“Who Forgives All Your
Iniquities”
Psalm 103:1-5
A Psalm of David.
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
3 Who forgives all your
iniquities, Who heals all your diseases,
4 Who redeems your life from
destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
5 Who satisfies your mouth
with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
Psalm 103 is a psalm of pure perfect
praise. It is a psalm that lifts up our worship to the Lord because of how good
He has been to us. David has enjoyed the personal benefits of God's blessings
over and over again in his life. Despite all the problems and difficulties and
challenges that he had to face throughout his life, David comes to the end of
his life, and writes this great praise psalm, that I believe is so beneficial for
us today. We have so many blessings to
thank the LORD for and while maybe we have difficulties and problems and tragedy
and heartbreak in our life, we can still bless the LORD. And that is what we
should do! “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”.
Oh,
how easily we forget! Sometimes, one of the biggest curses that we actually
face in life, is we are so blessed that we start taking them for granted and we
forget the Blessor, the One who gave us the blessings. That is what David is
wanting to do here, and that is what we need to do. Now there are at least seven
things he blessed the LORD for, and he did not want to forget His benefits.
First,
David did not want to forget about the benefit of forgiveness. “Who forgives
all your iniquities”.
Iniquities
are worse than sin. The word sin itself means to miss the mark. Transgression
another word for sin in the Bible which means to go beyond where God has told
us not to go. Iniquities are not just
the outward act of sin, but it pictures the motive, the inward deceit of the
heart. Iniquity is something that's twisted, that's distorted inside of us.
God
forgives us for all our iniquity, those terrible awful things that we think and
do in our lives. David knew about God’s forgiveness. You can read about his
experience in Psalm 51 and 32. In Psalm 51:1-3 he prayed, “Have mercy upon
me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy
tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and
my sin is ever before me.”
David
covered everything that sin is called in the Bible. He acknowledged that he had
committed adultery with Bathsheba and then set it up for her husband, Uriah to
be murdered. Oh, he felt weight, the
guilt and the burden of his sin and the need to be forgiven! That is why he cried
out to the LORD for forgiveness!
I
love Ephesians 1:7, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the
forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”. David goes on
to write in Psalm 103:10-12, “He has not dealt with us according to our
sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high
above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the
east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
The
east and the west never come together! My friend that's how far God has removed
our transgressions, our iniquities from us! They are not there anymore! Why? Because
our sins were laid on Jesus Christ on the cross, and when we by faith believe in
Him, we experience His forgiveness. Jesus paid the full price for our iniquities,
our sin, our transgression and now has imputed to us His righteousness! Praise
the LORD!
Today,
thank the Lord for this great “benefit” of forgiveness!
God
bless!
