This evening we continue in our series going through selected psalms. Tonight, tonight we read, and I’m preaching on, Psalm 103. Psalm 103. So before I read the psalm, I’d love to go ahead and pray, so let’s pray.
Lord God, we ask this evening simply that Your kingdom will come, that it will come in our hearts, that Your grace and Your redemption would break through into our hearts through the power of Your Word and through Your Spirit. And would You bring revival to our souls this evening. God, we are so, so grateful to have Your Word open in front of us because we know that it will not return void. So Lord, be with us as we study, as I preach. May it all be for our good and Your glory. We pray this in Christ Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm 103:
“Of David.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
Well this is God’s Word, and it’s a psalm, personally, that is a favorite of mine. Stephen Biggs last week remarked with his chosen psalm that it was a deep cut. In other words, an overlooked gem or a hidden gem of a psalm. Well Psalm 103 is probably the opposite of that. If there were to be a “Greatest Hits” album of the Psalms it likely would be on there. And why is that? Well, in part because there are such memorable lines that we can hold onto from this psalm. Lines that we use, for instance, in the assurance of pardon. Like, “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” And lines like, “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him.”
But this psalm contains much more than just a few memorable lines. It is a psalm that if you will take it to heart this evening, it will bring revival to your soul. Psalm 103, it grabs our hands and it leads us down a pathway of soul revival, teaching us again to praise God with all that we are. And so this evening, if you are cold, if you are apathetic, if you have ever been cold or apathetic, then this psalm is for you. And this is the call of Psalm 103 – it is to revive our souls by praising God; to revive our souls by praising God. And we are going to see this in three parts. First, we praise God for His benefits. Second, we praise God for His goodness. And third and finally, we praise God with all of creation. We praise God for His benefits, for His goodness, and with all creation.
So first, we praise God for His benefits. Derek Kidner says that in this psalm, “David is kindling his emotions with memories. He is, in a sense, trying to build a fire of praise within his spirit. And where does he start? He starts with the benefits that he receives from God because of his union with Christ.” Some of the main things that he receives, he says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not His benefits.” And so what are these benefits? Well, in verse 3 we see, first of all, that we receive through our union with Christ, as David receives, forgiveness. Not just forgiveness in part, but forgiveness of all our iniquities. Our sin, all nailed to the cross. Our sin, all completely forgiven and vanquished. Not one of them counted against us because of Christ’s perfect forgiveness – “Our sin, not in part but the whole,” as we sing. And so the benefits that we praise God for, the benefits of belonging to God, it starts with forgiveness. It starts with forgiveness, and yet so often in our minds we think that’s where it ends. What has God done for us? He forgives us. But salvation is not less than but so much more than just forgiveness.
And so we read on, and we read on, and we see that God heals our diseases, and this is mainly about what is to come. Although we do praise God when He heals us, one day we all will die, but there is a promise, and this psalm points us forward to that promise of total healing, of a day when there will be no threat of viruses or broken bones or cancer cells. God heals our diseases. In verse 4, God redeems us from the pit. He redeems us from eternal death and hell. And we are not just spared from that, we are redeemed to, we are redeemed to be crowned with steadfast love and mercy. This is to be forever the object of God’s affection, the object of His favor and delight.
And then in verse 5, we see that we receive both satisfaction and renewal. This is the best and our deepest longings met, our bodies and our minds healed and restored. This does not happen completely today, but one day, this will happen for all of God’s people, completely and forever. Satisfaction and renewal. William Plumer remarks that, “No real believer has ever been to think of any real blessing that is not secured to the child of God.” “No real believer has ever been able to think of any real blessing that is not secured to the child of God.” In other words, think of any true and legitimate good. Get to the root of it, get to the essence of it, follow the thread – whether that be beauty or joy or connection or satisfaction or delight or rest – and there, you will find the author of everything good and true. And in Him and through Him and from Him, one day you will receive all that your perfected soul could ever long for. Everything of lasting and eternal good is promised to every Christian, not just the strongest Christians, the ones who crawl to the finish line, everything of lasting and eternal good, all tears gone, pleasures forevermore. And there is only one appropriate response to this, and that is to praise God. Praise God and remember His benefits. Remember His benefits and praise Him for it.
But that’s not all. We praise God for His benefits and we praise God for His goodness. I was taught in high school not to use the word “good” as a descriptor. It’s not specific enough. But here, this word is appropriate because it encapsulates all that we are about to read in verses 6 through 19; all the ways that David describes God can be thought of as His goodness. We see first in verse 6 that He is just. “He works justice and righteousness for the oppressed.” He never compromises justice. Every single wrong will be made right in God’s time. There will be no sin that goes unpunished. God is the avenger of wrongdoing, and as Spurgeon says, “He will mete out His portion to the proud and make the tyrant bite the dust.” God is perfectly just and we praise Him for His goodness. God is also perfectly merciful, and we praise Him for that too. God is merciful. In verses 7 and 8, there is a reminder baked into these verses. A reminder of Israel’s history, of their exodus by the Lord’s hand out of captivity, only then for them to worship a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. And yet then, God showed mercy, and now to all God’s people, even as we spurred Him time and time again, He shows us mercy. Verse 9 and 10, “He does not chide us.” One commentator said that this means to prosecute us. He does not prosecute us in our sin. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. Verse 12 says, “In His mercy, He deals with our sins completely, removing them as far as the east is from the west,” because He is so perfectly merciful.
You know, we often think that God is like us, don’t we? We think God is like us, and so when we despise ourselves for our pornography addiction or for our constant jealousy or for our outbursts of anger, we think, as God’s people, that God despises us too. But as one author said, “When God forgives, He forgives like a God and not like a creature.” He is so merciful to us, and we praise Him for His goodness. God is just. God is merciful. God is kind. He is kind. Or He is full of steadfast love. Verse 11, “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love to those who fear Him.” Verse 13, “As a father shows compassion,” so God shows us compassion because, as verses 14 through 16 say, He knows us. He knows our weakness; He knows our frame. He knows that we are but dust. He knows that we are so easily tempted, so easily led astray that we are weak, and so He shows us compassion. And He cares for us with the utmost tenderness and kindness. “Fatherlike He tends and spares us, well our feeble frame He knows.” And verses 17 and 18 tell us that His steadfast love is from everlasting to everlasting. It has nor origin and it has no ending and it extends generationally to us. He is kind. He is full of steadfast love, and we praise Him for His goodness.
It’s Father’s Day, and so naturally I think of my daughter, Libby. And people told me when she was born, or before she was born, that – many people told me – it will change you instantly. And I really didn’t know what to make of that. I didn’t know if that would happen to me. But it did. And I distinctly remember the moment that I saw her, the clarity and the focus that was brought into my life of – “I will take care of this little girl.” And I will always remember that. And one of the great blessings of that moment and the days that followed was the sense that I got that, “If I love this little girl this much, in all my imperfections and sin and selfishness, then how much more so does my heavenly Father love me?” But you know what? The thing is, that realization or those feelings, that didn’t make God’s love for me any more true. It was already true. So for all of us in this room, whether we want to be a mom or a dad or no matter the kind of relationship we have with our father, if you are in Christ Jesus, you are loved perfectly. It’s a fact. And that will never change. His steadfast love is as high as the heavens. It is from everlasting to everlasting. And we praise Him for His goodness.
And this God, this God who loves us so perfectly, verse 19 tells us that He sits on His throne. The same God who loves us perfectly is the One who is in charge. He is ruling; He is reigning in perfect might and in perfect glory. “This is my Father’s world,” we sing. “Let me never forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” God is good. He is just. He is merciful. He is kind. He is in charge. And we praise Him for His goodness. But God’s goodness – how do we make sense of this? He is just. He is merciful, kind and sovereign. He avenges wrongdoing, but He casts our sin away. He demands obedience, but He cares for us so tenderly in our temptation and in our failure. How do we make sense of this? Well, God’s goodness is literally fleshed out for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was perfectly just and righteous, and yet He was prosecuted for sins He did not commit and He paid the penalty for sins that we should have been prosecuted and found guilty for. And we, in return, get abundant mercy. We get access to God as a Father. And Jesus rose, and now He sits on the throne. He protects us. He prays for us. He pours out His Spirit upon us and enables us to keep His covenant. Do you see that Jesus Christ manifests the goodness of God for us?
And so maybe as you read Psalm 103, you became stuck or you paused when you saw that phrase that happens three times – “to those who fear Me.” To those who fear God. And maybe you thought to yourself, “Do I fear God?” And so what does it mean to fear God? And this is important to understand. If the beginning of wisdom if the fear of the Lord, then it can be rightly said that the beginning of the fear of the Lord is simply to cast yourself upon the grace of Jesus Christ. It begins with running to Jesus with empty hands and receiving all that He has to give you. And it ends with being awestruck and filled with reverent praise for His goodness and His glory. So to fear the Lord is not, as maybe we think of it, to keep your distance from Him and to try your best. The fear of the Lord begins with looking to Jesus. And it ends with being awestruck by His goodness and glory and to be filled with adoration as you praise Him with all that is within you for His goodness. So you want revival in your soul this evening? Is that what you want? Well if so, then look to Jesus. Look to Jesus and praise Him for His goodness.
We praise God for His goodness, we praise God for His benefits, and finally, to have our souls revived this evening, we praise God with all of creation. David, at the end of this psalm, he has stoked the fire of his heart. He has recalled the benefits of his union with Christ. He has rejoiced in the goodness of God. And now, as His adoration burns hot, he ends the psalm with a rousing call, a rousing call for everyone to praise God, to join in, in praising God. Verse 20, 21 and 22 – all angels, all creation, all creatures, he says, “Come, everyone, bless the Lord with everything that’s in you!” You can almost hear him shouting! And you know it’s interesting, this phrase, “bless the Lord” – I think it’s said eight times in this psalm. When we think of blessing someone, usually we think of providing something to someone that they need or they lack. But it’s not so with God. God has no need of anything that we can give Him. He has no lack.
And so when we praise God or we bless God with our soul, we are not adding anything to God. We are simply recognizing His glory, His beauty, His goodness, and we are adoring Him for it. Paul says that God is the blessed one, or the one that is to be praised forever. And so God does not become any more God-like when we praise Him, but it is true that we become, in a sense, more human when we praise God because that, in fact, is exactly what we were made to do. This command, this call in Psalm 103, it’s like being told to drink water on a hot August day. We are being commanded to do what our soul needs more than anything. And isn’t this refreshing? It’s as if God’s Word is grabbing us and looking us in the eye and saying, “This is what you were made for.” And we live in a world that says, “You have to build your own meaning. You have to create your own story. You are the captain of your fate.” And at the end of the day, that leaves us hopeless and lost. But here we have from God’s Word, revealed to us, the Lord Himself saying, “This is what you were made for – to praise Me forever.” And so that’s the call of this psalm – to revive our souls to praise Him, to praise Him with all of creation, to praise Him with the angels, to praise Him with everything in this world because it is all, it is all created for God’s praise.
Well, so maybe this evening you think, “That sounds really great, but my friend is dying or my marriage is failing. I can’t stop sinning. I’m anxious all the time, and I don’t think I can muster one ounce of praise.” If you feel that way, you too can take heart. You too can take heart. Why? Because not only is this psalm a call to praise God with all that is within us here and now, it is a picture of what is to come, of where all of history is headed for all of God’s people when the mountains and the hills break forth into singing and the trees of the fields clap their hands. When there is a great multitude around the throne saying, “Worthy is the Lamb of God who was slain,” and when the Lamb of God is in their midst, wiping every tear from their eyes.
These final verses of Psalm 103 are also a picture of the culmination of history for all who trust in Jesus. I saw a video the other day of a soldier who had been away for over a year. There was a spread of food in front of him and he points to a dish on one side of the table and he says, “Is that from my hometown?” And then a moment later as he takes a bite of it, he begins to weep. And he says, “This is my mother’s cooking.” The very best praise that any of us can muster today is but a little foretaste of what we will experience when we are home and God is bringing us home. He will bring us home. And so even now, in the darkness and in the struggle of this fallen world, when all seems dark and hopeless, you can say from a sincere place, “Bless the Lord, O my soul. Bless the Lord, all that is within me.”
Let me pray to that end. Lord God, would You teach us again to praise You. Lord, would You revive our souls as we see Your blessings, Your goodness, and teach us to do what we were made to do, and that is to exalt Your holy name. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.