The God We Worship
(Psalm 103)
Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Psalm 103 as we continue our series on the book of Psalms. Last week we talked about the kind of worship that pleases God, and we talked briefly about how we don’t just worship an impersonal God that we don’t know anything about. We talked about how we aren’t like the space aliens in Toy Story, and their worship of “The Claw.” And this morning, I want us to go even deeper into reflecting on God’s character. And here’s why:
One of the greatest Christian thinkers of the 20th century was an American pastor named AW Tozer. In his book The Knowledge of the Holy he made a stunning statement. He said,
“What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
AW Tozer
Now, that’s a pretty epic statement. Really? The most important thing? I would say yes, and here’s why: First, our worship of God will never be greater than what we think about God. If we have a shallow, superficial view of God, then we will have shallow, superficial worship. If we think of God primarily as a way for our needs to be met, our wish list to be fulfilled, then we will stop worshiping God when its inconvenient for us to do so.
But let’s make it personal. Tozer goes on to say that people “tend to move toward their mental image of God.” So let’s say, again, that what you think about God is that He exists to make you healthy and wealthy. If that’s the case, then you will move toward God as a means to satisfy your own greed. Which means that you actually aren’t moving toward God at all. On the other hand, Let’s say your view of God is as a demanding, vengeful, wrath-filled deity who is just waiting for you to make a mistake so He can hurl you into Hell. If that’s you, then you are most likely to keep that kind of God at a distance, aren’t you?
And that is why this Psalm is so very important. Of all the Psalms, 103 may give us the most complete picture of God’s character. Just as Psalm 19 gave us a complete picture of God’s Word, 103 gives us a complete picture of Who He is. And if we really get what 103 is saying, then its going to help keep us from creating God in our own image. Being attracted to a false view of God is just as deadly as being driven away from a false view of God.
So, if you are physically able, I invite you to stand in honor of God’s Word.
Read Psalm 103
Pray: AW Tozer’s Prayer at the beginning of The Knowledge of the Holy
O Lord God Almighty, not the God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and the apostles; and better than all, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ:
Those who don’t really know you might call upon You as other than You really are, and so worship not You but a creature of their own making. Therefore, enlighten our minds so that we may know You as You really are, and so love You more perfectly and praise you more worthily.
In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Now, I know this isn’t in your notes, but I want to point out something we see from the first couple of verses of 103: True worship begins with who God is. Not who we are.
1. Worship begins with God, not yourself (v. 1). David starts with a simple command to himself. He says, “Praise the Lord, O my soul”
2. Worship begins with praise, not requests. “All that is within me, bless His holy name.” Last week we talked about how we teach our children to say please and thank you. But in worship, we say thank you, and then please.
3. True worship begins by remembering what you have, not what you lack: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
So, first thing, right off, let’s make a decision that when we come to worship God, we are going to tell Him how great He is.
Now, verses 3-5 read a little like a job decription. On the surface, these verses seem to just be descriptions of what God does. But here’s what you need to fill in on your notes:
We know Who God is because of what God is doing (vv. 3-5)
And notice that it doesn’t say “What God has done,” but what God is doing. Each of these verbs in the Hebrew is an active participle, which means that it represents an action or condition in its unbroken continuity, and corresponds to the English verb, "to be" with the present participle. It may be used of present, past or future time. In the Hebrew, each phrase begins with
Definite Article + Participle
So it reads like a title. If we were trying to go word for word from the Hebrew, it would read
• The One Forgiving all of the iniquity of you.
• The One Healing of all the diseases of you
• The One Redeeming from the pit the life of you.
You get the point. And who knew Yoda spoke Hebrew? So let’s look at these one by one:
1. He forgives sin because He is “The One Forgiving” (Jehovah Salach)
David, the author of Psalm 103 knew what it was like to need forgiveness. In 2 Samuel 11 we read about his most epic fail: He committed adultery. He got the woman he slept with pregnant. He arranged to have her husband killed.
• In Psalm 51 David wrote, “I know my transgressions and My sin is ever before me.” Do you know what feels like? Are you dealing with the guilt and shame of sin in your past? If so, let Hebrew grammar change your life this morning! David says, “The Lord forgives [present tense] the Lord forgives all my sins.” How many of my sins does he forgive? All of them. He forgave when I asked him to.
1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
But then we keep on sinning, so:
• He forgave us in the past,
• He forgives us in the present,
• He will forgive us in the future.
2. He heals diseases because He is “The One Healing” (Jehovah Rapha)
Did you know that your body is constantly being healed?
Rub your arm for a second. You know what you just did? You just deposited over one hundred thousand dead skin cells on the floor. Your body is a death machine that is constantly being rejuvenated by the Lord. Every seven years, every cell in your body is replaced by a completely new one.
You want to do something gross someday, take a clean white rag or a clean white handkerchief, and stick it on the end of the nozzle on your vacuum cleaner, then vacuum your mattress. Within thirty seconds, your rag will be covered with dead skin cells. Dead cells from which God is healing you even as we speak! Because he is Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals.
Some of you may look at a verse like this and say, well this proves the Bible isn’t true. This says God heals all diseases, and people die of disease every day. And that’s true. But let me point out two things: first, being healed doesn’t necessarily mean being cured. Healing means wholeness. It means you aren’t identified by your disease. Your identity comes from who you are in Christ. Second, those who are in Christ are on a timeline that stretches into eternity. We all will experience ultimate healing in the life to come.
3. He redeems us because He is “The One Redeeming” (Jehovah Ga’al)
A third name and a third reason David gives thanks is because God is Jehovah Ga’al. Say, “Jehovah Ga’al.” Jehovah Ga’al is the Lord who redeems.
To redeem is to be bought back. You know what it’s like to be bought back?
Have you ever watched the Father of the Bride movies? In the second movie, George and Nina decide that now that their kids are grown, they’re going to move to a smaller place. They’re going to downsize.
So they sell their house to a business guy who’s going to tear it down and build two smaller houses in its place.
Then they discover they’re pregnant again. They can’t stand the idea of this new baby growing up in any house other than the one they raised their first two kids in. So George goes to the business guy and says, “I want to buy my house back.”
The guy says, “Sure. I’ll sell it to you for twice what I paid for it.”
George can’t believe it. But he pays the double price because he can’t stand the thought of his youngest child growing up anywhere other than their family home.
The Bible says that Jesus bought us back at a huge price. Far more than double our worth. He made, so he owns us. He knit us together in our mother’s womb. But then we grew up and went our own way.
God couldn’t stand the thought of us living anywhere other than the family home. So he sent his son to buy us back. We were bought back. Praise the Lord, O my soul. All my inmost being, praise his holy name. Because he bought me back.
He is Jehovah Ga’al, the Lord who redeems me.
4. He crowns and protects us because He is “The One Crowning” (Jehovah Ater)
In the Hebrew, there are two different ways that this verb “ater” is used. The first is to crown someone. When David became king of Israel, he was crowned. But the verb is also used to describe the protection of an encircling army. And both of them are true. God both crowns us and encircles us with His loving kindness. Imagine a dad grabbing his toddler and squeezing him for all his worth. That’s what our heavenly Father does to us. He encircles us with his love.
We’ve talked about this word chesed before. It’s God’s covenant, unfailing love.
5. He satisfies us because He is “The One Satisfying” (Jehovah Saba)
Verse five says that God “satisfies us with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” How many of us get worn out and old because we aren’t satisfied? Or how many of us abuse our bodies because we are trying to find satisfaction in things that are bad for us? But God satisfies us with good. Over and over in the Psalms God promises to satisfy us with good things.
• Psalm 81:6: he would feed you[fn] with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
• Psalm 90:14: Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
• Psalm 91:16: With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
• Psalm 104:28: when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
• Psalm 107:9 For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
• Psalm 145:16: You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
Man and woman fell in the Garden when Satan convinced them that God alone wasn’t enough to satisfy them.
So, just to recap, it was AW Tozer that argued that “what we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” However, there was actually another great Christian thinker of the 20th century that disagreed with Tozer. Many of you may be more familiar with CS Lewis.
“What God thinks about when He thinks about us is the most important thing about us”
CS Lewis
Don’t get me wrong. My goal this morning isn’t for us to try to stage a smackdown between AW Tozer and CS Lewis. Because the fact is, I think they are both right. Tozer’s point was that we can’t properly relate to God if we have an improper understanding of who He is. But Lewis’s point is that we wouldn’t be able to relate to Him at all—properly or improperly, if God didn’t love us, delight in us, pursue us, seek a relationship with us. So let’s finish our time in Psalm 103 by looking into what it says about what God thinks about us:
We know what God thinks of us because of what He has done for us.
1. He works for the oppressed (v. 6)
God is a God of justice and righteousness. Not just for a certain nation or a preferred group of people. Look closely at verse 6. How many of the oppressed does God work justice and righteousness for? All of them. There aren’t any qualifiers here. All means all. All means black and white, and brown. All means rich and poor. All means Democrat and Republican. All means citizen and alien. All means all.
2. He reveals His ways to the ignorant (v. 7)
While God is concerned for those of every tribe and nation, Scripture consistently points out that God has a special relationship with the people of Israel. He made himself known to Moses, and to the people of Israel. We are beneficiaries of that because we have been grafted on to that branch (see Romans 11:11-31). But don’t miss the fact that we couldn’t know anything about God without God making himself known to us.
3. He forgives the sinful (v. 8-13)
These are some of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture. The Lord is merciful and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. In the Hebrew, that phrase “slow to anger” literally means “long of nose.” Which sounds a little weird. But think about it this way: You ever seen a cartoon of an angry bull? How are they usually pictured? That’s right. Smoke coming out of their nostrils. And often in Scripture, when God is angry, He is pictured the same way (see Psalm 18:8, Job 27:3). So to describe God as “long of nose” means that it takes him a long time to get angry.
God doesn’t repay us in proportion to our sins. We deserve separation from God forever in hell because of our sin. But God is long-nosed toward us—
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” For how many of us does God abound in love and not treat us according to our iniquities? All of us.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Ps. 103: 11–12)
Think about this for a minute:
• How high are the heavens above the earth? Infinitely high.
• How great therefore is his love for those who fear him? Infinitely great.
• How far is the east from the west? Infinitely far.
• How far has he removed our transgressions from us? Infinitely far!
This is one of the greatest promises in all of Scripture:
• It tells us that no matter what we’ve done, God’s love for us is bigger than whatever that is.
• It tells us that no matter how far and how long we’ve sinned, God’s forgiveness for us is farther and longer than our sin.
4. He understands our weakness (v. 14-19)
Why does God have compassion on us? He knows how we are formed. We’re made up of tiny dust particles, for crying out loud.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more. (Ps. 103:15–16)
Our lives are short!
But from everlasting to everlasting
the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts. (Ps. 103:17–18)
Our lives are short, but his love is long!
“The LORD has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules over all.” Over how much? All. How much is that? All.
So I have a crappy day. The Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules over all. So what can a day do to me? What can a person do to me? What can separate me from his love?
Romans 8:38-39 says,
38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If someone gave his life for you, then you never have to question where you stand with them. All the insecurity that comes from wondering how someone feels about you? That’s off the table. God has already demonstrated his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. End of discussion.
So what are we going to walk away from this sermon with? How does this make a difference? I want us to end with three truths from God’s word that, if we take these to heart, I really believe they will make a difference in how we live our days this week.
1. God is who He says He is.
2. God will do what He says He will do.
3. I am who God says I am.
