Bless the Lord, O My Soul!
Psalm 103:1–5, 11–18
1Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
3 Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases,
4 Who redeems your life from destruction,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
5 Who satisfies your mouth with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
11For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
12As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father pities his children,
So the Lord pities those who fear Him.
14 For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
16 For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.
17 But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
18 To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your mercies that are new every morning. If it wasn’t for your mercy, we would have nothing. If it wasn’t for the sending of your Son Jesus Christ to pay for our sins, even what we have would be meaningless. But since Jesus has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west, we have hope and comfort in this life and the next. Grant us faith to humbly acknowledge you for all these mercies, which you abundantly give to us. Amen.
Dear Friends in Christ,
One of the earliest lessons mothers drum into their children is “Don’t forget to say thank you.” From birth we are naturally ungrateful and so this can be a tough task for any parent. But when children finally begin to say, “thank you” without any prompting from mom or dad, it is a sign of maturity for the child (and perhaps persistent parenting). They are beginning to realize that the things they receive are from the work and effort of others on their behalf.
Tomorrow, we celebrate Thanksgiving. Despite the wide variety of social, religious, and ethnic diversities in this country, we recognize that we have much for which to be thankful. Thanksgiving is one of the few National Holidays that has made its way into the church. But giving thanks did not just begin with the Pilgrims, it’s as old as the Bible. God’s people have been praising and thanking God from the beginning because in mature faith, they recognize that everything they have is from their good and gracious God.
Yet, King David, the author of this Psalm, also understood how easily we can forget to say “thank you” to God for all his blessings and benefits. So, he rightfully admonishes us to not forget by singing, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”
“And forget not all His benefits.” David doesn’t want us just to be thankful, he wants us to be thankful to God—to remember his benefits, blessings, and actions. We are to remember that they are from God. Only unbelief doesn’t recognize God for his blessings. Listen to the two reasons Paul gives in Romans for why so many had fallen from the faith, “because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). The two factors that led to unbelief were that the people did not glorify or thank God.
This week, I’m sure you heard people emphasizing the importance of being thankful. People encourage us to be thankful but fail to mention that we should be thankful to God. We are told how important it is to give thanks, but few mention to whom we should give thanks.
Doesn’t that strike you as odd? To just give generic thanks into the void? But we are giving thanks to someone. But it’s not God. Our default position is to thank ourselves. We may say we are thankful for our homes, car, clothes, family, friends, and good health, but we do it while patting ourselves on the back: “I am so thankful for all these things for which I have worked so hard. I have tried hard to diet and exercise, and my good health shows it! I have much because I have worked much. I deserve it all.”
When we take credit for ourselves, we are stealing it from God. We haven’t earned it, nor do we deserve it. This is why David reminds us that we are to give thanks to God. He is the one who made us; he is the one who takes care of us. Everything that we have is from God. But when David lists all the things he is thankful for, did you notice what was at the top of his list? The forgiveness of sins.
The forgiveness of sins is the fountain source of all of God’s blessings. Without the forgiveness of sins, all the things we have would mean nothing. We can’t take them with us. Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” Without the forgiveness of sins our souls would be lost. For our sins we deserve death and hell. The Lord knew that we could not save ourselves.
David says, “For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass… But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.” Our lives our temporary; God is eternal. But by God’s everlasting love and mercy, he sought to overcome our sin and save us.
John writes, “This is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). God saw us in our sin. He saw our weakness. As a father has compassion on his children, God had compassion on us, giving his own Son to be our Savior so that we could have the hope of eternal life and peace with God.
The greatest gift we have is Jesus. For he came to save us from our sin and death. He did this by living a perfect life for us. Jesus gave perfect thanks to the Father throughout his life. With joy and thanksgiving, he went forward to the cross for you and me. He took the heavy load of our sins to the cross so that they might be removed from you, “As far as the east is from the west.”
Exactly how far is the east from the west? Well, you can’t go far enough east to get west. East and west never meet. That’s the point! When God forgives you your sins—you and your sins never meet again. God’s mercy and forgiveness are immeasurable. We can never reach the end of God’s mercy. Because of Jesus, we can have the hope of heaven!
“Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name!”
Yet, God’s mercies do not end with forgiveness. The Lord’s mercies are new every morning. You all have clothes, tomorrow you will say, “I ate too much,” you have family, friends, home, and everything that is needed for this life. And God is the one who gave it to you. He is the one who knows your needs. He is the one who knows your weaknesses. And he is the one that satisfies your needs.
As you look back at this past year, you may have things which you are extremely thankful for and other things that maybe you’d like to forget. We also don’t know what lies ahead of us in the coming year. But we can be thankful because we know what lies before us for eternity. We know that in Jesus, our sins have been forgiven. We also know that as we go about our short lives here on earth, not even sickness or death can separate us from God’s love. As Paul says echoing King David, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8).
As we go about our Thanksgiving festivities, we know who to thank—our good and merciful Lord whose love never fails, whose mercies never end.
“Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits.” Amen!
+ + +