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Psalm 103


My soul, give thanks to the Lord,
all my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord
and never forget all his blessings.

It is he who forgives all your guilt,
who heals every one of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion,
who fills your life with good things,
renewing your youth like an eagle’s.

The Lord does deeds of justice,
gives judgement for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses
and his deeds to Israel’s sons.

The Lord is compassion and love,
slow to anger and rich in mercy.
His wrath will come to an end;
he will not be angry for ever.
He does not treat us according to our sins
nor repay us according to our faults.

For as the heavens are high above the earth
so strong is his love for those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west
so far does he remove our sins.

As a father has compassion on his sons,
the Lord has pity on those who fear him;
for he knows of what we are made,
he remembers that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass;
he flowers like the flower of the field;
the wind blows and he is gone
and his place never sees him again.

But the love of the Lord is everlasting
upon those who hold him in fear;
his justice reaches out to children’s children
when they keep his covenant in truth,
when they keep his will in their mind.

The Lord has set his sway in heaven
and his kingdom is ruling over all.
Give thanks to the Lord, all his angels,
mighty in power, fulfilling his word,
who heed the voice of his word.

Give thanks to the Lord, all his hosts,
his servants who do his will.
Give thanks to the Lord, all his works,
in every place where he rules.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord!

Commentary

Psalm 103, which is attributed to King David, is one of the finest fruits of biblical faith. Combined with its neighbour, Psalm 104, we have two psalms that praise God as saviour and creator, father and sustainer, One who is both merciful and mighty. Together they illustrate two aspects of our prayer and praise, namely, that the beloved Abba, “Daddy”, whom we love and adore, is also the great author and ruler of the universe. This produces both love and humble, adoring reverence in us. Our Abba is the king of the universe.

My soul, give thanks to the Lord,
all my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord
and never forget all his blessings.

It is he who forgives all your guilt,
who heals every one of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion,
who fills your life with good things,
renewing your youth like an eagle’s.
                                             (vv. 1-5).

The psalmist shows us how to shake off apathy, worldliness and gloom in order to enter the presence of God in prayer. This is not a choirmaster urging his congregation to enter into praise and worship; it is David speaking to his own soul, calling upon himself to praise God with thanksgiving. It expresses his desire to hearken to the voice of the Lord, both in the Scriptures – as we shall see in verse 6 – and in the intimacy of prayer. He is aware of the need to create a “sacred space” or a divine atmosphere for communion with God. Then, face to face with God, in faith, he can enjoy the living and loving presence of Abba-God.

 David wants to be present to God with his whole being, because the true relationship with God is expressed in the command to love God “with your whole heart . . . your whole soul . . . and your whole being (see Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Matthew 22:37-40). Nothing but complete presence and surrender in faith on the part of the person praying is worthy of the loving presence of the saving God. While approaching God’s Holiness with reverential awe, we give ourselves up to His loving embrace.

David then arouses his soul in thanksgiving by using his memory to recall the manifold goodness of God towards him throughout his life. Counting our blessings is an important exercise; we arouse our gratitude to God, but we also prevent ourselves from taking life for granted and thus blunting our response to it. Everything comes to us from the hand of the good God. It is merely truth to acknowledge it (vv. 1-3).

The poet, now more responsive to God, begins to look at the abundance of God’s blessings in his life. His reflection enables him to recognise that the light, life and presence of God has pervaded his whole life, bringing with it deliverance from sickness and death. The forgiveness of sin is the beginning of real liberation. The healing of the body is secondary to this; it is only a foretaste of the full redemption of our bodies promised later (see Romans 8:23). The final liberation is from the pit of hell (see John 3:16, 5:25, 28, etc.). No life can prosper when the cancer of sin rules it, and left unchecked it leads to death in the real sense, namely, the absence of God, which is Hell (vv. 3-5).

The Lord does deeds of justice,
gives judgement for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses
and his deeds to Israel’s sons.

The Lord is compassion and love,
slow to anger and rich in mercy.
His wrath will come to an end;
he will not be angry for ever.
He does not treat us according to our sins
nor repay us according to our faults.

For as the heavens are high above the earth
so strong is his love for those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west
so far does he remove our sins.

As a father has compassion on his sons,
the Lord has pity on those who fear him;
for he knows of what we are made,
he remembers that we are dust.
                                             (vv. 6-14).

Looking back in history to the events of the Exodus, David tries to learn its lessons. The Exodus tale is an extraordinary testimony to God’s grace, and unmerited favour, in the context of man’s unworthiness and ingratitude; to the forgiving, healing and saving grace of God that David sang about in the opening verses. Besides, Exodus is also the record of God’s righteousness. God is just and right in all that He does, and is always on the side of the oppressed, no matter who the oppressor is. David learned this to his cost in his woeful relationships with Uriah and Bathsheba. There David was the oppressor, and he found that God still defended the weak, this time against David himself. If all of God’s deeds can be summed up in His righteousness, and His goodness to us, then we can have hope for the future, for the history of mankind is a complex of God’s actions and man’s response to them. The darker side of history is entirely man’s doing.

God revealed His ways to Moses (see Exodus 33:13). He allowed His intentions and His will to be known in a series of gracious acts that invited Israel into intimacy with Himself. God’s self-revelation to Moses in Exodus 32 is referred to here by David. There God allowed himself to be seen as tender and compassionate in the wake of the apostasy of the Golden Calf. Both here and elsewhere He showed that He never treats us as our sins deserve. Strict justice from God would be the worst thing any sinner could receive! God always tempers justice with mercy, because He does not desire the death of the sinner, rather that he be converted and live (see Ezekiel 18:32; John 8:1-11).

How do we describe this wonderful love of God towards us? It cannot be measured in human terms, for it is impossible for man to squeeze God’s love and inconceivable majesty and greatness into any scheme of ours. Man is good at meting out retribution to his fellow man – “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” – but God’s ways are infinitely different, and His compassion for the innate sinfulness of His creatures is utterly awesome. These words from Isaiah 55:6-9 express the same message: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked abandon his way, the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn back to the Lord who will take pity on him, to our God who is rich in forgiving; for my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks. Yes, the heavens are as high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts” J.B. – I have substituted “The Lord” for Yahweh).

To illustrate God’s incomparable grace, David now resorts to the lovely image of father and child. God is a father to us, not just a ruler and judge. As father He has inexpressible tenderness and patience with His children as they grow to maturity. What spoils the relationship with Him for us is our own fear, born of sin and infidelity to His grace, for we compare Him with men and their retribution. We forget that God is aware that we are made of dust, and that therefore we are capable of very little in the spiritual sense. If we were more conscious of this fact, we would rely more on His grace and mercy. Jesus reminded us of this in John 15:5 when He said that apart from Him we could do nothing. The other side of the coin was given to us by St Paul in Philippians 4:13, where he claimed that there was nothing that we could not master with the help of the One who gives us strength (vv. 6-14).

As for man, his days are like grass;
he flowers like the flower of the field;
the wind blows and he is gone
and his place never sees him again.

But the love of the Lord is everlasting
upon those who hold him in fear;
his justice reaches out to children’s children
when they keep his covenant in truth,
when they keep his will in their mind.

The Lord has set his sway in heaven
and his kingdom is ruling over all.
Give thanks to the Lord, all his angels,
mighty in power, fulfilling his word,
who heed the voice of his word.

Give thanks to the Lord, all his hosts,
his servants who do his will.
Give thanks to the Lord, all his works,
in every place where he rules.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord!
                                      (vv. 15-22).

We are so insignificant that the span of our lives can be compared to that of the grass, here today and gone tomorrow. Yet we “strut and fret our hour upon the stage” as if we were very important! As the flowers cannot survive without sunshine, so neither can we without God’s compassion. The miracle of God’s love is such that it pervades our lives. He is the life of our life, as well as being the love of our love. God’s love is our life. Without it we die. Using the same image of the grass of the field to explain the shortness of our lives, Jesus begged us to trust the Father’s loving care for us instead of worrying about things we could not solve anyway (see Matthew 6:25-34). The real glory of this “dust”, this “nothing” that is us, is the fact that God has made us His children, and destined us for eternal happiness with Him (vv. 15-18).

It is strange to observe that when man stands tall in his pride and arrogance he sees nothing of the glory of God. He is blinded. But when he humbles himself into his native dust, vision is granted him, and he not only can behold the glory of God, but also the wonder of all creation in a universe that vibrates with the presence and glory of Heaven. He can now appreciate that God is not only the Father of mankind, but also the ruler of the universe, and that He deserves more praise than an infinite number of worlds, full of saints, could give Him. So David now calls upon the angelic choirs to praise God for us and with us. But all creation must join them too, including the plant and animal kingdoms who are part of God’s empire. None of this has value if the poet himself, and we who read his prayer, do not join them. The psalm ends as it began.

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