Wedding Sermon
Psalms 103
1 A Psalm of David. Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: 3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; 4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; 5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. 14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. 17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; 18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.
Do not forget all that God has done for you. There are benefits in the Christian life.
Some have the wrong impression of Christianity, thinking that if you’re a Christian you can’t enjoy life. But there are none as miserable as those that do not know God. And to be a true Christian is a foretaste of Heaven.
It’s a human weakness that we easily forget. Young people forget too. But do not forget God’s benefits, what God has spoken to you and what you have promised to God.
David spoke and addressed his soul to bless the Lord.
There is the story of a certain intellectual who spoke at a university saying that man has no soul. After his speech a certain missionary man stood up, went up to the platform and asked to comment on what the intellectual had said. The missionary was quite a strong, big man. He took a chair on the platform, turned it upside down and spun it around, and placed it back on its feet again. Then he walked over to the intellectual, threw him off his chair and spun him a few times around on the ground. Then he took him by the hand and helped him up. The intellectual was furious, and fuming for the humiliation and the way he was treated. Then the missionary spoke and said, “I spun the chair around, which doesn’t have a soul, and it had no reaction. I spun you around and just see what a reaction I got. That just shows that you have a soul, whereas the chair doesn’t have one.” That struck home and the man understood.
Yes man has a soul and our soul should praise the Lord.
It’s a pity that we spend so little time with our souls. Yet the Lord Jesus said, “what will it gain a man if he should gain the whole world yet loses his soul.”
You think about your finances, your education, your body etc. But what about your soul?
The worth of a soul is immeasurable. The very fact that God the Son was wiling to give His life to save our souls just shows the value of our souls.
If you forget your soul, you will regret it for the rest of eternity in hell.
In short what are some of the benefits of God that we should not forget?
He forgives all your sins.
The forgiveness of sins is not a small thing.
A missionary in China used to visit the prisons. One day he met a man who seems like he was carrying a mountain. The man was on death row, because of murder.
The missionary said to him that there is forgiveness for sin. The man said he sinned too severely. But the missionary said to him that indeed it was true for Jesus paid His own life as guarantee.
But the man said to him that he could not believe it for the faces of the Christians he knew did not testify to forgiveness. He said to get forgiveness from his sin he would be willing to go on his knees on glass across China.
You claim to be a Christian, but have you experienced God’s forgiveness?
Your thoughts are a revelation of who you are. You are not what you think you are, but you are what you think.
There is nothing like having the assurance that your sins are forgiven. The wonderful thing is that when God forgives, He forgets.
He takes our sins and separates them from us as far as the east is from the west.
The second benefit is that He heals all your diseases.
There are diseases that come upon a person because of sin and the judgement of God. We read of it in Deuteronomy. However not all disease is because of sin.
Job became very sick, not because of sin. So too the blind man Jesus healed was not blind because of his own or his parents’ sin.
But there are sicknesses that come upon a person because of sin and God’s judgement. Just think of smoking, drinking, taking drugs and getting AIDS from an immoral life.
Another benefit is that He also redeems your life from the pit. To redeem implies that a cost was involved, even the cost of Jesus on the Cross. If you’re a genuine Christian, you cannot forget what God has done for you.
A raw heathen induna, not far from here, said that he started to hear people speaking about being born again. He was perplexed and he said, but how is it possible for an old man to be born again? However, not long after that, God started to work in his life and he stopped drinking alcohol, smoking, using drugs, and living immorally. Then his eyes were opened and he realised that God had touched his life and made it new and he experienced that he had been born again. His whole life became new.
The zulu name for a Christian is ikholwa, meaning to be satisfied. A Christian is satisfied and doesn’t long for the things of the world.
In the days when money still had value, there was a man in America who was a millionaire. They asked him what it was like to have his first million. He replied that now he wants his second million.
This is what the things of this world are like. It doesn’t satisfy. You always want more.
The fact of the Son of God in our lives should shine brighter than the sun. The sun loses its brightness when there are clouds or in the shade, but the spiritual Son in your life never loses its brightness.
We find so called Christians longing for the things of this world. They would go to the bookstore and buy evil books, or look at evil on the internet. But as a true Christian you are satisfied and have no longing after evil things.
Medical science has now shown that watching pornography is more harmful to a person than using the worst drugs!
Another benefit is that He renews your life as the eagle. Even if your life is spoilt, God can renew your life. The past is lost but the future can be spotless.
A certain young man died at 21 like an old man. He said, “I die like an old man. There isn’t a sin I haven’t committed.” And that was also the state in which he died.
An eagle, when it gets old, goes and sits alone on a precipice for a number of days. It’s a pitiful sight, with old feathers and wings. It looks like it is dying. But then it shakes itself, the old feathers fall off and new feathers grow and it becomes completely new, and lives for another 40 years.
So God renews our life, even more than the eagle.