Psalm 103

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Ingredients for life

What I am going to preach is not what I originally had planned for this week.
Yesterday I was preparing for a memorial service for a sweet lady I went to church with for many years.
The family had asked me to read Psalm 103, and as I was reading it in prep, I was struck by it.
This Psalm carries all of the ingredients of the gospel.
Now whenever we read the Psalms we of course have to remember that the original readers didn’t know about Christ, but we know clearly from scripture that Old Testament believers were just that, believers.
Believers in the covenant promises of God.
They had faith.
So we too with faith, looking back into the Old Testament scriptures are enriched by considering these same covenant promises of God and Christ breathes fresh dimensions into the pages of the Old Testament,
as we study the Old Testament scriptures we gain ever increasing understanding and depth to just how completely Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s story and how all of the covenant promises are realized in His kingdom.
But like I said, this Psalm carries all of the ingredients of the gospel.
We’ve been talking about how the gospel is cosmic in scope, and here’s what I mean:
On Board:
Identity
Sin
Covenant
King
Creation
Identity:
Individual and Corporate
Individual:
Look how the Psalm starts.
Praise the Lord oh MY soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
What are God’s benefits?
A) He forgives all your sins
You could take the beginning of this Psalm and make it a morning liturgy for yourself.
“Soul. He forgives all your sins.”
B) Heals all your diseases
“Soul, God cares for my body day in and day out. But one day, all my diseases will be truly healed as I gain a strong resurrection body.”
C) Redeems your life from the pit
We talked about this concept when we did Psalm 30.
“Soul, Christ descended into the pit for you that I might live. He rescues me when I fall.”
D) Crowns you with love and compassion
“Soul, you are a coheir with Christ. You have been crowned with every blessing in the spiritual realm.”
Augustine:
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1.8: Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms (Psalm 103)
It is a reward when you, a sinner and an ungodly man, has been called, that you may be justified. It is a reward, when you are raised up and guided, that you may not fall. It is a reward, when strength is given thee, that you may persevere unto the end. It is a reward, that even that flesh of thine by which you were oppressed rises again and that not even a hair of thy head perished. It is a reward, that after thy resurrection you art crowned. It is a reward, that you will praise God Himself for evermore without ceasing
E) Satisfies your desires with good things.
“Soul, you have been benefitted with the highest good that could be offered to man, Christ himself. Praise the Lord!”
These are all individual benefits of knowing Christ.
Corporate:
But the gospel isn’t just for me.
It’s for my neighbor.
So what are the corporate benefits of the gospel?
Well first of all, God is interested in the liberation of entire people groups from the bondage of oppressors. Whether those oppressors be tyrannical regimes or sin and death itself.
Psalm 103:6 LEB
6 Yahweh does deeds of justice and judgments for all who are oppressed,
The promise here is that there is a God who is actively working to undue evil.
And the promise isn’t empty.
The psalmist backs this up by calling to mind for the reader how God made his deeds known to Moses and Israel.
How did God make His ways known to them?
Astonishingly.
In power.
As God works to undue evil, we see the signs of it.
It is not an unrealistic response to great evil, such as we saw this week to ask,
“How is God undoing that?”
Great evil is not unique to our day.
Every generation has seen bloodshed.
Every generation has seen the senseless slaying of little ones.
This is precisely why the Psalmist turns our hearts to the Exodus.
Remember that in Egypt, a mere generation before they left, the Pharoah there ordered the killing of all the Hebrew boys.
“Yahweh works righteousness and justice for ALL the oppressed.”
God liberated Israel from oppressive Egypt with astonishing power.
He slayed the children slayers, and brought them into a new land.
The even more astonishing truth that unfolds before our eyes as we read the biblical story, is that this exodus, is just a foreshadowing of the New Exodus that Christ is leading his people on now.
Grief and tears remain for now,
and we don’t fully comprehend just HOW he’s doing it,
but we hold onto the same covenant promises that Israel held onto.
That he is making all things NEW
That he is making the sad things untrue.
We are being corporately saved as the people of God,
as God gathers together all tribes, nations, and tongues into his family.
The second ingredient of the gospel that we find in this Psalm is the way it talks about sin.
SIN:
Psalm 103:8–12 HCSB
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in faithful love. 9 He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. 10 He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our offenses. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His faithful love toward those who fear Him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Sin is truly the great barrier between us and God isn’t it?
This Psalm reminds us that God is the kind of God who doesn’t sit idly by while we get wrecked by sin.
God is not watching you struggle and waiting till you’re really hurting bad before he does something to help you.
He’s never been like that.
As we read the Bible, we see that God is always acting on behalf of his people when it comes to sin.
The Bible story isn’t “If you were born during this old testament part you were up a creek, and then after Jesus there’s finally something for your sin.”
No.
From some of the earliest moments in history we see God working in His world to solve the sin problem.
In the garden, God sacrifices an animal to cloth Adam and Eve who had sinned, symbolizing for the first time that the giving of a sacrifice would be the way that relationship with God would be prepared.
And then jumping ahead, we that for the people of Israel, they have two very important days in their calendar.
Passover, and Day of Atonement
Passover was their annual reminder of God’s deliverance out of Egypt for them.
But the Day of Atonement was different.
We find God giving instructions for it in Leviticus 16
As we read Leviticus we see a whole sacrificial system set up for the people of Israel, designed to keep them in right relationship with God.
Some of the sacrifices were animals, some grain, some drink.
Would it surprise you to know that all of these sacrifices were for unintentional sin?
We often define sin like this:
Missing the mark.
And that is a legitimate Hebrew definition of sin.
But it’s not the only definition.
There’s another word in Hebrew for sin.
Pesha.
This is the word for willful sin. Spiteful disobedience to God and His law.
The nasty stuff.
1 day a year the High Priest was to make sacrifices for himself and his family so that he could even approach God in His Most place in the temple,
and then he slaughter a goat for the pesha of the people, sprinkling it’s blood on the atonement cover which was the gold top of the ark of the covenant.
And here’s where it gets even better.
After he has slaughtered this goat for them, he takes another goat,
places his hands on it,
confesses all of the sins of the people, pesha included, and then that goat is taken out of the city, out into the desert to a solitary place, and released.
When David writes
Psalm 103:12 HCSB
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Covenant:
Psalm 103:13–18 HCSB
13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. 14 For He knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field; 16 when the wind passes over it, it vanishes, and its place is no longer known. 17 But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear Him, and His righteousness toward the grandchildren 18 of those who keep His covenant, who remember to observe His precepts.
Part of the gospel is the reality that God is a covenantal God.
We don’t deal in well in covenants these days.
You’re more likely to encounter the phrase covenant when you’re trying to find out whether or not you can grow corn in your front yard or if you can paint your house orange.
Nick actually did grow corn in his front yard.
Covenant is closer to if I approached James or Andrew and said, I covenant with you that I will protect Lucy with all of my energy and ability, and if I don’t, I will die.
Firepot and Abraham
We should have immense interest in what the only eternal being in the entire universe is making covenants about.
Because God cannot die, and because he cannot lie, a covenant made by God is truly unshakeable.
Imagine if you will that God’s covenants were announced with the same excitement we hold for the tweets of billionaires.
This just in! “Yahweh has made a covenant with Noah to never again flood the earth!”
Breaking edition! “Yahweh has made a covenant with Abram of Ur to bless all the nations through him!”
In a way, we could say that the Bible is at it’s base level, a book written by a covenantal God, about His covenants.
We should be fascinated with his covenants.
God is so committed to his covenant that he did the unthinkable and took on human likeness.
This is the truth that we will return to when we get back to Philippians as we consider the humility of that act.
St Augustin, writing about this very Psalm is considering the comment of man being like grass that blows away and he writes this:

For he is not speaking of grass, but of that for whose sake even the Word became grass. For thou art man, and on thy account the Word became man. “All flesh is grass:” “and the Word was made flesh.” How great then is the hope of the grass, since the Word hath been made flesh? That which abideth for evermore, hath not disdained to assume grass, that the grass might not despair of itself.

One of the most beautiful ways that God’s covenant faithfulness is seen in our world is in generational faith.
Remember I was reading this psalm for a memorial service.
This psalm was requested by the family as it was the Psalm that the granddaughter, a wonderful woman of faith that most of you know Ty Kiecolt, read to her grandmother often.
I think it is beautiful that this psalm has this line
“Yahweh’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren of those who keep His covenant.”
I pray that I will one day have a grandchild read me Psalm 103.
Because that would be the fulfilment of this promise made to God’s people.
If you’re a parent, you may have had a moment where you realize that there is nothing you can do to MAKE your child love God.
And that’s terrifying.
Here’s where we hold onto the promise. God keeps his covenants because he is the only eternal and holy being.
That powerful God has promised you that his righteousness will be extended to your grandchildren.
Lay hold of that promise.
Raise your children IN this covenant.
Baptize them.
Bring them to the table to dine on the Lord’s body and blood.
Because it is Christ’s blood that ratifies and signifies for us that his new covenant is sure.
That he is making all things new.
Us.
And our children.
And our grandchildren.
This promise is for all of us.
King:
The next element of the gospel is the Kingship of God.
Psalm 103:19 HCSB
19 The Lord has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all.
This has been true for all time.
David could truthfully proclaim this long before Jesus was born because God is eternal.
Augustine again:

“The Lord hath prepared His throne in heaven” (ver. 19). Who but Christ hath prepared His throne in heaven? He who descended and ascended, He who died, and rose from the dead, He who lifted up to heaven the manhood He had assumed, hath Himself prepared His throne in heaven. The throne is the seat of the Judge: observe therefore ye who hear, that “He hath prepared His throne in heaven.… The kingdom is the Lord’s, and He shall be the Governor among the people. “And His kingdom shall rule over all.”

It is good news that Christ’s kingdom rules over all because there is ruling that needs done.
We all have an inherent need for a God who will rule our lives by his law of love.
And all creation needs a God who will judge every deed that has been done under the sun.
Without it, God would not be good.
But he is.
Which brings us to our final ingredient of the gospel.
Creation:
Psalm 103:20–22 HCSB
20 Praise the Lord, all His angels of great strength, who do His word, obedient to His command. 21 Praise the Lord, all His armies, His servants who do His will. 22 Praise the Lord, all His works in all the places where He rules. My soul, praise Yahweh!
This reminds me of Psalm 150:6
Psalm 150:6 ESV
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Jesus says that if necessary the rocks will cry out to worship him.
And indeed all creation does declare the glory of God from the smallest atomic particle to the largest supernova.
And God has created man in his own image to be the praising priests that worship God in everything they do.
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