The psalmist supplies us with several reasons for praising God. At the start of his list is “forget not all of His benefits” (103:2). In v. 3-8 he enumerates some of those. Applicationally speaking, this is a part of the psalm where there is plenty of room for us to personalize the psalm by thinking about the “benefits” we’ve experienced from our Father’s hand.
But the psalmist doesn’t stop here, and neither should we. He goes deeper by answering the question, “Why do we have all of these blessings?”
We don’t have them because of who we are, we have them because of Who God is. Beginning in v. 9 we are told He is “compassionate, and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” This is the psalmist in church, singing his song! This is our song church. It is not a song about how great we are, it is a song about how great God is! That’s the only one worth singing.
This description of God occurs half a dozen times in the Old Testament. It is used by Moses (Exodus 34:6), Nehemiah (9:17), Joel (2:13), Jonah (4:2), and the psalmist (86:15, 103:8), to make sure that God’s people never forget who their God is. Remembering this about our Father will help us to integrate Him into every part of our lives.
There were some photos about a decade ago that showed a crow riding on the back of an eagle. It turns out that while this isn’t an everyday occurrence, other pictures have turned up showing other crows and even blackbirds doing the same thing. In all these pictures, the eagles never seem to be bothered by the passengers they have acquired. And why should they be? All they have to do is start soaring upward and their passengers will drop off and leave them alone. They do that because the eagle is a predator and threatens them and their nests. Thus, smaller birds like crows and blackbirds will act territorially like a dog going after a person in their territory, to try to fend off the eagle. When the eagle soars, they know it is going far enough away it will no longer be a threat. We’re just a little bit like that in that when we choose to soar close to God through praise and worship, the little things that we carry around drop off and fade away.
We can do this because, “The Lord has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all” (v. 19). I know it doesn’t always look that way, but it’s the truth. It didn’t look like God was ruling when Pharaoh and his army was about to catch up to the Israelites at the Red Sea, but He was. It didn’t look like God was ruling when Daniel and his three friends marched into captivity, but He was. And it didn’t look like God was ruling when they Joseph and Nicodemus placed the body of Jesus in the tomb, but He was. We can praise God because no matter what it looks like, He is ruling over all!
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 