The Gospel According to David: The Character of Our God Text: Psalm 103:6-14
Introduction: A Universe of Personal Kindness
We live in a world that is desperate to depersonalize everything. The secularist wants a universe of blind, pitiless indifference. He wants reality to be a cosmic accident, a chaotic jumble of particles governed by impersonal forces, with no author, no director, and certainly no judge. Why? Because an impersonal universe makes no moral demands. A rock cannot tell you how to live. A random explosion cannot hold you accountable for your thoughts. If reality is just stuff, then you are free, or so you think, to do as you please.
But the Christian faith declares that the ultimate reality is not an 'it' but a 'He.' The universe is not a product of the impersonal plus time plus chance. It is the handiwork of a personal God, a Father. And this means that everything, from the spinning of galaxies down to the sparrow that falls from the roof, is saturated with personal intention. And at the center of that personal intention is the character of God Himself. This is the most important thing you can ever know. Who is this God? What is He like?
Psalm 103 is one of the great portraits of God in all of Scripture. It is a psalm of immense comfort for sinners, which is to say, it is a psalm of immense comfort for every last one of us. David, having begun by commanding his own soul to bless the Lord and not to forget His benefits, forgiveness, healing, and redemption, now moves from what God does to who God is. He is catechizing himself, and us, in the glorious character of Yahweh. He is reminding himself that the God who governs all things is not a remote, abstract principle, but a God who is righteous, compassionate, gracious, and abounding in a rugged, covenantal love.
To forget this is to forget the gospel. To forget this is to be an ingrate. And one of the worst things a man can be is an ingrate. This psalm is our glorious defense against such ingratitude. It is a school for remembering. And in these verses, we are taught to remember the very heart of our Father.
The Text
Yahweh performs righteous deeds And judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always contend with us, And He will not keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, And He has not rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, So Yahweh has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our form; He remembers that we are but dust.
(Psalm 103:6-14 LSB)
The God of Justice and Revelation (vv. 6-7)
The psalm pivots from God's personal benefits to His public character, beginning with His justice and His self-revelation.
"Yahweh performs righteous deeds And judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel." (Psalm 103:6-7)
Notice the foundation. Before we get to the tender mercies, we get the bedrock of His righteousness. Our God is a God of justice. He is not a sentimental grandfather who pats sin on the head. He executes righteousness and judgment. This is not a contradiction of His mercy, but the necessary foundation for it. A god who is not just cannot be truly merciful; he can only be permissive. God's mercy is glorious because it flows from the throne of a holy and just God who does not, and will not, clear the guilty apart from a perfect satisfaction of His justice.
He is the vindicator of the oppressed. This is a central theme of Scripture. God takes up the cause of the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, and all those who are crushed by the wicked. This is not social justice in the modern, envious sense of the term. This is true, biblical justice, which means rendering to each his due according to God's law. And God is the ultimate enforcer of this standard. This should be a terror to all tyrants and a profound comfort to all the saints who cry out to Him for deliverance.
And how do we know this? Because God has not remained silent. He has revealed Himself. Verse 7 is crucial. He made known His "ways" to Moses, but His "acts" to the sons of Israel. There is a distinction here. The people of Israel saw the acts of God, the miracles, the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea. They saw what God did. But to Moses, His chosen prophet, God revealed His ways. He revealed His character, His motivations, His very nature. This refers directly to that foundational moment in Exodus 34, after the golden calf apostasy, where God puts Moses in the cleft of the rock and proclaims His name: "Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness..." (Ex. 34:6-7). What David is doing in the rest of this psalm is unpacking that very revelation. He is reminding us of the ways of God, not just His acts.
The Heart of God Unveiled (vv. 8-10)
Here David quotes directly from that Exodus revelation, giving us the core curriculum on the nature of God.
"Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always contend with us, And He will not keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, And He has not rewarded us according to our iniquities." (Psalm 103:8-10 LSB)
This is the character of God in covenant with His people. He is compassionate and gracious. He is slow to anger. When we learn to be slow to anger, we are imitating God Himself. Our hot tempers and hasty words do not work the righteousness of God. But God's anger, while very real and very holy, is restrained. He is patient. He gives space for repentance.
And He is "abounding in lovingkindness." This is that great Hebrew word, hesed. It is one of the most important words in the Old Testament. It means loyal love, covenant faithfulness, steadfast mercy. It is a love that is not based on the loveliness of the beloved, but on the binding promise of the lover. It is a rugged, unbreakable commitment. God's love for His people is not a fickle emotion; it is a blood-sealed, covenantal bond.
Because this is His character, it governs how He deals with His people's sin. His anger is real, but He will not always chide or contend. He will not keep His anger forever. This is a promise of gospel relief. And then, verse 10, that glorious, counter-intuitive declaration that is the death of all legalism and self-righteousness: "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, And He has not rewarded us according to our iniquities." If He had, we would all be in Hell. Every last one of us. This is a plain statement that our standing with God is based on something other than our performance. It is based entirely on grace. He does not grade on a curve; He provides a substitute. His treatment of us is not commensurate with what we actually deserve.
The Measure of His Mercy (vv. 11-12)
How great is this grace? David now gives us two soaring, poetic images to help our finite minds grasp an infinite reality.
"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:11-12 LSB)
First, the vertical dimension. The distance from the earth to the heavens is immeasurable. It is a poetic way of saying 'infinite.' That is the height of His hesed, His loyal love, toward those who fear Him. Notice the qualifier: "toward those who fear Him." This is not a universal, squishy love. This is covenant love for His covenant people, those who walk in reverence and awe before Him. This fear is not the cowering of a slave before a tyrant, but the loving reverence of a son before a good father.
Second, the horizontal dimension. "As far as the east is from the west." This is a brilliant image. How far is east from west? If you go north, you eventually reach the North Pole and start going south. But if you go east, you go east forever. East and west never meet. This is how far God has removed our transgressions from us. He doesn't just forgive them; He banishes them. He puts them away to an infinite distance. When God forgives, He does not keep our sins on file, just in case. They are gone. This is what it means to be forgiven. He covers them, not with lies or excuses, but with the blood of the eternal covenant. This is why we can have a clean conscience.
The Father's Compassion (vv. 13-14)
David concludes this section with the most intimate and tender image of all.
"As a father has compassion on his children, So Yahweh has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our form; He remembers that we are but dust." (Psalm 103:13-14 LSB)
The Lord pities those who fear Him in the same way an earthly father pities his children. A good father knows his children. He knows their frame, their weaknesses, their immaturity. He does not demand from his five-year-old the same thing he demands from a grown man. He makes allowances. He is sympathetic. This is how God is with us. He is not a harsh taskmaster, cracking the whip and expressing constant disappointment.
Why? "For He Himself knows our form; He remembers that we are but dust." This is the ultimate statement of the Creator/creature distinction. He is eternal, self-existent, and all-powerful. We are dust. At the peak of our strength, we are nothing but an August dust devil. He formed us from the dust, and He knows what He was working with. This is not an excuse for our sin, but it is the context for His compassion. He knows our frailty. He understands our weakness. He remembers. This is a profound comfort. Our God is not surprised by our failures. He knows our frame.
Crowned with Hesed, Because He was Crowned with Thorns
This entire portrait of God's character finds its ultimate expression, its high-definition clarity, at the cross of Jesus Christ. How can a just God not deal with us according to our sins? How can He remove our transgressions from us? How can His holy anger be turned away?
The answer is that He did deal with our sins, fully and exhaustively, in the person of His Son. He did reward our iniquities, not upon us, but upon our substitute. On the cross, the full, righteous, undeferred anger of God against our sin was poured out on Jesus. Jesus was not treated according to His righteousness; He was treated according to our sin, so that we might be treated according to His righteousness.
God's justice and His hesed met at Calvary. God wanted to be both just and the one who justifies the ungodly. And He did it by punishing our sin in Christ. The heavens are high above the earth, and that is the measure of His love. But the Son of God descended from those heavens to this earth, to this dust, to become dust with us in the grave, so that He might raise us up. He took our transgressions and carried them away, not to the east, but to the cross, nailing them there, canceling the record of debt that stood against us.
He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust. And He demonstrated this ultimate fatherly compassion by sending His eternal Son to become dust for us. He came to dwell in the dust with us, so that He might lift us out of that dust and raise us to glory. We are crowned with lovingkindness, with hesed, because He was crowned with thorns. This is the character of our God. This is the gospel. Do not forget His benefits. Bless the Lord, O my soul.