Tag: Sovereignty

Do Not Forget Any of His Benefits

Bless the Lord, my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
2 Bless the Lord, my soul,
And do not forget any of His benefits;
3 Who pardons all your guilt,
Who heals all your diseases;
4 Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with favor and compassion;
5 Who satisfies your [a]years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.

6 The Lord performs [b]righteous deeds
And judgments for all who are oppressed.
7 He made known His ways to Moses,
His deeds to the sons of Israel.
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in mercy.
9 He will not always contend with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our guilty deeds.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who [c]fear Him.
12 As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our wrongdoings from us.
13 Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who [d]fear Him.
14 For He Himself knows [e]our form;
He is mindful that we are nothing but dust.

15 As for man, his days are like grass;
Like a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
16 When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place no longer knows about it.
17 But the [f]mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting for those who [g]fear Him,
And His justice to the children’s children,
18 To those who keep His covenant
And remember His precepts, so as to do them.

19 The Lord has established His throne in the heavens,
And His [h]sovereignty rules over [i]all.
20 Bless the Lord, you His angels,
Mighty in strength, who perform His word,
Obeying the voice of His word!
21 Bless the Lord, all you His [j]angels,
You who serve Him, doing His will.
22 Bless the Lord, all you works of His,
In all places of His dominion;
Bless the Lord, my soul!

(Psalm 103 – New American Standard Bible Translation, emphasis added)

Praise Him for all of His benefits! May we be like the early believers who were “…going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit… (Acts 9:31)

His blessings be upon all that love the Lord Jesus Christ.

Carl

(Scripture and footnotes from Bible Gateway)

Footnotes

  1. Psalm 103:5 Or desire
  2. Psalm 103:6 Or deeds of vindication
  3. Psalm 103:11 Or revere
  4. Psalm 103:13 Or revere
  5. Psalm 103:14 I.e., what we are made of
  6. Psalm 103:17 Or faithfulness
  7. Psalm 103:17 Or revere
  8. Psalm 103:19 Or kingdom
  9. Psalm 103:19 I.e., the universe
  10. Psalm 103:21 Lit hosts

God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will

God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervale the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it….. Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so…

God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He proposed in Christ Jesus before the world began… Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, no accidents …[but] within the broad field of God’s sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good and evil continues with increasing fury.

There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made…Our choice is our own, but the consequences of the choice have already been determined by the sovereign will of God, and from this there is no appeal.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961), pp. 117-119, as quoted by Dave Hunt, What Love Is This? (Bend, Oregon: The Berean Call, 2013), pp. 234-235.