This week we are continuing our teaching series, The Beauty of Forgiveness. Last time we talked about the fact that when we sin, we can go to Jesus to receive forgiveness. This week, with the help of another psalm of David, we are going to explore why exactly that is the case. What is it about Jesus that makes Him the best place to go for forgiveness when we have fallen into sin. The answer has everything to do with who He is. Let’s take a look!
The Source of Forgiveness
In the opening of the second chapter of his international bestseller, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins offered up a description of God that was intended to be provocative. I wonder some if his position hasn’t softened a bit in the years since given some of the public comments he has made recently—including describing himself as a cultural Christian just last year—but at the time, he gave word to something that a whole lot of folks were feeling. Many still do.
Here’s what he said: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Now, if you are sitting there squirming in your seat a bit that I would read that passage to you, that’s understandable. Depending on your starting point, it’s a pretty shocking passage. But remember two things: Dawkins is a rhetorical genius (he just uses his gifts to make and support truly terrible, infantile, arguments that are easily defeated by simply reading the whole Old Testament and taking it seriously rather than cherry-picking a handful of challenging passages, and from a perspective drippy with chronological snobbery, using them as the lens to understand the rest instead of the other way around), and, although being provocative was his goal, he was giving word to what a whole lot of other people were already thinking about God when he wrote it.
The odds are fairly good that if you are in the room this morning, you probably don’t think about God along those lines. The folks who still do don’t typically come to churches. Maybe you’ve had some seasons in which you got close to them. Maybe you’ve never touched them with a ten-foot pole. Either way, when you walk out those doors here in a little while, unless you go straight home (and maybe even if you do), there is a reasonable likelihood that you are going to encounter someone whose thoughts about God run somewhere in that direction.
But even if your circle is so populated by Christians that you still can’t imagine anyone thinking that, let’s talk about your own thoughts about God for a second. “Well, I love Him,” you might be reflexively insisting at this point. “I’ve experienced His goodness and grace. I don’t have any negative thoughts about God at all. Well…hardly any. Sure, I’ve gotten irritated with Him a time or two, but I worked through that pretty quickly. Okay…fine…so there was this one time when this awful thing happened and I got pretty upset with Him—upset to the point of questioning His goodness a bit, but that was it. I’ve never gone anywhere near Dawkins’ dark path.”
Maybe not, and that’s great. I’m glad for you for that. I haven’t either. But I wonder: Do you fully understand just how good this God you profess to love really is? At the very end of the message last week, we looked very briefly at a passage from Isaiah that often gets cited as a way to point to the greatness of God and to highlight His mysterious ways. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” But as we talked about, when you look at that verse in its full context, the aspect of God that is being elevated to such lofty heights is not His wisdom or His intelligence or His power, but His compassion and mercy for wayward sinners. To put that a bit more directly, no, you don’t fully understand just how good God really is. I don’t either. We can’t. As good as we might think He is, the reality is infinitely beyond that. His willingness to have compassion on and extend forgiveness to the struggling sinner goes far beyond our comprehension. Well, this morning, I’d like to try to close that gap just a bit with you.
Today we are in the second part of our new teaching series, The Beauty of Forgiveness. From now until Thanksgiving, in conjunction with the series all of our adult Sunday school classes are working through, we are taking a look at the concept of forgiveness and seeing from the Scriptures just how fully we can get our minds and hearts wrapped around it. We started things off last week by establishing two really important things. First, we inherently yearn for forgiveness when we become conscious of our sin. When you know that you have broken a relationship you value, your natural instinct is to try to restore it. Second, if we want to experience that forgiveness, Jesus is where—or rather, to who—we need to go. When we sin, we can go to Jesus for forgiveness. This morning, I want to take things a step forward with you by talking about why exactly that is.
Why is it that we can go to Jesus when we need forgiveness? The answer has everything to do with who God is. In order to help us see that, we are going to return to another psalm of David. Rather than being all gloomy and guilt-ridden like last time, though, this one is nothing but praise. Those are always fun psalms to read. If you have your copy of the Scriptures with you this morning, join me in Psalm 103, and let’s see what David has to say here.
Contextually, we don’t know what were the circumstances in David’s life that prompted him to write this song of praise. Maybe he was going through a rough season and needed a lift. Maybe everything was really good and he was simply crying out from the overflow of his joy. I tend to lean a bit toward the former, but we don’t know, so we’ll just have to take the psalm on its own terms. And when we do that, we see right out of the gate that David here is praising the Lord. “My soul, bless the Lord, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. My soul, bless the Lord, and do not forget all his benefits.”
Now, who is David talking to here? That’s always important to establish when you are reading a psalm. Who is the target audience of the words? That impacts how we receive them. Well, in this case, David is talking to himself. He’s doing a bit of holy navel gazing. This is why I lean toward the idea that he was facing some difficult circumstances when he wrote this psalm. I think he was facing difficult circumstances he had created for himself through some sin. He was being actively tempted to forget who the God was that he had served so long and so faithfully. The temptation to embrace the thought that God had written him off now and he might as well just walk away and do life on his own from here on out was potent. This psalm was in part his answer to that temptation. “My soul, bless the Lord, and do not forget all his benefits.” It’s like he’s looking in a mirror and giving himself a pep talk. “Remember the Lord. Remember to praise Him. Remember all that He has done for you.”
Have you ever done that? Have you ever had to remind yourself of something? I need to do that all the time. I put things on the calendar. I set reminders on my phone. I leave myself notes. I ask other people to remind me. I can be fairly forgetful. As much as I can be forgetful about life details, I can also be forgetful about who God is. Maybe you haven’t struggled with that like I have, but just maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. When life gets hard—and especially when we have caused that hard—sometimes we need to remind ourselves of just who God is. That’s what we find David doing here. And he does this in four movements. Let’s look at each of these in turn. Perhaps you’ll find something in one of these reminders that you need to hear.
Look at this first reminder with me. What are the benefits of blessing the Lord? “He forgives all your iniquity; he heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the Pit; he crowns you with faithful love and compassion. He satisfies you with good things; your youth is renewed like the eagle.” Focus just on that first thing for a second. “He forgives all your iniquity.” Iniquity is just a fancy word for sin. Whatever it is you have done that is out of sync with God’s character and command, and which has broken your relationship with Him, He is willing to forgive that. Understand here that there’s nothing compelling God to do that. He’s the God who created the world and everything in it. He is infinite in power and knowledge. His glory is beyond comprehension. He is perfect in righteousness, unapproachable in holiness, wholly dedicated to justice. He doesn’t have to put up with nonsense from us like our deluded belief that we can somehow successfully operate independently of Him. When we reject Him in spite of His creating us and sustaining our lives to this point, He could just blink us out of existence. Except that’s not who He is.
The God we serve is a God who forgives. He heals. He redeems. He satisfies. He renews. David calls His faithful love and compassion our “crown.” What is a crown? It is a physical, visible symbol of power and authority. The king wears the crown because the king is great. The thing that makes us great is not anything inherent to us, but that we are bearers of the faithful love and compassion of God. Our glory—if we have any at all—is just His glory shining through us. But again: He doesn’t have to do that. And why would He want to? I mean, we rebelled against Him. He didn’t do anything wrong. He created us and gave us a good world to live in where we can delight in the goodness of His creation and the goodness of giving Him the glory and praise He deserves. We threw all that away for this delusional notion that we don’t actually need Him. He could have started over fresh with creatures who actually were willing to consistently acknowledge that rather than consistently—not to mention ungratefully—throwing it back in His face.
But He didn’t. Instead, “He forgives all your iniquity.” He heals all your diseases whether that happens now or in the kingdom yet to come. He redeems your life from the Pit. The grave has no power over you in Him. He’s paid the price. He extends His glory to you through His faithful love and compassion so that you are fully satisfied with the good things of His kingdom; things which will give you the renewed vigor and energy you need to keep journeying toward that glorious end.
Well, if David was seeking to give himself a boost when feeling low, he’s off to a pretty strong start. But he’s far from done. Stay with me in the text at v. 6. “The Lord executes acts of righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.” Pause there. The hope we have in seasons of unjust suffering; the hope those around the world who are experiencing that right now have, is that God will bring justice to their oppressors because of His fierce righteousness. That may not happen in this life, but as they—and we—trust in Him, we can rest assured that it will come, and it will come thoroughly.
He is a righteous and just God who wants us to know Him. “He revealed his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.” And what are His ways? What are His deeds? What is He like? “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love. He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities.” Slow to anger is not the same thing as not ever getting angry. God can get plenty angry when He is finally provoked to that. But it takes a lot to get Him there. The consistent picture we see in the Scriptures is that in almost every instance, God defaults to mercy in the moment with judgment paused for now. He doesn’t hold a grudge like we do. Once something has been settled, that’s the end of it.
And just marvel with me for a second at that last part. “He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve.” What do our sins deserve? The apostle Paul made abundantly clear that the wages of sin is death. Our sins deserve death. But did God make us die in response to our sins? Well, if you are still in the room with me, and if I haven’t already bored you to death, then you can say with the same confidence I have that He did not. What did He do instead? “He forgives all your iniquities.” “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.” “He will not…be angry forever.” It’s right there in the text. And it’s amazing. Utterly, astoundingly amazing.
We often picture God as angry with us. This is in part because there is a whole church culture that seems to delight in pointing out the few passages in the Scriptures when God is angry and applying all of that anger to us for our sins as if to guilt us into submission. Where in the Scriptures do we ever find God trying to guilt someone into submission? Nowhere. Yet because of this lazy and unloving approach to helping people overcome sin, we now instinctively imagine God as hard to please. We have an image of Him in our minds as constantly disappointed and disapproving of us and our lives. When we screw up and take the courage to ask for His help and forgiveness He is reluctant at best. It all kind of depends on whether or not He’s having a good day (and He doesn’t have many good days). And, once we’ve done something wrong, He holds that over our heads for the rest of our lives. Everything gets filtered through that one tragic moment.
Yet look at what David says in the next movement here. “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him.” This isn’t talking about a terror kind of fear. This is talking about having respect for God as God. When we are willing to take Him for who He actually is—and given how powerful and glorious He is, fully acknowledging that is going to bring with it a bit of trepidation—there’s not anything we could do that is going to result in His finally throwing in the towel on us. That one time when you felt like He might, that was the Devil whispering lies in your ear to keep you discouraged and down in your sin so that you wouldn’t reach out to this faithful God we serve because he knows that if you do, you are going to find forgiveness and grace and compassion and mercy because that’s who God is. He knows that you’ll be freed from your sins and taken out of his clutches for good. Friends, don’t believe things that aren’t true.
And what is true? What’s true is that “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” When you go to Him for forgiveness, He removes your sin so completely from you that you can’t even see it anymore. “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.” Now, if you didn’t have a good earthly father, that may be an image that’s lost on you. But even if you didn’t have a good father here on earth, you can imagine what a good one would be like. You came pre-programmed with an ideal about that in your mind and heart. God fits that ideal. It’s based on Him.
And He has this incredible compassion for us because He made us and He knows us. He knows us even in our brokenness. He knows what we can do and what we can’t. He knows not only that but where we are weak and how. “For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.” This is not some belittling remembering either, but a merciful one. He knows we are dust and longs to help us be formed of a much stronger substance than that—the strong substance of His Spirit dwelling in us.
The commitment He makes to us is not a short-term one either. Look at this last movement with me. “As for man, his days are like grass—he blooms like a flower of the field; when the wind passes over it, it vanishes, and its place is no longer known.” Our lives are temporary. On our most honest days we know that. Sometimes we try to resist it, but reality has a way of asserting itself even in the face of our futile attempts to deny it. Our lives in this world don’t last forever.
But do you know what does last forever? God’s commitment to love us and to be faithful to us when we are willing to trust in Him. “But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren of those who keep his covenant, who remember to observe his precepts. The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.” When we put our trust in the God who rules and reigns eternally as the sovereign king of all creation, He commits Himself to us in a way that doesn’t just bless us in this life. He is committed to us “from eternity to eternity.” There’s no end point on this commitment.
Things get even better than this. This forgiving and gracious and compassionate God who commits Himself to us when we choose Him from eternity to eternity doesn’t stop with just blessing us. Did you catch the end of v. 17 there? We have blessings in His eternal kingdom, sure, but we can start enjoying them in this life. The blessings of God on those who are willing to be faithful to Him enrich their lives, the lives of their children, and even the lives of their grandchildren. Your persistent and consistent faithfulness to God will make your life better, sure, but it will make the lives of your children and grandchildren better too. As long as you are here and letting those blessings flow through you, they will indeed bless all those around you. And this is all in spite of knowing that you are dust. When you turn to Him, He forgives you, redeems you, restores you, and uses you as a conduit of blessing to your family for multiple generations. That’s just who this God we serve is.
Folks like Dawkins see through only a tiny lens that is warped by animus. Sometimes that warping is totally understandable, and if we were in their shoes, we might feel the exact same way, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong. Yes, there are tough passages in the Scriptures that reveal God’s righteous wrath against sinners, and His terrible judgment against nations where sin has come to its full fruition and is ripe for His cleansing justice. Absent proper context and understanding, these kinds of passages can really throw us off. And, yes, there are times when we have gotten ourselves into a mess of sin that leaves us feeling like God is surely going to give up on us this time. But there is so much more that points to the goodness and graciousness and compassionate nature of our God. That’s what David is trying to help us see here. It’s what he was reminding himself of lest he forget. When we have sinned, we can go to God in Christ for forgiveness because forgiveness comes naturally to Him. Forgiveness comes naturally to God.
Forgiving you and me for our sins is easy for Him. It’s automatic. He’s got this incredible muscle memory around the exercise. When we go to Him in our sin with repentant hearts, His default setting is to forgive us and redeem us and restore us. How can that make sense? As far as we reckon things it doesn’t, but then His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts. It’s just who He is. Forgiveness comes naturally to God. All thoughts that He’s going to turn from us rather than to us are wrong out of the gate. Unforgiveness is as foreign to Him as breathing water is to us. That’s just not how He is wired. Forgiveness comes naturally to God.
This, friends, is a fact worth celebrating. It is worth praising Him for. David calls all of creation to bless or praise Him for it. “Bless the Lord, all his angels of great strength, who do his word, obedient to his command. Bless the Lord, all his armies, his servants who do his will. Bless the Lord, all his works in all the places where he rules. My soul, bless the Lord!” Or perhaps as the psalmist put it in Psalm 150: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” David is calling to himself to join in the great chorus of praise that echoes through creation itself as all of those who obediently answer the Lord’s call exalt the glory of His name.
This is a chorus we can join as well. It is a chorus we should join because He is indeed worthy of our praise. He is worthy of our praise because He has received us and forgiven us for all our sins as He is wont to do. Forgiveness comes naturally to God. The application here is obvious. If you’ve got sin in your life, go to God and get that dealt with. Forgiveness comes naturally to God. He’s not going to reject you. In Christ He has already accepted you. The price is paid. The debt is satisfied. Righteousness—being rightly related to God and others—is a prize you can receive.
Yes, getting right with others from whom you have been distanced because of your sin may take some effort on your part, and depending on where they are, it may not be possible. That’s something to make a point of prayer and to which you can apply a faithful, persistent demonstration of the patient love of God—the same love you have received. But in Christ, God will extend forgiveness to you for your sins. No matter what they are. Because that’s who He is. Forgiveness comes naturally to God. If you haven’t received this forgiveness and experienced the incredible blessing of being free from all of that…what are you waiting for? Forgiveness comes naturally to God.
