has turned away from Israel.

I will be like the dew to Israel. He shall grow like the lily and lengthen his roots like Lebanon.

And you can see how God then blesses. He's willing to heal those spiritual diseases that only lead to death.

One of the benefits He gives us, He heals our spiritual diseases.

We need to be aware of the symptoms that can indicate a spiritual disease so that we can go to God and ask Him to heal us of those diseases, because He is the only one who can.

Our own minds, our friends can't. They can encourage us to go to God and look to those things. But it's only God who heals us.

Notice in this verse as well, back in Psalm 103, again it's in the presence of tense.

God healed us of a spiritual disease. He put us on the road to recovery and the road to health.

But we all fall back into the same things sometimes. Some things we overcome, other sins come back to haunt us. He continually heals us. He continually is with us.

From now until the day we die.

And David says, don't discount. Don't discount that benefit. Don't take it for granted. Don't treat it carelessly. Forget it not. Always keep it in the forefront of what God has done because He's rescued you from that lifeboat and certain death.

And He healed the diseases that would lead to that. Back in Psalm 103, verse 4.

Another one that David lists here.

Again, in verse 4, we'll look at the parallels in between the two parts of the verse.

But the first one is, He redeems your life from destruction.

And there's a word, redeem, we hear often. Redeem comes from the Greek word that simply means that He delivers us.

So we could say, He delivers us from destruction.

The Hebrew word redeems. For redeems, the Hebrew word for destruction could also be translated corruption or the grave.

He delivers your life from corruption. He delivers your life from the grave. He delivers your life from destruction.

He delivers. He takes us out of that lifeboat. He sends the seagull that can give us the life that we need and rescue us from what we have put ourselves in.

It's a tremendous benefit. David says, don't forget that benefit. Don't forget what He has done for us.

If there was no God or if we never found Him, well, David addresses this. Let's go back to Psalm 16.

Psalm 16.

Psalm 16, verse 10. And you'll see the last part of verse 9 there. David says, my soul, my flesh, will rest in hope.

Well, we know where that hope comes from. In verse 10, for you won't leave my soul in Sheol. You won't leave my soul in the grave.

You won't abandon me there. I won't die and just rot forever and ever and ever in the grave, never to be heard of again. You will deliver us from that. You won't leave my soul there. And He promises us that we will be resurrected.

The fact that Jesus Christ was resurrected from death to eternal life gives us the hope of eternal life.

You won't leave us there. There is hope. It's a point that all men want to die. But even in that death, there's hope and we know God won't leave us there.

If we follow Him, if we forget not His benefits, if we show Him that we're not forgetful of His benefits by living the life that He asked us to live, by paying attention to the detail and following Him in every aspect.

Going on to verse 10, He says, God redeems us from destruction.

In Deuteronomy 15, we find another place in the Old Testament that this word, redeemed, that can also be translated, deliver, is used.

God is speaking to the nation of Israel, kind of a model of people who we learn and take the example from to not do the things the way that they did.

In Deuteronomy 15, verse 15, God says to them, you shall remember, or don't forget, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.

You were going nowhere. You were just afloat in that ocean. You were just going to drift and drift and drift and never amount to anything. But God reached down and He redeemed you. He delivered you from that bond, that He delivered you from a life of obscurity.

Don't forget it, Israel. Forget not that I did this.

And then it says, therefore I command you this thing today. Live the way that God said to live.

Over in the New Testament, of course, the word redeemed shows up there, too. Let's look at Galatians 3.

Galatians 3, verse 13.

The guy of the Old Testament redeemed Israel. Christ redeems us. Galatians 3, verse 13. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

He became the curse for us. But He's redeemed us.

Now, there's a lot of people in the world who would say, see, the law is a curse. The law is a curse. You shouldn't keep it.

But that isn't what the verse was saying at all. He's redeemed us from the curse of the law. The curse of the law, for those who don't obey it, is death. And if there's any doubt about it, He makes the crystal clear up here in verse 10.

For as many as are the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

Makes the crystal clear. He redeems us from the curse because we've all broken the law. We've all brought death upon ourselves.

But He redeems us. He delivers us. Death was the only alternative if it wasn't for Jesus Christ.

David said, don't forget. Don't forget that benefit. Don't forget that any of the days of your life. Always keep that in the forefront.

And you don't need to turn to Matthew 6, verse 13. You go back to the model prayer. Christ told His disciples, He will deliver us from the evil one.

Deliver us from the evil one. Does not one of us have the power to be delivered from the evil one?

Without His Holy Spirit, without the forgiveness, without Him healing the diseases, without Him redeeming us, we're powerless against Satan.

Only He can deliver us as we follow Him.

Let's go back to Psalm 103. The first part of verse 4 is, He redeems your life from destruction. He delivers you from corruption. He delivers you from sure death.

Now, what's the next part, the parallel part to verse 4? He crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies.

He takes a worthless nobody. He takes dead men. 1 Corinthians 1, 1, 26. He takes the weak and base things of the earth.

The people that other people would not even look at. Rescues us from that. Delivers us from what we brought upon ourselves.

And what does He do? He takes those worthless people and He crowns them with loving kindness and tender mercies.

Crowns them. Come back to loving kindness and tender mercies in a minute. But crowns them is something that refers to kings.

Let's go back to Revelation 1.

As David would write that psalm, he would see himself as the youngest of a group of people, a group of brothers, I guess, who was worthless.

He would recognize his sin, and yet he saw God take him from someone who his father didn't even give the time of day to when Samuel came looking for the king, and then he made him the king of Israel.

By the same token, God does that to us.

Verse 5 here breaks into a sentence, but we know the context here. Revelation 1.5, From Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth, To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, Something we should forget not, and He has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

David would say, forget that not. Don't forget what God has. In his eyes, we're there. That's what He's training us to be. That's what He sees you and me as.

And our roads to whatever He has planned for us will take different paths. The trials, the tests that we have along the way are all designed to make us the best king, the best priest, whatever God has in mind for us. So our time on this earth will all be different. We can never judge each other and say, How could you let that happen to you? Or what did you do? No. God is preparing us. He knows our strengths. He knows our weaknesses.

And He takes us from obscurity and crowns us with loving kindness and tender mercies. Revelation 3, verse 11. To the church of Philadelphia.

You know this verse. Verse 11, 3-11. Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.

Don't let any man take it from you. Keep your eyes and forget not who gave you that crown. And don't let anyone take it from you. Don't let any man, don't let any group. You keep your eyes on God and you keep on doing what He has called you to do. And don't let anyone take that from you. Don't forget His benefits. Don't ever take it lightly. Don't ever doubt it. Keep it in the forefront of your mind.

That's what God has called me to do. That's what He has wanted me to do. I must follow Him, and if I forget not His benefits, I'll follow the path that He has set me on. But it says He crowns us with loving kindness and mercy. Now, we could spend a sermon on both of those concepts. I mean, we all know God's loving kindness. If He didn't have loving kindness, none of us would be here. We know His patience. We know how much He loves us. We know what Christ did for us. Well, we didn't deserve it at all. And we know His mercy, because none of us have deserved His mercy, but He willingly gives it. And without that mercy, none of us are here either.

Without that mercy, we're nothing but the dead men drifting in that raft. Let's go back to Psalm 103. David, in the very same chapter here, talks about that mercy that God has for us. That's our mercy that He would expect us to show each other, because in Micah 6, verse 8, he says, What does God require of you but to live justly, walk humbly, and be merciful? Same thing that Christ said in Matthew 23, 23. He expects us to be merciful to others, just as He is merciful to us. Over in Psalm 103, let's pick it up in verse 8. And David expands on this, how merciful God is. Verse 8, The Eternal is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.

He won't always strive with us, nor will He keep his anger forever. He hasn't dealt with us, verse 10, according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. Boy, if He had, our lives would be far worse than they are today, right? If we got what we deserved. There's been consequences for our actions, but He hasn't dealt with us according to our sins. He's been merciful. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. He forgets them. He forgives them. He forgets them. He wants us to go on and become perfect. As the Father pities His children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. He pulls us out of a life raft that's going nowhere except the dust.

He crowns us with loving-kindness and tender mercies.

Verse 5, Psalm 103, He satisfies your mouth with good things.

Now, you read the commentaries. Some take issue with the word mouth there, that it satisfies your life, satisfies your youth, satisfies any number of things, but mouth plays to the physical end of it. When we think of our mouths being satisfied, we live in a land where there's plenty of things that satisfy our mouths.

We've all come out of a few days where we've had way too many things satisfy our mouths, speaking of myself. He says He satisfies our mouth with good things. We live in a land that God has richly, richly blessed. Sometimes we eat, and I've never known a day of involuntary hunger. I have a feeling that's most of us in the room.

It's only when we decide not to eat. I've never known a day where I've woken up and there hasn't been anything on the table, and we just can't eat. It's never been a part of my life. I don't even know what that would be like. He satisfied all of us in that physical way. So we can remember that, the fact that we live in this country, He's richly blessed.

But again, if you read the context of what David's talking about there, he's not just talking about the physical things we eat. He's talking about what satisfies our souls. It satisfies our souls. If you remember back to the time before you knew God, before He called you, you just look at your friends at work, look at some family members.

You see people who just aren't at peace with themselves. You see people who keep longing, and some will show that by what they do. They're consistently looking for more, have to make more money, have to have more things, have to have that promotion. Never satisfied with what they have, and they're just always more, always more, trying to fill up the soul, trying to make some sense out of it. We shouldn't be that way.

Paul said back in Philippians 4, In any state I'm in, I'm content. I know how to be a based, and I know how to be content, and time is aplenty. It wasn't dependent on what was in his cupboard or refrigerator, it made Paul satisfied. It was what was in his heart, and what God had given to him. So he was satisfied. He was full. He was at peace with himself. He was established. He was steady, as Peter would say.

One of the benefits God gives us. One of the reasons we can look at the news around us, and we can see a world that is headed for who knows exactly what, and who knows exactly when, only God knows, is that we don't have the issues. We don't fear because we know that God is in charge, and we know that if we're right with him, that he will see us through.

And we know ultimately Jesus Christ will come, and he will provide all the answers that the world doesn't have the answers to today. So we can be satisfied. We can be happy. We can be peaceful in a world that doesn't know peace. Paul said in the same chapter, it's a piece that surpasses all understanding. We are just complete. God fills the holes. So we don't need to fill it with things. We don't need to fill it with any of the addictions that people have. We find our completeness in God. He satisfies us with good. Things there is in italics, not in the original context there, or in the original translation. Christ addressed the very same thing in Matthew 5 when he was at the very beginning of that chapter.

When he was at the part that's called the Beatitudes, he said, Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. Now, that person knows how to be filled. That person knows how to be satisfied. Seek God. He says, Blessed is he who seeks after hunger and righteousness, for he will be filled. He will be satisfied. I hope we all feel that way.

David says, if you do, don't forget that benefit. It's a nice feeling. It's good to feel satisfied in God. And then in the second part of verse 5 there, the parallelism, the completion of the thought, He satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Your youth is renewed like the eagles. You know when those men were in that boat? And when they had that seagull land, even in the movie that I watched, their whole demeanor changed. Before, they were just listless and they were just resigned to death. But when that came, there was a renewed spirit.

There was hope. There was energy. The listlessness turned into, let's do this, let's do that, let's make everything happen. And that little thing that happened in their lives renewed them. Back in Isaiah, Isaiah 40. Of course, we all know the eagles and majestic bird. It's fascinating to watch them fly.

Fascinating to see them. So many studies have been done on them. And God uses them as a symbol in so many parts of the Bible. In Isaiah 40, verse 31, it says, Those who wait on God, those who wait on the Eternal, those who are patient with Him, those who wait on the Eternal shall renew strength. They'll mount up with wings like eagles.

They will run and not be weary. They'll walk and not faint. So when we have God's truth, when we have His Spirit, when we forget not His benefits, we can be very old in years. But our Spirit is renewed. Our strength is there. We don't become tired and listless in giving up. We continue to do what God wants us to do, keeping our eyes, forgetting not His benefits, and He gives us the strength, the energy, the light that we need to go on.

It's a tremendous benefit. Tremendous benefit. Just like the eagles, strength is renewed somehow.

Just like David's strength was renewed, or the Spirit was renewed, when he came to repentance and he said, renew a true Spirit within me, or renew your Spirit within me. God renews us and we have strength. It's a tremendous, tremendous blessing that He gives us. We should forget it not. So in Psalm 103, as we think about what God has done for us, let's never forget what God has done. The very important things in our life. Let's conclude here in Psalm 103 by finishing the verses that we haven't read. Psalm 103, we read down to verse 15.

The Lord has established His throne in heaven and His kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, you His angels, who excel in strength, who do His word, heating the voice of His word. Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, you ministers of His who do His word, and all the Lord's people who do His word. Bless the Lord, all the Lord's people, all the Lord's people, and all the Lord's people who do His word. Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, you ministers of His who do His pleasure. Bless the Lord, all His works, in all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.