Psalm 103 - The Reason We Sing

Good praise music is always theologically based.

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PSALM 103

A Psalm of David.

¹ 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 none of His benefits;

³ Who pardons all your iniquities,

Who heals all your diseases;

⁴ Who redeems your life from the pit,

Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;

⁵ Who satisfies your years with good things,

So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.

⁶ The LORD performs righteous deeds

And judgments for all who are oppressed.

⁷ He made known His ways to Moses,

His acts to the sons of Israel.

⁸ The LORD is compassionate and gracious,

Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.

⁹ He will not always strive with us, 

Nor will He keep His anger forever.

¹⁰ He has not dealt with us according to our sins,

Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.

¹² As far as the east is from the west,

So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

¹³ Just as a father has compassion on his children,

So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.

¹⁴ For He Himself knows our frame;

He is mindful that we are but dust.

¹⁵ As for man, his days are like grass;

As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

¹⁶ When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,

And its place acknowledges it no longer.

¹⁷ But the lovingkindness 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 His precepts to do them.

¹⁹ The LORD has established His throne in the heavens,

And His sovereignty rules over all.

²⁰ Bless the LORD, you His angels,

Mighty in strength, who perform His word,

Obeying the voice of His word!

²¹ Bless the LORD, all you His hosts,

You who serve Him, doing His will.

²² Bless the LORD, all you works of His,

In all places of His dominion;

Bless the LORD, O my soul!

Heidelberg Catechism

Q&A 56

Q. What do you believe concerning “the forgiveness of sins”?

A. I believe that God,

because of Christ’s atonement,

will never hold against me

any of my sins

nor my sinful nature

which I need to struggle against all my life.

Rather, in his grace

God grants me the righteousness of Christ

to free me forever from judgment.

Summary

The Psalms are certainly the songbook of Scripture, filled with lyrics fit for every purpose, occasion and situation life brings. But we need not wonder how David felt as he penned these words in Psalm 103! Seven times over (no surprise there... seven is the Biblical number of completion) David issues the command to bless the LORD.

The word bless has a huge semantic range. What that means is that the word can mean different things in different contexts. We often ask for the LORD's blessing in our lives, and when we do so, we're asking that God give us the strength and provision we need in the moment. As one Hebrew lexicon puts it, to ask for a blessing can mean to "invoke divine favor, with the intent that the object will have favorable circumstances at a future time."

But that's not how David uses the word here in Psalm 103. After all, God doesn't need a blessing from us or anyone else! Instead, David uses the word bless to "extol, thank for greatness/goodness, and speak words of the excellence of an object." This is why the NIV and a few other translations often uses the word praise in place of bless.

And once again, notice how theologically based David's praise is - David blesses the LORD for who He is: he pardons iniquities, heals diseases, redeems lives, crowns with lovingkindness, and satisfies us with good things. Look for this sort of theological basis in all of the songs you sing this coming Sunday. To genuinely bless the LORD as you sing, you need to know well Who and What you're blessing!

  Dig Deeper  

We've seen often how it is that, just as our songs are divided into verses, psalms are divided into strophes. Psalm 103 has four of them. But whereas the verses to our songs are almost always all the same length and meter, that isn't the case for psalms. It's not always easy to find the breaks between each strophe... every English translation I'm looking at divides them slightly differently as they format Psalm 103!

But even though each translation is a bit different, the second strophe is far longer than the other three in all of them. And when we begin to unpack it, it's easy to see why David stretched this strophe out - it's all about how the LORD is compassionate and gracious.

David keeps going; our God is slow to anger. It's not that He never gets angry, but that even though even the smallest of our sins deserves His full wrath, He's patient with us, because He abounds in lovingkindness - that is, His ḥěʹ·sěḏ covenant love (mentioned 4x). He doesn't give us what our sins and iniquities deserve, and He has removed our transgressions as far as the east is from the west.

Psalm 103 helps put to rest a recurring misunderstanding that so many people have about God - that in the Old Testament, He's full of fury, and somehow in the New Testament, He finally mellowed out. That's not at all the case! Just like His Son is the same yesterday, today and forever, so is our Father! The LORD has always had compassion on those who fear Him.

So in all His places of dominion, Bless the LORD, O my soul!

AAA Prayer (About)

• ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, the LORD, who has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all;

• ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that all that is within you will BLESS the LORD;

• ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:

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