Psalms 103

Praise the LORD, my soul! All that is within me, his holy name. Wesley's frame: the psalmist stirs himself to praise and will call all works to assist. Inner life is commandeered for worship.

Self-exhortation is free agency under grace. The whole inward self must bless; sluggishness is to be corrected, not excused.

Calvin: by stirring himself to gratitude he gives every man a lesson. Our sloth needs continual incitement; even the fervent prophet confesses the malady. He addresses mind and heart and all faculties, as if removed from men and examining himself before God.

The Spirit upbraids our undiligence and points the remedy—descend into yourself and awaken praise.

Bless again; forget all his benefits. Memory is the fuel of praise. Ingratitude forgets, but blessing remembers.

Make a practice of recalling what God has done. List benefits; refuse the slide into spiritual amnesia. Grace restores memory; you must still remember.

Calvin: God is not deficient in furnishing matter for praise; our ingratitude hinders. He deals liberally that we may celebrate his praise. Shameful forgetfulness buries innumerable benefits; the sole prohibition is not to forget them.

Benefits are objectively piled high; the fault is our burying them, not God's meanness.

Who forgives all your sins, who heals all your diseases. Pardon leads the list of benefits. Healing may include body and the deeper cure of guilt's wounds.

All iniquity forgiven is the mercy this psalm sings for those who bless his name. Receive by faith; let the soul answer pardon with praise.

Calvin: he begins with pardoning mercy—reconciliation the fountain of all other blessings. Forgiveness freely blots out sins and receives us into favor. Healing diseases: not restricted to the body only; the medicine respects blotting out guilt and curing corruptions by the Spirit of regeneration.

Until the heavenly Physician succors us, we nourish many deaths within. Pardon is first for those who taste this goodness in Christ.

Redeems life from the pit; crowns with steadfast love and mercy. From near-death to crowned kindness.

Redemption and crowning are gifts to be answered with blessing. The pit was no illusion; so is the crown of hesed.

Calvin: previous to curing, we are dead and adjudged to the grave. Mercy delivers from death—what room for self-gloriation? He adds compassions in the plural: before, behind, on all sides, grace presents itself in immeasurable abundance.

Crowning love surrounds those God redeems; the first step of spiritual life is resurrection from the grave by mercy.

Wesley: The eagles—which lives long in great strength and vigour. Satisfied with good; youth renewed.

God fills the mouth with good and renews vigor. Expect renewal without denying aging bodies; spiritual strength can be young while years advance.

Calvin: God constantly infused new vigor so strength continued—secret influence by which the godly retain unimpaired strength. Though the outward man decays, we are renewed to a better life and sustained by the Spirit.

Eagle renewal images grace's secret vigor. Satisfaction is from God's bounty to overflowing.

The LORD executes righteous acts, and justice for all the oppressed. From personal benefits to public character of God.

Oppression is answered by God's justice. Plead for the wronged; trust the LORD who works righteousness.

Calvin: passing from personal benefits, he declares God the succorer of the oppressed—including himself under many persecutions. It is God's ordinary work to succor his servants when injuriously treated. Exercise patience; God takes vengeance and covers with the shield of his justice.

Ordinary providence for the wronged among his servants—righteousness as God's habit, not rare exception.

Ways to Moses; acts to Israel. Revelation in history and law. The exodus God is the praising soul's God.

Made known means truly shown. Israel saw acts; Moses received ways. Thanksgiving includes Scripture's story, not private mood only.

Calvin: he speaks in the name of the chosen people. Ways shown to Moses were deliverance until the promised land—God's righteousness in succoring the oppressed. He made known his ways first to Moses the messenger, then to all the people. Thanksgiving for adoption and the law's light.

True knowledge of God matches what faith finds in the written Word—not cold speculation into secret essence.

Merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love—Exodus 34's name of God on the psalmist's lips.

This character is why sinners hope. Slow anger and abounding love meet the penitent. Both camps confess this Name together before they differ on the scope of "those who fear him."

Calvin: allusion to Moses' exclamation in Exodus 34:6. David applies those terms: Israel continued in relation to God by sheer goodness though they forfeited it by wickedness. God rises to assert his mercy by which alone we stand. Synonyms meet our doubting: merciful, gracious, patient, abundant in mercy.

The Name corrects arrogance that robs God of praise and trembling that will not trust his grace.

Not always chide; anger not kept forever. Rebuke has an end in mercy for his people.

Chastening is actual and parental; it is not endless rage. Turn under the rod; hope in the Name of v. 8.

Calvin: when God has been offended he will not be irreconcilable—inclined by nature to forgive. He institutes action to humble sinners, then recedes when he sees them subdued. He does not keep anger as men cherish secret revenge. This does not describe his mind toward all mankind without distinction; it sets forth a special privilege of the Church—passing by unbelievers under everlasting wrath.

Tender pardon for his children (Isaiah 54), not a denial of vengeance on the unbelieving.

Not dealt with according to sins; not repaid according to iniquities. God’s forbearance goes beyond what we deserve.

Every believer must confess this. Examine your life; continual provocation met by non-repayment is sheer mercy that should melt resistance.

Calvin: proves from experience the divine character—only wonderful forbearance preserved Israel. Each should inquire how often we provoke wrath; yet he not only forbears but bountifully maintains those he might justly destroy.

Non-repayment is grace to a people who deserved ruin—evidence, not wage.

Wesley: So great—so much above their deserts and expectations. Heaven-high hesed toward those who fear him.

Fear of the LORD is the living reverence grace enables and we must exercise. The love is vast above desert; "those who fear him" names the path of recipients.

Calvin: God's mercy toward us is infinite—compared to the vast extent of the world. He does not treat generally of what God is toward the whole world, but of his character toward the faithful. One mercy restores strangers to life; another continually follows those embraced with fatherly love.

Heaven-high steadfast love is on those who fear him—the Church's privilege, daily pardoning those already adopted.

East from west: transgressions removed that far. Measureless pardon matches heaven-high love.

Removal is forgiveness. Believe the distance; stop digging up what God has removed.

Calvin: that mercy may reach us, the obstacle of guilt is taken away—sins removed as far as east from west. He speaks of mercy poured on the faithful, continually following those in fatherly love—not a one-moment remission after which righteousness is kept by meritorious works.

Daily pardon to the close of life; against both a once-for-all-plus-satisfactions scheme and perfectionist denial of ongoing need.

Father to children; LORD on those who fear him. Compassion is parental, not mechanical.

Fear and childlike trust belong together. Draw near as children; the Father's pity meets frailty without licensing presumption.

Calvin: he assigns the cause—God is a father. Having freely and sovereignly adopted us, he continually pardons; draw hope of forgiveness from that fountain. No one adopted on his own merit; sins freely pardoned. He is thus favorable to sincere worshippers—the free imputation of righteousness offered to those who devote themselves to so bountiful a Father.

Fatherly compassion rests on sovereign adoption; attainments still fall short, so goodness remains the only secure pillar.

Wesley: Knoweth—the weakness and mortality of our natures, and the frailty of our condition, so that if he should let loose his hand upon us, we should be irrecoverably destroyed. Dust remembered stays the hand.

God's knowledge of frailty is mercy's motive in the text. Humility and trust rise together—no room for pride, no need for despair.

Calvin: he annihilates worth men arrogate; the consideration of our misery alone moves God to patience. The more wretched our condition, the more inclined is God to show mercy. Remembrance that we are clay incites him to do us good.

Dust is not leverage we claim; it is what God sees when he chooses compassion.

Days like grass; flourishes like a field flower. Brief beauty, passing.

Learn to number your days. Flourish without pretending permanence; bless the God whose love outlasts the flower (v. 17).

Calvin: all excellency withers like a fading flower at the first blast. Man is said to flourish only loosely; he grants the grass image rather than calling man mere vapor—yet life is a show that passes, dependent on another's will.

Brevity of life is why God mercifully pardons (cf. Psalm 78:39).

Wind passes; it is gone; place remembers it no more. Erasure of the flower's spot.

Human places empty quickly. Invest praise in the everlasting Name, not in a spot on the field.

As soon as the wind passes, it is gone; Its place remembers it no more. Calvin: our life is phantom; if God withdrew grace the soul itself would be a blast and the body dust.

Total frailty drives the contrast of the next verse's everlasting steadfast love.

But—everlasting to everlasting hesed on those who fear him; righteousness to children's children. The hinge against grass and wind.

Fear of God remains the living description of recipients across ages. Promise to children's children invites household faithfulness; it does not baptize presumption in ungodly offspring.

Calvin: leaves nothing to rely on but God's mercy. Even the regenerate have no intrinsic excellence; God is the inexhaustible fountain. Goodness everlasting lets the faithful boast of eternal salvation even in death. Righteousness here is God's faithful protection of his saints, extending to children's children (Deuteronomy 7:9)—associating offspring in adoptive mercy.

Everlasting love on those who fear him secures empty people by God's fountain, including seed by hereditary grace of adoption.

To those who keep his covenant, to those who remember to obey his precepts. Fear of God (v. 17) is expounded as covenant-keeping obedience.

Remembrance and doing are grace-enabled duties we must actually take up. Hypocrites and degenerate children must not steal the promise; keep and do.

Calvin: by way of exception—God is merciful only to those who keep his covenant, which the unbelieving make void. Keeping the covenant is put for fear of God: true worshippers reverently obey his Word. The covenant begins with promise of grace, so faith and prayer are required above all. Remember statutes—or forgetfulness extinguishes truth; remembrance invigorates when men do them.

The condition-language describes the marked people of mercy, not a meritorious bargain that purchases everlasting love.

Throne established in the heavens; kingdom rules over all. Praise widens from personal benefits to cosmic rule.

God truly reigns over all. Creaturely agency remains under that rule; the soul blesses a King whose dominion is not theatrical.

Calvin: having recounted benefits to each and to the Church, he extols infinite glory. Ascend above the world; do not measure his power by man's. His majesty transcends the heavens; all kingdoms are under his control.

Established throne means effectual rule over all—not a title without sway.

Wesley: His hosts (v. 21 context)—angels in vast numbers, mighty power, unanimous concurrence, exquisite order. Mighty in strength, who fulfill his word, obeying his voice.

Angels model prompt obedience. Join their blessing; let created might serve the word, not self.

Calvin: he addresses angels to teach that advancing divine glory is their highest end. Clothed with strength, they hang on God's word—nothing more honorable than to obey. They execute commandments and are always ready.

Angelic readiness shames our sloth; we exhort them for our awakening, not because they lag.

Wesley: Ministers—this Hebrew word is commonly used of the highest and most honourable sort of servants. Hosts and ministers who do his will.

Honor is measured by doing his will. Bless with the hosts; aim at the same obedience.

Calvin: hosts are not the stars here but myriads who stand ready before the throne. Ministers who do his pleasure—appointed as our guardians, not idle spectators. Pleasure expresses joyful, cheerful obedience.

The honor of ministry is glad doing of God's pleasure.

All works in all places of his dominion—then back to my soul. Cosmic chorus returns to the personal summons of v. 1.

If mute works re-echo praise, how can the awakened soul stay silent? End where you began: praise the LORD, my soul.

Calvin: he addresses all creatures—though without speech, they ought to re-echo the Creator's praises—so we learn no corner of heaven or earth is without his praise. Express mention of all places of dominion stirs the faithful: if even lands where his voice is unheard ought not be mute, how can we be silent to whom he opens his mouth?

The design of recounting benefits and empire was to animate the soul again—Bless Jehovah, O my soul.