Week 35: Psalms 103-105
Questions: Psalm 103-105
- Psalm 103: When was the last time you took the time to list out the many benefits of knowing the Lord? David does that in Psalm 103. You may not be a proficient or professional writer, but you can give the Lord gratitude and thanks for so many things! Make some time today bless the Lord as David did.
- Psalm 104: Our God truly is awesome. Who can do what He does? That is the essence of this psalm - to recount the amazingness of God. To tell of His great deeds and what He has done. As you go throughout your day today, see if you can thank God once every hour for something only He can do!
- Psalm 105: The theme this week has been the writers of the Psalms telling of God’s wondrous works, remembering and telling others about things He has done in the past. Today’s psalm goes way back to the times of Moses. It is good to bring to remembrance all God has done. Thank God for His faithfulness in your life and in the lives of believers throughout the world.
Devotion
“Bless the Lord” is twice heralded at the beginning of this psalm and occurs an additional four times at its closing. If we add “Bless His holy name we have seven instances. The psalmist is challenging himself as well as readers to remember and embrace the chief end of man, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
The contents and complexity of the gift of salvation are specified; pardoning, healing, redeeming, crowning, satisfying, and renewing (verses 3-5). Although we can see faint aspects of these graces even in the unredeemed, only God accomplishes with completeness—pardoning all our iniquities and healing all our diseases, as examples.
In Exodus (34:5-7), when God passed by in front of Moses to reveal His glory, God used the same words to describe himself as in this psalm, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness (verse 8) and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by
no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
Notice that the warning to the guilty in Exodus is absent from the psalm because it is written as a love letter, enraptured as in the marital relationship. It invites every believer to “draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb 10:22), to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” (Heb 10:23), and to “consider how to stimulate one another toward love and good deeds” (Heb 10:24).
- Jim Yoder