Forget Not His Benefits: A Reflection on Psalm 103

Recently, we were blessed with the opportunity to have Mel Blount, former Pittsburgh Steeler and NFL Hall of Famer, join us for our Men’s Breakfast here at Orchard Hill. Mel played for the Steelers back in the 70s and was one of the most physical players on one of the most dominant defenses the league has ever known.

To be honest, knowing he was 78 years old, I was really surprised by how well he’s doing physically after all those years of playing football. He looked like he could suit up today!

Mel read from Psalm 103 that morning and shared with all those gathered that there are benefits to following God.  We can look back now and see Mel’s career as extremely successful, but, in his own admission, the journey was filled with hardships, different obstacles, great loss, and multiple setbacks. For Mel, his life and success are evidence of God’s goodness and mercy. This reality has led him to live his life in service to others.

While Mel shared a little about the blessing of God on his life that morning, for the sake of time, he didn’t get to expound on what those benefits are specifically. When we read Psalm 103, we come to see that God’s benefits aren’t some vague promises of something good, but that they are rooted in his work of salvation through Christ.

Psalm 103:1-5 says this:

“Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

Let’s take a moment to consider all the benefits the Psalmist mentions here.

1. He Forgives All Our Sins

There’s an interesting story in the gospels where four friends bring their paralyzed friend to see Jesus. They find Jesus teaching in a home with a crowd so large that they are unable to make their way in to see him. They decide to do something drastic – they climb to the roof and begin digging their way through so that they could lower their friend directly in front of Jesus while he’s teaching.

Seeing this, Jesus pauses, looks at their friend, and says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Again, this guy is paralyzed and unable to walk. It would appear this guy’s greatest need would be healing – as Jesus has been doing throughout his ministry. But Jesus knows what we don’t. For all of us, our greatest need is not healing, but forgiveness.

The book of Romans highlights this truth by showing us that, because of our sin and unrighteousness, we are destined to, rightly, receive God’s wrath and judgment. The only thing that can save us from eternal separation from God is to have our sins forgiven. Which is exactly what God accomplishes for us in Jesus.

The good news for us is that God is eager and willing to forgive. This doesn’t mean that God is eager to overlook sin. To do that wouldn’t help anyone.  Sin is serious, and it must be dealt with. In Christ, God does just that. Jesus, taking on flesh and bearing our sin, receives in himself the wrath of God that we deserve so that we can be reconciled with God and be at peace with him in our lives.

In Christ, there is forgiveness.

2. He Heals All Our Diseases

What I love about this story from the gospels is that Jesus doesn’t just forgive this man and move on - he also heals him. It’s important to see and be reminded that God doesn’t just care about our spiritual life; he also cares deeply for our physical being.

James, the brother of Jesus, says that a faith that only cares for blessing people spiritually, and not physically, is a dead faith. God created all things – things spiritual and physical. We see that sin has affected both our spiritual reality and our physical reality. God intends to restore both.

When it comes to healing in our day, I want to be clear that while God does heal people in this current age, our ultimate and final healing is to come when Jesus returns and erases the impact of sin for all eternity.

3. He Redeems Our Life from the Pit

The theme of redemption is traced all the way back to the Exodus account when God frees his people from slavery in Egypt. To redeem someone/something is to gain/regain possession or to make up for a mistake that created a debt.

The authors of Scripture paint a picture of humanity as being enslaved by sin and Satan. It’s not just that we occasionally miss the mark and need improvement; we are incapable of freeing ourselves from bondage and need to be rescued.

In Christ, God rescues us. He pays the penalty we owed and delivers us from the kingdom of darkness that currently exists in our world today.

4. He Crowns Us with Love and Compassion

It’s one thing to be given a second chance, and quite another to be established securely in a place of victory. To only be given a second chance, there would potentially be an opportunity to fail and need to be rescued again. God doesn’t give us that chance. He welcomes us in and clothes us with a new identity.

In Genesis, Jacob plots to steal Esau’s blessing from his father Isaac. Isaac, being old and blind, was waiting for Esau to return from a hunt so that he might bless Esau before he died. Esau, being quite hairy, was easy to distinguish from Jacob, who was smoother.

In deceit, Jacob clothed himself with hair and tricked his father into blessing him instead of Esau. In Christ, something similar happens. We don’t deserve God’s blessing. And yet, in pure grace, Jesus knowingly clothes us with his righteousness so that the Father blesses us with the love and compassion that only Jesus deserved. The only difference is, instead of this being an act of deceit, it’s a gift that we can confidently take hold of.

5. He Satisfies Our Desires and Renews Our Life

The call of Jesus to his disciples is to “deny ourselves” and to follow him. If we’re not careful, we can take this to mean that we must suppress any desire we have to suffer for the sake of God. Yet, the call of God is not to reject every desire; it’s to renew our desires.

C.S. Lewis famously says that we, as humans, are like little children who find themselves satisfied with playing in the mud as we can’t possibly imagine what it could be like to vacation across the sea. His point being, having desires isn’t bad – it's setting our desires on things that are less than what we were created for.

When the psalmist says that God “satisfies our desires,” he’s not saying that he gives us every job, all the new stuff we want, and every pleasure we could imagine. He means that he gives us himself. In Christ, he brings us to life and creates new desires that can only be met when we know and love him the way we were meant to.

As great as these benefits are, it’s common for us to go through life and quickly forget them. Unfortunately, as we progress, the negative experiences tend to far outweigh the positive.  If we’re going to not forget these, we must be intentional.

The Psalmist begins and ends this psalm with the command to “Praise the Lord, my soul.” Praise isn’t just a matter of “feeling it,” but a decision to acknowledge God and express his worth. As we, like the psalmist, consider the truth of God – his character and activity throughout history – we come to recognize his greatness, which often transforms our feelings of despair into feelings of hope. When we gather with people of faith and see the work of God in their lives, we’re reminded of his kindness and are encouraged about the possibility of him working on our behalf. God is good and kind to all and shows no partiality.

Part of what was so encouraging about listening to Mel is that being 78, he has seen a lot of life. The good and the bad. And to hear him proclaim that following God has benefits, it served as a good reminder of who God is and what he has done.

Praise the Lord! And forget not his benefits!