[0:00] Oh, good morning. Pastor told me the other day when we were talking that I needed to introduce myself.
[0:13] We'll be in Psalm 103. I played college baseball, and by the way, I put Bibles together. So, I don't know why he told me that, but just with that little thought in mind, I see several young people in here, and this isn't even part of the message, but I did play college baseball, and not in a bragging sense, was pretty good at it, and was on the verge of being drafted to play at least minor league ball.
[0:41] And God touched my shoulder. I was a pitcher, and God touched my shoulder and said, that's enough, you're finished. And I just say that to the young people in here, that don't be running from what God wants you to do with your life.
[0:52] Don't make him do to you what he did to me. Just serve him, and do what he wants you to do. And I still today, actually, I'm not kidding, this morning, I woke up and my shoulder was hurting.
[1:03] It's a reminder to me. I view it, and I've told people around it, I feel like Jacob, for the rest of his life, when he wrestled with the Lord, he walked with a limp the rest of his life. I've got a bum shoulder for the rest of my life.
[1:14] And that's just a little reminder that says, hey, Dan, don't get focused on anything else. Do what you're supposed to do. So, a little sidebar for the young people, just do what God wants you to do, and you won't regret it.
[1:26] I promise you that. You'll be happier than you've ever been in your life. Could have made millions of dollars potentially one day, but eh, wouldn't trade it for this, for anything. So, anyway, that's a sidebar.
[1:37] Psalm 103 is where we'll be today, and I just want to thank you, those of you that came and helped us put the scripture together. My wife, Kelly, and I, we've been doing this now for seven and a half years.
[1:48] August will be eight years that we've traveled with Seedline doing this. We've had the privilege of putting together, probably now we're in the neighborhood of about six to six and a half million John and Romans we've assembled in those seven and a half years.
[2:02] And that number just keeps rapidly growing even higher and higher. And it's just an awesome privilege to be able to do this, and I thank you for taking part in it. But 10,000 scripture are going to be going to either Romania, Hungary, or Poland.
[2:17] I'm not sure exactly where these will go right now, but they will get shipped to one of those three countries to be given out to the refugees that are fleeing Ukraine right now. We've had requests from missionaries in all three countries.
[2:29] As soon as the war broke out, we started getting calls from these missionaries begging us for scripture. So we got it printed. We printed 300,000 copies as quickly as we could. And they're all supposed to be, they're in different churches all over right now.
[2:43] By the end of this week, they should all be back in Milford. And then we'll work on getting the shipping set up and get them over to one of those three countries as quickly as possible. And when that gets loaded, I will send pictures and so forth to your pastor so he can see that.
[2:56] And you can be even more excited when you see it loaded in a container and watch it pull away from the dock. There's nothing like that knowing that nobody's going to see those again until they're in the hands of a missionary being put into the hands of somebody there in one of those countries.
[3:09] So thank you so much for what you've done. Psalm 103 is where we'll be today. I'll read the first five verses and then we'll pray and then we'll get into the message. Psalm 103 says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
[3:28] Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles.
[3:52] And let's pray. Lord, I thank you again for the privilege of what you've allowed us to do here on Friday evening and Saturday morning to put together scripture going to a people that need hope right now.
[4:05] And Lord, I just thank you for a church that's willing to partner with us and to assist and to get this goal accomplished of getting these scriptures over to the Ukrainian people that need them so desperately right now.
[4:17] But Lord, I ask that you would help us to put aside all of that for just a few moments and to focus on what you have for us from your word today. I ask, Lord, that you would speak to every heart, that you would draw us all closer to you as a result of what we hear today as well.
[4:31] And Lord, I do pray as well that if there's someone here that doesn't know you as Savior, may today be the day of their salvation. May they come to know you today. Please work in our hearts. In Jesus' name I pray.
[4:42] Amen. Amen. Psalm 103, this came from a study that I did around Memorial Day. And I started looking through the Bible at different times when the Bible talks about memorials or remembering different things to that.
[5:00] And it came to Psalm 103 here and forget not. And it says there, if you notice in the middle of verse, or at the end of verse number two, it says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
[5:15] See, back in Deuteronomy, we're warned in Deuteronomy 6 and again in Deuteronomy 8, we're warned to not forget what God has done for us. And I'm afraid sometimes we become so comfortable with what the Lord has done that it just becomes second nature sometimes.
[5:34] It doesn't affect us the way that it really should. And maybe even we begin to forget some of the things that he's done. But here at the end, as it says, forget not all his benefits.
[5:46] And then David goes on in the next three verses and lists six benefits of knowing who God is. And I want to go over those six things with you this morning, and then we'll try to tie all that in together here with what we were able to accomplish over the last couple of days as well.
[6:02] So the first thing, again, verse number two says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And then number one, who forgiveth all thine iniquities. Your sins are forgiven.
[6:17] If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior and you're sitting in here today, your sins are forgiven. Can I say it again? I'm not sure everybody caught that.
[6:29] Your sins are forgiven. That's an awesome thought. It doesn't matter what it is. Whether that sin was committed this morning, whether it was committed last night, last week, 10 years ago, 10 years from now, it's all forgiven.
[6:48] If you know Christ as your Savior this morning. What an incredible thought. And what a benefit of knowing our God. And I want you to, David goes on a little bit further over in verse number 12.
[7:01] If you'd look at that with me. This is a verse to me that I believe proves, is one of those verses that can prove that this truly is God's word. Because I don't believe David could have known the magnitude of what he's about to write right here.
[7:17] Because it says in verse number 12, as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Now, not saying David was an ignorant man, but back in that time, really, is there any way that David could have known about the entire world?
[7:36] There's not. So that verse says as far as the east is from the west. What if he had said as far as the north is from the south? What happens when you go north?
[7:49] When you get as far north as you can go, what do you hit? What happens the next step? You're going south. If you're going south, you go as far south as you can go, you hit the south pole.
[8:03] Next step, you're going north. So there are two points on earth where north and south come together. So what if David had written here, for as far as the north is from the south, so far as he removed our iniquities?
[8:20] That's not good. Because you could come back together with your sin. There are two points where you could come back and you would meet your sin. But he says as far as the east is from the west, this will be east.
[8:32] I have no idea what direction east is today. This is east. Stop me when I'm going west. How long am I going to walk?
[8:43] Forever. What an awesome thought. God says that he's taken our sins and they're separated from us as far as the east is from the west.
[8:54] That very simply means you will never face it again. What a benefit of knowing our God. Your sins are forgiven.
[9:07] Now, does that mean that we don't confess our sin back when we do? Absolutely not. But we don't confess our sin to keep our salvation. That's settled. The sins are forgiven.
[9:18] That confession keeps us in a right relationship with our Savior. But what a wonderful thought. Your sins are forgiven.
[9:29] And what a benefit that is of knowing who our God is. Don't forget it. As it says in verse number two, forget not.
[9:41] You know, Satan has a way. He's pretty good about beating us up over our sins. You go out here today and if you mess up and do something, and then you'll think, well, I can't.
[9:54] I'm a Sunday school. I teach life group class. I can't teach that. Look what I've done. Look what I just did. And God says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[10:07] That's already forgiven as far as the east is from the west. Don't look back at it. See, when you're going east, the only way you ever find your sin again is if you turn back and look at it. That's the only way.
[10:18] God says it's gone. So why don't we just do what God says and let it be gone and go on and do what God asks us to do? Because it's a benefit of knowing who our God is.
[10:29] The second part in verse number three, who healeth all thy diseases. Now that word there, diseases, is not just referring to physical healing of diseases, but that's referring more to the hurts and the distresses that we go through in life.
[10:46] Anybody in here ever dealt with a difficult time in your life? I'm sure every one of us is going to raise our hand. But God says, he'll heal us.
[10:57] He heals us from all of those things. So Psalm 147, verse number three tells us, he healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.
[11:09] Over just a few pages. If you want to flip there to Psalm 107, probably just a couple of pages in your Bible there. Verse number, just for context and everything, we'll start in verse number 17 and look here.
[11:26] It says, fools, because of their transgression and because of their iniquities are afflicted. Their soul abhoreth all manner of meat, and they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses.
[11:43] Again, their distresses, their hurts, their diseases. He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destruction. How do you get the healing?
[11:53] How does God do that healing from our diseases, from our hurts, from our distresses? He says right there in verse number 20 that we just looked at. He sent his word.
[12:04] And we talked about that a little bit this morning prior in the life group class. That's how we get, that's how we go on in life. That's how we move forward, because God gave us his word.
[12:18] Again, if I could, I'll give you a personal testimony here, because there may be someone dealing with something like this. Sometimes I probably tell on myself a little too much, but there was a time prior to us joining Seedline, I was, we, Kelly and I, we attended a church in Kentucky, and I was a Christian school principal there for eight years.
[12:40] And about six years into that eight years, I thought the Lord was calling us to the mission field. Well, it ended up, God ended up closing that door, and I didn't know what else to do, except I knew God had called me to be the principal of that school, so we just kept doing that for another couple of years.
[12:56] And then God made it clear that it was time for us to move from there to go to Milford, Ohio, which we did. And when that happened, I can tell you that there were some things said, some things that were not true, were told about us.
[13:16] Because at the same time, there were other people that had left that church as well. We had nothing to do with that at all. We didn't tell anyone we were leaving, except for the pastor. We just went and kept it to ourselves.
[13:29] But there were so many things that were said that were just hurtful. And I went through a period of time shortly after that, and my wife will attest to this, probably a year or two, probably mildly depressed.
[13:40] Because I was at a point where I was saying, God, if this is the way Christians are going to treat me, I don't want anything to do with it anymore. I'm done. Now, that doesn't mean I was still in church.
[13:51] I took my family to church, but on a regular basis, I didn't open this book. And I hate to admit this to you, but I'm doing it because there might be somebody in here that's going through the same thing today. I didn't touch this book on personally myself, probably for a year or two.
[14:06] I just went to church, was one of those Christians you hear about that get preached about all the time. I left it on the shelf. I picked it up again Sunday. I picked it up Wednesday, and that was it. But then I began to realize, and God began to work in my heart and said, Dan, I didn't do this to you.
[14:21] People did. And I got back into, as it says there in Psalm 107, verse number 17, or 19, it says, Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses.
[14:35] He sent his word and healed them. You know what got me out of that mild depression or whatever I was dealing with? Right here.
[14:46] I opened it again. I started reading it again, and God began to work again and rejuvenate and helped me to see that not necessarily was he calling me to the mission field like I thought a couple of years ago.
[15:00] He said, Dan, I want you to go around this country putting scripture together to send to those that I have called. And then add a little benefit. Every once in a while, we'll let you go as well and hand them out, which we've got to do in different places around the world.
[15:15] We've been to Africa. We've been to Brazil. I've been to South Korea, Mexico a couple of times. I'm a missionary that gets to put scripture together and gets to travel around the world.
[15:26] What better thing? But it all happened simply because God healed me, as it says here, who healeth all thy diseases. And it only happens by getting into his word.
[15:39] So if you're here today and you're dealing with any of that hurt, it's not God's fault. It's people. People will hurt, unfortunately. Let's just, we all know that to be true.
[15:52] But the way to get that healing, get into this word and he'll bring it back to you and oh boy, so much better. Such a better feeling than I had about 12 years ago going through what I dealt with.
[16:05] Knowing that God healed from that disease and that distress. point number three, verse number four, who redeemeth thy life from destruction.
[16:20] The ultimate destruction for a human, for a human soul is to be cast into hell for all of eternity. But guess what?
[16:32] If you know Christ as your savior, you're not going there. What a benefit of knowing our God. That word redeemeth has the meaning of the kinsman redeemer that you hear about.
[16:46] Someone who pays your debt to redeem you from death. Who's that sound like? Who paid our debt to redeem us from death? Our savior.
[16:57] What a wonderful benefit of knowing our God that we don't have to spend an eternity in hell one day. That we are redeemed. Psalm 34, 22 says, The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.
[17:14] And a verse that I love that talks about redemption, Revelation 5, 9. And they sung a new song saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.
[17:38] You know who's going to be gathered around the throne one day and the tongue that some of them will speak? Ukrainian.
[17:50] Why? Because you folded a cover. may have sent like a simple little task. They had to be folded because you put the scripture inside the cover.
[18:03] Not very hard, but it had to be done. A little more difficult job. A bunch of you stapled them. Not really all that hard. Then somebody carried them from one place to another.
[18:17] The kids everywhere carrying stuff. Just as important a job is everything else. Every single one of these on average will have about 10 sets of fingerprints on it. From the person that tore it apart to carry them here, there, and everywhere until the time they get in the box.
[18:32] There's about 10 sets of fingerprints. And as it says there in Revelation 9, thou hast redeemed at the end and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.
[18:45] Some of them will be Ukrainian-speaking people because of you. What a benefit of knowing our God.
[18:57] Not only for us, the fact that we are redeemed and that we don't have to spend an eternity in hell, there will be people in Ukraine that are going to have the same experience. Wow.
[19:10] What an awesome privilege it is to do what we did. Let's continue on because for sake of time, I want to get to the end here to wrap it all up.
[19:21] The end of verse number 4. The fourth thing, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies. The next benefit of knowing our God, He loves you.
[19:39] God loves us. Why? I don't know. I don't love myself sometimes. Why in the world would the almighty God that created me love me when I fail Him so miserably sometimes?
[19:54] Yet He does. And He shows us His mercy over and over. Over in verse number 8 of the same chapter, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.
[20:07] Aren't you glad He has plenteous mercy? Down in verse number 17. Well, go back to verse number 15. It says, As for man, his days are as grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
[20:20] For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more. Basically says, we're going to be here for a while, the wind's going to blow, we're going to be gone, and nobody's going to remember us. That's what those two verses are telling us.
[20:33] But then it says, But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him and His righteousness unto children's children.
[20:43] God's mercy will never stop. And that's a benefit we have of knowing Him. So not only can our sins, are our sins forgiven, and not only does He heal our diseases, our hurts, our distresses, not only does He redeem our life from destruction, not only does He show us His love and His mercy, but verse number 5, He satisfieth thy mouth with good things.
[21:14] He satisfieth thy mouth with good things. He's all we ever need. He'll give us everything that we need and that all the good things come from Him.
[21:27] I didn't say you get everything you want. I wish we did. I'd be driving a whole lot nicer car. But, but I have everything I ever needed.
[21:38] And I'm sure everyone in here could probably say the exact same thing. You're here today, you've got clothes on your back, there's probably some food on your stomach right now. We're doing fine.
[21:49] We've got all we need. And it's all because of Him. Psalm 63, 5 says, my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips.
[22:02] I love 1 Timothy 6, 17. It says, charge them that are rich in this world that they be not high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.
[22:19] Everything that we get, everything that we enjoy in this world is a direct result of God Himself. And the fact that we know Him and we get, it's a benefit of knowing Him.
[22:31] Don't forget it. It's easy to forget. But don't forget these things. And the last thing there in verse number 6, it says, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles.
[22:48] Our strength comes from Him. Famous verse, Isaiah 40, 31. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
[22:58] They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint. 2 Corinthians 4, 16 tells us, for this cause we faint not. But though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
[23:15] How does that inward man get renewed every day? By spending time with our God and allowing Him to renew the inside. I'm 52 years old now and yesterday after we wrapped up everything and went to lunch with Pastor and his wife, he had a great lunch by the way, it was very good.
[23:35] We went, Kelly and I went back to the hotel and we had every intention of just resting for a few minutes and then going out and taking, walking someplace, going someplace and walking around a park. That didn't happen. Once we laid down and got comfortable, we were done.
[23:50] We ordered pizza last night and had it delivered to the hotel. We were lazy. Let's just be honest. We were tired. It was tiring. It's been a crazy three or four weeks.
[24:02] This morning I woke up, I was tired. But you know what? I opened the pages of this book and started reading and going over some stuff for the lesson today and all of a sudden that inward man just started being renewed.
[24:19] The outward man is still a little bit tired but the inward guy, he got renewed this morning. I feel like I'm 16 on the inside. When I try to go do something, when I try to pick up one of these boxes later, I'll realize I'm still 52.
[24:36] But that inward man can be renewed day by day by spending time with our God. And what a wonderful benefit. Don't forget it.
[24:47] When we get tired, it's easy to forget God and to push things aside because we're tired. Don't forget. So we've talked about six things this morning.
[25:01] Just so I can remember them all, I'm going to scroll through it real quick. The six things, our sins are forgiven. That our diseases, our hurts, our distresses can be healed. That our life is redeemed from destruction.
[25:14] We're not going to hell one day if you know Christ as your Savior. God loves us and shows us his mercy. He's our satisfaction and our fulfillment. He gives us everything that we need.
[25:25] And last, he renews us. You now have the opportunity as that verse at the beginning there says, forget not. All of, everyone in this room now has the opportunity to forget all six of those things.
[25:44] I hope you don't. But you have the opportunity to. And may I say to you, that's a privilege. Because in order to forget something, what has to happen first?
[26:01] You have to know it. Somebody's got to tell you. You have to read it, whatever it may be. You can't forget something that you never learned. There's a subject I've heard about in high school and in college called physics.
[26:13] You know how much physics I've ever forgotten in my life? None. Why? Never took it. Never learned it. I have no intention of taking it now.
[26:26] I'll never forget a thing about physics. I did take Spanish in high school. Took two years of Spanish in high school. I took a year of it in college. I've forgotten a lot of it, but I remember some.
[26:38] And I get around people that speak Spanish and some of it comes back and I remember it. But it's all because somebody taught me. Do you understand what a privilege it is that you get the opportunity to forget the six things that we just talked about?
[26:53] And I say that in a sense of just a natural forgetting of things, not talking about dementia and Alzheimer's. I'm not, that stuff, I'm not even touching that at all. I'm just talking about something you learn and you just forget.
[27:08] You know there are people in Ukraine right now that are going to get one of these? that as of this moment right now, they can't forget anything that we've talked about because nobody's ever told them.
[27:30] But in a very, very short period of time, there's 10,400 up here. There's going to be 10,400 people that are going to get the opportunity to forget.
[27:46] I hope they don't. And the reason they're going to get the opportunity to forget is because somebody's going to walk up to them and say, you speak Ukraine now.
[27:58] I'd like you to read that. Now he can forget. What a privilege. And it's all because of what you did. How awesome a thought.
[28:11] A benefit of knowing our God. I'll get that back later. It has to get back in the box. The benefit of knowing our God is we get to forget these things. If I can put it in the right text, the right manner there.
[28:24] When there are so many people that don't have that privilege. As we talked about this morning, there are two and a half to three billion people on earth today that there's not one verse of scripture translated into their mother tongue, into their language, into the language that they speak, that they understand.
[28:46] They know it inside and out, backwards and forwards. Two and a half to three billion people that will never forget a thing about what we just talked about today because no one's ever told them and no one can even get it to them because it's not available.
[29:03] that ought to break our hearts. That ought to crush us and give us a burden to do everything we can to get it to them.
[29:15] As I also shared this morning, the estimate is that only about 30% of the world has ever heard the gospel. You know, the people that have never heard about Jesus and that can't forget the things that we've talked about today, they're not only in India and China and in other parts of the world where we can't get the gospel because it's dangerous to go in.
[29:38] But they also live in Alpharetta, Georgia. I would guess that if we were to go take a five-mile radius to circle around and you went to every single home and talked to every, there would be multiple people you'd come across that said, I've never heard the name of Jesus before except to use it in an incorrect way.
[29:58] I know nothing about him. I've never seen a Bible before and that's not a, that's all over, all over Milford, Ohio where we're from, it's the same way.
[30:12] Just a, just a sidebar there just to let you know how really true that, that statement can be. During, during COVID, the man that runs our press, he got a part-time job working at Home Depot.
[30:25] No, I'm sorry, he got a part-time job working at Lowe's just because we didn't know what was going to happen there for a while so people were just looking for something just in case. And he got a part-time job at Lowe's and got to know this lady.
[30:37] He says she was probably in her mid-40s. He's smart enough not to ask her her age. But he got to talking about what he did as far as printing Bibles and a lady that lives in Milford, Ohio where Bearing Precious Seed is that has printed 200 million copies of scripture in the last 50 years looked this man in the eye and said I've never owned a Bible in my life.
[31:06] Shame on First Baptist Church of Milford, Ohio and me. They're everywhere folks. They're not just in Ukraine. They're all over.
[31:18] They're right outside these doors. We've got to go find them. The benefits that we know and that we get to love and enjoy, they're great.
[31:29] But we need to remember there are people that will never forget because they've never been told. If you're here this morning and you don't know Christ as your Savior, you don't know that your sins are forgiven and you don't know that you're not going to spend an eternity in hell one day, may I ask you to please get that settled today.
[31:52] Come talk to somebody up here. Talk to Pastor, talk to me, talk to someone and let us show you from the Bible how you can know for sure and then you can say who forgiveth all the mine iniquities and know for sure that your home is in heaven one day.
[32:10] But for the rest of us, maybe we just need to gather around an altar and just thank God for the benefits that we have and ask him to help us not to forget them. Because it's easy to get cold.
[32:21] It's very simple. But David tells us here, don't forget these things. Six benefits of knowing our God. Let's pray.
[32:33] Lord, I thank you once again. God, I thank you that you saved me as a 16-year-old boy and that I can know for sure that my sins are forgiven.
[32:53] And Lord, I thank you for that privilege of knowing that I'll spend an eternity with you one day and not in the fires of hell. God, help me to remember all these things. We talked about six.
[33:05] things that we can't do. There's probably hundreds of benefits that we could find in the Bible about knowing you. And help us not to forget those things, not grow cold.
[33:15] When we start thinking about these, there's no way we can get cold about our service to you. It just has to overflow to where we want to give it to others. And I pray, Lord, that that would be the case.
[33:26] I pray that you would work in every heart this morning the way that you would have to work. May everyone be open and receptive, Lord, and not allow anything to hold them back from what you would have for them to accomplish here today.
[33:39] I love you, Lord, and thank you so much for what you do. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.