Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
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Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Psalm 103; A Psalm for Forgetful Hearts
Jason Sterling August 10, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin
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If you have a copy of God's Word, turn with me this morning. Psalm 103. We're going to conclude our summer series on the Psalms. We've been looking at various Psalms this summer. We're going to conclude with Psalm 103, my opinion, one of the greatest passages in all of Scripture. We are beginning. It started for some this week, it's going to start for others or last week, it's going to start for some this week, but the new school year is here, the new ministry year is here and everything you can feel it building, everything is about to kick into high gear and over the next few weeks and next few months there are going to be a thousand things that are going to be coming at you that try to make you forget the goodness and faithfulness of God. It's going to be busy schedules, ball games, stress. You're going to be faced with disappointments that you don't see coming and unexpected problems. All of those things are coming at us very quickly and that is exactly why we need this psalm, why we need this Psalm because David in Psalm 103 shows us how to fight back and push back against spiritual forgetfulness, forgetting who God is and what he's done.
Speaker 1:Follow along with me as I read this amazing passage. I think you'll see what I mean. This is Psalm 103. This is the word of the Lord. Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. 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 the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed.
Speaker 1:Like the eagles, the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He who made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. As for man. His days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is, from everlasting to everlasting, on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all.
Speaker 1:Bless the Lord, o you, his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord all his hosts, his ministers who do his will. Bless the Lord all his works in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, all his works and all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, o my soul.
Speaker 1:I feel like saying let's rise for the benediction and be dismissed. This is an amazing passage, and so let's pray and let's ask that God would help me, even do close to speaking and delivering how amazing this passage really is. I need the Lord's help. Let's pray. Father, this is an amazing passage and there's no way I can do it justice, but you can. Way I can do it justice, but you can. This is your word for your people and your spirit is at work in this place and you have brought us here, and so would you take this word, and I pray that Psalm 103 would not be just good information, but that we would meet the God of Psalm 103, and we would be transformed this morning. I pray that you would give us all.
Speaker 1:Some of us have had the best week of our lives, others the worst week of our lives. Wherever we find ourselves, meet us, and may we encounter the Lord Jesus and may we start singing In Christ's name, amen. Have you ever set your phone down? You just had it a couple of minutes later, whether it's in your car or in your house A couple of minutes later, whether it's in your car or in your house, and then all of a sudden you can't find it and there is a frantic search to find your iPhone or whatever kind of phone you have. Or have you ever been in a conversation and you start telling someone a story or telling them about something, and then you completely forget the point and you completely forget where you are going and you say something to the effect of I can't remember where I was going with that, and we hear those things and those kind of forgetful moments are laughable and we smile at those sorts of ways that we forget things.
Speaker 1:But there is something far more serious, a more serious form of forgetfulness that plagues every single one of us this morning, including me, every single one of us this morning, including me and that is spiritual forgetfulness, or what has been called spiritual amnesia. We make these promises to God, and at least I do. We have this moment of clarity, this moment of provision, where God shows up and he does something great in our lives and we say, maybe not verbally, but at least in our hearts, we say God, I'll never forget this, I will never forget what you have done. I will always remember this, I am with you forever. And then what happens? It doesn't take long and we forget. When something hard comes in all of a sudden, we start doubting God's care and God's love and his faithfulness. That is why we're not alone. This has been God's people since Genesis, chapter 3 and the fall into sin. Remember over and over. If you look at the scriptures, god's people forget. And what does God say over and over, dozens of times in the scriptures? Remember, remember, remember why. Because we are so prone to forget him. David knew that struggle too, and that is precisely why David writes this Psalm.
Speaker 1:Psalm 103 is medicine for the forgetful heart this morning. Our hearts this morning need to be stirred. They need to be commanded and compelled to remember who God is and to remember what God has done. And so let's look at this passage. If we're going to remember who God is and what he's done, this passage shows us that we need a few things. We need to one we need to learn to preach. Secondly, we need to remember God's unchanging character. And lastly, we need to start singing. If you're going to remember God this fall, when you're tempted to forget him, we got to learn to preach, remember his character, start singing. Let's look at those in turn this morning. The first heading is learn to preach. Look at verses one and two. We're going to walk through this passage. Bless the Lord all that is within me, and forget not his benefits. David opens this psalm and it's very interesting because he's talking to himself. So if you talk to yourself, you're in good company and notice what's happening.
Speaker 1:David is not waiting to feel grateful before he starts praising God. Grateful before he starts praising God, he's commanding his soul towards gratitude. He's preaching to himself, and you know why he's preaching to himself? Because he knows his heart. He knows that the human heart is forgetful, that by nature, our hearts tend towards not gratitude, but towards entitlement and towards being thankless. The default setting in the human heart is forgetfulness we left to ourselves, don't remember, we forget, and that's why David says oh, I love that All that is within me. He's basically saying every part of me resist remembering the goodness of God. Our minds and we know this they naturally drift towards our problems. Our heart tends to focus on what is wrong and what is missing in our lives, and so he is calling his whole being to worship and preaching the truth to his soul.
Speaker 1:Let me be clear at this point about something David is not saying fake it. He's not saying ignore your pain, ignore your suffering or deny your pain. The same David that wrote Psalm 103 is the same David that wrote my God in the Psalms. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now you know what David's doing here. He is refusing to let his pain have the last word. That's what he's doing Preaching to your soul the truth of God's care for you. It's not about suppressing your emotions. It's about making sure the truth of God gets equal time in your heart and notice what he does. Look at verses three through five. And the thing I want you to see here is he doesn't just in general terms say God, thank you for blessing me. No, he gets very, very specific about the benefits of God forgiveness, healing, redemption from the pit, steadfast love and mercy, daily provision. He lists very specifically what God has actually done.
Speaker 1:Last week we were eating with some neighbors in our neighborhood and I walked into their house and I saw on the kitchen table it was strange there were 15 pair of sunglasses and they're all shapes and sizes, all styles, some old, some new, and I immediately think like there's got to be a story here. And I immediately think like there's got to be a story here. And sure enough there was. And they go on to tell me that and maybe you've experienced this kind of thing. I've never seen this before. But they were at the beach and evidently the tide had turned in a very unusual way and everything in the ocean was washing up to the shore on a very concentrated spot Some trash and seaweed and all sorts of nasty things, but also a lot of treasure, and specifically the treasure of lots of sunglasses, sunglasses that people had lost in the ocean for months ago, possibly even years ago, were all coming up to the shore. And they meet this older gentleman who is around all of these sunglasses and has a. Isn't this crazy? I may be off seeing this, but has a whole bag of sunglasses that he's collecting. And he takes the sunglasses out and he looks at my friends and he says, hey, do you know anything about these sunglasses? They look like they're really fancy. And my friends look and they say, well, those are Costas, and they're the top-of-the-line Costas, and what you are holding in your hands is worth hundreds of dollars. And the man was holding this treasure and he completely missed it.
Speaker 1:And we do the exact same thing spiritually. We are holding treasures in our hearts and in our hands and we miss it. We're holding and have God's forgiveness and instead we focus on our guilt. We have his redemption and all we do is rehearse our failures. We have his steadfast love and yet we obsess over our circumstances. David is teaching us to recognize and to show us what we're already holding, and it is far more. And all of those things point to Jesus, and those benefits would ultimately cost God everything in order to provide. And so how do we stop missing the treasure that we're holding and do what David is doing here?
Speaker 1:Well, students, as you head back to school, you're going to have voices that are going to try to tell you who you are and tell you what you're worth. You'll have the comparison game. Your worth You'll have the comparison game. You'll feel this pressure to perform and measure up. You'll fear not measuring up. Don't let that be the only voice your soul hears. Make room and preach the benefits of forgiveness and mercy and love and the care of God.
Speaker 1:Monday morning, some of you are starting a hard week and you've got that meeting that you're dreading and you feel overworked by the things that you have to do. Pre, preach God's provision to your soul. When you're walking through loss or grief, don't pretend that it doesn't hurt and it's not painful, but don't let that be the only voice that is speaking. Make room for God's faithfulness. Make room for God's faithfulness to be a voice in your life too. When the anxieties whisper this week, preach the provision of God even louder. When that guilt and shame dominates you, preach forgiveness even louder. Don't wait to feel grateful. Preach gratitude to your heart until your heart catches up. No one talks to themselves more than you do. What are you preaching to your heart?
Speaker 1:We see David here says preach the benefits of the gospel. Secondly, god. We need to remember God's character. So he preaches to his soul the benefits. Now he focuses on God's unchanging character, and I'm just going to read through this again. So please, if you have a Bible, look through this. It's so rich. I'm going to walk through these verses. I'm going to read them again. I normally would just refer to them, but we need to hear them again.
Speaker 1:Look at verses 8 through 10. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. God does not treat you and treat me the way that our failures deserve. Thank goodness, the default mode of God's heart is not anger, it is love. Verse 11 through 12, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us. Please don't miss this. Your sin is not just forgiven. It is removed. It's not just covered up temporarily, no, it is removed. How far the east is from the west? And the point of this is that's an infinite distance. The east is from the west, and the point of this is that's an infinite distance. And so God has separated. That's how far God has separated you from your sin.
Speaker 1:Verse 13,. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. God is our father. We are his children. Verse 14 drives it home even more. I love this. He knows our frame. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:God is not shocked by your failure. He is not shocked when you blow it and when you fail he has compassion. Why? Because he knows who you are. He made you, he knows that you're dust, he knows how fragile we are. And oftentimes, and for lots of reasons, we think God, we have this very harsh view and we think God is harsh and that God is mean. No, god is so kind. God is long-suffering with us and patient and gentle and compassionate.
Speaker 1:Verse 15 through 17. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like the flowers of the field, for the wind passes over it and then it's gone. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. We are temporary. Bible says we are a vapor. We are here today and gone tomorrow, but God's love is not tied to our lifespan, it is eternal. What feels permanent to us is our problems, and our pain is actually temporary. Now, what we forget is God's steadfast love, and God's steadfast love is the thing that's actually permanent.
Speaker 1:You've seen this if you've been driving, perhaps in the country or on a trip. Do you ever drive and you look over and you see just some random chimney still standing in the middle of the field or by a house or whatever? Well, you know about the recent LA wildfires and one of the things it destroyed houses. It destroyed neighborhoods. But one of the things the reporters discovered was they kept finding the very same thing in the midst of the ashes, and that was brick chimneys were still standing. Everything else had burned away except these solid foundations. They had remained, and those chimneys became a monument of memory and proof that something had been there, something real had stood there, even though everything else was now gone.
Speaker 1:That's what David's doing here, when the wildfires of life come burning through your life and through the world and everything around you crumbles and is reduced to ashes. We have something that will never fall and never crumble, and it is the unchangeable character of God. Character of God. How can you be sure? You know how you can be sure? Well, because the compassion you see in this passage actually took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and came into the world. The love and compassion we see in Psalm 103 would be ultimately expressed on a cross. And, friends, the brick chimney that is still standing in the ashes of this world is the cross of Christ. Look at that. That is a picture of the compassion of God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and it will never be destroyed.
Speaker 1:And so, what aspects this morning of God's character do you need to remember today? Maybe this morning you're drowning in guilt and shame and you need to remember that God has thrown your sin as far as the east is from the west. He's removed it. Or maybe you're full of brokenness and you cannot shake it. Maybe you need to remember the father-like gentleness of God, who is gentle and kind, who knows your frame and who is near. Maybe you feel unstable and unsteady and anxious. Maybe you, this morning, need to remember the permanent and everlasting love of God. Learn to preach, remember his character and, lastly, to fight our spiritual amnesia, we need to start singing.
Speaker 1:I love this part. I mean so think about this, david. He's preached to his soul the benefits of God. He starts talking about the character of God and now he can't contain it. I mean, he is worked up here and his excitement about who God is explodes outside of the bounds of his own heart into all creation. Look at verses 20 through 23. Just follow along. I'll read through this.
Speaker 1:But notice the progression. Bless the Lord, oh his angels, all his hosts keep going, all his works, in all places of dominion. Notice the progression angels, heavenly beings, every created thing. This is cosmic worship. And David is not just observing this, he is inviting creation and all of these things to join him. He's saying come on, angels, join me, start singing. Come on, oceans and mountains and all of creation, join me and start singing. This is invitation, not just declaration. And then David notice he circles back. Look at the last verse, bookends. He begins praise the Lord, o my soul, and ends that way. After inviting all creation, he reminds himself that this worship, it includes him, it includes us. This morning he's saying we too, as God's people, we are part of the cosmic chorus and we're going to see this what David is talking about very clearly.
Speaker 1:In a couple of weeks, in SEC football stadiums around the Southeast, it'll start small, with someone cheering and doing the school chant or fight song or whatever, and then, in a matter of seconds, a hundred thousand people have joined in. You've seen it at baseball games. Take me out to the ball game, sweet Caroline. You see someone starting the wave in a stadium, starts with a couple of people and then, one by one, everyone starts to join in and to share in the joy. Why? Because it's how you were made. That is built into you. We were made as human beings for corporate worship. You and I were made to sing together, and that is exactly what David has discovered.
Speaker 1:Worship is contagious and we're designed to need each other's voices and friends. That is why corporate worship is one of the primary weapons to help us fight against spiritual amnesia. That's why we need to come, even when we don't feel like it, because it's one of the primary weapons that God's given us to help us to remember. There's something beautiful about the way God has designed us that we need the songs of other people to help us push back against forgetting God and his goodness and his faithfulness. Look around you this morning in this room. Did you know that? These are voices that God has given you to help you with spiritual forgetfulness? When you can't sing, we will sing for you. When your soul dries up from grief and loss and it seems like it's stolen your voice, we need to hear the church gather around us and sing and depression overtakes us. We need God's people to sing for us when doubt creeps in. We need the people of God. That's why we confess our faith together.
Speaker 1:You need, when doubt creeps in, for our faith, to help carry your faith, and we also, as we think about corporate worship, it's not just singing, it is sharing our stories with one another as well. We all have stories of the ways God has shown up and answered prayers and things that he has done. Share those with God's people, because we desperately need it, and that, too, is a way that we push back against spiritual forgetfulness. Have you ever had someone that has shared a story about what God has done in their life and walked away and thought, eh, whatever, no, what does it do to you? It fans the flame of your faith. It encourages you Share your stories of God's faithfulness.
Speaker 1:Sing stories and hymns of God's faithfulness, join the chorus that we see in this passage. And here's the most amazing thing in this passage, and here's the most amazing thing we have even more reason to sing, don't we? More reason than David did, because we live this side of the cross. All of these things that David is talking about point to the Lord Jesus. We have more reason to sing because of his forgiveness, redemption and everlasting love that we see at the cross. We have Jesus. Christ has died, christ is risen, come again.
Speaker 1:So let's start singing, because the fall is coming, the stress and the pressure and the a thousand things that are going to press in on you and make you forget. And that is when we need to remember that we're holding a treasure of the benefits of the gospel. Don't let the busyness of the fall burn away your memory and my memory of who God is. Learn to preach to your heart, remember the unchanging character of God and start singing and let's join the cosmic chorus. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, bless his holy name and forget not his benefits. Amen, let's pray, amen. Father, we confess that our hearts are prone to forget you and we need your help, and so help us to learn to preach the truth to our hearts, help us to remember your unchanging character and help us to start singing of your steadfast and unfailing love In Jesus' name, amen.