Psalm 103

Transcript

Alasdair Groves:
Hey, I’ve got some great news for you. All men are like grass, the grass withers and the flowers fall. Dust you are and to dust you shall return. Not the most cheery passage or passages in the Bible is it? I’ve always found those a bit bleak and grim. How is this good news? How is this part of what God is telling us, in a good way? Well, I talked today with David Powlison and he helps us see our frailty in a fresh light, bringing hope and comfort, connecting us to God’s compassion in a new way as we looked at Psalm 103. I hope you find this helpful.

You’re listening to CCEF On the Go, a podcast of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. Here at CCEF, we are committed to restoring Christ to counseling and counseling to the church. You can find our podcasts, books, articles, videos, and more resources for Christ-centered pastoral care at our website, ccef.org.

Alasdair Groves:
Hello, and welcome to CCEF On the Go. I’m your host, Alasdair Groves. I serve on faculty here at CCEF, and I also run our New England office. Today my conversation is with David Powlison, who is CCEF’s executive director, an author of countless articles and books. Most recently, he published a book called Good and Angry, Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness. David, thanks for talking with me today. Question for you. I know that Psalm 103 has been especially important to you in your life. It has journeyed with you for a long time. Would you say a little bit about why that particular Psalm has meant so much to you.

David Powlison:
Well, Alasdair, you’re asking a big question in a tiny space. So do you want to hear my life story or probably some shorter version thereof?

Alasdair Groves:
Well, I would love to hear your life story, but let’s go with option B.

David Powlison:
Psalm 103 has these unique charms that… Every Psalm has its unique charms. So Psalm 103, I think, it’s probably what makes it one of the kind of top five along with Psalm 23 and Psalm 121, and there’s a number of others. But I’d say Psalm 103 tends to make the head of the list for a lot of people. And, I think, one reason is that as a brand new Christian, the passage that says as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. And that powerful sense of my Father loves me. My Father loves me. He looks out for me. He cares for me. One of the things that was such, just from an experiential standpoint, in coming to faith in Christ, was as someone who is a kind of sixties existentialist alienation in the existential sense, this profound awareness that of actually not being alone, that there’s care and not indifference at the heart of the universe, that there’s life and not death.

David Powlison:
It was part of just a very powerful and emotionally rich experience of the love of God as my Father. And then being a parent and having children of my own, and realizing how much I cared for them, and how with a child, a parent doesn’t mock them for saying things that reflect a very limited worldview. Our children say these funny things that reveal that they have a worldview about an inch wide, and they’ll grow up, and they’ll learn more. And you realize that between me and my Father, God, I’m like that 18-month old that says funny things and sees only a little bit of the world, and yet is fully in the image of God, and has some lovely insights and impulses. And God understands. He’s a father, as a father has compassion on His children.

David Powlison:
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him and fear there’s not afraid of, it’s fear as in, He’s big, I’m small. And the way children are so comfortable with being small and the willingness to just come and snuggle, or if they’re in, feel any sense of danger to run to mommy and daddy, and the parent’s opinion and care is just so important. And part of growing up is you leave that care and protection, or what’s supposed to be that, obviously, some parents just grievously fail and wrong and wound their kids. But God doesn’t fail. And so those were starting points. And then as the years go on and something just becomes deeply… Your soul gets imbued with a segment of scripture, Psalm 103, just became one of those things that imbued my soul.

Alasdair Groves:
And has that happened, David, because it’s a Psalm you’ve particularly gone back to over and over again in a particular kind of circumstance, in anxiety or in worship or in just a desire to connect with the Lord, or is that more just the product of, as you’ve read through the Bible and stumbled across in other places, it continues to sort of have a special place, but it’s not necessarily-

David Powlison:
A resonance?

Alasdair Groves:
…something you’ve gone to, in particular, how is that?

David Powlison:
No, you put that nicely. It’s definitely the former. It’s something that I’ve returned to over and over again. Psalm 103, particularly, I mentioned verse 13 as something which made a huge impact as a young Christian and then has abided, it stayed there. But other parts have really come to life. Actually, I should probably say a word about, even the one, why verse 13 made such an impact. It’s because of what 14, 15 and 16 say, and they captured the first [crosstalk 00:07:07].

Alasdair Groves:
I was going to ask about that, yeah.

David Powlison:
And see I came into Christian faith from such an awareness. It’s the good part of existentialism, such an awareness of mortality, fragility, vulnerability, some of the things God had used in setting up my coming to faith in Christ was being with my grandfather as he was dying and watching him fail, and seeing that he had no, the despair he felt because he could find no landing place for his heart. And then being a passenger in a car that struck and killed a pedestrian one night. And at one second that man was just walking down the street and the next second I was looking in his eyes as we hit him at 50 miles an hour, and so that sense brought that to life. But then probably it’s the first half dozen verses that have just over, and over, and over again, been rich food for my life. They cover the whole terrain of our lives.

David Powlison:
You think about the first two blessings and it basically covers sin and suffering. He forgives all your iniquity, all. He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit. It’s this comprehensive addressing of all the things that make life hard, all aspects of the human condition that are, either, we’re off base or the world we live in is off in ways that are threatening and destructive. And the beauty of this Psalm, like many Psalms, is that it’s a broad enough category that allows you to pour in whatever your life experience is, and the shoe always fits.

Alasdair Groves:
Just for those of you who might not have a Bible on hand, those verses that come after the bit about the Father showing compassion say, “For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. As for men, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field for the wind passes over it and it is gone and it’s place knows it no more.” And then goes on to talk about the just steadfast and everlasting nature of God’s love for His children and their children. And what you’re saying is helpful to me, David, especially because I’ve always stumbled a bit over that phrase. He remembers that we are dust, this whole image of men being like grass or the flowers of the field is a bit uncomfortable to me, historically. I just… And, again, when it’s touched on in 1st Peter, which is where I really encountered it more first, personally. But I’m not wild about that image. I don’t like the idea of being a temporary wild flower.

Alasdair Groves:
And so, I think, that’s sort of a jarring thought to me. But what you’re saying about just encountering it in the context of facing the reality that you are fragile, rather than reading it in the comfort of your dorm room, or being a 10-year old and having a sense of immortality or whatever it may be. But there’s something sweet about a God who has compassion on children and especially on fragile children, children who indeed have a feeble frame and who are not long lasting. And yet, of course, in parentheses or between the lines or really in verse 17 about the everlastness of God’s love, God’s love is not going to be an everlasting love in the sense of memorializing the flower that wilted and faded and is no more. It’s a love that is so strong it sustains us. It overcomes our fragility, if you will. And that’s what you’re, I think, highlighting in verses three and four.

David Powlison:
And there are critics of Christian faith that say, “Oh, the Old Testament doesn’t really talk about hope of the resurrection and eternal life.” And I just think they have not read their Bible very closely, because one of the great descriptions of the relationship of Old Testament and New is the New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed. And so in the Old Testament, you’ve got this, it’s like these hints and overtones and reverbs of like the wages of sin is death, and if the soul that sins shall die, but then there’s forgiveness and God is a God of life. And it can’t come out and say, by the way, there is a resurrection because every human being that had ever lived just died and then he died.

Alasdair Groves:
Right.

David Powlison:
And then he died, and then she died. And so it’s really only in the New Testament that the fulfillment of that, just that continual hint and overtone of, if He really forgives sin then we’ll live. We won’t die. If we are not going to be like a piece of cactus in the desert that just dries up, but we’re actually planted by streams of living water, then we flourish, then we’ll live. So it’s very rich, that we are fragile. Everybody knows that. You just look at the obituary page, but then there’s this promise of life.

Alasdair Groves:
I’ve never quite thought of it in that way before. But what you’re saying, essentially, is if I’m hearing you rightly, that eternal life is ultimately a necessary corollary of forgiveness, forgiven sins. The only possible good, just right outcome, is life because the wages of sin is death.

David Powlison:
That’s right.

Alasdair Groves:
And for God to forgive us is for Him to grant us life.

David Powlison:
To make us live, yeah. And you see how the entire Gospel and the entire Bible all leans in that direction.

Alasdair Groves:
Right. Yeah, absolutely.

David Powlison:
So the dealing with sin is much bigger than just, I have to have certain guilty feelings because I lost my temper or I looked with a lustful look at someone, or I kind of fumbled the ball and said something idiotic.

Alasdair Groves:
Right.

David Powlison:
Yes, it’s not less than one’s personal awareness of guilty feelings, but it’s much bigger. It’s a cosmic issue at the end of the day.

Alasdair Groves:
David, I’ve heard you several times mention that there is one part of Psalm 103 that you’re not in love with, in terms of the way it gets translated. And that’s the second half of verse two where it says, “Bless the Lord oh my soul and forget on all his benefits.” I’ve heard you quibble with the word benefits. Will you say a little bit about why you don’t prefer that?

David Powlison:
Yeah, both the syntax and the word choice, “Forget not all his benefits,” Like we just don’t talk that way. And the word benefit, what it literally means is the good things that someone does, bene, and then the various verbs that have F and T in them, like factor and such, that factory. And so it’s, I like to just retranslate in my own mind, don’t forget all the good things that He does, and then it lists them. And it’s not benefits like your benefit package on your paycheck and whether you have a retirement and health insurance. These are these really good things that are at the core of God’s doing. And so I have a little translation quibble there where I think the syntax at the time when the background text for this was done, which is the King James or probably Tyndale before that. That was a perfectly understandable way to put it, but I just think we can put it more straightforwardly.

Alasdair Groves:
Yeah.

David Powlison:
I’ve got some other translation quibbles or not quibble so much as like, it just helps it pop for me. I always think wrestling to bring scripture into contact with life lived is never not helpful. It’s always helpful. A couple other things in here that have really helped it pop for me, one is the, where it says, “He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.” And that’s a perfectly acceptable translation. The word for crowns is, it’s literally the word for surrounds, and you can see a crown surrounds your head. You can see why that applies. But there’s something very rich about surrounds, which, I think, makes sense in the context and the fact that the second, its steadfast love, and then mercy is actually plural in the original, in the Hebrew. It’s Mercies.

David Powlison:
And what, I think, is very provocative about that is mercy can seem like a more, if it’s just a singular, it’s like, well, mercy, like He forgives your sins, or that person is merciful. It’s like an attribute of their character. But mercies, as a plural, is all these good things that He does. I like that. And then there’s another interesting one that in the next line it translates it, Who satisfies you with good, so your youth is renewed like the eagle? And you’ll notice in every single line in verses three, four and five, and this is clear in the Hebrew, but it comes out pretty well in the English. There’s always three elements in every line. So it’s forgive all inequity, heal all diseases and so forth.

But you notice in the first line in verse five, there’s only two things, satisfies, good. There’s a word that’s left out by the translators. And I think I understand why they kind of wobble a little with how this could fit as an idea, but literally in the Hebrew it’s, Who satisfies you with good as your adornment? So satisfies good and adornment. And you can see all that as a thought unit that could be a little bit,-

Alasdair Groves:
Awkward or?

David Powlison:
…what does that mean really? But I actually think that it makes perfect sense in Psalm three and doesn’t need to be dropped out that if God’s goodness to us is what makes, is what adorns our lives, it’s what makes our lives beautiful. It what makes us beautiful. It’s what just makes our lives sparkle. He satisfies you with good as your adornment. I like that. And I do think that it makes that verse pop and it’s certainly there in the Hebrew that there are three words there that we ought to make some stab at bringing into the translation. So I may well get Hebrew scholars like jumping all over me for that, but.

Alasdair Groves:
May we be so fortunate as to have Hebrew scholars listening to this podcast. If you’re listening, please send us an email and help us take this further.

David Powlison:
Tell me why I’m wrong. But it has done my soul good to make that connection.

Alasdair Groves:
Yeah. No, I see it. And it’s helpful to me along… I’m seeing verses three and four and five, the language of surrounding of adorning or sort of clothing over this, all your inequity, all your diseases. There’s something very, very comprehensive, very all encompassing, something that just floods over it. This almost is trying to find as many ways as you can to just say this good, these good things He does, these mercies, the steadfast love, this healing, this redemption, it is going to absolutely wash over every aspect of you, and that’s deeply encouraging.

David Powlison:
You’re not going to be a flower that dies in the desert after one day. And one other thing, Alasdair, I think, that has just added resonance. If I had to pick my favorite New Testament book, it would be Ephesians, in terms of, Ephesians is like the Himalayas. It’s the biggest mountain range on the Earth. It’s just got it all. And Psalm 103 is actually, all of the major themes in the first chapter of Ephesians are here in Psalm 103, about sonship and being adopted as God’s children, and the way He deals with sin, and deals with death, and the nature of steadfast love and mercy.

God’s goodness it… Now in Ephesians, you might say it’s all been lifted a whole, 10,000 feet higher because we now know how He did all this. He did it in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of these just lovely, sweet promises of the good that God does. But sometimes Ephesians is so high and exalted. It just does your soul good to sort of climb back into Psalm 103 and realize, this is how it tracks into daily human experience and into the hard things that we struggle with.

Alasdair Groves:
Well, I guess, now we all just have to go read Ephesians, so. David, thank you so much for coming in and for sharing this little piece of your life story and how God has been weaving scripture into it. I appreciate the time.

David Powlison:
It’s a pleasure, Alasdair. Blessings.

Alasdair Groves:
If you’re looking for more information and resources like the conversation you just heard, you should check out a blog called Abba Father, The Cry of God’s Children by Winston Smith. And he takes a little passage, Romans 8, and he focuses on how we can speak to God in the face, specifically, of loss and disappointment. For this resource and many others, check us out @ccef.org.