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David was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He was a warrior, a military commander, a songwriter, a musician and a prophet, a man God spoke to directly and clearly. He was the founder of the royal dynasty of the Chosen People, a dynasty that finds its ultimate King in Messiah Yeshua. He was a man after God’s own heart.
Psalm 103 is about David’s whole-hearted desire to praise the Lord, and his reasons for doing so: Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord.
Three times David expresses his intention to praise the Lord with the totality of who he. In the Word of God, repetition is used to emphasize something. When something is repeated twice, it’s being emphasized. You will keep in perfect peace – shalom shalom – all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You. When something is repeated three times – like “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Heaven’s armies” – it’s the greatest possible emphasis – the Lord is infinitely holy. David’s threefold repetition emphasizes that he isn’t going to praise God with only part of himself. He wants all that he is, his entire life to praise the Lord. And that’s so good and so right, because the Creator deserves more than praise from a limited part of who we are. He deserves the praise of our whole being – our mind, our heart, our emotions, our words and our actions.
May I never forget the good things he does for me. One of the dangers in human relationships is forgetting the good things someone has done for us. We can receive good thing after good thing and begin to assume that we are entitled to those good things. That kind of ingratitude is offensive to the one doing the good things. We can do the same thing with God – who does more good things for us than anyone else.
To help him not forget the many good things the Lord does for him, David begins listing them: He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things, and my youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
He forgives all my sins. Where would we be without the forgiveness of all our sins? Our sins separate us from God and lead to death and Hell. But the Lord forgives not just some of our sins but all of our and restores us to fellowship with Himself. What a reason to praise Him!
He redeems me from death. To redeem means to rescue someone from a situation from which he can’t rescue himself. Because of sin, death entered the human experience and none of us has the power to rescue ourselves from it. But God does. Being redeemed from death is such an extraordinary blessing – definitely worth praising God for.
He crowns me with love and tender mercies. A crown is something placed on the head as a sign of honor. Even though we don’t deserve it, the Lord honors us by giving us love and tender mercies. Two more great reasons to praise Him.
He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things, and my youth is renewed like the eagle’s. At this point you might be thinking, “If God does all these good things, including healing our diseases and filling our lives with good things and giving us strength, why don’t the faithful always experience these things?”
David is not teaching us that the faithful will always be healed, always enjoy material prosperity and always be protected from aging. The Word of God and our own experience give us many examples of faithful people who suffered in these ways. David is teaching us that the Lord’s promises are greater than the temporary circumstances of this life. God’s promises are certain, but their fulfillment is not always immediate or complete in the present age. But for everyone who belongs to Yeshua, there will be complete fulfillment of these promises: resurrection, perfect health, freedom from sin and death, and everlasting life in the presence of God.
Another reason to praise the Lord: The Lord gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly. Similar to the promises just mentioned, the Word of God doesn’t promise that the faithful will never experience injustice. Instead, it tells us that God is aware of injustice and ultimately will bring righteousness and justice. He’ll vindicate the faithful – either in this life or on the Day of Judgment. That’s a great reason to praise the Lord.
Another reason to praise God is that He has revealed Himself. He made known his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel. Think about where we’d be without the divine revelation of God given to Israel: We’d be in the dark, uncertain about who God is and unsure of what He expects from us. But the Lord revealed Himself to Moses and the Jewish people during the Exodus from Egypt. Then, over the following centuries, He continued to reveal Himself to us. Finally, He revealed Himself in the greatest possible way by revealing His Son to us. God has made Himself known. What a tremendous reason to praise Him.
More reasons to praise the Lord: The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with love. These are not merely things God occasionally does – they are who He is. That is so good for us, because He has every right to constantly accuse us, be angry with us, punish us for all our sins and deal harshly with us as we deserve. However, the God who has every reason to abandon us is compassionate toward us. The God who is infinitely righteous is also extraordinarily merciful. The God who has every right to be angry with us is slow to anger. And the God who knows every one of our failures is still filled with love for us. These attributes of God and which benefit us so much are so worthy of our praise. Are they not?
Another reason to praise the Lord: For His love toward those who fear Him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. How great is the height of the heavens above the earth? We now have a better understanding than David did in his day. Traveling at the speed of light, it would take billions of years to cross the heavens. David uses that comparison to describe the greatness of God’s love toward those who fear Him. What a reason to praise God!
Notice something important: The Lord’s vast love is directed toward those who fear Him. If we want to be the recipients of God’s infinite love, we must treat Him with reverence, with respect, with honor.
Another reason to praise the Lord: He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. How far is east from west? Travel either direction and you will never reach the other. The two continue indefinitely. That’s the illustration David gives us of God’s forgiveness. When the Lord forgives, He does not merely remove our sins a short distance away. He removes them completely – an infinite distance from us. What an incredible gift! That’s something worth praising God for!
More reasons to praise the Lord: The Lord is like a father to His children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone – as though we had never been here.
David lets us know how frail and unimpressive we are, and how brief our lives are. We are not made from impressive building materials. We are made from dust. We are not sturdy and enduring. The length of our lives is like grass that grows for a season and then withers, like wildflowers that bloom and vanish. All it takes is a gust of wind to blow us away. And yet, in spite of our weakness and unimpressiveness and the briefness of our lives, the Lord loves us. He’s like a father who is tender and compassionate toward His children.
It’s hard to invest our love in things that are fragile and temporary – at least it is for me. I grow morning glories. I enjoy them, but I don’t become deeply attached to them, because I know they will be gone soon. So, if an insect starts eating one of the blossoms, I usually don’t exert the effort to remove the it because I know the flower has only a few more hours to live. Not so the Lord. We may be weak and unimpressive and our lives may be brief, but our God still loves us with the tenderness of a father. What a wonderful reason to praise Him!
More reasons to praise Him: But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear Him. His righteousness extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to His covenant, of those who obey His commandments! Our lives are brief but the Lord is eternal, and His love is eternal. It never runs out. It never ends. And His righteousness – meaning His salvation, His deliverance – extends not only to us but to the generations who come after us. What God does in our lives can influence our children and grandchildren – who usually are among the most important treasures in our lives. Shouldn’t the Lord who loves us, who blesses us with salvation, and who extends that blessing to our children and grandchildren – shouldn’t He be praised?
These tremendous blessings are not for everyone. They are for those who fear the Lord, who are faithful to His covenant, and who obey His commandments. To fear the Lord means relating to Him with reverence. To be faithful to His covenant means remaining loyal to Him and His requirements for us. To obey His commandments means living the way He has told us to live.
Another reason to praise Him: The Lord has made heaven His throne; from there He rules over everything. Earthly kings have palaces from which they rule over cities and nations. But the Lord rules from the greatest place – Heaven – with complete authority, and He rules over everything. And He uses His sovereign power to do so many good things for us. That makes Him worthy of our praise.
Now David goes from listing his reasons to praise the Lord to summoning the angels to praise the Lord: Praise the Lord, you angels, you mighty ones who carry out his plans, listening for each of his commands. Yes, praise the Lord, you armies of angels who serve him and do his will! David calls the angels to praise the Lord – not because they are reluctant worshipers who need to be convinced to praise Him, but because David knows that just as the Lord has been so good to him, he has been so good to His heavenly servants. He is worthy of their praise too. He created them just like He created us. He created them so that they are wise and mighty beings. He created them so that they are able to obey Him and serve Him and do His will – which are very good things. They have been blessed to be in God’s glorious presence, and see how wise and great He is.
Finally, having called on himself and the angels to praise God, David now calls on everything to praise Him: Praise the Lord, everything he has created, everything in all his kingdom. Why does David call on everything that God has created to praise Him? And how can creation praise Him?
First, everything the Lord has made belongs to His kingdom and is under His authority. Everything that exists, exists because He willed it into being, and it exists for His glory. Just by existing, everything that the Lord created praises Him.
Second, everything that God created praises Him even if it can’t speak in human words. The sun, moon and stars, the mountains and hills, the seas and rivers, the plants and animals all proclaim the reality and the greatness of their Creator. Through their beauty, order, power and majesty, they silently declare His wisdom, glory and greatness. David’s call to creation to praise the Lord gives expression to what is already true. It’s already happening.
But there is one more reason this universal call to praise is so meaningful. It encourages us to praise the Lord even more. When we praise the Lord, we join the praise of the angels and, in a sense, the praise that rises from all creation. It’s like a man playing a beautiful melody on a flute. The melody may be lovely by itself, but when that flute becomes part of a great orchestra, the music becomes something far greater and more magnificent. The individual instrument has not lost its sound. Its music is now joined with the music of many others. In the same way, when we praise the Lord, our voices are joined with the angels and with all of creation. Our worship becomes part of something far greater than ourselves. We are adding our voices to the great chorus of all that God has made.
Finally, after calling the angels and everything else in all of creation to praise the Lord, David returns to where he began: Let all that I am praise the Lord. The psalm that opened with David calling himself to praise the Lord ends the same way. David is still totally focused, totally committed to praise the Lord with his entire being. And so should we.
Let’s pray:
Lord, we praise You because of who You are and because You do so many good things for us. Let all that we are praise You ‑ not merely our lips, not merely our emotions, not merely when life is going well, but all that we are, all the time. Thank You for forgiving all our sins, redeeming our lives from destruction, crowning us with Your love and tender mercies, and filling our lives with good things. Thank You for making Yourself known to us through Your Word and through Yeshua the Messiah. We praise You because You are compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and filled with love. Thank You that You do not treat us as our sins deserve, but remove our sins from us completely. Though our lives are brief and fragile, Your love is everlasting, and Your care for us is tender and faithful. You are the sovereign King who rules over all creation. Your throne is in heaven, and Your kingdom rules over everything. Yet You know us, You remember that we are only dust, and You care for us with the tenderness of a Father. Teach us to fear You with reverence, to remain faithful to Your covenant and to obey Your commandments. And when we do not experience all Your blessings in this life, help us remember that we will one day experience them fully in the life to come. Teach us never to forget Your goodness or take Your blessings for granted and to praise You in every circumstance. May our whole lives join the angels and all creation in giving You the praise and honor You deserve.
Hallelu‑Yah! Praise the Lord! Amen.