Title: Forgiving and Healing/Psalm 103:1-5
Forgiveness and Healing / Psalm 103:1-5
A large stone in front of the front door of a sanatorium said, “Let’s not count what we have lost. Let's count what's left." In the sanatorium, people who cannot speak, lose their freedom of limbs, lose their jobs, or lose their families due to cerebral thrombosis or cerebral infarction are gathering and trying to recover with all their heart.
However, we humans tend to count what is ‘lost’. 'I lost this, I lost that', and I count what I lost. However, the psalmist of today's text is mobilizing his body, soul, reason, and emotions to count the 'grace of God'. The grace of forgiveness of sins, the grace of being saved from destruction, judgment and hell, the grace of filling this life with good things every day, the grace of putting a crown of love and grace on my head every day. We are praising God with the rising feeling and emotion.
Therefore, the figure of the psalmist appearing in Psalm 103 is as it is, soaked in God's grace and mercy. Watching the Korean team perform unexpectedly at the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, you can see from the psalmist more than all Koreans were immersed in amazing joy and ecstasy. How should we approach the Lord after experiencing this wonderful grace of God?
1. We must taste the emotion of God's grace given to us.
In fact, we receive and enjoy many of the same graces from God. Nevertheless, some live expressing their gratitude and appreciation to God for God's forgiveness of sins and healing, while others live without personal fellowship with God and without full gratitude.
In Luke 17, there is an account of Jesus healing ten lepers. Among the sick who were healed, there was only one Samaritan who returned to the Lord without forgetting gratitude and emotion. Jesus Christ becomes the ‘place’ where God ultimately reveals himself, and the ‘place’ where we should give thanks and praise God. Therefore, those who have met Jesus Christ must live their lives enjoying gratitude and emotion before God.
2. You must have firm faith in God's sovereignty and rule.
The poet had unshakable faith in the sovereignty and rule of God. Our human mind is like a reed moving in the wind, sometimes to and fro. There are many times when the mood swings are severe. Therefore, even in the act of believing by believers, it is often found.
However, those who have experienced God's grace should never be shaken or changed in their faith in God. In Hebrews it says: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, have tasted the gift of heaven, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen, to renew them to repentance, because they crucified the Son of God again. It is markedly dishonorable (Hebrews 6:46).”
That's right. We must become believers who firmly believe and confess that God is leading all of our lives today and is approaching us as the master of history and the world. The poet confesses: “The Lord has set his throne in heaven, and by his government he rules over all things” (Psalm 103:19). It reveals the sovereignty of God and his reign. God rules over all creation with this sovereignty.
When we are deeply aware of this fact, we clearly confess the creation of man and the Creator of God.
3. We must live a life that fears and worships God.
Those who have experienced the grace of God forgiving sins and healing diseases will fear God. “Awe” never meant the fear that primitive people had. Neither is it a self-denial or self-rejection of returning oneself to nothingness before a divine being. In the Old Testament, the attitude of having a just attitude toward the sovereign while acknowledging the sovereignty of God was expressed as “awe”.
When a person loses his awe before God, he loses his right attitude toward God at that moment. That is why the Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
Like the psalmist, we too cry out, “Praise the Lord, O my soul. I hope you can shout joyfully, “All that is in me, bless his name.” To the God who forgave me and healed me, merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in mercy (Psalm 103:8), I always express my gratitude, acknowledge his sovereignty, and reverence and worship him. I hope you will be living the life of