April 12

Psalm 103

1 By David

Praise the LORD, O my soul.

With all that is within me, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the LORD, O my soul.

Do not forget all his kind deeds.

3 He is the one who forgives all your sins,

who heals all your diseases,

4 who delivers your life from the Pit,

Who crowns you with his loyal love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your life with good things,

so your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.

6 The LORD does what is fair,

and executes justice for all the oppressed.

7 The LORD revealed his faithful acts to Moses,

his deeds to the Israelites.

8 The LORD is compassionate and merciful;

he is patient and demonstrates great loyal love.

9 He does not always accuse

and does not stay angry.

10 He does not deal with us as our sins deserve;

he does not repay us as our misdeeds deserve.

11 For as the skies are high above the earth,

so his loyal love towers over his faithful followers.

12 As far as the eastern horizon is from the west,

so he removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us.

13 As a father has compassion on his children,

so the LORD has compassion on his faithful followers.

14 For he knows what we are made of;

he realizes we are made of clay.

15 A person’s life is like grass.

Like a flower in the field it flourishes,

16 but when the hot wind blows, it disappears,

and one can no longer even spot the place where it once grew.

17 But the LORD continually shows loyal love to his faithful followers

and is faithful to their descendants,

18 to those who keep his covenant,

who are careful to obey his commands.

19 The LORD has established his throne in heaven;

his kingdom extends over everything.

20 Praise the LORD, you angels of his,

you powerful warriors who carry out his decrees

and obey his orders.

21 Praise the LORD, all you warriors of his,

you servants of his who carry out his desires.

22 Praise the LORD, all that he has made,

in all the regions of his kingdom.

Praise the LORD, O my soul (Psalm 103, NET).

What a lovely psalm! This particular one, with its praise focus and its exuberant language to describe the goodness of God’s character has been the inspiration for so many choruses and hymns over the centuries of worship of the compassionate and merciful God. I’m sure, if you’ve been around worship services of any Christian tradition, you’ll recognize some of the phrases or ideas.

A few things want pointing out. First off, this is written by one of the “great men” of his era, King David. One of the reasons why David is reckoned among the righteous is not because he was always a “good man”, but because of his faith in God, and his humility when he was confronted with his sin. David built a habit of repentance, and we get some wonderful language from him in this poem/prayer/song to describe God’s commitment to restoration when one repents, and to the relief of carrying one’s burden of guilt and shame one can experience through repenting to God. I want to come back to this theme a little more further down.

I also love the inclusio used to frame the psalm – “Praise the LORD, O my soul” is the first idea as well as the last idea. This is a bit of a weird thing to say, to exhort your soul to do something. Why doesn’t he just do it? I think there are a couple of things going on. First, worship is something we all do (whether we’re aware of it or not), but it’s not always something that we want to do, that we enjoy doing, to take time to worship God. We don’t always feel it. Nevertheless, worshipping God is the right thing to do, He is the only one worthy (“worship” is an English compound word from Old English, initially “worth-ship”), and so it is our responsibility to do this whether we feel love towards God or not. After reminding himself to think through the “why” of worship (verse 2, “Do not forget…”), David goes about rehearsing a bunch of the reasons for worshipping God and by the time you get through the psalm, the “Praise the LORD, O my soul” has become a loving response rather than an instruction.

Second, I think David also self-consciously is giving us direction in this by making himself an example. He’s also needing this instruction, and so by including himself in this, shows himself to be an effective leader of corporate worship. One of the things that makes this so effective is that he spends very little time in the course of the psalm on his psychological or emotional state, just those initial instructions and then the final response, and spends the rest of the time with his eyes off himself, with his eyes fixed on God, his saviour, his forgiver, the commander of the angel armies, the worthy One. I’d suggest that many of our modern worship choruses and songs would benefit from a more determined placing of one’s attention on the right object of worship.

“Soul” is an interesting word. In Hebrew, it’s nephesh, and can be translated “throat” as well. The notion is that it’s the spot from which one’s breath emanates. There’s a clear linking of physical behaviour, actually speaking or singing praise, and spiritual behaviour, worshipping, which is implied in this hylomorphic (humans as a complex unity) rather than dualistic (body and soul/spirit being discrete entities) way of talking about the human person. According to the Bible, we’re not ghosts in a meat machine. We’re simultaneously and interrelatedly physical/spiritual beings and the behaviours we do with our bodies simply are spiritual. This understanding holds up well to scrutiny and reflection – it makes sense of things like conscience, innocence, guilt, kindness, compassion, all the important things, the meanings behind our actions.

So, David rehearses all of the stuff about God’s character that show Him to be worthy of worship with our physical/spiritual selves. God knows what He made, people “made of clay” (verse 14), and we’ve fallen short of the standard of goodness He set. Nevertheless, and David knew this intimately, when we come to God in humility, God’s response is not to mock us or scorn us or send us away, beggars though we are. It’s to forgive. The way God describes Himself to Moses in the Torah is first as the self-sufficient One (I am), but the most common throughout the Old Testament is that formulation you see in verse 8, “gracious and compassionate” in many translations, “compassionate and merciful” in the NET from which I’m working. Once again, we’re seeing the lie that the Old Testament is showing a vengeful, wrathful God. In fact, the Old Testament is a lengthy discussion of God’s patience with a humankind generally, and then an Israel specifically, that repeatedly fails to recognize His worth-ship. In this catalogue of humanity’s failures, Psalm 103 sticks out as a beautiful bright spot, a call to remember just Who made us, and the way that He commits to us so strongly, that even our sins, our lack of holiness, our missing the mark, none of this stops Him from extending His compassion to us. And when we come to Him the only way we can, humbly, He responds by removing our guilt from us, as far as the east is from the west (verse 12).

All this meditation on God’s compassion isn’t enough for David though. He then gets excited and describes God’s permanence, His sovereignty over all affairs, human or cosmic, and describes how even the heavenly beings, the sun, moon, and stars, and the mighty angels who govern these, obey the commands of the Creator God. Their existence is an existence of worship, pointing, orienting, all creation to exalt the merciful and compassionate God. David’s response is an example for us. The angels sing His praise, and we should join them. “Praise the LORD, O my soul” indeed!

My prayer for you as you meditate on this further is that you are encouraged by God’s persistent mercy to you, that you learn to rehearse the ways that God has come through for you, maybe even when you weren’t looking for Him to, and to cast your cares on Him because He does care for you, like a good father having compassion on his children. I also pray that you’ll take time to drag your attention back to these things, and to recall yourself to proper worship of the Worthy One.

Next week's text is Hebrews 11.