Psalm 103:1-5 August 19, 2001

Remembering to Praise

A young minister was about to deliver his first sermon, and asked a retired minister-friend for advice on how to capture the congregation's attention. "Start with an opening line that's certain to grab them," the older man said. "For example: 'Some of the best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman who was not my wife.'" He smiled at the younger man's shocked expression before adding, "She was my mother." The next Sunday the young preacher nervously clutched the pulpit. Finally he said, "Some of the best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman." He was pleased at the instant reaction—then became panic-stricken. "But for the life of me, I can't remember who she was!"

Forgetfulness can be a tremendous problem, often getting us into terrible predicaments. How many times have you been embarrassed by forgetting someone’s name? How many appointments have been missed or opportunities slipped by simply because we forgot about them? What have you forgotten this morning? Can’t think of anything? Then you may well have forgotten much! Each week several Bibles are left at church. I won’t name names.

Entire industries are built upon the manufacture and sale of memory aids. My life has been saved numerous times by my Palm Pilot ... as long as I remember to carry it with me. I once read of a man who went to a training conference where a course was being taught on how to improve one’s memory. He spent nearly $200 on the books, tapes and worksheets for the course and then brought them home, stored them in a convenient location, and promptly forgot where he put them.

In order not to forget famous people, we place their names on bridges and buildings. But who among you remembers for whom the Hoan Bridge is named or the man whose name graces this building, Horning Middle School? We videotape family events, but forget to transfer the tapes. We have albums filled with pictures of people whose names we soon forget. The problem is – we leak!

What is worse, no matter how hard we try, our memories only fade with time. The treachery of memory is that while it treasures the refuse of the past, it permits priceless treasures to decay. The raunchy joke is forever etched on our mind, and the painful words from the family member are constantly replayed, but all too often the important truths that should transform our lives leak from us like the water from the colander loaded with spaghetti.

Forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning is inconvenient, forgetting the name embarrassing, and forgetting the anniversary troubling, but when we forget all God has done for us, that is frightening.

It is for this reason Scripture shows that the opposite of forgetfulness is not just recalling truths like the grocery items you need from Pick ‘N’ Save. Rather, the opposite of forgetfulness is the activity of praise. Psalm 103 enjoins us to praise our God for all the benefits he has given us. This morning, in place of forgetfulness, let’s look at this Psalm to remember all we have. We will look at the first part, returning next week to examine further the truths this psalm contains. We will need to return not just next week, but in the future, for we leak, we forget, and we need constant reminding.

1 Psalm 103 Of David.

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits--

3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

This psalm begins with the command to praise. Some versions have "bless" but both terms point to the same activity. The word used here means to kneel, or salute. When this word is used of God blessing us, there are tangible benefits conveyed, but when it is used of us blessing God the meaning is different. There is nothing we can add to God; nothing we can say makes him any more or less sovereign. Rather, to bless or praise God is to acknowledge all he has done and all he has given to us, and that he alone is worthy of our affections and our attention.

But the importance of praise in place of forgetfulness is seen in how the word "forget" is used in the Old Testament. To forget is not merely a psychological act of having a thought pass from one's consciousness, or a lapse of memory. In Deuteronomy 8, to forget God is equated with going after other gods, or ignoring His commands. To forget God is to live in fear, to doubt His goodness. If we are to avoid forgetfulness, remembering to praise is important. What does that praise look like? What should we never forget? In verses 3-5 we see three particular points of praise: praise for pardon, praise for preservation, and praise for provision.

Praise for Pardon [verse 3]

Our pardon means we are forgiven

The first benefit listed is that of forgiveness. Why does this lead the list?

This is foundational to all the rest. Before we discuss anything else God has done in our lives, we must consider that the barrier between God and us due to sin is completely removed. The trouble is that when we forget forgiveness, praise will never be uttered. There can be no joy, no worship, and no excitement about life unless we know that that which separates us from God is once and finally removed. There is nothing more debilitating than guilt, and nothing more deadly than shame.

What does forgiveness mean?

The Hebrew word salah is only ever used of God’s pardoning the sinner and restoring the ruined relationship, and never of people forgiving each other. We understand forgiveness only by a poor analogy, for when I forgive, I merely decide to no longer hold another person’s offense against them. When God forgives, He alone is able to permanently change the person’s status.

When you or I forgive, it is for the moment, but God’s forgiveness does not fluctuate from bitterness to forgiveness and back to bitterness.

What is the extent God’s forgiveness of us?

The word describing the extent is simple but powerful: all. It is not that God forgives certain sins but not others, some sins but not all, or sins before coming to Christ but not after.

To be satisfied that God forgives 99.9% of our sins and that would be good enough would be like saying that we should be satisfied with near completeness in other areas. For example, we should be happy that at O’Hare, all planes except two, every day, land safely ... except two. Each week almost all surgeries are successful, but 500 deaths are tolerable. Every day doctors drop 50 newborns, and the U.S. Postal Service looses 16,000 pieces of mail every hour. That would not be good enough. How much more with God’s forgiveness! The good news is that God, because of Christ, forgives all our sins. When you, as a Christian, wallow in guilt, imagining that the weight of God’s wrath bears down on you and not on Christ, you’ve forgotten your status in Christ.

Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor on television, Marghanita Laski, one of our best-known secular humanists and novelists, said, "What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me."

When you see your sin, do you wallow in the muck and mire of your shame? For many, we imagine that we are saved by grace, but grow in Christ by beating ourselves, trying to convince God we didn’t mean to do wrong. What should be our response? Certainly repentance, but then with repentance comes joy. Seeing your sin is but another occasion to see the incredible love of Christ.

Sins forgiven may seem easy to speak of, but diseases healed? That is too tangible to take lightly.

Does it seem odd to combine these two? In Isaiah 53 we read "by his stripes we are ..." forgiven? No: "healed." Earlier we read in Matthew 9 where Jesus, in response to the paralyzed man, pronounces his sins forgiven. Did you notice the relationship between healing and forgiveness? (Matthew 9:6)

The connection of these two in the gospel is first that healing is a vibrant picture of what forgiveness is. Second, more than just a picture, it points to what God does.

Is this a guarantee of perfect health? Is healing a part of atonement?

No – death is certain. Last time I checked, Peter and Paul are still dead. Augustine has not been seen for 1500 years; his lusts have definitely been stifled. Luther hasn’t lifted a beer in quite a while, and although Wesleyan hymns are sung, the Wesley brothers’ voices are quiet. The question is not can God heal. Certainly. Any theist must affirm that, since God is God. But this verse says "all diseases".

How should we understand this phrase then? Should we make it merely non-tangible, emotional healings?

We must see the relationship between disease and sin, forgiveness and wholeness. Remember, disease is a product of sin: not individual sin, but the sin from our forefather, Adam. The Fall meant death and dying are a part of life. But the second Adam, Jesus Christ, changed all that. So, should we expect healing? Yes, in Christ all our diseases are healed – in the resurrection. Is that a cheap response?

Not at all – for in our bodily resurrection not one of us will ever suffer the pains of cancer, the torment of emotional breakdown, or the ache of arthritis. This is a benefit we must not ignore, but which we forget when we suffer in pain, and when we face our own death. This is a psalm of tremendous promise that we should not shy away from when facing our own demise. The promise is not empty even in the final moments of life, for we must praise our God that while this tent is torn down, we will be raised with new bodies. We will stand whole for all eternity.

Praise for Preservation [verse 4]

Our preservation begins in our redemption

With the first benefit of sins forgiven, and of our lives being made whole, we can have the confidence that our status has changed, and that God’s working in our life is to preserve us, not destroy us. God has reached down, and pulled us out of the pit, out of the mouth of destruction. This comes at a cost; there is a price paid as we are purchased. Forgiveness for us is free, but it is never cheap.

The word redeem points to a rich picture in the Old Testament of the kinsmen redeemer, one who would ensure the safety of a family member, and who would purchase their freedom from slavery. For God to pull you out of the clutches of hell, God descended to earth, to suffer and die.

This work of Christ, redeeming us from the pit and taking on our sins is summarized in the Apostles’ Creed we confessed early in the unfortunately confusing phrase: "he descended into hell." Christ’s descent into hell is not that after his death on the cross he spent Friday evening, all day Saturday and the early hours of Sunday morning in hell, but rather, on the cross he bore the full weight of our sins on his body when he uttered those final words: "It is finished". With that phrase he made a pronouncement we often forget, and for that reason we do not praise God as we should.

Whatever debt is owed by us to God is once and for all paid. The indiscretions of youth, the rage of the mother at her children, the inattentiveness of a father – all were covered 2000 years ago. The penalty is over, as God the Son bore our penalty. Therefore we have reason to praise, as we are now forgiven.

Redemption is wonderful; our debt is paid. I’ve got even better news for you. It doesn’t end there. We’d have reason enough to praise knowing that the debt is paid, that we are taken from the negative and restored to neutral, but we are also given a new status. There is also a positive.

We are taken from the jailer’s pit to the throne room of the King. There the kingly crown awaits us. When we think of a crown, we think political power, might and authority. This coronation is certainly one of honor, but not in world’s terms. Here it is the Father’s love and compassion that are placed on our heads. But when we lose sight of this tremendous prize, we lose the ability to praise our God.

One football team owner calls it "the single most impressive symbol of being a champion in all of sports." Well, he's talking about the NFL’s Super Bowl ring. The rings on the most recent Super Bowl champions are worth $5,000 each! Can you imagine losing something that valuable and irreplaceable? Former Raiders champion Gene Upshaw can. To keep his Super Bowl ring safe at home, he put it inside a bank that looked like a Pepsi can. Problem: he forgot to tell his housekeepers. They mistook the bank for an empty pop can and tossed it out, ring and all.

That was a costly mistake – trashing treasure because of the container it was in. It's a mistake many people are making. Except that the treasure they trash is their standing in Christ, tossed aside as they forget the benefits of all Christ has done for them and decide they need to earn that standing on their own. But God has graced you with love and compassion, something you can never create within you... have you forgotten that that is what he has done? Zephaniah 3:17 contains those words we sung earlier: "He will rejoice over you with singing."

Praise for Provision [verse 5]

Our provision satisfies our needs

While Mick Jagger couldn’t "get no satisfaction," in Christ we have all we need. This is the natural end point. If we forget anything above, we are left with discontented and disgruntled lives.

It is odd that so many people waste years seeking happiness, but always end up short. You can’t create happiness; it is given to you. Because of Christ, God has for us the greatest satisfaction ever. In light of forgiveness, eternal health, redemption and crowns – what could provide greater satisfaction?

We are told here that he satisfies our desires with good things. This sounds like I get what I want.

Whatever I desire, he is forced to give it to me. But that is not the case. The word "satisfy" here describes the response to a delicious meal. Think back to after a fine Thanksgiving feast when the turkey is no longer stuffed but you are. That sense of belt loosening, couch potato napping satisfaction – what God gives us is an infinitely greater contentment. Rather than a promise of getting all you want, this is a promise that what God gives is good.

The good that God gives empowers us, strengthens us, and restores that which is old and tired. The image used here is that of an eagle.

It may be that the ancients saw the molting of the great birds as a renewing process, causing them to remain ever young, or that their powerful and seemingly tireless flight was to be envied as they soared higher than the rest. This same image is used in Isaiah 40 in the passage made more familiar in the movie "Chariots of Fire," when Eric Liddell reads from this passage while we see images of Olympians faltering and falling as they compete.

What is the application of these passages? That as a Christian, I am able to run better and faster than an atheist Olympian? That answer should not be too hard. Of course we grow weary; of course we grow old. We have enough to be guilty about without adding that.

Rather this promise takes us to the heart of the benefits of the gospel.

In preparation for our confession of sin we read from Colossians 3. That list of duty by itself should tire us; we easily become weary thinking about what must be done. But the good news is that another gives me the strength to be compassionate – for he has given me a crown as we read above. How can I forgive? I hold grudges tighter than Scrooge holds his money bags. The answer – I’ve been forgiven, and as I look in faith to Christ as my only hope and my only help, God renews me so that by his grace alone, I will forgive.

But if you forget that, there will be little to praise God for as you labor to make God happy with you. Instead, the gospel calls us to praise and not forget. We are called to respond with gratitude for all He has done for us. God’s pardon, preservation and provision should produce praise. The trouble is...we forget. But in gratitude we must remember.

It was gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour that would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.

Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean... For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark...ten feet long.

But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. Captain William Cherry, "read the service that afternoon, Rickenbacker later wrote, "and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off. Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don't know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food...if I could catch it."

And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know...that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast...you could see an old man walking...white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls...to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle. ("The Old Man and the Gulls" from Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story by Paul Aurandt, 1977)