(Note: This sermon was introduced with a dramatic monologue based on the life of John Newton and then a reading of Psalm 103:1-18).
John Newton could’ve written those words. Every word of Psalm 103 cries out that the God of the Bible is the God who cares.
Have you experienced God as the God who cares? Today we’re going to look at God’s attribute of caring for people. Specifically, from the 103rd Psalm we’re going to find six very distinct ways God shows us he cares.
1. God’s Grace
Psalm 103 starts with a very personal tone. Notice who the psalm is addressed to. The psalmist is talking to himself when he says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul." It’s as if he’s trying to stir himself into worship by saying, "Come on soul, it’s time to praise God." The singular personal pronoun dominates vv. 1-9 as the singer sings to himself trying to stir his own soul into worship.
But then starting in v. 10 the scope broadens to include more people than just the psalmist. So while the first 9 verses talk about "me" and "my soul," verses 10 to 18 shift to the plural "our sins," "our iniquities," and "our transgressions." So what starts as a personal song of praise shifts into a congregational song of praise.
Now the word for "praise" in v. 1 is the same word translated "bless" throughout the Old Testament. It might seem odd to you and I that we can bless God, but according to the Bible we can. We bless God by speaking well of him, by calling attention to all the things God has done to enrich our lives (Davidson 335).
In v. 3 we see that the opposite of praising God is forgetting God’s benefits, overlooking all the great things God has done to enrich our lives. Instead of neglecting God’s blessings, the psalmist stirs himself to remember, to praise God, to bless God.
In verses 3 to 5 we encounter GOD’S GRACE, and that’s the first way God shows us he cares. WITH HIS GRACE, GOD SHOWS US HE CARES BY GIVING US GIFTS WE DON’T DESERVE.
We’ll talk more about forgiveness later in the psalm, but notice that in v. 3 we learn that the singer has experienced God’s healing of disease. Now this is not a promise that God will always heal every disease, but it is a statement of praise coming from the psalmist that he’d experienced physical healing. He’d been restored to wholeness, not because of anything he’d done to earn healing, but purely as a gift of grace.
I think about God healing John Newton of the stroke he had when he was 30 years old, and that was a gift of pure grace.
The psalmist had also been rescued from death’s door, redeemed from the pit. That too is an act of sheer grace, a free gift that can’t be earned or bought. Out of gracious love, God had delivered the psalmist from some life-threatening circumstance. Just as John Newton made it home from that terrible storm at sea, God had delivered this psalmist from death’s door.
God had also crowned the psalmist with love and compassion. God had filled the heart of the psalmist with good things. The word "satisfied" in v. 5 is the same word used to describe what it feels like to be full after eating a gourmet meal. We feel content, at ease, satisfied.
God had renewed the psalmist’s strength, so he felt like he could soar like an eagle. All of these "benefits" (v. 2) are examples of God’s grace, examples of good gifts God showers on people who don’t deserve it.
This concept of grace broadens even further in the New Testament, where God’s gift of a personal relationship with him through Jesus Christ is offered as a gift of grace. Listen to the words of the New Testament:
"In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that God lavished on us..." (Eph 1:7-8).
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast" (Eph 2:8-9).
God’s grace is what makes the Christian message unique. Once during a British conference on comparative religions several years ago experts from all over the world came together to debate what belief was unique to the Christian faith. The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room, and his colleagues asked his opinion. Lewis said, "Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace." All the conference attenders had to agree.
Philip Yancey says, "The notion of God’s love coming to us free of charge, with no strings attached seems to go against every instinct of humanity. The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma... the Muslim code of law--each of these offers us a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional" (11).
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not God’s amazing grace.
2. God’s Justice
If vv. 3-5 describe God’s grace, v. 6 describes God’s justice. WITH HIS JUSTICE, GOD CARES FOR US BY TREATING US WITH FARINESS.
By saying "the Lord works righteousness" in v. 6 the psalmist confesses his conviction that God is just. We may see justice miscarried in our own court system, but no one slips through the cracks in God’s courtroom. God works to accomplish righteousness.
God also protects the rights of the oppressed. The "oppressed" are the people in every society who have no one to look out for their welfare and protect their rights. In ancient Israel it was the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner who were usually oppressed. God protects the rights of people who the rest of society turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to.
God cares about you by treating you with fairness. God doesn’t play favorites with people, as if he somehow loves Billy Graham more than he loves Fidel Castro. God is no respector of persons, but he treats everyone with equity.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his justice.
3. God’s Word
In v. 7 we encounter God’s word. WITH HIS WORD, GOD CARES FOR US BY COMMUNICATING HIS TRUTH TO US.
The psalmist says that God made his ways known to Moses. God’s "ways" are the pathways he established for us to live. The idea behind this word is that life is a journey, and that different people choose different roads on this journey. One road leads to destruction, but the road God reveals leads to life, both fullness of life today, and eternal life in heaven. God reveals his ways as signposts for us to navigate the journey of life effectively, so we can stay on the path God has laid out for us.
God made these ways known to Israel through Moses. It was to Moses that God gave the 10 commandments to Israel. It was Moses who was responsible for the first five books of the Old Testament. God’s word came to Israel through Moses.
God’s "deeds" describe God’s saving actions on behalf of Israel. These saving actions include the plagues God sent on Egypt, parting the Red Sea, God sustaining Israel during their 40 years of wilderness wanderings, and so forth. These saving acts communicate God’s truth, just as God’s ways help us walk in God’s path.
For Israel, the Old Testament was God’s communication to them, revealing God’s ways and God’s deeds. But 300 years after the Old Testament was completed, God’s word took on human flesh and lived among us in Jesus Christ. What the Old Testament scriptures looked forward to, Jesus Christ fulfilled as God’s final word. And God’s deeds in Jesus Christ go even beyond the Old Testament, as Jesus lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, and raised from the grave in victory. Jesus’ apostles and first followers wrote their teachings down for us in what we have today as the New Testament, and the New Testament bears witness to God’s living word living among us, Jesus Christ. So if God made some of his ways known through Moses and his deeds to Israel, how much more has God made his ways known through Jesus, and his deeds through Jesus’ resurrection.
Every time you see a New Testament, it should remind you of how much God cares about you.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not God’s word.
4. God’s Love
In v. 8 we encounter God’s love. WITH HIS LOVE, GOD CARES FOR US BY OVERFLOWING IN FAITHFULNESS TO US.
The word translated "love" in v. 8 is the Hebrew word hesed, which combines the two ideas of love and loyalty. Hesed is found 246 times in the Old Testament, and the key component of this word is the idea of a personal relationship based on loyalty and faithfulness. Bible translations struggle with how to translate hesed into English, with some using words like "lovingkindness," "steadfast love," and "faithful love."
The other words in v. 8 are further descriptions of God’s hesed, of his loyal love. The word "compassion" describes the tender affection a parent feels toward a newborn baby.
God’s love renders God as slow to anger. If God’s love means he overflows in faithfulness to us, that means he never gives up on us. Christian musician Steven Curtis Chapman said, "In the message of the New Testament we discover we are far worse off than we thought, and far more loved than we ever dreamed." God never reaches the limits of his love for us; he never throws up his hands in disgust. Live a river that overflows its banks and drenches everything around it, God’s love overflows from his heart, and drenches our lives with his faithfulness.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his incredible faithful love to us.
5. God’s Mercy
If v. 8 describes God’s love, then vv. 9-12 describe God’s mercy. WITH HIS MERCY, GOD CARES FOR US BY PROVIDING US WITH A WAY TO BE FORGIVEN.
In fact, v. 10 is a great definition of mercy: "God doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve." If grace is giving us good gifts we don’t deserve, then mercy is not treating the way we deserve because of the bad things we’ve done. So grace is giving us good gifts, and mercy is withholding judgment.
God’s not the accuser, he doesn’t "endlessly nag or scold us" as The Message translation puts v. 9. God doesn’t hold grudges, allowing resentment to boil over in bitterness. That may be how we tend to act when people sin against us, but God’s not like that. God doesn’t nag or scold us, he doesn’t hold grudges against us.
If God treated us in proportion to our sins and our failures, we’d all be hopeless, condemned to an eternity of separation from God. But instead God provides a way for us to be forgiven. The forgiveness God provides is as broad as the space between heaven and earth. It’s a forgiveness that removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west.
Notice he doesn’t say as far as the north is from the south. If I go north I eventually reach the north pole, cross over, and suddenly I’m going south on the other side of the north pole. So if I go north I’ll eventually reach south. But if I go east I’ll never reach west, but I’ll forever be heading west. This is a way of saying God’s forgiveness is final and complete, just as John Newton the former slave trader turned pastor discovered.
Now forgiveness is never automatic in the Bible. It’s not as if God can just look the other way and pretend like we never sinned. That would be incompatible with his righteousness. How can God "work righteousness" and forgive our sins at the same time? God does it by providing a righteous way for us to be forgiven, and in the Old Testament that came through the sacrificial system. The person who’d sinned brought an animal sacrifice to the Jewish temple, trusting that their sin would somehow be covered and wiped away, and God forgave the person’s sin. God has always provided a way for people to be forgiven, but it’s always been a way that’s consistent with God’s righteousness. People in the Old Testament looked forward to God somehow providing a final way of forgiveness, an ultimate way of washing away sin. The animal sacrifices of the Old Testament merely looked forward to a final sacrifice God would provide.
That’s why when Jesus Christ came, his cousin John the Baptist said, "Look, there’s the lamb of God who takes away the world’s sins." Hundreds of years later, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross would become the basis for the psalmist’s experience of forgiveness in this psalm, even though the singer never heard the name Jesus. He looked forward to the cross just as we look back on the cross. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the turning point of human history, the hinge event that provides the ability for our sins to be taken away as far as the east is from the west.
John Wesley was an ordained minister and had a degree in theology, yet he hadn’t yet received God’s free gift of forgiveness. John tried to earn God’s forgiveness, yet as hard as he worked, it seems his sins followed on his heels. Only after John failed at trying to become a missionary to the Indians in Savannah, Georgia and went back home to England in shame did he encounter God’s way of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
God’s mercy provides us with a way to be forgiven that’s in accord with God’s righteousness.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his forgiving mercy.
6. God’s Patience
In vv. 13 to 18 we discover God’s patience. WITH HIS PATIENCE, GOD CARES FOR US BY UNDERSTANDING OUR LIMITATIONS.
As human beings, our lives are fragile, like dust blowing in the wind, like a flower in a field. In a split instant our lives can end. We try to pretend like we’re strong, but in reality the human condition is frail and weak. We’re constantly aware of our limitations. We can’t heal ourselves of our cancers, we can’t stop those we care about from destroying themselves, we can’t control our children’s decisions.
All around us circumstances confront us that we can’t control or stop. When the winds of time blow over our lives, we’re gone, and in a few generations no one remembers our names.
God understands all this because he designed us, he sees how we were made, he realizes our limitations better than we realize them ourselves. God knows our lives are frayed like a rope that’s about to break, he sees the stress that threatens to fracture our lives into fragments. God understands, and he bears with us, patiently understanding us.God understands you better than you understand yourself.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his unlimited patience.
CONCLUSION
This is how God cares for people: with his grace, his justice, his word, his love, his mercy, and his patience. God demonstrates his care for you by giving you gifts you don’t deserve, by treating you with fairness, by communicating his truth, by overflowing in faithfulness, by providing a way for you to be forgiven, and by understanding your limitations. This cluster of six attributes of God show us how much God cares for us.
But notice what the psalmist says in vv. 17-18.
Ps 103:17-18--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.
Experiencing God’s care in our lives isn’t automatic, but it comes as we enter into a covenant relationship with God. When this psalm was written, the covenant in v. 18 was the mosaic covenant. You entered into the mosaic covenant by becoming Jewish, by being circumcised if you were a man, by entering into the people of Israel, promising to obey the laws of Moses. This made you a part of the covenant community, which ushered you into a personal relationship with God where you experienced his caring in your life.
But when Jesus Christ came, he established a new covenant, a new way of knowing God that’s based on trusting in Jesus, in his life, in his death, and in his resurrection. Instead of being circumcised, we express our entrance into the new covenant with water baptism. You see, the Bible tells us God loves everyone in the world, but people only experience the benefits of that love by entering into a covenant relationship with God.
Have you done that, have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, believing he lived a perfect life that you failed to live and died a sacrificial death that you deserved to die?Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his amazing grace, his perfect righteousness, his revealed word, his loyal love, his forgiving mercy, and his understanding patience.
Sources
Davidson, R. 1998. The Vitality of Worship: A Commentary On the Psalms. Eerdmans.
