Psalm 103
Psalm 103, it says, of David,
and reading from verse one, 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 eagles. 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 does He 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 and he remembers that we are
dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like
the flower of the field. For the wind passes over it and
it is gone, and in its place it 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 covenant and to remember 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. Amen. This is God’s word for
us. Andy Griffith tells the story of Romeo and Juliet. And when
he’s telling this story, He talks about Romeo going into Juliet’s
house and giving a soliloquy. And Opie says, Paul, what’s a
soliloquy? And he says, it’s where you kind
of look way off in the distance and you kind of talk to yourself.
And Opie says, hmm. He says, they used to do that
a lot back in those days. If you did it today, somebody
might cart you off. But a soliloquy is really giving
yourself a speech. It’s a one-person monologue. Maybe you had to read about those
in high school literature, college literature, whatever, but it’s
a one-person speech. And that’s exactly what Psalm
103 is. It’s a one-person speech. It’s
King David giving himself a pep talk. Maybe sometimes you get
down in the dumps. Maybe sometimes you get a little
unthankful. Maybe sometimes you get a little
blue. You start looking at what you
hadn’t got and what your problems are, and you forget to count
your blessings. You forget to name them one by
one and see what the Lord has done. Well, Psalm 103 is an exercise
in giving thanks and seeing how great God has been to you. Many years ago now, probably
15, 16 years ago, I was feeling down in the dumps and maybe I
spent a day with a friend who was a pastor and he listened
to me for a little bit and he said, before you whine anymore,
I want you to write down 50 good things. That’ll shut you up on it. Actually,
it’ll get your pen working. This was at a particularly difficult
time in ministry. I think in maybe 2005, it was
for 10 months on the session where I was an associate pastor.
The session, which was divided, had a vote of confidence on the
senior pastor, and it was brutal. Ten months of just infighting
and difficulty. And so I had a lot to complain
about, but what this person was trying to say is, you’ve also
got a lot to be thankful for. Probably had a one-year-old baby
at the time and many other good blessings. And so that’s what
this psalm is trying to do for us. It’s saying, count your blessings,
name them one by one, and you will see what the Lord has done. So let’s take a peek at a couple
themes from the psalm. First of all, verses one and
two, we’ll call this section, Let It All Hang Out. Y’all know
what that means. Y’all were alive in the 1960s.
Party hardy, right? Let it all hang out. Or in this
sense, you just say everything that’s on your heart that God
has done for you. And notice how he says we ought
to do that. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and
all that is within me. Bless his holy name. What’s the
thing we say around here about saved people? Saved people sing. Now I’ve been a minister long
enough to have looked across a couple of congregations and
you see people, you see their body language, and nothing has
startled me more than just to see people cross-armed with their
heads down in church acting like their mother still makes them
be here. Saved people sing. I don’t know
about y’all, but I like to sing in church. I can’t sing worth
a hoot. But when everybody else sings and the instruments are
loud it covers up my bad singing but I get to sing loud and sometimes
my microphone stays on and that’s bad for y’all. But we ought to
give it all we got when it comes to the organ we say we pull out
all the stops You know, you go sometimes to a Friday night football
game and what does the band do when it’s third down and they
want a third down conversion? They just blow their horns and
beat their drums and they just let it all hang out. And that’s
exactly what the psalmist is encouraging us to do as we approach
God. We bless him with everything
that we have. We give it all that we’ve got.
A couple Friday nights ago, we went to Countdown to Craziness
at Duke University for the basketball team. And you get about 9,000
or 10,000 people in that arena. I forget how many it holds. But
everybody is screaming. Everybody is jumping. Every noise-making
device is making noise. And the place just vibrates.
And it shakes. Mandy and I this year took earplugs,
because we’re getting old and fuddy-duddy-ish. And even the
earplugs didn’t hurt. We left that place just vibrating. But that’s 10,000 people letting
it all hang out for basketball. I mean, Duke basketball’s neat,
it’s great. They almost got beat last night by a Division II school,
that wasn’t so good. But we go to these sporting events
and we let it all hang out. Some of you watched the big Duke
Carolina football game yesterday, the big rivalry. There’s other
sporting events we watch. Maybe you’ve watched the Washington
Nationals in the World Series. The hometown crowd has been quite
amazing to see. They’ve still lost, the away
team is winning at the moment at least. not sure what’s going
on tonight, but we go to these events and we let it all hang
out. Why not with church? Why do we come and we’re like
these poor servants and we just, you know, we, we kind of whisper
our, our songs. We should let it all hang out.
We should come to church and not be quiet. But we should come
and say, Oh my soul, all that is within me praises the holy
name of God. After all, we’re made for worship.
Mind, heart, and hands were made to think and to feel and to do.
And so true worship hits our affections through our heads.
And so what would it help us do to worship better, to think
about how good God has been to us? Then you’ll sing a little
louder, you’ll sing a little better, and you’ll have a little
more oomph in your worship. So first thing this passage shows
us is when we praise God, let it all hang out. The next thing,
verses three to five, that teaches us is to count our blessings,
name them one by one. Look at verse three. God forgives
all our iniquity. He heals all your diseases. He
redeems your life from the pit. He crowns you with steadfast
love and mercy. He satisfies you with good so that your youth
is renewed like the eagles. Count your blessings, name them
one by one. It’s an old hymn that’s not found
in many hymnals anymore these days. Count your blessings, name
them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has
done. When’s the last time you sat
down and just wrote out a list of what you’re thankful for?
One of the things I’ve learned to do, especially as maybe a
little more attention span has gotten shorter or whatever, I
try to write out my prayers during the week. I have a special spot
I write them, but I write out adoration, confession, thanksgiving,
and supplication. And guess which section has the
most in it? You’re probably thinking confession because he’s a sinner.
You’d be right. But hopefully my thanksgiving
section has the most. If you’re like me, God has blessed
you immensely. If he’s done what’s in verses
three through five, has he forgiven all your iniquity? How in the
world could you clean that off? Maybe this is a little bit too
personal, but for some reason, every time, uh, every day when
I take my bath, uh, when I get in the shower, I think about,
isn’t it amazing that God has washed me clean? Cause I get
in and you know, I use my dove and my whatever. I must be using
Nair because my hair is leaving. But when I get in there and get
clean, I think, this could not scrub away my sins. I think about
that a good bit. But God has forgiven all your
iniquity. Who can do that? Who else can
pardon? No one. He heals all your diseases. Now think about a time, think
about an era where they did not have the doctor. Last week, I
visited two doctors. It was annual checkup time, and
so I went to one and went to another. One of them was a specialist.
How privileged are we? We’re extraordinarily privileged.
But back in these days, how did you get better? You just hoped
for the best. You probably went to bed, but
not only are all your iniquities forgiven, he heals all your diseases.
Maybe the psalmist had been sick. He redeems your life from the
pit. It’s just another way of saying death. Psalmist hasn’t died. He did
not get sick and die. Anybody have a near-death experience?
I don’t mean one of those weird ones you write a book about and
make money. But maybe you drove up on a wreck on the highway
and you say, oh, it’s a good thing I forgot my purse. I went
back in the house and got it, because if I hadn’t been late
getting my purse, I would have been in that wreck. Do you ever
think through thoughts like that? Or you say, It could have been
worse. I could have died. God spares us from so much. He crowns us with steadfast love
and mercy. The central character of who
God is is his steadfast love and mercy. He crowns us with
it. Think about Israel going into
the promised land. You’re going to live in houses
you didn’t build. You’re going to drink water from cisterns
you did not dig. You’re going to eat grapes from Vineyards
you did not plant. How great is God’s steadfast
love for those of us who walk with him. We’re gonna learn in
a few weeks in the Lord’s Prayer, give us this day our daily bread.
When’s the last time any of us skipped a meal? Because we didn’t
have one. When’s the last time any of us
really went without? Most of us, if we want something,
we’ll find a way to get it. either by the money we have or
the credit that we’re offered. We’re gonna get what we need,
but we’re also gonna get what we want. We call these first
world problems. And so we’re a very, very blessed
people, but God has forgiven, God has healed, God has redeemed,
and God has satisfied us with many good things. Count your
complaints, name them one by one. We’re pretty good at that,
aren’t we? You know, honey, we need a bigger TV. The 55-inch
one isn’t quite doing it. You know, my back hurts again.
Traffic was bad. On and on we could go, but God
has done more great things in our lives. He’s forgiven, He’s
healed, He’s kept us from the grave, and He’s given us His
great blessings. So count your blessings, name
them one by one. and see what God has done for
you. The third thing, God, our compassionate and gracious Father.
This is verses 6 to 18. There’s a listing here in verses
6 through 18 of all the things our gracious and compassionate
Father has done. And so that’s why we call it
this. God, our compassionate and gracious
Father. All these things put that on
display. The Lord works righteousness. He works justice for all who
are oppressed. He’s a gracious and compassionate
father. He made known his ways to Moses. He met with him face
to face. He gave him the 10 commandments. He gave him the first five books
of the Bible. He made his ways known to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel. They witnessed the water from
the rock, the bread from heaven. They witnessed that their shoes
did not wear out, their tunics did not get eaten by moths. Moths, not moss. The Lord is
merciful and gracious, verse eight says. He is slow to anger
and abounding in steadfast love. We can all probably remember
a time when our earthly fathers just lost it with us, right?
Not so, we probably deserved it, but the Lord is merciful.
He is gracious. He is slow to anger and abounding
in steadfast love. How much junk has God put up
with from his people? A whole lot. And it’s not just
the wicked Israelites who were, as our passage this morning said,
they were stiff-necked. Some years ago, Mandy and I went
to one of these spiritual life conferences for the ARP and it
was down in Charlotte. It was on a Sunday afternoon.
They used to do these and this one family did a little thing
on family worship and they talked about how their children would
pass the Bible around the table and read. during family worship,
and they talked about how they came to the stiff, naked people. And their family never forgot
that, but a stiff neck means you’re stubborn. But how much
has God put up with from us? He’s put up with quite a bit.
He’s slow to anger. He’s abounding in step past love.
You think about how, for how many centuries did the prophets
cry out to Israel, if you don’t get things right, you’re gonna
go into exile. It was hundreds of years. It was decades. It
was centuries. God is merciful. And what does
Peter say? God is patient, not willing that
anyone would perish. He is withholding his wrath until
the gospel is proclaimed. Then it says in verse nine, he
will not always chide. Oh, we love to chide, don’t we,
as parents? Told you this before. Told you eight times, right?
Isn’t that how we say it? We like to remind our children how
terrible they are and how wonderful we are, because we’ve told them
93 times and given them every opportunity. But God, not so
with him. He does not chide. He does not keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor does he repay
us according to our Iniquities. It gets better here. As high
as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast
love towards those who fear him. And what does he do with our
sin? As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove
our transgressions from us. There are other places in the
Bible that says he sinks them into the depths of the sea. The
sea is a deep, deep place in some spots. As a father shows
compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to
those who fear him. For he knows our frame, and he
remembers that we are dust. So God, our compassionate and
gracious Father, is on display in the middle of this psalm in
verses six to 18. Now think for just a moment.
As a church, we set our three main goals, our worship, discipleship,
and what’s the third one? Evangelism or outreach. Is this
a God that people around us need to know? He forgives, he heals,
He rescues from the pit of the grave and he crowns with steadfast
love and righteousness in such a way that it renews your youth. You feel young again. Tell people,
I’ve got the secret to youth. It’s the steadfast love of God.
And if you come to him by faith in Jesus, he’ll crown you with
it. This is a God needed, greatly
needed by the culture around us, by our loved ones, our friends,
our family. And so we should share this God
who is a compassionate and gracious Father with others. Well, finally,
the last thing, we’ll call this section, Let All Things Now Living.
There’s a hymn theme in this passage I think you’ll find.
Let All Things Now Living, verses 19 to 22. He says in verse 19,
the Lord has established his throne in the heavens. His kingdom
is over all. So bless the Lord, you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice. of his word. Bless the Lord, all his host,
his ministers who do his will, the ministers there, not preachers,
but the host and angels. Bless the Lord, all his works
in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. So
let all things now living bless his name. I don’t know if you’ve
noticed in this Psalm or in other Psalms, but there is a progression
of pronouns. And I know pronouns is a dangerous
word these days, but the pronouns I learned, And I still believe
in our, is it I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they? I, you, him,
her, it, us, you, them? Those are still the standards,
right? Okay, that’s good. Did you notice in the Psalm,
he starts by speaking, bless the Lord, oh, my soul. And then
in the middle under the section about God, our compassionate
and gracious Father, who heals our diseases. who does corporate
things. A lot of times the Bible is speaking
to the church, it’s speaking to the people of God, and so
there’s the my, there’s the individual stuff, there’s the our, there’s
the corporate, the church stuff, but then there’s certain people
or things or aspects of creation, and that’s what we come to in
this last section. Let all things now living, let the angels, let
his host of heaven, let his ministers in the heavenly places, let all
his works, praise his name, but how does he end? He ends where
he began, bless the Lord, oh my soul. Thanksgiving is for
all of God’s creation. And it’s for us to praise him
and to give him the glory that is due his name. But look at
verse 17. It says, but the steadfast love
of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear
him and his righteousness to children’s children. So who can
fitly praise God? Who can really say these things
to Almighty God? It’s those who love the Lord
Jesus Christ. It’s those who put their faith
in him. It’s those who are in covenant with him. It’s those
of the generations of the godly who can say, surely God has been
good to us, and I’ll count my blessings, and I’ll name them
one by one. Let’s go to God in prayer. Lord,
we give you thanks that this Psalm reminds us to count our
blessings, to list them, to name them. We do bless you and praise
you, our God, for every good and perfect gift comes from you,
the Father above, the Father of heavenly lights, Lord, so
often we think we have earned it, we have done it. It’s by
our hands, we have accomplished all that is in our vast little
kingdoms. But no, it is from you. We live
and move and have our being because we have life from you. And so
this night we’re reminded not to be so cast down for what we
do not have, but to be reminded of the great things we do. Most
of all, forgiveness of sins. and life rescued from the eternal
grave. Hear us as we make our prayer
in the name of Christ. And we say together, amen.