Sep 27, 2022
He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel: The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:7-12)
Right at the heart of psalm 103 is this familiar title for God: “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” It’s the title God used as he proclaimed his name to Moses, way back on Mt. Sinai—on the second trip up the mountain for the second set of the Ten Commandments.
Moses broke the first set, if you recall, because the people had made a golden calf to worship. Within the 40 days that Moses spent with the Lord on the mountain, the people had forgotten their God. Which is odd, because God had made known his ways to Moses, and his deeds to the people of Israel. They had seen the mighty pillar of fire. They had watched the sea roll up so they could pass through on dry ground. They had seen God’s provision of water, manna, and quail in the middle of the desert where nothing grows, nothing lives, and no rain falls.
The Israelites had seen the deeds of the Lord. But in just a little over a month—they forgot. And it was then that the Lord more clearly showed them not only his deeds, but also his ways. Because God, knowing what the people were up to down there at the foot of the mountain, put aside his anger at their idolatry. God forgave his people.
We all have a tendency to forget who our God is. We get pulled along by the steady current of activity, conversations, and news in our lives and world and lose track of the matters of real importance in the process. Like the Israelites before us, we can very quickly forget who our God is and wind up with caricatures of him instead: maybe as this senile benevolence or the specter of a distant, wrathful punisher.
Psalm 103 puts our feet back on the ground in our relationship with God. He is near, like that Father who has compassion on his children. He is intentional: he knows our sins. And yet he is also very good and gracious—"he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” His love is as high as the heavens, and his ability to remove transgressions from us is limitless. This is our God: the kind of God that sends his son so that we might see him in the flesh, get to know him, and learn from him just what the love of God means in action—that he is a God that would go to any length to forgive his children, even dying for them.
Our God did not treat Adam and Eve as their sins deserved, nor the Israelites fallen into idolatry, nor us today. Our God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Tuck that word away in your heart, remember it throughout the day no matter what happens, read it again tomorrow. Remember it, and believe. Our God forgives. Thanks be to God.