God is Worthy of Our Deepest Praise

Psalm 103 God is Worthy of Our Deepest Praise Introduction: Psalm 103 is a Psalm about reflection. It’s a meditative Psalm because although we can read it as an exhortation to our own lives, the Psalmist is actually speaking to himself. The Psalmist celebrates all the wonderful services or benefits that he has in Yahweh, stirring up his own affections for his God. Once again centering his life around God. 1. The Charge 1. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” 1. But what does it mean for my soul to bless the LORD? 2. To bless or praise the Lord is obviously more than singing (which is the most common way in which we associate these terms.) But the singing does capture what it really is all about because we sing about things that we love, things we are passionate about. We have a deep appreciation for or awe for someone or something and therefore we talk about it, we sing about it, we want everyone to know how great this thing is or how wonderful this person is. 3. “The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God. We should neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, but eat to God, and sleep to God, and work to God, and talk to God, do all to his glory and praise…. As we receive all from God, so we should lay all at his feet, and say, ‘I will not live in a course of sin that will not stand with the favor of my God’…. We glorify God when we exalt him in our souls above all creatures in the world, when we give him the highest place in our love and in our joy, when all our affections are set upon him as the greatest good.” - Richard Sibbs 4. The ultimate way we glorify and bless the Lord is through our lives being lived in grateful obedience to God, for all that he is and all that he has done. 1. God is worthy of our deepest praise. “Praise be to Yahweh from our innermost being. Let every part of me; Let every fiber of my being, every thought, word and deed, bless his holy name.” This Psalm is calling God’s people to praise God with all of their being, never forgetting his goodness and glory. 2. The Reason or Benefits 1. Forgiven iniquity - God forgave us at infinite cost to himself. 2. Healed diseases /illness - Jesus bore all our sickness and sorrow 3. Redemption from the pit of destruction - a reference to resurrection and eternal life. -Jesus experienced the pit of hell 4. Crowning with unfailing love and mercy - infinitely faithful to us, to our good, and our glory. - Jesus was crowned with thorns, mocked and spit at. 5. Satisfies our lives with good things, and renews our strength - Jesus body was broken, all of our sin was laid on him, his strength was dried up, Psalm 22 tells us. 1. David really bring out the big guns here. Everyone of these things he list are huge blessings and benefits that we have received and continue to receive from God and each have enormous implications for our lives. 1. 3. Our Failure - 1. The truth is that we don’t give God the honor, the glory, the praise, the recognition due to him. Just like David, we forget. In vs 7 the Psalmist recalls God’s ways that were made known to Moses and the children of Israel in their Exodus from Egypt, vs 8 is a direct quote from Exodus 34 when God declares his name to Moses. You know why the Psalmist records this? Because the Children of Israel were guilty of this very thing - they saw the mighty works of the Lord, they experienced first hand his compassion and care - and yet they forgot about him, they didn’t honor him. But this isn’t just something that the Israelites do this is something that all of us do, we don’t give God the glory, honor and praise that he deserves from our lives. We have far more reason to praise and thank God than they did. 2. That’s the indictment of this passage - every single one of us are guilty, we praise, we glorify, people and stuff more than we do God, the Lord of Hosts, the Everlasting King of Glory.. 1. If the passage stopped there we would all be in trouble. “You should praise God with every fiber of your being, but you don’t” -But see the scripture already knows / the Lord already knows the human condition, the sinfulness and waywardness of the human heart. 2. Psalm 103 takes a very honest look at Human Nature. These are the descriptions: having iniquity, disease, going down to the pit of corruption, tired, weak, having transgressions, sins, our whole frame is likened to dust and grass. It’s all weak, fading, transient sinful. 3. And it is contrasted to the unfailing Father Love of God for his weak, failing people….The Scripture often describes God as loving Father and this is to be understood in the best terms possible. The greatest mothers and the greatest fathers pale in comparison to the great father love, and care that God has for us. 4. God is pictured here as an absolute safety, having compassionate anger, and being our ultimate home, which are all parental illustrations. vs.8-18 1. Absolute safety 1. We talked last week about God’s omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence. Here again we are struck by the care of God for us. 2. “As a father shows compassion to his children,so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. 14 For he knows our frame;[a] he remembers that we are dust.” 1. (Compassion or pity doesn’t fully carry across the idea here, It is literally the emotional attachment and love that a mother feels for her nursing child when her milk is coming in) 1. “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” -Isaiah 49:15-16 3. “He remembers that we are dust” Dust is a metaphor for what is weak, what is falling apart, for what is sinful..(God knows that we are weak, that we are stupid, that we are sinful and that’s why he loves us..) You know what God loves you more when you are doing right, and he loves you more when you are doing wrong… he loves you in the good and the bad, the same. God is so emotionally and deeply involved with his children because they are such idiots. We are so safe in God’s father love..Parents you know this, It’s amazing isn’t it, that when one of your children is acting up you feel more parent love for them, your compassion for them increases when they are being stupid often times. This shows how we are made in God’s image - he is ultimate Father and there is abundant safety in his love.. 2. Compassionate Anger 1. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (eternal) 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. (temporary)10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” 1. God is not retributive in his anger..he is never trying to pay us back for our sins, tit for tat…Now even the best parents in the whole world have made this mistake, to punish out of anger or embarrassment. But not with God, He’s the perfect parent. he’s neither neglectful nor retributive. God has compassionate anger. Yes, God gets angry. 2. But since his compassion is driving his anger this means that God disciplines us not out of punishment or wrath, but to teach us, to help us avoid greater hurt, heartache and damage to ourselves… Just like Hebrews says, God disciplines those he loves, for those without discipline are illegitimate children. If you love, you get angry. 3. E. H. Gifford, said, “Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.” - Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.” We as flawed human beings desperately need this kind of love. 3. Ultimate home 1. "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. 17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, (eternal home, love and acceptance in the Father) and his righteousness to children's children, 18 to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. 1. Finally, there is something in every one of us that wants a home. They say you can fit anywhere but home is the place that fits you…and ever heart longs for that place where we belong 4. All of this is unconditional toward us because God the Father has made a covenant with us through his beloved one of a kind son, Jesus Christ. The covenant will never be broken because both are eternal and infinitely faithful - it cannot fail… 1. Truly the only way that we will be transformed, changed, to be and to do all that we were created to do (to praise God with every fiber of our being) is by our hearts seeing how completely and totally undeserving we are when it comes to God’s grace.. 4. God’s Remedy - His Word (the recordings of all that he is and all that he has done) The narrative beginning with Adam and Eve all the way through the coming of Christ. God’s record of faithfulness to weak and sinful people… 1. How must we work against this forgetting God? 1. We must do the work of meditation. Meditation is to spiritually digest the scripture - applying it, thinking out how it affects you, describes you, guides you in the most practical way. It is to draw strength from the scripture, letting it give you hope, using it to remember how loved you are…. 2. Tim Keller in his book, Prayer, says, “Meditation is taking truth down into your heart until it catches fire there and begins to melt and shape our relations to God, to ourselves, and the world.” 2. Here in our passage, notice, David is not speaking directly to God though he is aware of being in God’s presence. He is talking to himself, to his inner self, the soul. He is taking these truths deep down into his heart. This is meditation. 3. The benefits that David lists are those of salvation: The forgiveness of sin, the receiving of grace, and God’s infinite unconditional Father love. He’s taking these truths and driving them into his own heart until it is affected, delighted, and changed by them..He does this by rebuking his heart that it tends to “forget” it’s salvation. David doesn’t mean that he forgets that he actually does believe in God, but he is confessing that God, and His blessings too often become abstract to him. All of these truths that David knows so often fail to become a living reality to him. 4. It might look like this: 1. When I forget I am justified by faith alone; I give place to guilt and regret about the past. I therefore live in bondage to idols of power and money that make me feel better about myself. 2. When I forget I’m being sanctified through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit; I give upon myself, and stop trying to change. 3. When I forget the hope of my future resurrection; I become afraid of aging and death - these fears take control over my life decisions… 4. When I forget my adoption into the family of God; I become full of tears. I don’t pray with honesty. I lose my confidence. I try to hide my faults from God and myself. 5. Helpful questions for meditation: 1. What does this text show me about God for which I should praise or thank him? 2. What does the text show me about my sin that I should confess and repent of? What false attitudes, behavior, emotions, or idols come alive in me whenever I forget this truth? 3. What does the text show me about a need that I have? What do I need to do or become in light of this? How shall I ask God for this? 4. How is Jesus Christ or the grace that I have in him crucial to helping me overcome the sin I have confessed or to answering the need I have? 5. How would this change my life if I took it seriously - if this truth were fully alive and effective in my inward being? Also, why might God be showing this to me now? What is going on in my life today that he would be bringing this to my attention today? - Tim Keller (Prayer, Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God) 6.