Paul Horne
Psalm 103 sermon
Have you ever experienced something
so grand that all you wanted to do was talk about it. For those of us who are
married, think back to when you first fell in love with your spouse, all you
could do was sing their praise they could do no wrong. Well this is how David
feels about the Lord in Psalm 103. He is rejoicing over all the goodness of God
and how he relates to his people. It is my hope that by the time we are done
looking at this Psalm we will all be rejoicing right along with David, because
of what we see the Lord doing not only in our lives but also in the lives of
those around us.
David is rather
emphatic when he says “Bless the Lord, O my soul” so much so he feels the need
to repeat himself. When he goes to bless
the Lord he doesn’t want to do it in some halfhearted manner, he wants to do it
with all that he has. He wants to do as Jesus spoke about in Mark 12:30 when he
told the scribes who questioned him, “And you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your mind and with all your strength.’”(ESV) In verse two he expresses what
would be our first point that we should not forget all the benefits we receive
from the Lord. David is praising the Lord for his greatness, but “the opposite
of “praise” is “forgetfulness”, to forget the benefit of the Lord is to
disregard his covenantal Lordship.” He spends the next four
verses expounding on those benefits. How easy is it for us to fall into a place
of complacency and forgetfulness? I know for myself it is a daily struggle to
remember all of the good the Lord has done for me. The greatest thing we should
remember is that he forgives our iniquities, which is no small feat. He
forgives us of our iniquities by the blood of his son Jesus Christ and the
price that was paid on the cross. All of our benefits center around all the
redemptive qualities we receive in Christ. “The use of who and your
personalizes the acts of God in that he forgives and restores individuals.”
It needs to be understood in verse three it is not a literal
sense of healing all of our diseases, it is more of a metaphorical reference to
sin. Once we look at verse four we are told that we are going to be crowned
with steadfast love and mercy, this is not the last time steadfast love shows
up, so lets look at it and see more about it. The Hebrew word is hesed, which can mean faithfulness, loyalty, loyal
love, goodness. What does it mean to you that the Lord has crowned you? It
means he makes us part of the family, because if you have faith in Christ you
are now in the family and you receive this steadfast love and mercy. Another
great benefit we receive from God is that we do not go about longing for
things, because he satisfies us with good. The satisfaction we receive from the
Lord, is greater than anything we would ever get from the world, he gives us
eternal satisfaction, while all the world can offer us is temporal
satisfaction. With that satisfaction comes a renewal of our youth like that of
an eagle. This verse brings to many believers minds Isa 40:31. In ancient
Israel “The eagle serves as a symbol of vigor and freedom associated with the
benefits of restoration to divine favor and covenantal status.” In verse six we are told
that the Lord works righteousness and justice for the oppressed. That makes me
think that the Lord is working for good for those who are being put upon. Some
would say that righteousness relates to salvation and justice or vindication. These
are some great benefits to have received from the Lord, I cannot imagine anyone
better work towards my vindication. How about you can you think of someone who
can come into your bad situation and turn things around for you?
Next we learn about the ways the Lord acts towards his people. Before
he revealed himself to the world incarnate as Jesus Christ he revealed himself
to Moses, and then to the people of Israel. Unlike the Lord some people are known to have a
temper at times, but the Lord has never let that happen to him, there has never
been something we have done that caught him off guard and made him become
irate. No he responds in the complete opposite manner with mercy, grace, and
steadfast love. Verse nine should probably be understood in the manner that he
will not always scold or rebuke us, nor will he remain angry with us forever. As
a human being how easy do you find yourself holding a grudge against someone for
something they did? The question then becomes do they even know that they have
wronged you, and are you holding on to your anger for no reason allowing it to
tare you apart? The Lord doesn’t repay us deed for deed, or deal with according
to the things that we have done. When I say us I am referring to those who
belong to Christ, we have been redeemed and bought by the blood of the Lamb and
have his righteousness covering us in place of our sinfulness. He did that
because he loved us before the foundation of the earth, the Lord is not
forgetful in the sense that we know forgetfulness. Verse 12 tells us “as far as
the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
That is something to rejoice about which is the point I have been making that
the Lord has given us so many benefits to be glad over.
While this verse are not specifically about fatherhood is makes
me think back on my own childhood and also how I am raising my own children, I
was shown certain amount of compassion from my father could it have been more
sure, but it could have been less also. I strive daily to show my boys that I
love them through little gestures and try not to speak harshly to them. The
same way I try and be compassionate towards my children God doesn’t try he just
does. The word here for compassion Keraham,
can mean love or show pity toward. We need to be careful and not think that the
Lord is going to show pity (word the KJV uses) towards just anybody there is a
stipulation mentioned, and it is to those who fear him. On this verse the
famous Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon gives this rebuke,
Some of you he does not pity at
all. You that do not fear him, but trifle with him, you that hate him, you that
despise him, you that are careless about him, you that never think about
him—you have none of his pity. When you are sick he looks on your sickness as
something you deserve. When you go astray, he looks upon your wandering as a
mere matter of course of your guilty nature, and he is angry with you. Your
afflictions are not strokes of his rod, they are cuts of his sword. Your sins
are not things he overlooks, but if you die as you now are –guilty and
unsaved—justice shall look on you with a tearless eye and say to you, “You knew
your duty, but did it not.” Think not that this text shall afford you any
consolation in this life or in that which is to come. You shall not have even a
drop of water to cool your tongues in hell. No pity shall be shed upon you
there.
After hearing such a scathing rebuke
you should either be scared or comforted. Which are you? To those of us in this
life that fear and follow the Lord we will receive this pity and
compassion. I could not imagine what
life would be like without the Lord showing me compassion for all the things I have
done and will do. David moves on from
the compassion of the Lord to the frailty of man and how God remembers us.
Psalm 8:4 ask the question of “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son
of man that you care for him?” Our days are short and filled with
self-indulgence but the Lord still remembers us. This is another reason we
should be praising God. Just like the
verses in Isaiah we are equated to as grass and flowers. What David is doing
here is contrasting the days of man with the steadfast love of the Lord which
is from everlasting to everlasting.
Again though his love comes with some
stipulations, but there is also additional blessings that take place as we
observe what the Lord commands. There are three things we have to keep in mind
as we go about our daily lives that will ensure we receive this steadfast love
of the Lord. As we have seen we need to fear him, fear here means to reverence
or worship him, next we are to keep his covenant that he has made with us, and
lastly remember to do his commandments. What commandments do we have to live by
today, are they the 10 commandments or the Jewish law or is it to love God and
love other people? If we do the last two we will be fulfilling the rest of the
Law.
Verse 19 establishes our last and final
point that all things must praise God; while it doesn’t explicitly say that you
will see how I came to that conclusion once we take a little bit of a closer
look at verses 19-22.
Why
is the Lord worthy of praise, well if we haven’t established that fact already,
I haven’t done my job. But, to add to the reasons we should praise God is that
“The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over
all.” That means there isn’t anything or anyone in this world that the Lord
doesn’t have rule over, now whether or not one submits to that rule willingly
is a different story.
Four times in the last three verse we
are told the Bless the Lord. Not just us as individuals, but also his angels,
his hosts and all of his works. That leaves no stone unaccounted for everything
is to bless the Lord and sing his praises. But knowing what we are supposed to
do and doing it are two different things. What makes it difficult for you in
your life to openly or better yet in private praise the Lord? I say that
because I have found there are times I can sing the Lord’s praises to people in
public but in my private life I struggle to recognize all the things he has
done for me and all the praise he truly deserves.
So let us be like the fall leaves and
show God’s splendor and glory in our lives and speak about it not only to those
who come around but to ourselves also. Let not a rock have to cry out praises
to our God and king because we were to timid to do it.
It is my hope that our time together
has enlivened your hearts to all the good things the Lord has done for and
given to us. Please do not leave this place and forget the benefits we have for
loving the Lord, or forget the ways in which he acts towards us, and most of
all that we should praise him for it all, David felt that praising God was so
important that he not only started his Psalm that way he ended it that way as
well.
