Psalm 103: The Unbelievable Love of God
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits;
3 Who pardons all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases;
4 Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
5 Who satisfies your years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
6 The Lord performs righteous deeds
And judgments for all who are oppressed.
7 He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the sons of Israel.
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
9 He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who [c]fear Him.
12 As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
13 Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
14 For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
16 When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place acknowledges it no longer.
17 But the lovingkindness 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 His precepts to do them.
19 The Lord has established His throne in the heavens,
And His sovereignty rules over all.
20 Bless the Lord, you His angels,
Mighty in strength, who perform His word,
Obeying the voice of His word!
21 Bless the Lord, all you His hosts,
You who serve Him, doing His will.
22 Bless the Lord, all you works of His,
In all places of His dominion;
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
When you hear people speak about the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament as being distinctly different, then you can easily conclude that person has never read the Bible. When we look at Psalm 103, we see a clear picture of the character and attributes of God that shows us the gospel in the Old Testament. As we look at the 22 verses of Psalm 103, we can see three distinct sections that message consistently with the New Testament. First, we see the grace and mercy of God and our posture towards that revelation (verses 1 – 5). Second, we receive the revelation of the permanence of the unmerited Forgiveness of God that is administered by His compassion, patience and lovingkindness (verses 6 – 12). Third, we receive the unending, unmerited, and unbelievable revelation of the love of God, which defines our new relationship with God and our identity as His child.
Beginning with verses 1 to 5, we see a clear picture of the Sovereign grace and mercy of the Lord. The psalm begins and ends with a call to worship. “Bless the Lord” is a term of adoration often used to describe worship and show honor by kneeling. The call to “bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within in me bless His holy name” is what Jesus called the fulfillment of the law, when He quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 in Matthew 22:37. As God is calling true worshippers (John 4:23-24), the psalm continues with another call to worship (verse 2), but now the Psalmist calls us to remember the benefits of the Lord. In verses 2 to 4, we see that God has forgiven us, healed us, and redeemed us from the grave, a message we also see in Ephesians 2:4-9, where we see that we were dead, but God being rich in mercy called us to life. Not only did He call us to life, but He adopted us into His family (Romans 8:14-15), crowning us with a new identity that is characterized by lovingkindness and compassion. Since our new relationship is one of parent and child by which we call God Abba, which means Daddy (Galatians 4:6-7), He provides good things throughout our years, because He is good (verse 5). The Lord has revealed Himself to us, otherwise we could not have known His righteous deeds, His holy judgments, His deliverance or any of the benefits He freely gives us (verses 6-7). We know God because He showed Himself to Moses, then to us, and we know that we could not know Him unless He calls us to know Him (Ephesians 1:3-14), and reveals our sin to us by His kindness (Romans 2:4).
God further reveals Himself to us to know His character as compassionate, gracious, and patient, abounding in lovingkindness (verse 8). We know that because love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4), He demonstrates His kindness towards us not dealing with us according to our sin (verse 9), but by taking the penalty of sin for us (John 3:16). God not only became incarnate in Jesus Christ, but He affirms that His love for us is infinite reaching above the earth to the heavens (verse 11), coupled with infinite forgiveness. He has removed our sin from us, as far as the east is from the west (verse 12), which is an incredible revelation when we know that east and west never meet. This truth of the forgiveness of God is reinforced in Romans 8:1 where we are told that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is an incredible truth for those who fear God, for those who can accept the truth of this spiritual reality.
When we have seen our sin, it is the truth of the love of God that breaks a man to surrender, for it is a full awareness of something we will never get over, hard to believe, unreasonable, yet His compassion makes me His child (verse 13). It is the picture we see of the prodigal son in Luke 15:20, when we come humbled and ashamed, ready to plead our case, but it is the Father who runs out to hug us, and embrace us and kiss us. It is a love that is not human, yet it transforms us to love others because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). He knows that we are frail, dust stood upright for a while (verse 14), like grass that dies and flowers that quickly fade with the wind (verse 15-16), but the love of God is from everlasting to everlasting to those who revere His name, and He extends His love to our children, and our children’s children (verse 17-18). Each one of us joins with all of creation to bless the Lord for His sovereign rule that is administered by His grace, mercy, compassion, patience and lovingkindness (verse 19-22). While this love can often provoke an emotional reaction, we must be mindful that it is by faith that we are saved and enter into His family. Faith begins with intellectual awareness of our redemption, but faith is not validated by emotional response, but rather by the fruit of the Spirit in our lives as faith grows in our hearts. To know the love of God in full will never be possible, but our Christian journey is to continually grow in knowing and experiencing the love of God, and expressing that to the people that God brings into our lives, so we pray to continue growing in the vastness of the love of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).
Discipleship for Hearts and Minds 