How to Bless the Lord
Psalm 103,
Bless 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 iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
6 The Lord works righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.
7 He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
8 The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to 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;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
18 to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
19 The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word,
obeying the voice of his word!
21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
his ministers, who do his will!
22 Bless the Lord, all his works,
in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Notice, right away, that this psalm opens and closes the exact same way:
Verse 1 opens with “Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
Verse 22 closes with “Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
The exact same words are at the beginning and the end, and this tells us the purpose of this psalm … the purpose of Psalm 103 is that we would bless the Lord …
That’s what we’re gonna talk about this morning, but first things first, I need to explain what it means to “bless the Lord.”
It might feel a little odd to talk about us blessing God because we want God to bless us! What’s the difference?
Well, when we ask God to bless us, we’re asking God to give us something good. We have a need, and we want him to provide — spiritually, physically, whatever it is — we want to receive something good from God. That’s what it means for God to bless us.
Now it’s not like that when we bless God … because God does not need anything. We cannot give God anything good because he already possesses every good. All we can do is acknowledge that.
So, when we bless God it means we speak of his goodness. We don’t give him something good he doesn’t already have, but we testify to how good he is. To bless God basically means the same thingas to praise God.
We are speaking well of God.
And this morning, my goal is to tell you howto do that. This is a how-to sermon. I wanna tell you how to bless the Lord, and it’s fairly simple — you have to do two things:
Learn who God is.
Remember what you learn.
That’s it. Learn who God is and remember what you learn.
That’s how you bless God, and now let’s see this in Psalm 103 …
1. Learn who God is
This is the heart of the psalm. It’s verses 6–19 where David, the psalmist, plainly tells us who God is. That’s what David’s doing.
He saying: This is who Yahweh is! This is what he’s like! This is his character!
And David’s description is glorious. We just heard it read. Many of us know this psalm well. It’s one we’ve come back to time and time again. In my Bible, I’ve highlighted it and re-highlighted and marked it up. I’ve read from Psalm 103 for our call to worship on Sundays countless times over the years. It’s just so good — Charles Spurgeon, our favorite British preacher from the 1800s — he says that Psalm 103 is “one of those all-comprehending Scriptures which is a Bible in itself.” … That’s true.
And as “a Bible in itself” Psalm 103 tells us three truths about God that are especially important. And if we would learn who God is, we gotta know these three truths.
First: Learn that God is merciful and gracious.
This is verse 8:
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
And that’s a quote from the Book of Exodus, Chapter 34, in one of the most famous episodes in the Bible’s storyline … Israel has rebelled against God, and God is ready to wipe ’em out and start over with Moses, but Moses intercedes for the people, and God hears him.
Then God directs the people to leave Sinai, but Moses needs some assurance that God will be with them. So he prays, “Please show me your ways” (Exodus 33:13). And God answers that prayer — and we know this is what David is thinking about because he says in verse 7 that God “made known his ways to Moses…”
Well, what did God do?
In Exodus 34, God passed before Moses and proclaimed to him:
Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love… (v. 6).
And this sentence about God is repeated all throughout the Old Testament. The prophet Jonah quotes it (Jonah 4:2); the builder Nehemiah quotes it (Nehemiah 9:17); the psalmists quotes it over and over again.
If you had to capture who God is with one summary statement — like if you could only say one sentence about what God is like in relation to creation — this is it … He’s merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
And some of us have heard this so many times before we’re not really moved by it. This is where we might need to slow down and understand that for God to be this it means the converse cannot also be true … think about this … if God is merciful and gracious, he is notharsh and stingy. If he’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, he is notquick-tempered and tight-fisted — He doesn’t sit in heaven and ration out his grace with little pinches: “Here’s a little for you, no more today.” … or “Already give enough here, come back next year.”
No! None of that! That’s not how God is. He tells us in his word that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Learn that.
Second: Learn that God always acts according to his character.
Verses 9–10 comes after verse 8 to tell us what this kind of God looks like in action … And in this case, David is talking about God’s actions toward his people.
He’s not talking about every human to ever live, but this is about “those who fear [God]” (we see in verses 11, 13, 17). David is talking about those who “keep [God’s] covenant” (v. 18).
In New Testament language, he’s talking about believers — these are men and women, and boys and girls, who are united to Jesus by faith. Understand, that God’s people — Christians, us — we’re sinners. There is no sugarcoating sin in this psalm. David mentions sin, iniquities, transgressions — all these words are used.
The people of God, Christians, are sinners, but get this: God does not deal with Christians according to their sins. That’s not what defines the relationship. When God thinks about his people, their sin is not what’s on his mind … neither is their success! Some Christians might think that God is lucky to have ’em, but God has never thought that.
Whatever a person’s assessment of themselves might be, learn that when God acts, when he moves toward his people, it’s because of his character and he always act consistent with his character.
This means that God always acts like God! He never acts “out of character.” He is never arbitrary, never capricious, never random. And this is why he can be trusted! What a God! He always acts according to his character. Learn that.
Third: Learn God’s heart for his people.
We see this in verses 11–14, and what’s amazing about it is that David doesn’t just give us statements here, but he gives us pictures. We’re supposed to use our imagination, and not just ‘know’ this, but get a real sense of it.
So he starts with the heavens in verse 11. The heavens are high. We can all see that. We can have our feet grounded here, and we can look up in the sky, above the clouds, and it’s just blue, and we don’t know where it ends.
There’s no ceiling. It’s endlessly high. And as high as that sky is, that’s how strong God’s love is toward his people.
In verse 12, the east and west are a long ways apart. From where we see the sun rise to where the sun sets, that’s a wide expanse that stretches across the heavens. East keeps going one way and west keeps going another. And as far as that vastness is, that’s how far God has removed our transgressions from us.
And notice, in these first two images, David is calling us to look into the bigness of creation — into the height of the sky above, and the width of the sky east to west. But then, in verse 13, he takes from vastness to nearness … He directs our eyes from looking up high to looking at home … Verse 13:
“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.”
I’ve said this before, there are no perfect dads, but I can promise you, for every father in this room, if their kids asked them for bread, they wouldn’t give them a stone … if their kids asked for a fish, they wound’t give them a snake (see Luke 11:11–13). We know how to give good gifts to our children, and dads, we love giving to them … we love putting our arms around our kids when they need us … we love looking them in the eyes when they seek our attention … we love defending them from every danger … we love making them laugh with our jokes … we love cheering on their growth … we love being dads — And to think that God is like that toward us!
God is a good Father to us. That is his heart toward his people. Learn that.
Learn who he is.
That’s the first thing if we wanna know how to bless the Lord.
Learn that he is merciful and gracious, learn that he always acts according to his character, and learn his heart for his people.
Learn who he is. But secondly …
2. Remember what you learn.
Learn who God is, and remember what you learn.
And for this, we’re gonna go back to verse 1, but before we do that, I want to carefully introduce this next part, because I think this topic is a really big deal in the Christian life. And I would even say, in terms of useful skills in the daily Christian life, this might be the most important.
And I’m calling this a “skill” because I don’t think it’s a natural ability. You have to learn this, and practice it and develop it. And listen, I wanna be really honest with you about it … life is hard enough, but if you don’t know how to do this, life will be even harder.
Here it is: The skill istelling yourself the truth. It’s being able to tell yourself the truth. Because, look: you can know who God is! You can have a great theology and tons of knowledge. You can learn a lot of truth, but when it comes to remembering what you’ve learned and putting your knowledge to actual work in your life that means you gotta tell yourself the truth.
That’s what David says. Verse 1. He says:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!”
You see who he’s talking to here? He’s talking to himself. David addresses himself, he speaks to his own soul, and he tells himself to bless the Lord, and then he says, verse 2:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits …”
To “forget not” is another way to say remember. So David is directing his soul to remember the benefits God has given him. He’s saying: Remember, soul, all the ways God has been good to you. Have you ever talked to yourself like this?
We’ve heard the saying before, “Count your blessings” — but you ever actually counted your blessings? David starts naming them … verse 3:
God forgives all your iniquity, soul. God heals all your diseases. God redeems your life from the pit. God crowns you with steadfast love and mercy! God satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles!
David is taking the truth of who God is — that he explains in verses 6–19 — and he applies it to himself and speaks it to himself.
What is true for the people of God in verses 6–19, is true for David personally, and he says it. He remembers what he’s learned by telling it to himself.
Now, here’s the question: why doesn’t every Christian do this all the time? Because it’s not easy. What’s easy is passively listening to the voices around you. Consider how this works.
When David counts his blessings in verses 3–5, he’s not exhaustive — he could say thousands and thousands of things — but I do think David is comprehensive. He counts five benefits that are the five categories that encompass human existence.
These five categories, in order, are:
sin
suffering
death
eternity
joy
We all live within these five categories, and so, what happens if we passively listen to the voices around us?
First, for sin …
If we passively listen, we’re gonna hear that our sin is our story.
We’re gonna think that we are our failures and that we are most truly who we are when we’re at our worst. I know some of you hear that all that time. You’ve repented, you’ve trusted in the cross of Christ, but you still struggle with constant guilt and shame. You can’t be passive here.
Tell yourself the truth, that God forgives all your iniquity — he has removed your sin as far as the east is from the west.
Second, for suffering …
The “diseases” in verse 3 have in view the diseases Israel experienced as judgment in the Old Testament. These diseases were curses the people brought upon themselves because of their sin, and they knew it.
They knew when their suffering was judgment in the old covenant.
But it’s not that way anymore in Christ. But sometimes we can think it is!
It’s so easy for us to think, when we suffer: “This must be God repaying me for my iniquities! God does deal with me according to my sin! I’m cursed!”
Christian: no, you’re not. You might still get sick. Bad things will happen. But Christian, you are not condemned. You are healed from every curse. No sickness has the final say. Tell yourself that.
Third, for death …
If you passively listen, it’s all despair — we’re all just headed toward this dark abyss and everything is stupid, and we are worthless little dots good for nothing.
I was driving the other day, through a neighborhood, and I thought: Everybody around here is gonna die … one day I’m just gonna die. And I got kinda sad about it. See I was passively listening.
But hey, soul, God redeems your life from the pit!
One day you will be raised from the dead. You will live forever.
Tell yourself the truth.
Fourth, for eternity …
Because we will live forever, what we do now, in this life, matters.
None of this is pointless. We do things now that have eternal consequence.
And look, the worst of social media makes you forget that. It is used by the enemy to devour your attention and time, and the subtext is that you have nothing better to do. But yes you do!
One day, in the new creation, you will receive a crown. You ever think about that? Jesus is gonna put a crown on your head.
How many of us live like we’re wearing crowns? Tell yourself the truth and go touch grass.
Fifth, is joy …
Verse 5: God will satisfy you with good, now and forever. God will do this, not the things we chase in this world. We are bombarded by empty promises.
And how many times do we buy the lie that if “we just had this” or “tried that” then we’d finally make it. Then we’d be happy.
No! … Tell yourself the truth: God is your satisfaction. God alone can fulfill the longings of your soul.
Do you see how this goes? Tell yourself the truth. That is how we remember what we’ve learned. We take the truth of God that we’ve learned and we tell it to our souls like David is doing here.
I mean this very practically. If this has not been a habit for you, you can start doing this today. If you don’t know where to start, just memorize Psalm 103, verses 1–5.
What David says to himself, you, as a Christian can say to yourself — and you can say it with even more certainty because of Jesus.
We have learned more of who God is today than David knew when he wrote this. David says that God knows our frame, that he remembers that we are dust … but we know that God actually became dust like us.
The eternal God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus took on our frame, our weakness, our humanity, and he went to the cross.
That’s why God doesn’t deal with us according to our sin — he dealt with Jesus according to our sin. Jesus was crowned with thorns so that we could be crowned with mercy. Jesus was raised from the dead to redeem our lives from the pit.
Look, every blessing we receive from God comes to us in Jesus. He is how we bless the Lord. He is the goodness of God given to us. And so here’s the sermon in summary: How do we bless the Lord? Learn Jesus, and remember him. Truly.
And that’s actually the mission of our church.
We are here to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.
That’s what brings us to the Table.
The Table
Jesus has given us this Table to help us remember him together. The bread represents his body, and the cup represent his blood, and when we eat and drink, we are saying to our souls, and to one another, that Jesus is our hope.
That is why this Table is for Christians. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s receive him again this morning and give him thanks.
