I Must Remember

By: Howard Vanderwell

Scripture Reading: Psalm 103

August 16th, 2009

Many Christians call Psalm 103 their favorite. Along with Psalm 23, David’s shepherd Psalm, this one is probably one of the best—known of the Psalms. It’s one of my favorites too. I remember that, when I was a child, this was the Psalm the pastor always read at of the conclusion of a communion service. During my years as a pastor, when I would call on folks who were suffering or in some sort of crisis, I would often ask them which Scripture passage they’d like me to read. This Psalm was one that was very near the top of the list for many. They are not only familiar words; they are precious words that have comforted the hearts of many in times of need. These are David’s words. It’s another David—Psalm. At least he was the human writer of the Psalm. Because we believe the Bible is inspired by God, we are convinced that behind David’s efforts at writing these words, we’ll find the Holy Spirit of God giving him the words to write. So these are words the Holy Spirit has given to us through David’s pen. And like so many of David’s words these were born out of womb of David’s life. He speaks so personally! We’re not sure exactly when he wrote these words, or what experience is behind them, but judging from what he is saying, it surely sounds like this was somewhat later in life. I get the impression from these words that he has lived a lot, experienced a lot, and is older now. As many of us know, with living more and experiencing more comes a seasoning that makes us look at life more reflectively. And so for David, too, a lot of good has happened, and a lot of bad has happened, and now he’s in a position to step back from it all a bit and think about what it all means. I wonder how many of you are at that stage right now. A good many years have passed. Decades of it. And you’ve experienced a lot. Many of the years have been good to you. But others have not. You can look back at a good long line of them and notice how they involve so many ups and downs — times when you felt so blessed and times when you almost felt abandoned; times when dreams were fulfilled and times when they were dashed; and times when you felt close to God and times when he seemed so far away. I’m there too. Some years ago when we began this journey of life we knew theoretically it might be this way, so varied, with so many ups and downs, but now that we’re able to look back on several decades of it we realize it’s been a journey quite different from what we expected. Well, if you have any reflections like that — then this Psalm is for you! It’s a very unique Psalm because of the direction in which he speaks. Most of the Psalms speak in one of two directions. Some of them are prayers that are spoken to God. So the direction of the Psalm is vertical, up, to God. For instance, Psalm 51 is one of David’s vertical Psalms.
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgression." (Psalm 51:1)
Those are words that David was speaking heavenward, to God. But other Psalms have a different direction. They are spoken to other people around us. They are what we call horizontal Psalms, testimonies and exhortations to instruct and encourage other people. Take, for instance, the familiar words of Psalm 23:
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in greet pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul." (Psalm 23:1—3a)
Those are words spoken about God but clearly addressed to other people, to his friends and family, and to people like you and me down through the centuries so we might be encouraged in our faith too. We call them horizontal Psalms. But this one we’ve read today, Psalm 103, is different. In the heart of the Psalm, from verses 6 through nearly the end of the Psalm, David is speaking horizontally, to other people. He is describing God. He’s giving his testimony of what he knows about God, and he is doing it in a way that encourages others to trust him and find strength in his care. And so he says things like this:
"For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is his love for those who fear him… From everlasting to everlasting The Lord’s love is with those who fear him…" (Psalm 103:11, 17)
And he also calls others to praise this God. Listen:
"Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion." (Psalm 103:22)
So a lot of these words from this Psalm are horizontal, spoken to you, me, and others. But what is unique here is that he doesn’t begin that way, and he doesn’t end that way. He does something here that you will find in only a few other Psalms. He talks to himself. He addresses the words internally. That’s right. David is talking to himself. Listen to the direction of these words at both the opening and the closing of the Psalm:
"Praise the Lord, O my soul all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul…." (Psalm 103:1,2)
And again at the end of the Psalm,
"Praise the Lord, O my soul." (Psalm 103:22b)
It may seem strange but this is a Psalm that begins and ends, not with vertical or horizontal words, but with words directed internally. And therefore we must understand that this Psalm aims to teach us that this is often a good thing to do. It’s entirely appropriate. And sometimes it’s very necessary. There ought to be certain reflective times in life when we get off the highway of a fast pace, look back over the course of our life, the chapters it has involved, and talk reflectively to ourselves about it all. Do you ever do that? Maybe it’s while you sit quietly and think silently; maybe it’s when you write in your diary or journal. Whenever. But there are certainly times in life when we need to talk to ourselves. And why? What is David’s point here? Why does he need that, and why do you and I need that? Well, if you consider how he expresses it here, you will discover that he is really warning himself about something. He is warning himself about how easy it is to forget, to forget big things that we ought never to forget. Listen to him, "O my soul, forget not all his benefits…" (Psalm 103:2) And then he goes on to mention those benefits that ought not to be forgotten. They are all about the gifts of God — about the fact that he forgives our sins, heals our diseases, redeems our life from the pit, crowns us with love and mercy, and satisfies our desires with good things. In other words, all those good gifts that God pours out on us day after day, and especially in some of those critical and strategic times in life, that we can so easily forget. I wonder if David was thinking about those times when his Father Jesse taught him about their ancestors, the Hebrews, and how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt; how he led them through the Red Sea, protected them on their journey through the wilderness, forty years of it…and always kept before their hearts the promise of a new life in a new land, the land flowing with milk and honey, the Promised Land. And I wonder if his father told him about what Moses said to the Hebrews one day, not long before they arrived in that Promised Land. I wonder if he was thinking about Moses’ warning in Deuteronomy 8. "Now be careful, Moses told them. You will get there and you will have a good life, and you will eat and be full, and you will build fine houses, and you’ll settle down, and your flocks and herds will grow, and your gold and silver will be multiplied. Then", Moses warns them, "be careful! For it will be very easy to forget the Lord your God. It will be easy to take all his gifts and forget him! You will take the gifts and forget the giver. And you will assume you did this all by yourself. And then you will proudly give yourselves the praise and credit that belongs to God." (Deuteronomy 8:10ff) Sure, it is terribly easy to forget God when you have a lot of good gifts! I can’t help but think of another story from the Bible’s New Testament that Luke told. You’ll find it in Luke 17. Jesus met ten men who were afflicted with leprosy, a terrible disease in their day which led them to be a hopeless outcast of society. Jesus healed them, all ten, as a wonderful display of the power of God. It’s a great story. But then it takes a haunting turn when Luke says, "One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice." (Luke 17:15). One of them. One of ten. Did all the rest forget who gave them the gift of healing? Did all the rest do exactly what Moses had warned about…that when God gives his gifts we’ll find it very easy to forget him as the giver—right while we enjoy the gifts? I think Moses, David, and Luke are all trying to warn us about the dangerous human weakness of forgetting. Are you as susceptible to that as I am? There was a time in the life of the congregation I was serving as Pastor when things seemed so heavy and dark. Key people were dealing with cancer and the prognoses were grim. A tragic accident on a church outing took the life of one of our members and seriously injured several others. Several families were dealing with very heavy circumstances. A child was stillborn. Another prematurely born little boy was in the neonatal unit fighting for his little life. And it seemed that we just recovered from one jolt and another came. Hearts were heavy. And so we decided we needed time to step aside from our normal worship life and spend some time with this Psalm and the message of encouragement it had. We needed to think about the good gifts of God. And so it’s for our good that in this Psalm David talks to himself. And he warns himself about how easy it is to forget. "O my soul, all my inmost being…don’t forget all the benefits of God." And he takes himself aside and they have a talk together. He enters a quiet reflective time to muse and remember. I need that, too. Our congregation needed that. I’m sure, you do too, don’t you? So it’s OK that David talks to himself that this Psalm begins and ends with internally directed words. We simply find it too easy to forget God’s gifts, and that’s not good for us and it’s not fair to God! I think I need to talk to myself today. Just about every day, for that matter. Just like David did. And I would think that you do too. And when we do, we’ll find, as David did, that two great and powerful realities stand out. The first is the compassion of God. That is the big theme of his testimony here. When David stops to reflect, to remind himself of God’s benefits, what comes to mind? Well, listen to him in these words — he forgives your sins, heals your diseases, redeems your life from the pit, crowns you with love and compassion…. David is speaking out of his own experience. This is his personal testimony. Behind every statement there is a personal memory. Can’t you just feel his mind and memory running back over all the stored pictures, the photo album with all its impressions of the past 20 years or so? I can do the same thing. I trust that you can too. He begins talking right away about the nature of God. The very nature of God is to be gracious and give us more than we deserve, to treat us not as our sins deserve, to have love that is as high as the heavens, to remove sins from us as far as the east is from the west. Yes, the very nature of God is to be a father to his children, filled with compassion. While he was remembering, which involves looking back, he also was looking ahead. Yes, he was looking ahead more than he realized at the time. Or at least the Holy Spirit who was writing through him was looking ahead. And he was anticipating the time when the eternal Son of God would lovingly come to this earth, take on our human nature, and give himself as our Savior on the Cross. Yes, God loves us enough to send his Son, and the Son of God was so filled with compassion he was crucified for our sins, so loving he gives us room to repent — so that he could forgive our sins, heal our diseases, redeem our lives from the pit, and crown us with love and compassion. I know it sounds unthinkable, but it’s very easy to forget all that. And that’s why a good memory, a stirred—up memory can be such an ally. Well, that’s the first great reality that stands out — the compassion of God. The second reality that stands out is how fragile we humans really are. Oh, we try to tell ourselves that we are invincible. The younger we are the more we believe it. But gradually all these experiences in life season us to realize how fragile we really are. I sat in my Doctor’s office one day. For a long time I sat there waiting. He was running behind again. You can only read so many waiting room magazines at a time like that. So I just started looking around the room. I noticed that he had a framed little story hanging on the wall. The title caught my eye — "A Lesson in Importance". So I moved closer to read it carefully. I wasn’t prepared for its impact. If you really want to know how important and indispensable you are, it said, take a bucket of water, thrust your fist down into the water, leave it there for a minute, and then quickly withdraw it. Then watch how big a hole your fist leaves! I didn’t like that story. I was still trying hard to believe in how important and invincible I was. I needed to learn otherwise. David had learned it by the time he wrote this Psalm. He had spent years out on the hillsides as a shepherd with his sheep. He saw the brown barren fields of winter turn into the lush green grass of spring and summer; but then just as quickly turn brown again. He noticed the flowers that could stand up so straight, facing the hot winds, and soon began to droop and fall. And his sheep who seemed so healthy one day could become prey to a predator the next or brought limp by some disease. So he writes;
"He knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more." (Psalm 103:14—16)
And he says in another Psalm, "…help me to know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath." (Psalm 39:4,5) So David was writing these words when he was aware of just how fragile he was. He talked to himself about that too. And those times of feeling fragile are often the times when it is a whole lot easier to remember, and a lot harder to forget. That’s why those times are our ally. So his remembering put him in touch with two great realities — how fragile he was and how compassionate God is. Maybe you are feeling very fragile, vulnerable, and broken right now. It may be the right time for you to see the compassion of God in Jesus Christ more clearly than ever. Now look at David’s words again. I want to show you where all this leads. It all leads David to praise God much more than he ever had before. You see, he opened the Psalm that way. You must praise the Lord, O my soul, and I know you won’t really do that unless you remember all his benefits, all of them. So stop, recall, remember, count…. Then you will understand how compassionate God has been to you. And when he arrives at that point, he has this powerful desire that our praise for God just ought to expand more and more. I can feel a little frustration on his part here. He’s like a pastor who wishes the congregation would sing God’s praise more vigorously than ever before. One who wishes the choir could be bigger than ever. Listen to him in the closing verses of the Psalm and watch how he calls for the circle to get larger. The crescendo of praise just keeps on building. He starts with "Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding." I take that to be a call to all the angels of heaven to join in hearty praise to God. Then he goes the next step. "Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will". Is he now calling not only for all the hosts of angels in heaven, but also for all the saints who have gone there, to join them? Remember that the book of Revelation talks about myriads of angels there, and an innumerable host of white—robed redeemed Christians. He wants them all to praise this gracious and compassionate God. And then one more. "Praise the Lord, all his works, everywhere in his dominion". That’s the whole created cosmos. All of us. And all of creation. Angels, saints, all of creation….nothing less to praise the Lord! And then one more time, "Praise the Lord O my soul!" You know what he’s doing? He’s anticipating heaven. I feel some homesickness on David’s part here. Could that be? Have you ever felt that? Sometimes we’re prone to feel that kind of homesickness when life is hard and troubles are heavy. Then we long for heaven to (as one spiritual puts it) "be done with the troubles of the world". But David’s reason is different here. He is so filled with praise to God for all his good gifts in all the ups and downs of life that he wants to gather the biggest and heartiest crowd he possibly can to give God the praise that he deserves, and he can’t imagine anyplace better than heaven to find a group like that. On this side of the grave we hold back so much, but over there we’ll be able to pull all the stops out. Finally we’ll be able to fully satisfy the passion of our grateful spirits to praise God the way he deserves. So if the David of Psalm 103 were with us in person today, I think he would take each of us aside and warn us about the terrible tendency we have to forget the benefits of God’s compassion. Especially in times as tough as today for many of us, "be careful," he would say. Don’t forget. Find some quite time alone, leisurely reflect, and then journal, about all the good gifts of God to you. Count the gifts of forgiveness, of healing, of encouragement, of redeeming your life, of new strength for each day. Count all the daily mercies, but count also the eternal gift of life everlasting through his Son Jesus Christ. And then praise God. Praise him with all your heart. Praise him with your prayers; praise him with your voice; praise him by your faithful living. And be sure that you’ve found a good church that will give you opportunity to praise him together. And…keep the hope alive in your heart of the day when you’ll arrive in heaven and will be able to join with angels, saints and all of his cosmos to praise him, finally, the way he really deserves.
Prayer

O Great God and Father, these words seem so small. They seem so inadequate to carry all the deep praise you deserve for your gracious gifts to us. Help me daily to so live that all my days may be a song of praise to you. And keep alive in my heart the hope of that day when I can join the hosts above praise you fully. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

About the Author

Howard Vanderwell

Howard Vanderwell was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1962. He received his M.Div. and Th.M. degree from Calvin Theological Seminary and his D.Min. at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. He has served as pastor to four congregations over 40 years in Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. After leaving the pastorate in 2002 he began a new ministry at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. He is currently a staff member at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and Adjunct Professor of Worship at Calvin Theological Seminary. He consults with local congregations, provides worship materials, leads conferences and workshops, and teaches courses on worship at Calvin Seminary. Howard’‘s interests include planning, leading and evaluating worship, preaching, and worship renewal throughout the evangelical church. “My life-long prayer, from my days as a child, was that I might be honored to serve as a Christian Reformed pastor preaching the Word of God to encourage and challenge his people. I consider the forty years of my pastoral ministry to have been the most valuable way in which I could have invested those years! When I consult with pastors, teach and mentor students, hold conferences for worship leaders, or write worship planning materials, my aim is to equip and inspire others to serve their Lord and Savior by making a whole-hearted investment in his church and his people. Such ministry is certainly not without its stresses and discouragements, and those of us who have found such joy in a life-time of ministry are uniquely fitted to encourage others.” Howard lives in Hudsonville, MI with his wife Eleanor. They have three married sons and ten grandchildren ages 5 through 19. His hobbies are yard-gardening, walking, photography and model railroading.

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