Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

Transcription

1 Don t Forget Psalm 103 October 27, 2013 Do you ever talk to yourself? I don t think I do but I do write myself a lot of notes! Well, Psalm 103 begins with David talking to himself: Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Some of the translations are a touch more literal: BLESS the Lord, O my soul. The word, in both Hebrew and Arabic, is Barak, and when it is talking about PEOPLE, bless is a good way to put it. But, how do we bless GOD? The word carries the idea of bending the knee, so what he s really talking about is WORSHIPING God WORSHIP the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, PRAISE his holy name. WORSHIP the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And the forgetfulness that he s talking about is not the experience that many of us have as we get older this is NOT a memory issue but a spiritual one! The truth is that God has given us this amazing BENEFIT PACKAGE that we ll be talking about, but so often we choose to ignore it or neglect it we DO forget all His benefits! There s a familiar story in 2 Chronicles 32 about King Hezekiah of Judah. Hezekiah has an incurable disease he s DYING, and he PLEADS with God to heal him. And the Lord DOES heal him. But the text tells us, But Hezekiah s heart was proud, and he did not respond to the kindness shown him. In other words, in his pride and he FORGOT God s benefit package he deliberately IGNORED His blessings. And so do WE so often! And Psalm 103 gently but firmly SCOLDS us for that and lets us know that forgetting is not a slip of our minds but a slip of our hearts and of our wills. 1

2 In the Bible to forget is to disobey and to remember is to obey. Just look at vs : But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children s children with those who keep his covenant and REMEMBER to obey his precepts. We ll talk about what all that means in a moment, but for now I want you to see how he ties together REMEMBERING and OBEYING. Remembering is not an emotion it s not having an agile brain it s a COMMITMENT to follow Jesus. Do not forget God s benefit package. So what IS this benefit package that we ve been talking about? David lays it out in vs And all you have to do is look at the VERBS: God Forgives heals redeems crowns satisfies works. So is this some kind of BLANK CHECK for us that guarantees that God will give us all trouble-free, carefree lives? Of course not. David himself had seen his own infant son die despite pleading desperately to God. And, as we have seen, we have all these Psalms of Lament complaining TO GOD that He seems to be on vacation when we need Him! But in this outburst of praise that comes from the mountain top of life rather than from the valley David shouts this joyful exclamation that forgiveness and healing and redemption and all these other blessings truly are gifts to us of God s amazing grace. He DOES forgive our sins. He DOES heal our diseases. He DOES redeem us and crown us with love and compassion. He DOES satisfy our deepest longings and work for the oppressed whom nobody else cares for. And we all KNOW these things. We just have a tendency to FORGET them as we walk through those deep dark valleys of our lives. In the next part of the Psalm, vs. 7 8, David takes us back to the Exodus, when God had brought the people of Israel to Mount Sinai to receive His law and His covenant to be their God. And, as you may remember, things got a little messy when Moses was gone for a while up on the mountain, and Aaron crafts a Golden Calf to give the people something to worship. 2

3 And Moses comes down with the 10 Commandments and sees what s happening and blows his stack and throws down the tablets. (Thus becoming the first person to BREAK the 10 Commandments!) At that point, God this holy and righteous God had every right to call the whole thing off and walk away and maybe try again with some other nation. But He doesn t! He gives Moses a second set of tablets, and passes in front of Moses and says the words that David paraphrases in Psalm 103:8 10, The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will be harbor his anger forever [the ESV simply puts it, nor will he KEEP his anger forever ], he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities [and the word repay is the same as in vs. 2: He doesn t give us the benefit package that our sins deserve. ]. This is the God whom we meet in Psalm 103 He is HOLY set apart completely different from us. As vs declare, His throne is in heaven and His kingdom is over all. He receives and deserves to receive the praise not only of the ANGELS but of all creation. By rights, He should treat us as we re treating those Asian Beetles that infested our homes a few weeks ago He should sweep us up and toss us into the garbage can! (Or whatever you did with yours!) God doesn t have to put up with our nonsense and He SHOULDN T have to put up with it He s GOD, after all! But, for some reason we will never, ever understand that we CAN T POSSIBLY understand He doesn t dispose of us, He LOVES us!! Look again at how vs describe Him: For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love [there it is again His Hesed His covenant faithfulness to His people]. The irony of that verse, of course, is that ancient Israel could never have GUESSED how far the stars were above the earth. They knew nothing of millions of light years. So, here in the 21 st century, that promise is magnified even more, isn t it?! As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. So, how far IS the east from the west? 3

4 It s an INFINITE distance, isn t it? That s how far God in Christ has carried your sins from you! But then he shifts gears from these conceptual ideas to something far more familiar: As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him [who revere Him TEV who HONOR him ]; for he knows how we are formed [because He is the Former ], he remembers that we are dust. I hope you hear the incredible condescension and the incredible grace in these words. This God created everything (including us) and declared that it was very good, back in Genesis. But He didn t. And then He saw it all fall apart because of sin. It would have been so easy for Him to say, TO HELL with you all! Literally! He doesn t treat us as a disappointed Genius Creator might have but as an incredibly gracious Father in Heaven. Somehow, He puts Himself in our shoes and has compassion on us and forgives us all our sins. It s a portrait of JESUS, isn t it? Who being in very nature God [Paul writes to the Philippians], did not consider equality with God something to be grasped after, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross. And David goes on to say in Psalm 103:15 18 that we are WEAK and frail but His LOVE is strong and everlasting. But then he says something in vs that we dare not overlook: But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord s love is with those who fear [again, revere or honor] him, and his righteousness with their children s children with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. So, how do we understand those words? It seems to me we can take them in two ways: 1) We could understand them as a CONDITION of God s love. 4

5 In other words, God could be saying, If you will love me perfectly and do everything I tell you, THEN I will love you back. But do you see the problem with that? We can t POSSIBLY keep that condition! And so we re always perched on the edge of a cliff wondering if we ve been good enough today for God to love us. 2) Or, we can understand these words as the RESULT of and our RESPONSE to God s love for us. Because I realize how much God loves me, I choose to REVERE Him [which I think today is a much better word than fear. We re not scared of God, but we do revere Him we do honor Him for who He is] And so I choose to REMEMBER to obey his precepts. Will I do that perfectly? Of course not. But that s what the earlier part of the Psalm is all about we re constantly failing Him, constantly in need of Him to heave our sins as far as the east is from the west. We re constantly in need of a Father who will have compassion on us. As Paul writes, It was while we were still SINNERS that Christ died for us. So, who is this God whom we worship this morning? He s a God who is slow to anger and abounding in love. He is slow to anger and quick to love! He doesn t nurse grudges, and He doesn t look for ways to get back at us. Make no mistake: God EXPECTS us to live godly lives; but He also treats us as weak little children. I assume this morning that I am talking mainly to people who know these things and just need to be reminded of them so we don t forget. But, perhaps you re here this morning and this is all NEWS to you Maybe you ve been aware of how needy you are; maybe you ve even felt like you aren t good enough to come to church, let alone be a Christian. May I invite you this morning to take all of your sins and failures and give them to Jesus? And let Him take them away, as far as the east is from the west. 5

6 Will you trust Him to do that this morning? Please talk to me after the service or anytime if I can help you on that journey. Rev. Robert Smallman Bible Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) 1605 Highway G Merrill, WI