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20/20 Worship
Psalm 103A Christian man heard a message on the end times and he decided to make all of the money that he could before the economy collapsed. He took his entire savings, went to the race track and prayed for wisdom on how to bet. He watched the first race without betting. But then he noticed that a Catholic priest came out, sprinkled some water, waved his arms and made some signs over a horse. That horse went on to win by seven lengths. The same thing happened on the second, third and fourth races. The man waited one more race just to make sure. Same thing, the horse that the priest blessed won. So on the sixth race he waited until the priest did his thing. Then he ran off and placed his entire life’s savings on that horse. The race began. The horse ran 50 feet and dropped dead. The man was horrified! He ran down to the priest and said, “Priest, I have to talk to you!” “Yes, what is it, my son?” “Sir, I watched you in each race and in every race the horse you blessed won. So I went and bet everything I had on this last horse. What happened?” The priest said, “You must be a Protestant.” “Why do you say that?” asked the man. “Because you don’t know the difference between a blessing and the last rites.”
I wonder, could an outsider coming into a typical Sunday morning worship service tell whether we’ve come here to bless God or to bury Him and conduct His funeral? Would a person who doesn’t know God be able to look at your life or my life and tell if we’ve been blessed by God? Or, would they conclude that last rites must already have been pronounced upon us? Are you a believer whose life is marked by heartfelt worship, whose life overflows with thanksgiving to God for His abundant blessings on your behalf?
The key to heartfelt worship is all in what we see. Let me illustrate that with a story from John Killinger. Killinger tells of a man who visited a classroom for visually impaired children. Troubled by what he saw, the man insensitively remarked, “It must be terrible to go through life without eyes.” But one little blind girl quickly responded, “It’s not half as bad as having two good eyes but still not being able to see.” Her point was very well made. There is physical blindness and there’s another, even more tragic form of blindness that affects the spirit. You and I will never truly worship unless we can first see…spiritually.
There are two vital elements that must come together to spark heartfelt worship: An understanding of who God is; and, an understanding of who I am. As you come to realize who God really is, you can’t help but become painfully aware of whom you are in His holy, awesome presence. Psalm 103 is about seeing both – Who God is and who I am. It’s 20/20 Worship.
Worship is an inner attitude, a sense of awe, reverence, gratitude and love resulting from a realization of who God is and who we are. God is seeking true worshipers, 20/20 Worshippers. We can’t be His children without seeking to grow as true worshipers. God called David a man after His own heart because David worshiped God in spirit and truth. He knew who God is and knew who he was in relation to God. And David expressed this with awe, reverence, gratitude and love for God in many psalms.
Psalm 103 is one of those psalms. It’s a psalm of pure worship. And unlike most of David’s psalms, there are no petitions for help or cries for deliverance. It’s also what we call an “envelope psalm,” because it ends exactly the same way that it begins, “Praise the LORD, O my soul.”
In Psalm 103 David just focuses on the Lord and His great blessings and he overflows in worship. God’s great goodness and our great need should cause us to respond in heartfelt worship. If you’re taking notes…1. Worship depends on seeing who God really is – that God is good! Deep in our hearts we believe in a good God, yet how shallow our understanding is of His goodness, especially since we see many things that seem to deny it. Corrie Ten Boom clarified this issue for us. She wrote: “Often I have heard people say, ‘How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!’ Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp. I remember one occasion when I was very discouraged there. Everything around us was dark, and there was darkness in my heart. I remember telling Betsie that I thought God had forgotten us. ‘No, Corrie,’ said Betsie, ‘He has not forgotten us. Remember His Word: “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him.” Corrie concludes, “There is an ocean of God’s love available—there is plenty for everyone. May God grant you never to doubt that victorious love—whatever the circumstances.” A major theme of Psalm 103 is that God is good. That’s because…
a) God’s goodness is inherent in Who He is. David focuses on the abundant goodness of God, “forget not all his benefits,” (vs. 2) inviting us to join him in recalling God's many tender mercies. It's so human to forget God's benefits. Focusing on God's blessings must be a deliberate choice.
When I do marital counseling, I’ll ask couples to list out what originally attracted them to one another and what their relationship has going for it. Because some of them have been at each other’s throats for awhile, they often struggle with that. But over and over again, I’ve seen couples who had a wedge between them – when they start focusing on what they loved about their spouse (on the benefits) start sitting close again even in that session. Often, they kiss and make-up. What happened? They’d forgotten the benefits. Their focus had changed! It is all too easy to fall into the same trap spiritually.
In the Garden of Eden God blessed Adam and Eve with so many good things. It was a perfect, beautiful environment. But there was one negative, “Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” But what did Satan get Eve to focus on? That one negative! He used it to cast doubt on the goodness of God, “God is trying to keep something good from you. If He really loved you, He'd let you eat from that tree. Go ahead!” Eve did and the human race fell into sin.
Satan found a strategy that worked and he's been using it ever since! He uses trials that come upon us because of our sin, and the sin of this fallen creation to get us to doubt the goodness of God. He promotes the idea that God's commandments are harsh or that God is out to deprive us of pleasure. If we believe that lie, we're sitting ducks for temptation. We need to resist Satan's lie and focus on God's great goodness toward us.
David goes on to develop for us that God's goodness stems from His nature, “Praise His holy name” (vs. 1). God’s name refers to the totality of His attributes, to Who He is as a person. Since all of God's actions stem from His attributes, God's name refers to all that God is and all that He has done for us as His children. David goes on to emphasize some of the attributes of God in this psalm.
* God is gracious (vv. 7-17). David accentuates God's grace by referring back to Moses and the nation of Israel (v. 7). Derek Kidner observes that “No story surpasses the Exodus for a record of human unworthiness: of grace abounding and 'benefits forgot.'" Israel certainly did not deserve God’s grace, and neither do we. Grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less. If you can get your heart around that truth, it will blow your mind!
Look at verse 8. This comes from God's revelation of Himself to Moses (Ex. 34:6) and reveals the fundamental nature of God. While it’s hard for us to understand, there’s room for anger in God's love. While our human anger is quick to rise and slow to fade, God’s anger is quite the opposite. He has much to rebuke, but not to harp on (v. 9); He sees much to punish, but all the more to forgive (v. 10); and all of this, not because we are worthy or deserving.
* God is loving (vss. 4, 11, 17). The word for love is a familiar Hebrew word, hesed, coming from their word for stork. It pictures the loyal love of God as that love which the parent storks show for their young. God crowns us with His loyal love. He’s abounding in it and it’s eternal (v. 17)!
In verse 17 we find the same phrase Moses used in Psalm 90:2 of God's eternality. Before the foundation of the world God chose you in Christ (Eph. 1:4), and in the future, we will reign with Christ forever and ever (Rev. 22:5)!
* God is compassionate. A terrible earthquake hit Armenia, killing over 30,000 people in less than four minutes in December of 1988. In the moments following the earthquake, a father rushed to his son’s school. When he arrived there he saw that the building was as flat as a pancake. Standing there looking at what was left of the school, the father remembered a promise he’d made to his son, "No matter what, I’ll always be there for you!" Tears began to fill his eyes. It looked like a hopeless situation, but he couldn’t take his mind off his promise. Remembering that his son’s classroom was in the back right corner of the building, the father rushed there and started digging through the rubble. As he was digging other grieving parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: "My son! My daughter!" They tried to pull him away from the rubble, saying: "It’s too late! They’re dead! You can’t help! Go home!" Even a police officer and a firefighter told him he should go home. To everyone who tried to stop him he said, "Are you going to help me or not? I made a promise to my little boy that I would always be there for him. And I’m not going to break my promise now!" And he continued digging for his son stone by stone. He needed to know for himself: "Is my boy alive or is he dead?" This man dug through the rubble for more than a day and a half. Finally in the thirty-eighth hour, as he pulled back a boulder, he heard his son’s voice. He said, "ARMAND!" and a voice answered him, "Dad? It’s me Dad!" Then, the boy added these priceless words, "I told the other kids not to worry. I told them that if you were alive, you’d come and get us. You promised me, ‘No matter what, I’ll always be there for you!’ And here you are. You kept your promise!" Verse 13 says "As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him." Just as that father gave everything he had to rescue his son, God gave everything He had to rescue us. Not from the rubble of a building or from the ruin of an earthquake. But from the rubble and ruin of our own lives! Galatians 1:4 says that God gave everything He had to rescue us from this evil age when He sent His only Son to die on the cross for our sins. It was the single most beautiful expression of God’s compassion that the world has ever seen.
This word compassion, found four times (vss. 4, 8, 13 [twice]) comes from the Hebrew word for womb and refers to deep, tender love rooted in some natural bond. David uses the analogy of a father's compassion toward his little ones. That’s because God understands how we’re made. “Dust” in vs. 14 recalls the Fall and that God relates to us with gentleness, not according to our sins (v. 10). Aren't you thankful for that!?!
* God is forgiving (vv. 3, 12). The idea behind the word forgiveness in both the Old and New Testaments is to “take away and put somewhere else.” That’s exactly what God has done with our sins. He took them away and put them on Jesus. He took them away and put them in the sea of God’s forgetfulness.
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed someone had done to her years before. But she acted as if she’d never even heard of the incident. "Don’t you remember it?" her friend asked. "No,” came Clara Barton’s reply, "I distinctly remember forgetting it." Doesn’t that sound just like God?
You can know freedom from all your guilt and complete forgiveness for all your sins through the Lord Jesus Christ! The sacrificial system of David's day pointed ahead to the complete and final sacrifice for sins that Jesus secured for us on the Cross. The only way that a holy God can accept sinful people is through the satisfaction of His holy law. Jesus paid the penalty we deserve, so that God's justice was satisfied and His mercy can flow freely to all who flee to the cross.
* God is sovereign (v. 19). God's sovereignty is a source of comfort to us. It guarantees that nothing or no one can thwart His plans to bless His people. What He has promised, He will bring to pass. Either God is a liar or else all the good things He has promised to us will be fulfilled.
b) God’s goodness means that His people receive abundant benefits from Him. As a pastor was addressing a group, he took a large piece of paper and made a black dot in the center of it with a marker. Then, he held the paper up before the group and asked them what they saw. One person quickly replied, "I see a black mark." "Right," the preacher replied. "What else do you see?" Complete silence prevailed. "Don't you see anything other than the dot?" he asked. A chorus of no’s came from the audience. "I'm really surprised," the speaker commented. "You have completely overlooked the most important thing of all—the white sheet of paper." Then, he made this application. He said that in life we are often distracted by small, dot-like disappointments or painful experiences and are prone to forget the innumerable blessings we receive from the hand of the Lord. But like the sheet of paper, the good things are far more important than the adversities that monopolize our attention. Someone wrote, “As you travel down life's pathway, may this ever be your goal; Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole!” Rather than concentrating on the trials of life, we must fix our attention upon its blessings. David wrote, “Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (vs. 2).
* Healing (v. 3b). David also mentions the healing of all our diseases. In the context this points to every aspect of healing—spiritual, emotional and physical. Now he’s not promising instant, miraculous deliverance from all of our problems. Neither David nor anyone else in Scripture experienced that. He’s also not saying that God will heal you of every physical ailment or that it’s His will to heal everyone. There’s no such promise in the Bible.
In fact, the Bible shows that God often uses physical trials to bring about our spiritual and emotional healing by deepening our dependence on God. And yet, since sin often takes a physical toll on us, when God cleanses our sin, there is often an accompanying physical healing. Vs. 3 affirms that when healing takes place, through whatever means, it comes from God. Thus, in everything, we must learn to depend totally upon God. Its right to use medical science but God should get the praise when we’re healed, even if the healing comes through medical science.
* Deliverance from death, “Who redeems your life from the pit” (v. 4a). The pit refers to the grave. Because we’ve sinned, we’re subject to death, "for the wages of sin is death." To redeem means to pay the price of release. God paid the ransom for our sin through the death of Jesus Christ so that we might be released from sin's power and penalty. The sting of death is taken away by the fact that the moment you trust in Jesus as your sin bearer, God gives you eternal life. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
* A good life now, “Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (vs. 5). God gives us so many material blessings. He also gives us inner renewal, even as our outer body grows weaker. An eagle is a picture of strength, soaring effortlessly in the sky, even in their old age. Isaiah 40:31 promises that those who wait on the Lord will mount up with wings as eagles, renewed with strength in the Lord. And all of these blessings are ours at no cost to us, although at great cost to God. We deserved His wrath, but He has given us His love.
Do you ever take the time to let the immensity of God's goodness as seen in His many blessings overwhelm your soul like a flood? That's one reason the Lord's Supper is so important. It’s a time to contemplate what God did for us at the cross. With David we should frequently exclaim, “Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits!”
David is reminding us that we need to focus on who God is and how He has blessed us if we want to be people who worship Him from the heart. Focusing on His goodness will cause your heart to well up with thanksgiving and praise. But you can't focus on God without also seeing and realizing something about who you are.2. Worships depends on seeing who I really am – that I am helpless and hopeless. The primary focus of Psalm 103 is on God, not man. But there’s also a minor theme – we are all desperately needy: sinful, sick, and short-term. If we don't acknowledge our condition, we won't cry out to God for grace and mercy, and thus, we won't receive His many blessings.
* We are sinful (vss. 3, 4, 8-10, 12). We can't come to God until we admit our sin to Him. And then, although He removes our sin and guilt and imputes to us the righteousness of Christ, we’re still sinners saved by grace. Every single moment we need His grace to overcome the sin that still indwells us. And the closer we draw to God who is light, the more we see the sinfulness of our hearts, which makes us cling all the more to His grace and love Him all the more who forgave us so much.
* We are sick (vs. 3b). We're subject to disease. We're vulnerable and frail, in spite of the advances of modern medicine. A strong, robust man in the prime of life can be cut down by an invisible virus. A healthy person can be struck down by cancer without warning. Our physical frailty should show us that we're needy!
* We are short-term (vss. 15-16). As Moses did in Psalm 90, David compares man to the grass or the flowers of the field—here today, gone tomorrow. No one is guaranteed a long life and even a really long life is so short compared to eternity. We expect the old to die, but death seems to be a cruel thief when it steals the young. Carl Jung said that unexpected death is “a period placed before the end of the sentence.”
Our fleeting lives show us our need for God. The problem is that we often don't see ourselves as needy, so we don't throw ourselves completely on God’s grace. Remember, grace is not for worthy people; it's for the unworthy. If we think we're worthy, we won't come to God for His grace. If we think we're competent, we won't rely on Him. We must have Paul’s attitude, “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:5-6). God humbled Paul with a thorn in the flesh so that he’d learn how weak and needy he was. But then he trusted fully in God and His grace, so that he could say, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). Seeing God's goodness and our own need results in…3. 20/20 Worship means that when I see who God is and who I am, my only response must be grateful, heartfelt worship. "What can I do for you, Madam?" Abraham Lincoln asked an elderly lady who had been ushered into his private office. Placing a covered basket on the table she said, "Mr. President, I have come here today not to ask any favor for myself or for anyone else. I heard that you were very fond of cookies, and I came here to bring you this basket of cookies!" Tears trickled down the gaunt face of the great President. He stood speechless for a moment; then he said, "My good woman, your thoughtful and unselfish deed greatly moves me. Thousands have come into this office since I became President, but you are the first person to bring something instead of asking for something."
Brothers and sisters, there’s a time when we need to come to our Father in praise only, not asking for anything…just praising, blessing Him, thanking Him. That’s what Psalm 103 is all about. It’s praise only. No petitions. No pleading. No asking. Just heartfelt praise!
David ends this psalm like a conductor ends a great symphony, calling in all of the instruments for a great climax of praise. After affirming the absolute sovereignty of God (v. 19), he calls in the angels to bless the Lord (v. 20). Next, he calls in all the hosts (probably referring to the angels as God's army) to praise God. Please note that they all do God's bidding and obey Him. Then, he extends the call to all of God's works (v. 22). But then, lest the individual get lost in the grandeur of it all, he crisply closes by bringing it back down to where he started, to this little speck on planet earth – himself, “Praise the LORD, O my soul.” He concludes this psalm with three elements of worship.
* Worship is a response of praise (vss. 1, 2, 20-22). That's what it means to bless God: to respond to God's blessings in your life with heartfelt praise. When my kids were very small and would buy me a Christmas present, where did they get the money? From me! But when they gave back to me what I gave them, they were blessing me. You and I are to give back to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name (Heb. 13:15), which flows from His abundant goodness to us.
Like David, our hearts may grow cold and we may have to rouse ourselves to praise God. David is talking to himself in the psalm (“O my soul”), stirring himself to worship. He’s deliberately remembering God's blessings. The opposite of praise is forgetfulness (vs. 2). Friend, please stop and count your blessings. Remember God's goodness to you in spite of your self-centeredness and sin. And stir yourself to praise Him.
* Worship is a response of fear (vss. 11, 13, 17). To fear God means to live with the awareness that all you think, say, and do is open to His scrutiny (Heb. 4:13), and that one day you will give an account to Him. The fear of God takes away silliness and trifling with the things of God. We shouldn't goof around when we worship the Lord. We can have fun, but it must be tempered with reverence.
* Worship is a response of obedience (vs. 18). “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Prov. 8:13). God isn't impressed with our worship if we’re not obedient to His Word. If you sing God's praises on Sunday but are living in known disobedience to Him throughout the week, you’re like King Saul, whom God rejected (1 Sam. 15:22).Conclusion: Worship is an intelligent response to God: a response of praise, reverence, and obedience which stems from an understanding of who God is and who we are. God's great goodness and our great need should cause us to respond to Him in heartfelt worship.
Sally Poskevich of Sioux City, Iowa, shared, "My husband, Paul, and I have been married 49 years, and he’s thanked me with a kiss for every meal I’ve made. It doesn’t matter if it’s toast for breakfast or steak for dinner – he always remembers. When he worked, he thanked me for the lunch I packed even before he knew what was in it. I’ve made more than a few disastrous meals over those years. For those he gave me an extra kiss-‘for the effort’, he said. Our granddaughter calculated that Paul has thanked me 53,655 times!"
My friend,God has flooded your life with far more than 53,655 expressions of His love and blessing. He wants you to respond by giving up your self-seeking, stubborn ways and by giving in to His great goodness toward you in Christ. He wants you to be filled with heartfelt worship every day as you think about His great goodness and your great need. That’s 20/20 Worship! Seeing who we are but more importantly, seeing our awesome God!
When we recognize the gracious hand of God at work in our lives, we can’t help but tell others what the Lord has done. When gratitude grips the human heart, it spills over its edges in words of proclamation to a dying world that is stumbling around in the dark looking for answers. When the Lord has acted in your life a simple, “Thank You” will not suffice – we must tell someone…everyone.
Roland Allen tells of a veteran missionary who came up to him one day after he’d delivered his sermon. The missionary introduced himself and said, "I was a medical missionary for many years in India. The people in the area of India where I was working were plagued with progressive blindness. People were born with healthy vision, but there was something in that area that caused people to lose their sight as they matured."
But this missionary had developed a process that would reverse blindness. So people came to him and he performed his operation, and they would leave realizing that they would have become blind, but now they were going to be able to see for the rest of their lives. He shared that they never said, "Thank you," because that phrase was not in their dialect. Instead, they spoke a word that meant, "I will tell your name." Wherever they went, they would tell the name of the missionary who had cured their blindness. They had received something so wonderful that they eagerly proclaimed it.
My friend, that’s gratitude – to tell of the wonders of our God wherever we go. But to tell the wonders of God to a world blinded by pain, sorrow, and heaviness, you must first personally know the wonders of God that have come through His Son Jesus.
Maybe this morning you’re here and you don’t know Jesus as Lord of your life. You’ve never had your eyes opened to His glory and grace, but this morning something is stirring in your heart; something is telling you that you need the benefits of the Lord. Something is drawing you to His grace, mercy, and salvation. That’s the Spirit of Almighty God drawing you with cords of loving kindness and salvation.
Come on Home, my friend. Come to Jesus! Walk into the arms of grace that you too may know the kindness and mercy of the Lord. Won’t you invite Him into your life this morning so that you may be truly grateful and be able to experience 20/20 Worship?
