When we typically think of God, we think of an all-powerful being that must be served. We think that if we don’t work hard enough or perform well enough that this all-powerful being will be displeased and angry with us, raining down punishment, injury, disease or even death. Furthermore, we think that if we dare ask God for something, that the very action of asking is the equivalent of playing Roulette. I have spoken with people who are afraid that God will be angry at them for being so needy, or that He will either answer “no”, or He will answer yes, but in a way that will cause them harm like the Djinn from popular movies.
However these common beliefs actually could not be further from the truth. God is not someone who will play you out. God is not a sadist or a bully. God cares more about you than you can possibly imagine, and He actually delights in doing good to you and blessing you! This is what we will be studying today.
Our first scripture today is going to be Psalms 103:2-6:
“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies;
Who satisfies your mouth with good things; so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD executes righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.”
Right away we see the words Bless the LORD. The word bless in Hebrew (baruk) means to “speak well of.” and notice what David is doing here. He is telling his soul what to think. There are many people who allow their soul to guide them – they allow their thoughts and feelings to run wild and to control and define them, however we do not see that here. Instead here what we see is that David is not taking stock of how he feels or what thoughts are currently running through his mind, but he is telling his soul to bless the LORD. And not only is he telling his soul to bless the LORD, to speak well of Him, but he is doing so in a very specific way. David could have said to bless the LORD because He is all powerful and thrice holy – it would’ve been a true statement. David could have said bless the LORD because He is ruler of all creation and all must bow before Him – that too would’ve been a true statement. But look at what the Holy Spirit moved David to say instead of that: Bless the LORD (the I AM, the Covenant-Keeping God), Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
Some people recoil at the thought of us actually receiving benefits from God. Some people think it’s wrong that God is generous and actually gives good gifts to His children. These are the same people who I mentioned in the opening of this study, who see God as a dictator demanding perfect service with no mercy. However as I also stated in the opening, that idea of God is actually opposite of how the scriptures describe the LORD.
So David tells his soul (his mind and his emotions) to speak well of the LORD, and to not forget all of the benefits of relationship with Him. He doesn’t just leave it there though, because in the following verses of our text, David then proceeds to recount each benefit specifically! This is a very important detail, and it is something that we often forget about. Believers today are very quick to say “God is good!” “Yes God is great!” but then we leave it there without any further thought, and before long, it becomes empty words; it becomes just a vain repetition. However the Holy Spirit through David here is showing us the value of meditation. And again, the specific subject of this meditation is equally important. There are a lot of wrong ways to meditate on God; did you know that? Back in my days entrenched in legalism, I would meditate all day on how God was angry with me. I would meditate, I would focus and fixate my thoughts on all of the punishment that was coming my way because of my sins and failures, and how much I disgust God because He hates sin. And I know some of you are thinking that what I have just described sounds foolish; but I also know that some of you are very much identifying personally with what I just described, and you might be surprised how often such things happen, sometimes out of reflex, and we aren’t even consciously aware of it when it does happen.
Every time something bad happens, and you have a thought come through your mind saying “See, that’s a punishment because of what you did earlier.”, or you start wondering “Maybe this happened because God is upset with me.”, “Maybe this disease is God teaching me a lesson.” All of these thoughts are seeds of what I just described from my own life – and it may also surprise you to learn that these kinds of thoughts are often promoted from church pulpits. But because they are spoken from a cool guy with a nice personality standing on a platform, people accept the idea without question or reading the Bible for themselves, and it leads people into bondage, just as it led me all those years ago.
However look at what the scriptures say here in verse 3 as David begins to list the benefits of the LORD. Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases. Today, as a believer in Jesus Christ, your iniquities are forgiven! Your sins are already paid in full! Do not for one moment think that even one of your sins remains unpaid! Don’t you dare let anyone or anything tell you that you have to suffer or pay for your own sins when you have a Savior named Jesus who has suffered and paid for your sins in His own body and by His shed blood! That disease that is trying to destroy your body is not from God, but look at the second-half of the verse… He is the One who heals you of it! This is a benefit of the LORD; and the Holy Spirit through David says, don’t forget about such a benefit, don’t neglect what Jesus paid for you to have!
Next we have in verse 4, the LORD redeems our life from destruction, which in Hebrew is šaḥaṯ, a pit or more specifically a pit set for us as a trap. This is a wonderful truth and promise for us from God. Even when our enemies try to trap us (just as they did with Jesus Himself many times) things may look bad for a mere moment of time, but in Christ there is redemption, there is deliverance for us. He has already redeemed us from the pit of sin and hell itself. And with it also comes redemption of every kind. There are some today who believe that you can have one but not the other. They believe that God offers one kind of deliverance and redemption but withholds another kind. However that kind of thinking totally undermines the worth and value of the completed work of Jesus Christ. When Jesus redeemed you, when He bought you back from the slave-market of sin and death, He did so completely! When He delivered you from the pit and from destruction, He did so completely! He is not withholding any good thing from you; if He were to withhold any good thing from you, then He would be saying that whatever the thing is, it is more valuable than Jesus! That is precisely why Romans 8:32 says what it says, that He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him, also freely give us all things? In Christ Jesus today, you have all things freely given to you because of Jesus. He paid for it, you receive it as a gift. God is not withholding anything from you!
This is also why the second-half of 4 tells us that He crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Now this crown is not the type of crown that you wear on your head. It is āṭar in Hebrew, which means to encompass around or to encircle. The loving-kindness, the Grace the tender-mercies of God totally surround you! Wherever you go, all-the-time day or night, regardless of circumstances, you are totally wrapped-up in the tender-mercies of God. His Grace, His unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor is always upon you completely covering you!
Then we have verse 5, which begins by saying that the LORD satisfies your mouth with good. The word “things” is not in the original text.” And the word translated as mouth in your English Bible is actually ăḏî which means desires. It is God who satisfies your desires, and He does so with good. This thought annoys some people because they cannot picture a God that satisfies desires, but when the Holy Spirit describes God in this way, we should listen, because this is another benefit of God which we should not forget. Now we cannot take the first part of this without also taking the second part. He satisfies our desires with good. Many times, what we tend to do, precisely because we do not believe that God satisfies our desires, is that we go out and try to satisfy our own desires by our own limited, strength, power and understanding. And while those things may seem to satisfy us for a moment, they are not good, and in the end they leave us empty, and they don’t renew us either but end up draining us. However when God is the One doing the satisfying, we are not drained, but our youth is actually renewed!
Now the second-half of this verse has caused a lot of confusion that our youth is renewed like the eagles. A lot of people have heard stories about how the eagle plucks of its own talons and beak and grows a new beak and talons and in a sense “renews its youth”. It’s an interesting story, but unfortunately it has no basis in fact. Now the world eagle there, is the Hebrew nesher which is actually a vulture (ayit is an eagle), but the point being made in the verse is not that youth is renewed as the eagle or vulture, but that it is renewed like the eagle. That you have will have the youthful strength and vigor like the high-flying keen-sighted, creature. Just like it was said of Moses in Deuteronomy 34:7.
How does this happen? Go back to the first part of the verse, the LORD satisfies your desires with good. Now what is this good that He satisfies your desires with? It is Himself! In Psalms 100:1 we can read that The LORD is good. And if you don’t believe it, Psalms 34:8 Taste and see, that the LORD is good. When we are receiving from Him, it has a wonderful effect on every area of our live, spirit, soul and body; Solomon said that His words are life and health to all of your flesh. (Proverbs 4:22), and Jesus said that He has come to give you life, and life more abundantly (John 10:10)
Our problem many times is not that God isn’t supplying and providing, it’s that we don’t believe that He is, so we aren’t in receiving mode. We are so busy trying to do things ourselves, that we never stop to consider that God has already covered it. It’s only after our own plans and ideas crumble that we cry out to God, and He lifts us up and then we say “God why didn’t you do that before all of this?” – but the reality is that He was prepared to, but you weren’t paying attention.
Aren’t you glad the previous verse says that He redeems you, and that His loving-kindness and tender-mercies surround you always?
Lastly we have verse 6: The LORD executes righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. The main thing to remember here is that the word judgment is actually the Hebrew word for justice (mišəpāṭ). God is promising righteousness and justice to all who are oppressed. A promise which as every other, has been wholly fulfilled by Jesus Christ and His finished work. All who were oppressed by the enemy, by Satan, and in the jail-cell of sin, have been righteously pardoned.
We see a wonderful picture of this in Acts 10:38:
“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.”
This is our God, this is our Savior, and these are the many benefits of our relationship with Him. I encourage you today, as David wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, do not forget Bless the LORD, and do not forget all of His benefits. Remind yourself of them, encourage yourself with them, and never let anyone talk you out of what Jesus paid for you to have. They are yours in Jesus Christ.