The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): As sinful human beings, we grow cold to the blessings of God, especially when things are going well. It may comfort you to know that even King David needed a reminder of God's goodness.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Dr. Boice reminds us that it's a terrible thing to forget the blessings of God and that being spiritually lukewarm is an all too common disease. Let's listen as Dr. Boice considers Psalm 103 and reminds us of the reasons we are to praise God, remembering to count our many blessings when we suffer from a cold, unthankful heart.

Dr. James Boice: I want to turn your attention today to the 103rd Psalm, one of the great Psalms in the Psalter, and the way I'm going to handle it is by asking a lot of questions. I will ask questions of the Psalm itself that will take us through the teaching of the various stanzas, but I'm going to begin and end with questions not directed to the Psalm, but rather directed to ourselves. The question I want to begin with is this: Have you ever asked yourself who the Psalms are spoken to? That is, to whom are they addressed?

Well, the obvious answer to that, I suppose, is that they're addressed to God. That's probably right, at least most of them are, but not all of them. Some are addressed to other people. There are Psalms that are addressed to the righteous, some to sinners, some to Israel, some to the Gentile nations and other groups. In this Psalm, Psalm 103, the Psalmist is addressing himself. You say, that's unusual, himself? Why would he address words to himself?

Well, the answer isn't very hard to find. You only have to go as far as verse two to learn why. It's to remind himself of God's blessings so he'll continue to be grateful for all that God has done for him. Roy Clements is a Baptist pastor of the Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge, England. He's written a very helpful book on a number of the Psalms, and he has a study of this. He explains it this way: "The Psalmist is cataloging the goodness of God, emulating His blessings, lest in a moment of depression or backsliding, he should forget the source of his prosperity and take God's grace for granted."

Well, here's another question for us as we begin: Do we take God's grace for granted? Do you take God's grace for granted? I'm sure we do many times. Some people murmur against God all the time, even though God gives them life and health and all sorts of other things. People murmured against God, complained against God, criticized God in David's day. They still do today, but David in this Psalm says that he wants his words to be words of praise.

John Stott said of this Psalm, "We have here the authentic utterance of a redeemed child of God who piles up words to express his gratitude to the God of grace." Now, there are a number of good hymns based on this Psalm, which is what we would expect of such a great praise Psalm. One comes from the Psalter of 1912. This is the hymn with which we began our worship service: "O come, my soul, bless thou the Lord thy Maker, all within me praise His holy name. Bless thou the Lord, forget not all His mercies, His pardoning grace and saving love proclaim." Every stanza of the hymn is based upon Psalm 103.

Or there's a hymn from 1680 that was translated about 200 years later by Catherine Winkworth into English: "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation." We sing that many times. And there's this great hymn of Henry Lyte's from 1834. We're going to end the service by singing this hymn: "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven, to His feet your tribute bring; ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, who like me His praise should sing? Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise the everlasting King." As we study the Psalm, you'll see that all of those phrases come from the Psalm as well.

There's another hymn that was popular some years ago that is not based on Psalm 103 but captures the ideas that are in it, and many of us know that. It's the one that goes, "Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done." That's what David is doing here, and it's also what he's encouraging us to do.

Now, Psalm 103 and Psalm 104 go together. They're a pair of praise Psalms. We're going to look at some of the comparisons next time when we look at Psalm 104. There are probably no two twin Psalms in all the Psalter praising God that are greater than these two Psalms. In this fourth book of the Psalter, this is the last Psalm and only one of two that's attributed to David. It is very interesting, although we're going to find 15 more of them in Book Five, that is, the last book of the Psalter.

Now, I've asked a number of questions of us sort of by way of introduction. Let me ask some questions of the Psalm now, arranging them in a way that help us follow the thought of the Psalmist as we look through it from stanza to stanza. The first question I want to ask is this: How should a person praise God?

Well, there are lots of ways you can answer that. You could say with many instruments and making a loud noise. You could say we ought to praise God with harmonicas. All of that would be perfectly valid, but that's not the answer that David is giving here. The answer is in verses one and two: it is with all my inmost being, or with all my soul. You see that there: "Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being, praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits."

In these verses, David is rousing himself to remember God's benefits or blessings, and what he's saying is that he doesn't want to do it superficially. He wants to do it with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and with all his strength, to use that great verse from Deuteronomy that also was used by Jesus Christ as the first and greatest of the commandments.

This might not be a bad place to look at the "alls," A-L-L, in the Psalm. Notice, David wants to praise God with all his inmost being, verse one, and for all His benefits, verse two, which includes forgiveness for all my sins and the healing of all my diseases, verse three. Later, as we get to the end of the Psalm, we'll find him calling on all God's heavenly hosts and all His works to join him in his praise.

Well, right at the beginning here, that's a great rebuke for a lot of what passes for praise or worship in our assemblies. We come to church, but we leave our minds at home. We're thinking of something else that's far from God and His ways, and so we're not worshipping God with our minds. Or we hear of God's grace, we understand that intellectually, but our hearts are hard. Our hearts are far from Him, and so we're not worshipping God with our hearts.

Jonathan Edwards, when he was talking about worship, said there's no true worship of God that doesn't touch the affections. That was his choice word for it. And yet as far as we're concerned, we come to church and we're often strangely unaffected. It's sort of what Jesus was saying when he spoke about Israel. He says they honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him. And so right at the beginning, we have a challenge.

Now, what's the problem? Well, the problem is simply that we have forgotten God's many benefits or mercies to us. It's human to forget, and we have to wrestle with that all the time, but we should remind ourselves again and again that it's a very terrible thing to forget. It's bad to forget favors that somebody has done for us, or to forget our parents who have raised us and cared for us, or forget friends who have held us up in difficult times. We know that's bad, but if that's bad, how much worse is it to forget the benefits and the blessings of God? And yet we do it.

I think of some passages in the Bible. How about these words that were spoken about Hezekiah, who it said forgot the blessings of God? His heart was proud, and he did not respond to the kindness shown him. Therefore, the Lord's wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem. It's a way of saying it's very serious to forget God's blessings.

Or here's a paragraph I'd like to read. It's from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. Here's a warning that God is giving to the Israelites. They're not yet in their land; they're still out in the wilderness, but the time is coming when they'll possess the land. God's going to bless them; He's going to give them houses, and God warns them now, "Don't forget when that happens."

Here's what He says: "When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to obey His commands, His laws, and His decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."

"He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, 'My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms His covenant, which He swore to your forefathers, as it is today."

That sounds almost as if those words were written directly to Americans living in the latter part of the 20th century, we who have been so blessed with material things. It's a warning from heaven: remember your God when you're blessed, lest you get proud in your heart and say, "I'm the one who's done it and I've done it by myself."

So, here's the question I'm asking next: Why should a person praise God? And the answer is because of all His many benefits. Now David gives the answer in verse two, "Forget not all His benefits," and then he lists what he means by God's benefits in verses three through five. What are they? First of all, the forgiveness of sins, verse three. This is the very first thing he's thankful for, and rightly so, because this is the greatest of all the gifts we can ever receive from God.

It is true that we have to remember to thank God for all the other benefits—for the houses and the wealth and the herds and the bank accounts and all of that, the very things that God warned the Israelites not to forget Him for in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy—but what if you would gain all of that? What if you would have the houses and the wealth and the bank accounts and everything else and lose your soul? Where would you be then?

The other things are blessings, but you see the greatest of all blessings is the forgiveness of sins. Remember that David was a rich man. He was the King of Israel; he had a great many possessions, but he understood that the greatest blessing he had ever received from God was the forgiveness of his sins. Now, some of the statements that occur in the first part of the Psalm reoccur later on, and they're amplified later on, and that's what happens here.

Verse three says He forgives all my sins. That's dealing with the number of the sins that are forgiven. That's what David is saying, but you go a little bit further, you get to verse 12, and here you find him elaborating on that by bringing in the scope of the deliverance. He's delivered me from my sins, but to what extent has He delivered me? And the answer He gives is this: "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

Now, east and west are directions; they're not points on the compass. And so what David is probably saying here is that there is an infinite, you might want to say an unmeasurable, distance between them. Or it may be, as Clements suggests in that study of the Psalm I mentioned a moment ago, that what he's trying to point out here is that however many miles you think lie between east and west, you can't look both directions at once.

Here's the way Clements puts it: "When God forgives us, He puts our sin and us on two different horizons. So when He looks at our sin, He's no longer looking at us, and when He looks on us, He's no longer looking at our sin." I don't know if that's exactly what David is thinking of, but that's good biblical theology because that's exactly what Paul means when he's explaining the work of God and he says He justifies us. That is, He's counting us as if we had never sinned because our sins are on Christ and the righteousness of Jesus Christ is on us. When God looks at us, He doesn't see our sin.

Verse three mentions something else, the second thing David is thankful for, and that is healing—healing all his diseases. Now, that verse has played an important but unwarranted role in some systems of theology that stress what is often called "healing in the atonement." It means that if you have been saved from your sin by Jesus Christ, therefore you either have healing or you have the right to healing from every physical ailment you might have. Now, that's bad theology.

It's bad theology because it's simply not true that God heals all the physical infirmities of His people. He heals many of them, but He doesn't always do it. And the Bible teaches, if you look at what it says about illness as a whole, that God has His purposes in illness. Sometimes He sends it into our lives to accomplish something very significant that wouldn't happen in any other way. So that's not what he means. Well, you say, what does the sentence mean then?

Some have suggested that when David says He heals all my diseases, what he's saying is that He heals all my spiritual diseases, so I become a whole person spiritually. Now, I don't believe that's what he's saying. I think he really is talking about physical diseases, but what he's saying is this: that when he is healed, as he often has been, it's God who has done it. In other words, He's the healer of the body as well as of the soul.

Take the matter of benefits. He gives me all my benefits. Does that mean we have every benefit we could possibly have? No, a sentence like that means that what benefits I've been given all come from God. And so when David says He heals all my diseases, he doesn't mean that he's been healed of every disease he could possibly have, but when God heals him, as He often has, it's from God. So, health, when we have it, is a gift from God, and when illness comes, we have to look toward God's purposes in that as well. But here he's been healed and he's praising God for it.

Now thirdly, he talks about redemption from the pit. In my judgment, this reinforces the interpretation I just gave of the previous verse because when he talks about the pit, he's talking about Sheol. That's where the dead go when they die. The Hebrew word is Sheol. And what he's saying is not that God has rescued him from Sheol by taking him to heaven, because he isn't in heaven yet. He's still on earth; he's writing the Psalm. What he means is that God rescued him from the brink of death. In other words, brought him back from the edge of the pit, so he's healthy once again.

Even that isn't the whole of it because when you get to verse five, he adds one thing more: he says He satisfies me with good things. And furthermore, He's done it so my youth is renewed like the eagles. Hasn't that been your experience of God? He's been good to you if you've known Him and you're following in His way, as David obviously is. Hasn't He enriched your life with many good things? Well then, the bottom line of that is that you should praise Him.

Now we looked at verses one through five, and I'm sure you've noticed that they're very personal. David wants to praise God himself with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. He's praising God for forgiveness of sin and the other items that I have mentioned. When he passes on to verses six through 18, he seems to be talking here about God's grace to other people, particularly to Israel. And that's caused a lot of the commentators or the scholars to separate verses five and six and make the first five verses the first stanza.

Well, there's something to be said for that, but in my judgment, what he's really doing now from this point on is beginning to talk about the character of God. It's true that there's a difference between the first part and what comes down, but it's not that he's thinking about himself and others so much as now he turns his attention to God and he's saying, "What kind of a God is He that we should praise Him?" That's the question I want to ask as we go into this. What kind of God is He? What's God like that we should praise Him?

Now, a number of answers come in. Just scan through these verses with me. Look what it says: He's one who works righteousness and justice for the oppressed. Isn't it good we have a God like that? Verse six. He says that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, verse eight. He does not always accuse; He will not harbor His anger forever, verse nine. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities, verse 10. Indeed, His love is from everlasting to everlasting with those who fear Him and His righteousness with their children's children, verse 17.

Now, what those statements are doing—all of them—are basically variations of a single point, and what they're saying is God is gracious. God is a merciful God, God's a compassionate God. That's a way of saying virtually the same thing. David has in mind here is the revelation of Himself that God gave to Moses on the mountain when Moses had asked if he could see God's face. You find it in Exodus 33 and 34. We've referred to it on other occasions because it's referred to in the Bible on many occasions.

It was a great memory in the historical mind of Israel. They looked back to Moses and they remembered that he had said to God, "God, I want to see Your face." What did God say? God replied, "You can't see My face; no mortal can look upon My face and live. It would mean instant death for you if you did." But God said, "I'll do the next best thing. There's a mountain there, I'll put you on the mountain, I'll cover you with My hand, and then I'll pass by, and you'll see Me as I move away, but you won't see My face."

And so that's what God did, and the text tells us how God revealed Himself to Moses. Here it is, Exodus 33:5-7: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin." Now, that's exactly what's referred to in verse seven, where David says He made known His ways to Moses, His deeds to the people of Israel. He's talking about that revelation because in the next verse, verse eight, he actually quotes Exodus 33:6: "The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love."

Now, I said a moment ago that that is referred to many times in the Old Testament. Indeed, it's quoted many times in the Old Testament: Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, this text Psalm 103, verse eight, Psalm 145, verse eight, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2. It obviously meant a lot to Israel. It was sort of for them the equivalent of that answer that we give from the Westminster Shorter Catechism when the question is asked, "What is God?"

And our answer is, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." A creedal statement having to do with the character of God. A Jewish person might very well have answered that same question by saying something like this: "God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love." Now, it's because of that characteristic that God forgives our sins, heals our diseases, rescues us from the pit, and satisfies us with all good things. We don't deserve any of it, do we? But because He's a compassionate, merciful God, we receive it, and we receive it in abundance.

One more thing to be said about God's mercy, and that is David compares that as the mercy of a father for his children in verse 13: "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him." That's what God is like. We call Him our Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ taught us to do that. He called God Father, and then he said, "I've called God Father, you can call God Father too." And so we begin the Lord's Prayer by saying, "Our Father who art in heaven."

Now, I ask another question of the Psalm as we draw to the end, and it's this: who should praise God? Now, the answer we might expect is this: those whom God has forgiven, those whom He has redeemed from the pit, and certainly they should. But that's not what the Psalmist says as we come to the last stanza, verses 19 through 22. We find here that he's not satisfied with the thought that only the redeemed should praise God. God is so great that nothing but the praise of all creation will do.

And so we find him crying out, "Praise the Lord, you His angels," verse 20. "Praise the Lord, all His heavenly hosts," verse 21. "Praise the Lord, all His works," verse 22. And then finally, once again, "Praise the Lord, O my soul," verse 22. These final praises in that last stanza echo the praises of the opening lines. Sort of ties the Psalm together. It's true they broaden out. At the beginning, David is speaking personally; as he gets to the end, he broadens it out to include all of the angels and all creation and all the works of God.

But lest you get the idea that somehow he's forgetting himself, he goes back at the very end and he wraps it up by saying, "Oh yes, praise the Lord, O my soul." There's no missing the point that David wants to praise God himself more than anything. And so we come to the very end, and we need to ask some questions of ourselves again. We started out that way. I've been asking questions of the Psalm up to this point, but here I turn to myself and I turn to you, and I ask questions like this: Number one, is there praise in your heart to God? And secondly, do you have a share in the blessings for which God should be praised?

Let's take the first one. Is there any real praise in your heart to God? That's a question for Christians. Roy Clements, whom I quoted earlier, asks it directly. He says we need to ask ourselves whether or not there's any real praise in our hearts. It's easy to come to church out of habit; it's easy to repeat "Amen" without ever really speaking to God. It's easy to hear sermons without ever really listening to God. Spiritual lukewarmness is a common disease.

If that's our condition, then we like David need to talk to ourselves. We need to stir up our hearts to a more appropriate emotional response to the truth about God that we know. If you find your heart cold, then do what David did and count your blessings. If you're a Christian, it may be that the most important part of this study of Psalm 103 today is that you do just that, that you'll make a note of the blessings that God has bestowed upon you, that you might go home and write them down and actually get down on your knees and thank God for the many blessings, and ask Him to warm a cold heart that has come over a period of months or years to take these things for granted.

And then there's this last question: Do you have any real share in these blessings? At first glance, it might seem that David is thinking of everybody when he's calling upon creation to praise Him because that's the way he speaks. But actually, this isn't so. The blessings he speaks of are for those who fear Him, verse 17, and for those who keep His covenant and remember to obey His precepts, verse 18. So what he wants us to ask is that kind of personal question: Have I experienced forgiveness of sins? Has God redeemed my life from the pit? Has God satisfied me with good things? Have I discovered for myself, and do I truly know that the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love?

Do you know that? Do you have a share in those blessings? If not, then I want to suggest that the only place you'll ever discover that God and those blessings is at the cross of Jesus Christ. Here's a verse you must know, John 3:16: "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." God can't possibly be more merciful to you than that. He can't show His mercy to you in any more specific fashion than that which He has already done.

So what you need to do is think about that, come to that Christ, and surrender to His claims, and then join the great company of those who know that their lives have been redeemed and who want to praise God for that now and also forever. Let's pray.

Our Father, we have experienced that grace in Jesus Christ. It's there at the cross that we have found that You are a compassionate and forgiving God. So our Father, we ask that You would so work in our hearts that we might be found people filled with thanksgiving and gratitude, singing Your praises, and that those who do not know Jesus Christ as Savior might come to know You in Him and so join the company of those who praise You forever. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): As sinful human beings, we grow cold to the blessings of God, especially when things are going well. It may comfort you to know that even King David needed a reminder of God's goodness.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit AllianceNet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians.

Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep the Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come.

You can do so at our website, AllianceNet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support, and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.