Psalm 103 • Remembering Dust
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Have a seat and let me ask that you would look in your bibles this morning at Psalm 103, Psalm 103.
In your Grace Bibles, that is page 502.
And to remind you as we are going through the Psalms, the Psalms themselves are compiled from different times of Israel's history.
And in this, the fourth book, we have a collection of Psalms intended for God's people in a time of trial and exile.
As a nation, they have been separated from their land, smashed by an enemy.
How do you praise God at such a time?
This is one of the most well-known and beautiful psalms as it speaks to a sinful people about a compassionate God whose mercies never fail.
Let's stand as we read Psalm 103.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!"
Now, that's what I want to sink into your hearts today.
Can you just repeat these phrases as I say them?
Bless the Lord.
>>> Bless the Lord.
>>> O my soul.
>>> O my soul.
>>> And all that is within me.
>>> And all that is within me.
>>> Bless His holy name.
>>> Bless His holy name.
>>> Amen.
Verse 2, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide, nor keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."
We'll finish the Psalm in the message itself.
Let's pray together for this portion that we have read.
>>> Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Father, I would pray this day that those words would by the end of this service be able to resonate from all: those who struggle with the circumstances that have crushed them, those who struggle with the sin that even now attracts them.
Teach them of a God whose steadfast love endures and is more powerful than the evil and the hurt of this world.
Grant that we may rejoice in a Psalm whose very intention was to give people hope in a hard time.
You've put this here, by Your Holy Spirit, for our comfort and strength.
So work by Your Spirit in our hearts we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
He dashed past the guards with a hammer in his hand.
Laszlo Toth, a geologist with a broken marriage, a broken career, and a broken mind.
Pushing his way through the crowds, he jumped over barricades and climbed onto Michelangelo's Pieta, the masterpiece and marvel of Mary holding the crucified Jesus.
And Toth, believing that he was Jesus, in his demented state, cried out, "I am Jesus."
And He began to attack with his hammer the statue that he believed was his rival.
He smashed the face of Mary.
He broke off her arm.
He smashed the hand of Jesus before he was restrained.
The masterpiece was broken.
And the nation of Italy believed could never be made right, never be repaired.
And as they faced the consequence of their masterpiece ruined, some began to cry out for the ruin of the demented man.
"He broke the statue; break him."
"An eye for an eye."
But saner and softer hearts prevailed.
And he was taken to a place where he could receive healing.
And if you would go to Italy now and look at Michelangelo's Pieta, you would recognize it has been remarkably restored.
You would never have seen or noted that it had been hurt as badly as it had been.
It's the message, not just of a statue, but of the Psalm: that what has been smashed by sin and circumstance can be restored.
It's why the psalmist begins with such wonderful, extravagant praise.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!"
It's happened here.
It really has.
We've seen it.
We have seen lives that have been smashed by divorce and addictions and disgrace made right again, fixed, restored, made whole.
And it's what the psalmist is saying God can do for a people who are broken and writes it down for us, so that when we face the brokenness, we recognize a God who can restore as well.
What's the path to such restoration against all the improbabilities of our world and its evil and our own sinfulness?
The path to that restoration actually begins with the very words that the psalmist says: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!"
The path to experiencing restoration begins with declaring something about God.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul."
You know, we think about the Lord blessing us, and the Lord blesses us when He endows us with the opportunity or ability to receive blessing.
What does it mean to bless the Lord?
It means to declare that He is able, that He is able to restore and give blessing.
What we receive, He is able to give.
And right with that statement of the Lord's power, "Bless the Lord," He is able to do as He has said, is a statement of His name: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me, bless his holy name!"
What's it mean that His name is holy?
In the Bible, the concept of holiness is separation from sin or stain.
As the prophet Isaiah looks and sees God in His heaven, he says, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, and the whole earth is full of his glory."
But he sees God separate, in heaven, his robe separated from earth but coming down to the world, as though God is untouched by earth's stain.
The sin that sullies and dirties us doesn't touch Him.
And because He is holy, the power of His blessing can be trusted.
He is not bitter.
He is not vengeful.
He is not one who is petty.
He is holy.
And because we declare Him both powerful and holy, we have the ability to remember what needs to be remembered in our own times of devastation.
Do you remember the end of verse 2?
As the psalmist now declares the greatness and the goodness of God, he says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."
This path to blessing is declaring who God is, naming who He really is, and then remembering it.
"Forget not all his benefits."
That's simple to say, very hard to do, right?
When the crush of sin or circumstances come upon us, particularly if we have been sinned against, we can't stop thinking about the crisis, the crush, the hurt.
It preoccupies our thoughts.
It preoccupies our dreams.
We have every waking moment with--, even when we try to push our thoughts another way, going back to the hurt, to the harm, to the guilt.
And here's the psalmist just saying so simply, "But the path to knowing the blessing of God is forget not His benefits."
Kathy and I have a pastor friend who studies with dark clouds coming into his mind sometimes.
He struggles with depression from time to time.
And he even writes into his sermon notes these words: "Forget not His benefits."
Note to self: Forget not His benefits.
I think of some of the great Christian leaders of the past and near present.
Martin Luther, echoed in the writings of Jack Miller, who said, "We have to learn to preach the gospel to our own hearts every day," that so much else presses in, my opinion of me, my opinion of circumstances, my opinion of God, that I have to actually say, "No, He's powerful and He's good.
That's His character and that's His name, and I need not to forget that.
I need to preach the gospel to my own heart.
Jack Miller's quick summary, note to self: Cheer up; you're worse than you think you are.
[Laughter]
And the gospel is better than you can imagine.
For all its sin that crushes us, for all that is wrong about our circumstances inside and outside of us, God says, "My love is greater and it doesn't change."
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
And forget not his benefits."
When everything else presses in, remember the benefits.
What are they?
He says, verse 3, this is the God "who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."
Now, honesty on the page here: These are words we find very comforting and very troubling at exactly the same moment.
I like that part about forgiving all my iniquities, but what is this about healing all your diseases?
I mean, is this just hyperbole, religious speak?
It doesn't seem to be true of people I know.
There are faithful people who have disease.
And, of course, you get to that part about your youth being renewed like the eagle's.
Some of you getting old.
[Laughter]
I mean, do we just say this doesn't apply?
I mean, even for those who are healed of their diseases, they're getting older.
That's true of all of us.
So how do we take these words of Scripture?
I will tell you various ways that the commentators have tried.
They have sometimes said that what God is doing is simply saying, "If your diseases are healed, remember, He's the one who did it."
Now, I find that a bit unsatisfactory, because as you get to that verse where it talks about our youth being renewed, he doesn't seem to be talking about just some people but everybody experiencing that who trust in the Lord.
Let me try this: I actually think it's a wonderful aspect of Scripture.
If we put all of these promises in the present tense, then we all become liars.
Right?
Yes, He forgives all your iniquities: great present tense.
Heals all your disease, renews your youth?
If that's all in the present tense, then I just don't observe it being true for any people, any congregation.
So I can put it all in the future tense: Well, when we're in heaven, He will heal all our diseases; He will renew our youth.
But the trouble is, I need Him to forgive my iniquities in the present tense.
That can't all be in the future.
One beautiful way of looking at this passage is to recognize it's not immediate and it's not future but progressive.
He forgives all of your iniquities.
And that understanding that God begins to work in our lives so as to break the consequences of our fallen condition that touches us all means He is then healing all of our diseases; all the brokenness of this fallen world is being done away with, not immediately but fereg--, progressively.
So that God then would say that He actually redeems our life from the pit.
The pit is the Hebrew definition, the Hebrew expression for death.
That He actually redeems us from death, "crowns you with steadfast love and mercy and satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle."
Isn't this the path of the Christian life?
We are forgiven.
The effects of the fall, all the disease and corruption of this world is being broken until ultimately what happens is we are safe from death.
And in resurrection, we are crowned with glory and honor.
And in renewed in youth like the eagle's, we are given the blessing of everlasting, eternal life.
Some have said this is like a time capsule of the gospel planted in the Old Testament, so that we later on can come back and say, "The gospel was being preached to God's people, that there would be an immediate and eternal effect of God's blessing."
And proof of that, as it were, or further strength of that is in verse 4, "Because God will redeem your life from the pit."
The word redeem in the Old Testament almost always means release from bondage at the price of blood.
Remember?
As Israel was taken out of slavery, they put blood of an innocent animal on the doorpost and lintel in the Passover: Release from bondage came through blood.
And now God is saying to His people, "You will be redeemed from death."
But if the word consistent is there, you will be released from bondage by blood.
And it's the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ even in Old Testament terms.
So that we now, looking backward, this side of the cross can say, "I get it; I understand.
He forgives my iniquities and now He's still working in my life.
So the effects of the fall in this that I experience are being broken until one day I will be redeemed from death by faith in Jesus Christ, whose blood has purchased me.
And I will be crowned with glory and honor.
And my life and those that I love who love Jesus will be renewed.
And it is the blessing of the gospel that comes now in Old Testament page.
Why can we count on it?
Why can we bank on it?
Because if He redeemed us with blood, we are precious to Him, regardless of what crushes us, circumstance or our own sin.
Rick Warren tells an account of preaching in a large prison one time where there were four or five thousand prisoners in a prison yard who pretty much had been forced to come to the religious service.
Most had no intention of listening to him, no desire to.
And so, as the inattention grew, he said at some point he took out of a $50 bill and he said, "How many of you would like this $50 bill?"
He had their attention.
[Laughter]
Five thousand hands go up.
So he took the $50 bill and he crumpled it and tore it and he said, "Now how many of you want the $50 bill?"
Five thousand hands still went up.
[Laughter]
So he threw it on the ground and smashed it and spat on it and said, "Now how many want a $50 bill?"
And five thousand hands still went up.
He said, "Such is the love of God for you.
Though you be smashed and dirtied by what you have done or what's been done to you, you are eternally valuable to God.
He purchased you with His own Son's blood.
And because you would affirm faith in that, you are precious to Him, regardless of the dirt and the corruption and the crushing that you are experiencing."
It's what you and I need to know as well.
That we go through things in life sometimes that we think are our disgrace, that can't be set right, that can't be made right.
And here is this wonderful time capsule of the gospel where God is saying, "No, this is not the end of the story.
The hurt and the damage is not the end of the story.
I am the God who redeems you from the pit, wherever that pit is in your life.
And I will crown you with glory and honor, and I will call you My own.
You will be renewed with the eternal youth of the blessing and the goodness of God."
It's what holds us.
It's what comforts us and what brings us to 'God again and again, if we remember His benefits, even in the smay--, in the face of the smashing that we experience.
How do we remember?
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!"
Why?
Do you remember the song of the 80's?
"Because He has done great things."
Even the great things are listed here.
Verse 6 and 7: "The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel."
It's the reference to exodus, right?
Here were a people enslaved.
And God said, "I show mercy to the oppressed.
I prove it.
Through Moses, I provided a deliverer for you."
But the great evidence to the people who were in exile has been superseded by the greater evidence to you and me.
Jesus did not just send Moses: He sent Jesus.
Did I say Jesus?
God did not just send Moses: He sent Jesus.
And the evidence of our redemption in Christ is what gives us confidence to move forward, to believe in Him despite the difficulties that we may face.
God has demonstrated His faithfulness.
But even more than that, He declares His Fatherliness.
That's the great thing that He has done.
It's here in so many ways.
Verse 8: "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."
Now, those words may be so familiar to you that their significance has been lost to you.
I mentioned in the introduction of our service: This is the most common way that God identifies Himself in the Bible.
"I am merciful and compassionate, gracious, abounding in love."
Where does that come from?
Exodus 34.
If I mention the events, you will know them.
God has given the Ten Commandments to His people.
As Moses is coming down Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments, he hears a sound of partying.
What are the people doing at the party?
God's people are worshipping a golden calf.
God has released them from Egypt.
He's released them from slavery.
And Moses comes down from the mountain where he's going to give them the blessed way that God tells them they should go, and what they are doing instead is committing immorality and worshipping a pagan god.
You may remember: Moses destroys the tablets.
So God calls him back up the mountain.
The Ten Commandments are written down again.
And it's in Exodus 34 God says, "Write the Ten Commandments and declare who I am.
The Lord, who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love."
It's not the only time it appears.
Ten times in the Old Testament this one verse is repeated, as though God is saying, 'This is who I am; this is who I am.
You didn't get it?
This is who I am.
This is who I am."
It's like the spine that runs through the Bible: God's declaration of His own nature.
"You can trust Me.
You can turn to Me, because though you have been guilty of sin, even the sin of My people Israel, worshipping a golden calf right after I had delivered them, I am the God who redeems.
There is hope for you yet.
There is restoration here."
How do you know that?
"I am merciful and gracious, abounding in love."
So I go to Him.
That's the confidence that I have.
He's declaring constant care over and over again.
And that care is expressed in just extravagant grace.
Again, as you kind of move through the passage and think how God is speaking to a people who are in exile, verse 10, God says about Himself, "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities."
Verse 12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us."
We covered this earlier in Psalm 32.
Here, all the dimension of sin being mentioned: sin, the New Testament term is "to miss the mark," as though God has given standards and we haven't kept them.
But not just sin is covered: iniquity.
That's the inside stuff: the covetousness and the lust and the anger and the bitterness.
God says, "The stuff that's inside: I cover that too."
And then, finally, transgression.
This is not just missing the mark; it's not just keeping stuff inside: It's actually rebelling against God, crossing the standards that we knew, doing what we knew not to do.
And God Himself is saying, "No, even as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is My steadfast love for those who fear me."
As far as the east is from the west, so far as He removed our transgressions from us.
Maybe we need to deal with that word "fear" for just a moment.
"As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him," says God in verse 11.
Wait, wait.
You were talking about all this love that comes our way, and now you say that His love comes for those who fear Him.
What does that mean?
Because somewhere deep in us, we know that if we fear God enough, we actually cannot love Him.
Some of you know what it means to be in abusive relationships.
You love me or I'll hit you.
Well, I may obey you, but I can't love you if that's the condition.
If God is simply threatening us in order to get us to love Him, we can't actually do it.
The heart will not respond that way.
So what is this fear that God is saying, "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is My love toward those who fear Me"?
One of the great passages that helped me to understand that is Isaiah 11 verses 2 and 3, the great prophecy of the coming Messiah.
And there we are told that when the Messiah comes, He will come in the fear of the Lord.
In fact, we are told He will delight in the fear of the Lord.
Now, you know who that Messiah is: That's Jesus.
And whatever you know intuitively about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, you know it is infinite and perfect love.
So what is that fear?
It's proper apprehension of all that God is.
It's reverence.
It's proper regard.
It's all He is.
He's just and He's merciful.
He extracts justice with wrath and extends compassion for those who turn to Him, though they cannot make it right.
He's all powerful and all good.
And taking in that great circumference of all who God is, we fall on our knees in wonder and awe.
And it's that sort of reverential fear that God says, "I will take and love people as far as the heavens are above from the earth when they really regard who I am.
I am the God who is able to bless, because I'm that powerful.
And I'm holy.
I only operate out of good motives.
And when that is your regard for Me, then blessings come."
As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His compassion for those who fear Him.
I that's, that's just one access of God's dimension of covering the love, covering the sin and the iniquity and the transgression.
But there's another dimension as well.
Did you catch it?
Those of you who are engineers, you know the Y access is now covered, right?
Y to the sky, right?
As high as the heavens are above the earth.
But there's another access that's covered as well.
Do you see it?
Verse 12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."
You know, one of the things I love about being here in Central Illinois is you can travel to certain places on the highway, if you're going to Lincoln, if you're going to Springfield, that you can actually get to a certain place on the highway where you actually have a totally unencumbered view of both horizons.
I mean, nothing in the way.
And you can look and see all the way to the east and all the way to the west and nothing between.
And when you get to that place this week or this month, I want you just to do this: I want you to mark the east horizon and mark the west horizon and say, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed my transgressions from me."
7 Bless the Lord O my soul 7
7 O my soul 7
7 Worship His holy name 7 7
Why?
"As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."
You just can't hold it in.
You just can hardly fathom it.
Cheer up: You're worse than you think you are.
And the gospel is better than you can imagine.
"As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."
And the wonderful proof of that is the Father's heart that is now speaking to us.
Verse 13, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."
Hey, only the worst fathers expect their children to act like adults.
And God is a perfect Father and He expects children sometimes to be children and He understands, which is why He provides His power and He provides His holiness, but He also provides His forgiveness.
And He remembers that we are dust.
You and I recognize that's a reference all the way back to Genesis, that we are formed out of dust.
But if He remembers we are dust, what does He know about us?
We're messed up, but we can be cleaned up.
Right?
If we're dust, we can be awful messed up.
But He's the Father who can clean us up if we are dust, even to restore us.
Michelangelo's statues, the Pieta, when they had to repair it: They actually took the marble from the damaged statue and they pulverized it into dust, mixed it with adhesive, and then reformed the statue.
So if you saw it now, you would say, "Good as new."
It's the gospel, that God is able to take what is dust and broken and smashed and ruined in so many ways and say, "But I'm a Father who understands My children.
I know they're dust, and I can restore them, because I made them."
God says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me, bless his holy name, for he has done great things."
And the rest of the gospel here is: And He will do great things.
Not just in the past: It's to come.
Verse 15, "As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it's gone, its place is known no more."
Hey, human effort just withers away.
But in contrast is the work of God.
Verse 17, "But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children."
What we do fails.
What God does endures.
And what He does is love His children.
And that endures to children's children.
And the reason it does is because He is able to control what has to happen to make that so.
Verse 19, "The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all."
His love endures past time and trial, even generation upon generation.
And, yet, at the same time He says, "And my rule is from the heavens," as though, again, He is separate in His rule in such a way that He's not upset; He's not surprised; He's not undone by what happens on the earth.
And so when He says He will maintain His love and He will bless those who honor Him, we believe it because we know He is able to rule over all things.
That becomes so important when things have come undone to us.
And we wonder if these words actually apply to us.
Verse 17, "The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments."
Now, we struggle with that a bit.
Wait, you've told me all about this compassion that God has for those who fail; now you say He will bless those who keep His commands, who walk in His ways.
I hope you recognize what a good Father God is.
He is saying to those who fail, "I will love you still."
But failure's not His desire.
Sin and its consequences are not what He hopes.
So He says at the very same moment, "I will forgive and I will hold you and I will help you."
He says, "But here's a better path.
Here are my commands.
If you walk in these commands, if you walk in these ways, I who rules from heaven will bless your obedience to children's children."
Wow, what a promise.
Vince and Casey were affirming that promise today as they were making vows that they would walk in such a way as not to cause a little one to stumble.
As they themselves were affirming this promise of God, that God is saying, "If you walk in My commands, if you walk in My ways, though the world may assault you, though there may be difficulty in your life, I will bring about blessing generation to generation."
And we trust that, because God rules from heaven.
He doesn't rule in the vagaries of earth.
And for that reason, the heavens themselves rejoice.
Verse 20, "Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!
Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will!
Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!"
Did you catch the vastness?
If God is ruling from heaven, if He is making His righteousness rule and His compassion touch generation upon generation, then the heavens themselves are rejoicing, the angels, the ministers of His word.
I don't think that's me: I think those are the ministers who bring the word to the Old Testament saints.
And all creation and ultimately my soul.
From heaven to my heart springs praise, and it's the path to knowing the blessing of God.
After all, what good is it if the angels praise God and my heart can't?
And so God is saying here, "Because you know that I am compassionate and gracious and rule over all, you can trust Me.
And you can return to Me.
And I can restore you.
I have the power for that as well as the heart to do it."
And for that reason, we bless the Lord in our souls, because He is good generation upon generation, not undone by time or trial.
He is so great a God.
I think of the impact upon that blessing when life gets hard through the writings of Kara Tippetts.
Some of you have followed Kara.
She's the wife of a P.C.A. pastor who has struggled with cancer.
It claimed her in March of this year.
Prior to that, her blog was being followed by tens of thousands of people.
Because she was writing of life in its preciousness even against those who wanted assisted suicide to be the course of some.
And she kept talking about the preciousness of life, even in the struggle, of a God who was compassionate and gracious, who was not bound by time or trial, whose blessings would go generation upon generation to children's children.
She wrote what that meant in just the most private of terms: "My greatest prayer," she wrote, "is just to have more time with my children, to focus on their hearts and to shepherd them while I'm here.
It's easy as a parent to want to press beyond where my children are.
There are things I want to talk to them about, things I want to nurture them about, about godly relationships and godly living.
And a five year old just doesn't understand that.
So I realized I get to nurture them now and let them know me now, but then I get to trust them to a covenantal God who's bigger than me, who's bigger than my story.
And so as I grasp for the moments, He has all of their moments for eternity.
And I bless the Lord who is the forever God of me and my children."
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name."
He forgives me and holds me and by His sovereign rule blesses to children's children.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name."