I. Praying the Psalms 00:03
Lord, we come before you this morning grateful that you have forgiven all our debt, Lord, that you have paid the price for us, that we are set free in your goodness and in your love. I pray this morning, as we dive into your word, that you would change our hearts to be more and more like you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So if you needed a reminder of our sermon last week about forgiveness, I think you got it in our readings today. So much of the richness of Christianity is born out of the forgiveness of God, and we are ambassadors of that forgiveness to the world.
Today I want to talk a little differently. I wanted to highlight the psalm. As I was reading through the readings, it really grabbed a hold of me, this Psalm 103, one that we’re very familiar with, that we’ve probably said hundreds of times. But as I was reading into it, I was really impacted by the type of person who could believe what’s in this psalm, and I wanted to be like him. And so this morning I want to talk through it.
And there’s something I want to advise you as we walk through this psalm. I don’t know if there’s a better way, if you’re looking to make a change in your life and your attitude and your character and your disposition, than praying the Psalms. Because there’s something about them. Yes, read the entire Bible. It’s awesome. The story will change you. God will speak to you. But praying through the Psalms has a particular power to change our attitude. And so if you find yourself thinking, “Man, I’m just upset all the time. I’m just angry all the time. I’m just complaining all the time,” try praying the Psalms.
I will tell you, it convicts me every time. I don’t think the way that this psalmist thinks, or I don’t pray the way that this psalmist prays. And when I pray the Psalms, it reminds me of who God is and how I’m supposed to respond in these situations. And so as we dive into Psalm 103, it really starts right away with an attitude change.
II. Bless the Lord, O My Soul 02:15
In fact, I like to imagine that David, who wrote this psalm, was having a bad morning, and he felt like, “You know what? I need to go worship the Lord.” And this is the prayer that he came up with to worship the Lord. Now, we don’t know if he was having a bad morning, but man, is this effective if you’re having a bad morning. Let’s read this here. It says:
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Ps 103.1
That’s the command phrase. He’s ordering himself to bless the Lord, to praise. I think sometimes we start to think in our minds that the true Christian life is the guy who wakes up in the morning, or the woman who wakes up in the morning, and as they’re waking up, coming out of their lips is, “Thank you, Jesus, for this day,” and they’re smiling and they’re happy. And that was just my mom. That wasn’t everybody else in the Christian life. At least it felt that way from my perspective. Of course, come to find out, guess what? The reason she came into my room singing the Psalms and singing praise songs is because she was changing her attitude in that time.
And so we get so concerned with our normal disposition: “Well, I’m just a grumpy person,” or, “I’m not happy like Christian Harris,” or, “I don’t have the energy of these people that you feel like just exude joy.” Well, I’m telling you today that actually the Christian journey is one of transformation. You don’t actually stay where you’re at. And so if you feel like you’re someone who’s constantly afraid, constantly angry, constantly sad, pray the Psalms. God wants to change you.
I can tell you, I’ve seen people who have been shaped by a practice of following Jesus and praying the Psalms, and they are different after than they were before. If you’re not different after walking with God for years, then something’s wrong. He wants to change you. Dive in. He wants to bring you that life, that peace, that joy that we were singing about this morning.
And I love that: “All that is within me, bless his holy name.” Because we contain the multitude in ourselves. There are times where “Bless the Lord, O my soul” is exactly what I want to say. But we also know there are times when I’m complaining about my circumstances. There are emotions and dispositions. And ultimately what we’re trying to do is we’re looking for a whole-person transformation, every part of us, so that at no point do we not have the disposition to praise the Lord. But you know what? We never get there. Instead, we command ourselves, even when we don’t feel like it, to bless the Lord.
III. Forget Not All His Benefits 04:24
And so let’s continue, because now he’s going to tell you not only “Bless the Lord,” but he’s going to explain why we’re blessing the Lord. What are we praising God for? In verse 2:
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 5 who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Ps 103.2–5
Now, the first verse that I just read out of that gives us a hint. How do you wake up and decide to bless the Lord? Well, one way that’s crucial is to not forget his benefits towards you. If you were aware, truly aware, of everything God had done for you, and you were able to maintain that awareness, don’t you think you’d be blessing the Lord? And in fact, if we look at this list: he forgives your iniquity, heals your diseases, he redeems your life from the pit. Who wouldn’t be praising God if you had that at the forefront of your mind: how he has saved you, how he has blessed you, how he has healed you, how he has forgiven you?
And so when we look through this, we start with “forgives.” And I actually opened reminding us of forgiveness, and how we have to accept God’s forgiveness so that we might forgive others. So we need to remind ourselves we’ve been forgiven. If you’re walking around thinking, “Thank God I’m in the church. Thank God he chose me. I bring so much benefit to this room or this place,” then you’re forgetting the benefits. You’re forgetting that God actually forgave you out of your debt, out of your sin, out of that place.
And you know, I’m reminded daily of my sin, so it’s hard for me to put myself in that mindset. But I know what I will do after a full day, a great sinful day: I will justify everything I did. I will work really hard to prove that I don’t need God’s forgiveness. “Well, Haley, I bought that because it makes so much more sense.” “But it didn’t follow our budget. You didn’t ask God for wisdom.” “Yeah, but you know what? It was really important that I bought that board game,” or whatever it is that I bought at that time. Or, “I yelled at my kids, but you know what? They needed to see the anger. They needed the anger to come out, and that really helped them shape up.” It’s like, well, maybe you could love your kids the way God loves you. Maybe the anger could stay away. Maybe the greed can stay away. Maybe the materialism could stay away. Maybe I can remember God’s forgiveness instead of trying to prove to everyone how great I am. God’s forgiveness is the reason why each one of us is called, chosen, valued. So you don’t have to defend yourself. All you’ve got to do is throw yourself on his mercy. It is always there.
And God is a healing God. There are many things we’re praying for in our home group regarding healing. On Wednesday night we had a great time praying for people’s needs. We need to believe and walk in faith that God is a healing God. There is no problem you face that he cannot heal. There’s no problem you face that he does not desire healing for you. Now, working that out and walking that out is a lifetime of relationship with God and with your community, praying for people and seeing this work. But man, can we have faith and expectation, because he is a healing God.
IV. From the Pit to the Crown 07:34
He redeems your life from the pit. We just read in our Old Testament the end of the Joseph story (Gen 50.15–21). The best story in all of Scripture, in my opinion, is the Joseph story, because man, nobody got treated more unfairly than him. He got sold into slavery by his brothers. He got thrown into a literal pit. And God, in the midst of that story, raised him to be the second in command over all of Egypt, to save the known world at the time with the wisdom of God.
He redeems your life from the pit. Are you in the pit? Well, guess what? Your redeemer is coming. Praise God! “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” even in the pit, because my redeemer is coming. If you’re in a bad place, all you need to know about God is that he’s on the way. He is coming with your salvation. Look to him. Don’t try and save yourself. Look to God.
He crowns us with steadfast love and mercy. Even on the day when you mess up, he crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. “Steadfast” is the great word in there, because I have difficulty loving my wonderful wife and my wonderful kids, and I can’t imagine how hard it is for God to love me, or for that matter, for my wife to love me. But there’s a steadfastness to God’s love for you that goes beyond anything you can imagine.
If we aren’t justifying ourselves, we are often talking about how awful we are. We often have a whole narrative in our head about how we’re so unlovable, undeserving, unworthy: “Well, God can’t do that for me. Look at how much I’ve messed up.” Both of those, “I’m justified by my own works” and “I’m the worst and unworthy,” are completely bogus. God is your justification. God is your worth. And he has chosen you, and he is steadfast towards you with his love and mercy. Bless the Lord!
And then he satisfies us with good. I know in this room every one of us is hungry and thirsty, maybe not physically, but there are things that we are hungering for, that we are thirsting for. There are dreams, there are visions for our life. Who is the one who satisfies your hunger and your thirst? It is God. Every good thing comes from him. It’s not Amazon. It is not McDonald’s. It’s not that bottle of really nice Scotch. It’s not the TV. It’s not your sports team, believe it or not (although the Cowboys did great last week, just want to mention that). But you cannot find your satisfaction in the things that fade, that pass away. You’ve got to find it in God. And once you find it in God, guess what? All of those things, the bottle of Scotch, even the McDonald’s every once in a while, can be a great blessing and benefit from God our Father. We can thank him with honesty for everything we have when we’re looking to him to provide our satisfaction.
V. Your Youth Is Renewed 10:56
And then our youth is renewed. I have bad news and good news with this one. If you have back pain and stress in your body due to being old, I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about. I don’t think you’re going to be transformed to be a 25-year-old athlete because your youth will be renewed. That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s the part about the healing. God can heal you, but that’s not what we’re talking about in this verse.
When he says your youth is renewed, what is he talking about? He’s talking about making you a dreamer again. He’s talking about lifting up your faith and expectation. If I woke up Rowan and I said, “Rowan, we’re going to go to the greatest place in the world today,” Rowan would jump out of bed and say, “Yes! Where are we going?” And then God holds out his hand to us, and we’re like, “Do I have to get out of bed?”
That thing changes in us. We can build up this layer of cynicism. You don’t have to, but it tends to happen. As you get older, you get tired, you get cynical, you get spiritually arthritic. And when God invites you into that new thing that he has for you, we count the cost a little too much. We start making the focus, “Well, then I’d have to do this or that.” God wants to renew your expectation. He wants to raise you up on wings like eagles (Isa 40.31). He wants you to soar with him. There is no age at which you stop being invited into the goodness of God. Your youth is renewed.
In fact, we think that David was writing this psalm at the end of his life, just based on historical evidence. And I can imagine him looking at everything he’d done, everything he’d gone through, and maybe he woke up that morning tired, and everybody’s wondering who’s going to take over as king, and “How are we going to do this?” and the Midianites are threatening, and these things are happening. And he’s like, “God, I need to be renewed. I don’t want to be a grumpy old man.” There’s a reason why that’s such a stereotype: because it happens, if you let it. God wants to awaken you to his goodness today. He wants to renew your youth. And you know what? I’ve met sixteen-year-olds who are older than my dad, at least spiritually. They acted like grumps, cranks, cynics. God wants to renew all of our youth.
VI. Righteousness and Justice 13:05
Okay, so those are all the things God’s doing as we’re blessing the Lord. Remember his benefits towards you. What else does God do?
6 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. 7 He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. Ps 103.6–7
People are hungry for righteousness and justice in our time. There is so much exposure of injustice and evil. There’s even celebration of injustice and evil in our time. And we need to look to God to work righteousness and justice. Instead, people are looking to organizations. They are looking to political parties. They are looking to woke religion. They’re looking to climate change cults. They’re doing everything they can to fix the world except look to God. And by “they,” you know I always also mean us. We are so easily put on a bandwagon, and then we get in this fight that God never called us to fight.
We need to start with what God is asking us to do. He is the one that’s going to work our righteousness, our justice. He’s the one who goes to bat for the oppressed. And you know what? If you look to him to do that, he will activate you in your sphere to bring righteousness and justice. He doesn’t want to do it alone. He’s not a genie. He is an empowerer and an earth-shaker, but he works through humans. He works through us. And so look to him for righteousness and justice. If there’s something that really bugs you in the world, ask him what he wants you to do. Ask him where he’s moving, and we can trust him.
If you look at Moses: he’s bringing that up because that is the history of God redeeming oppression, bringing people out of slavery, setting people free. That was one of the greatest stories of oppression and injustice in history. They were slaves to the gods of Egypt, and they were throwing their babies to the crocodiles. It doesn’t get much worse than that. And in that moment, God broke what was going on in Egypt. He brought Moses and his plan of salvation. Once again, he used a man. He’s always looking for men who are willing to do his work, women who are willing to do his work. He used him to break the greatest power in the world at that time.
You know, in our culture we have the same problem: the materialist capitalism, crony capitalism, all of the structures that are bent to make you a slave to an image of America and the American dream. That is not God’s image for your life. That’s another form of slavery. If you just can’t help but spend your money on all the wrong things, that’s the advertisers trying to enslave you. But God comes to set you free. And then, if you look at abortion, what else is that except sacrificing the babies to a false god, an idol of selfishness and self-obsession? So who do we look to when we’re looking at a world that’s shaped like that? We look to God to work our righteousness and our justice.
VII. Merciful and Gracious 16:30
And we keep on talking about who God is. That’s what’s so great about the Psalms. As he prays, he affirms God’s character, so his prayers don’t become twisted by his own image of what God can and can’t do, who God is and who God isn’t. He reminds himself:
8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. Ps 103.8–10
He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger. Who here at some point in time has thought, “God is mad at me”? I have. I think all of us have. Well, guess what? That’s not God. God is gracious, slow to anger. He’s not mad at you. Yes, absolutely, God has hopes and dreams for your life, and you can choose to cooperate with him, or you can choose to, symbolically, break his heart. He actually cares what happens in our life. He feels the disappointments. He feels the pains. But he never resorts to anger against us.
But let’s keep talking here. He said all that, and then he goes, “He will not always chide.” He’ll discipline you. He’ll let you know when you’ve displeased him, but not because he’s angry.
VIII. Punishment and Discipline 17:43
That’s the big dichotomy. We were talking about it at home group. Somebody asked, “When I do something wrong, does God punish me for that wrong?” And the question was an interesting one, because it seems kind of like, yeah, he has to set you straight. But we got into this great conversation about the discipline of God. What’s the difference between punishment and discipline?
Punishment is: you did something wrong, now you deserve to feel wrong. You deserve to have pain inflicted on you. That’s punishment. It’s a justice thing. We’ve got to balance the scales. So if you did something wrong, something bad has to happen to you. That’s not God. In fact, Jesus took all of that punishment on himself, and the scales are forever balanced in your favor. There is nothing you can do to tip the scales of God’s love and mercy towards you. He has already paid the price.
So then why does God discipline us? Because discipline’s about discipling you. He wants to change you. So yes, he absolutely allows us to experience the consequences of our mistakes, because if we didn’t, we’d go on making them. He is so committed to who he has called you to be that he will let you experience the pain and difficulty of his discipline. But when you learn to understand who God is and his heart towards you, it’s the same as a father’s heart, we’re told, towards his child. Do I discipline my kids because I want to get back at them? Hopefully not. God help me. But man, I discipline them because I want to see them thrive. I want to see them go way beyond anything I’ve ever been able to accomplish. I want to see them in the fullness of God’s love and goodness. And that’s God’s heart towards us.
And it’s why Proverbs 12:1 says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid” (Prov 12.1). It’s the S-word, sorry. You don’t want to be stupid. You want to be the person who loves God’s discipline. You want to learn. You want to grow. You want to ask God for input: “God, I’m really feeling it today. What is going on?” Guess what? He might just tell you. He might just lead you, guide you. He might be a good shepherd who wants to walk it out with you. And trust me, where he’s taking you is so much better than anywhere else you could imagine.
IX. As Far as the East Is from the West 21:16
And it says:
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. 13 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. 14 For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. Ps 103.11–14
Good news all the way down. Pardon… shoot, that’s not good news. Now, it requires a heck of a lot of death. In fact, Jesus, our greatest symbol, our greatest hope, God himself, died for us and invited us to participate in that: take up your cross and follow him (Matt 16.24). But man, when you have a God who can take your transgression and move it as far as the east is from the west, it is so worth it to go the way of the cross.
In fact, I think there are probably people in this room (because I know I’m one of them) who have felt the burden of their transgression, even to this day. And God wants you to know it is not on you anymore. He has separated that from you. If you’re still wrestling with it when you realize that, come get prayer, come get healing, go to the rite of confession and reconciliation. God wants you to be free, and he already paid the price. He’s inviting us to walk it out. Like we sang in one of our songs today: “I can’t believe that I get to carry your victory. You chose me to carry your victory.” Every one of you is not carrying sin and guilt and shame. You’re carrying the victory of Christ in the world, and he’s inviting us to live in that reality.
And he knows our frame. He remembers that we are but dust. That’s such a picture of God’s care and love for us. There is no hurt, no burden, no pain you feel that he does not understand fully and intimately, that he does not bear for you and with you. He took it all.
X. Bless the Lord, All His Hosts 23:45
Verse 15:
15 As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. Ps 103.15–16
We need some humility. That’s what I’ll say for that one. We need to be aware of the fact that we are just like dust that blows in the wind. And yet at the same time, we’re called to change the world. We’re called to conquer the world for the kingdom of God. It should break our brains to try and figure that out. Let’s keep reading:
17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, 18 to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. 19 The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. Ps 103.17–19
We’ll just keep going to the end here:
20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! 21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! 22 Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Ps 103.20–22
I’m going to end with this today. I love what the psalmist does here, because he reminds us that we are not the only players in the game. God has his angels. He has his host. He has the saints who have gone before us. He has the church that’s living now. He has the church that will be. And he invites us to participate in that.
A few weeks ago I mentioned how we can read the Bible with our modern-day self-obsession, and we can totally twist the meaning to be all about us. But at the same time, we have to understand that it starts with you. It’s about us, but every invitation starts with how you respond. The expectation is that the church is responding to the salvation of God. We are called as a community, not just as individuals, but every individual is called, as an individual, to “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
So he talks about the hosts and the saints and all of God’s creatures, whatever spiritual beings (I think more than we can even imagine exist). He’s saying, “Bless the Lord.” And he ends with that most powerful phrase: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
And so as we end today, as we think about all the things that God has done for us, forget not his benefits towards you. Look to him for your salvation. Remember you are forgiven and set free. Forgive others, all of the things we talked about. And a great way to start every day: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Amen.