Many psalms are man talking to God. Some are one worshipper talking to others. This one opens with the psalmist talking to himself. We all talk to ourselves, but rarely in so profitable a manner. How should we talk to ourselves?
As individuals, we should review the Lord’s blessings and praise him.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! 2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 5 who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The Hebrew for “Bless” is literally “bend the knee.” God condescends to bless us. We bend down in worship before him.
C.S. Lewis said regarding our blessing of God, “Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your while life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.” (Mere Christianity p. 127)
My soul is the totality of my being. Adam “became a living soul.” He did not come to possess a soul but became a soul when he came to life.
We must not forget God’s benefits. Our need to constantly remember the action of the Lord is a consistent theme of scripture.First of all, we are not to forget forgiveness, healing, redemption, steadfast love, and mercy. We are not to forget the results or the cause behind the result. And, as Christians, we should have a much clearer picture of the price the Lord paid to forgive and redeem us.
As individuals we must daily take the time to hold before our minds the ways the Lord has bent down to bless us, or we will soon be failing to bend down before him in praise.
As God’s people, we should review the Lord’s blessings and praise him.
The pronouns change in verses 6-19. Instead of only addressing himself, the writer is now calling others to take note of the Lord’s goodness.
He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. 8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
It is never enough to praise him as individuals.Those who have clearly seen any truth, inevitably become evangelistic. They desire that others should see that truth as well. Even pluralists become evangelistic for pluralism.
Purely individual praise tends toward self-centeredness. In purely individual praise there is a tendency for God to be treated as important only in terms of what he does for us. Corporate praise is not a complete corrective to this danger, but it corrects it to an extent. In corporate praise we at least move away from being individually the centre of attention. Hopefully, we are also taught to remember that the initiative of our salvation is God’s.
The reference here in verses 7-8 could be to Exodus 33 and 34. The people have sinned in making the golden calf, yet the Lord is going to restore and bless them. This he does on his own initiative.
All creation should praise the Lord (19-22).
The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. 20 Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! 21 Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! 22 Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Just as the truly converted individual desires to worship with others, so the truly converted church desires that all the earth should praise the Lord.It is desired that not only other people but angels and other heavenly beings bend the knee before the Lord (20-21).
All his works are to praise him (Psalm 19). Human sin affected not only humanity but all of creation. The creation has not glorified God as it ought, but we look forward to the freeing of creation from decay (Rom 8:20-22).
Praising the Lord is a matter of bending the knee before him in thankfulness for his bending down to bless us. The final phrase (22) takes us back to the start and reminds us that, if we expect others to bless the Lord, we must do so. It is something to be done as individuals but must not be limited to that. We must seek to hasten the day when all creation will praise him.