⏱ 13 min read

What Does Psalm 103 Mean?

You have said the words. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. You have sung the hymn. You have read it at funerals where the grief was so heavy that the verse was the only thing left to hold the room. You know the psalm is the psalm of David’s old age, the one where the long-walking believer turns inward and speaks to himself with the kind of authority you can only earn by living the truth for forty years before you get to repeat it.

And yet, on the long evenings, you have noticed that the psalm has stopped doing anything in you. The words go past. The praise is sincere. The soul is, in some quiet way, not blessing. The forgetting that Psalm 103 warns against — forget not all his benefits — has happened in small ways across the past year, and you have not noticed it happening until the psalm landed on you tonight and the inside did not stir.

This is the slow reading. Charles Spurgeon, who preached more sermons on Psalm 103 than on almost any other psalm, read it as David’s self-sermon — the believer’s slow act of preaching to his own soul, recalling the benefits the soul has been letting drift, and pulling the inside back into the praise the outside has been performing. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a 140-day rhythm if you would like a daily home for the practice. (If the underlying question for you is closer to what is the joy of the Lord — the steady joy David is recalling himself toward in Psalm 103 — Spurgeon on strength through joy is the upstream essay this one quietly leans on. If the prayer side of the psalm has gone thin, Chrysostom on the Lord’s Prayer line by line is the same slow approach on a different text. And if the doubting has crowded out the blessing, Murray on the soul in crisis walks the harder country.)

The psalm, set down where it sits

Psalm 103 is one of the last psalms David wrote, by the best old tradition. He was an old man. He had been king for decades. He had committed the great sin and walked the long road of repentance. He had buried sons. He had outlived friends. He had had his throne nearly taken by Absalom and given back to him by mercy. He had spent his old age, by his own report in the books of Kings, in long quiet evenings with the harp.

And out of that long quiet, he wrote Psalm 103.

Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Notice immediately who David is talking to. O my soul. He is not addressing the congregation. He is not addressing the children. He is not addressing God directly, not yet. He is addressing himself. The opening of Psalm 103 is the believer speaking to his own soul — the part of him that has been letting the blessing thin — and commanding the soul, gently, to come back into the praise.

This is the structure that Spurgeon called David’s self-sermon. The believer has noticed that his soul is no longer blessing on its own, so he stands in front of the soul and preaches it back into the praise. Forget not all his benefits. The verb is direct. The soul has been forgetting. David is recalling the soul to memory. The benefits are then listed — the forgiving, the healing, the redeeming, the crowning, the satisfying — and the listing itself is the sermon. The psalm is not the report of a praise already in full flow. It is the slow re-kindling of a praise that had been quietly going out, by the older believer who knew the kindling was now his own pastoral work.

The first passage worth keeping near the page

Spurgeon, in Till He Come, named the small moment in which the self-sermon actually lands. Read this slowly. It is the first of three passages we will sit with.

“I was sitting, the other night, meditating on God’s mercy and love, when suddenly I found in my own heart a most delightful sense of perfect peace.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Till He Come

Read it again. The line is the structure of Psalm 103 in miniature.

Spurgeon was sitting. The sitting matters. The self-sermon of Psalm 103 cannot be done at the run. David is in the evening of his kingship, in the quiet of his older years, when he writes the psalm. Spurgeon is in his Sussex evening, in the chair, when the peace arrives. The sitting itself is the precondition.

He was meditating on God’s mercy and love. This is the forget not all his benefits of Psalm 103 in plainer English. The soul has been letting the mercy drift. The slow recalling of the mercy — His mercy specifically, the one that has been forgiving, healing, redeeming, crowning, satisfying — is the labour the older believer takes up in the evening chair. Not the inventing of new theology. The recalling of the benefits that have been there the whole time and have gone quietly unblessed.

And then — suddenly, I found in my own heart, a most delightful sense of perfect peace. The answering of the self-sermon. The soul finally hears the preacher and the inside catches the blessing the outside has been speaking. The peace is found in my own heart. Not produced. Not manufactured. Found. The mercy was already there. The blessing was already there. The self-sermon merely returned the soul to where the blessing had been all along, and the finding was the recognition.

The line worth keeping near the page is the suddenly. Spurgeon will not pretend the peace arrived on a schedule. It arrived when the meditating had gone on long enough for the soul to be quietly ready, and the timing of the readiness was the Spirit’s. The older believer doing Psalm 103’s self-sermon does not control the timing of the answering. She controls the showing-up. The blessing, when it comes back, comes back on its own quiet schedule, in the chair, on an evening she did not mark in advance.

The second passage — the river of love behind the blessing

The second passage is from Gleanings among the Sheaves. Read it once at speed. Then slowly.

“Thou, O Father, art the source of all grace, all love and mercy towards us. Thou, O Son, art the channel of Thy Father’s mercy, and without Thee Thy Father’s love could never flow to us. And Thou, O Spirit, art He who enables us to receive that divine virtue which flows from the fountain-head, the Father, through Christ the channel, and which, by Thy means, enters into our heart, and there abides, and brings forth its glorious fruit.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves

Spurgeon is doing here, in three sentences, what Psalm 103 does in twenty-two verses — naming the source of the benefits David is recalling.

The Father is the source — the fountain-head. The Son is the channel — the means by which the source reaches the believer. The Spirit is the enabler — the one who makes the receiving possible. The benefits David recalls in Psalm 103 are not abstract attributes of God. They are the divine virtue that flows from the source, through the channel, into the soul, by the Spirit. The forgiving, the healing, the redeeming, the crowning — all of it is the fruit of this triune flow into the believer’s heart.

This is the under-structure of Psalm 103 that the wall-art version never names. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits is not a generic command to be more grateful. It is a specific command to remember that the benefits have a source, a channel, and an enabler, and that the soul’s blessing is the proper response of a creature who has been on the receiving end of a flow she did not generate.

The line worth keeping near the page is the small one in the middle: which, by Thy means, enters into our heart, and there abides. Spurgeon names that the divine virtue does not pass through the soul like water through a sieve. It abides. The benefits David recalls are not events that happened once. They are abiding realities. The forgiveness abides. The healing abides. The redemption abides. The lovingkindness abides. The believer who has been forgetting has not been forgetting events. She has been letting abiding realities drift into background, and the self-sermon of Psalm 103 is the slow act of returning the abiding to the foreground of the soul.

This kind of slow returning is the spine of the Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women — a 140-day rhythm built to keep the abiding benefits in the foreground of the soul by the small daily practice of recalling them. The workbook is not the cure for the forgetting. The Spirit is. The workbook is the daily small structure that keeps the older believer in the chair long enough for the abiding to be re-noticed.

The body inside the psalm

Pause here. Psalm 103 has a body to it, and bless the Lord, O my soul lands differently when the body has been quieted enough to participate.

Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat on the floor. Take one slow inhale through the nose. As the breath comes in, let your chest rise slightly — not by lifting the shoulders, but by allowing the breath to fill the upper chest, where the heart sits behind the breastbone. And all that is within me, David says. The chest. The heart. The breath that warms them both. On the exhale, do not let the chest collapse. Let it stay slightly raised, gently, the way a chest in worship is raised — not in performance, in receiving.

Take a second slow inhale. On the exhale this time, whisper, almost silently, bless the Lord. Let the breath itself be the blessing. The body has its own way of saying the psalm. The chest raised in receiving, the breath releasing the small whisper, the soul gently following the body’s lead into the praise it had forgotten how to do alone.

That small somatic moment is the body’s translation of all that is within me. The chest is part of the within. The breath is part of the within. The blessing of the Lord is, at its deepest physical layer, the chest rising in receiving and the breath releasing the small whisper, even before the words of the praise arrive in full.

Continue when you are ready.

A small word about the journal that holds this practice

If the slow reading you are doing right now has the feel of something you would like to keep doing — not just once but as a steady evening rhythm — the Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women walks this kind of reading at one short page per evening for 140 days. A psalm pre-printed. A small Spurgeon-style gloss in plain English. Space for one honest sentence at the end. Built for the older-walking believer whose blessing has thinned and whose evenings are looking for a quiet structure to walk the self-sermon back into life.

The workbook is not the cure for the forgetting. He is. The workbook is the daily small structure that keeps the soul addressed, the way David addressed his own, until the inside catches up with the outside again.

The third passage — the renewal at the end

The third passage is the second from Morning and Evening, Spurgeon’s daily companion. Read it once. Then slowly.

“He is so prolific of grace, that like the sun which shines as it rolls onward in its orbit, his path is radiant with lovingkindness. He is a swift arrow of love, which not only reaches its ordained target, but perfumes the air through which it flies. Virtue is evermore going out of Jesus, as sweet odours exhale from flowers; and it always will be emanating from him, as water from a sparkling fountain. What delightful encouragement this truth affords us! If our Lord is so ready to heal the sick and bless the needy, then, my soul, be not thou slow to put thyself in his way, that he may smile on thee.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Notice the last sentence first. Then, my soul, be not thou slow to put thyself in his way, that he may smile on thee. Spurgeon is doing exactly what David did in Psalm 103. He is speaking to his own soul. The self-sermon. The older pastor, having described the prolific grace of Jesus across the long paragraph, turns at the end and addresses the part of himself that has been slow.

The line worth keeping near the page is the verb at the heart of the sentence: put thyself in his way. This is what Psalm 103 commands the forgetting soul to do. Not to feel the blessing on demand. Not to manufacture the praise. To put thyself in his way — to position the soul in the path of the prolific grace, so that the grace, which is going out from Jesus as sweet odours exhale from flowers, can land on a soul that is actually in the room when it lands.

The benefits David recalls — who forgiveth, who healeth, who redeemeth, who crowneth, who satisfieth — are not benefits the believer earns. They are the sweet odours that exhale from Him whether the believer is in the room or not. The self-sermon of Psalm 103 is the slow practice of getting the soul back into the room. Be not thou slow. The grace is going out. The Lord is ready to heal and to bless. The believer’s only labour is to stop being slow about putting herself in His way.

This is what Psalm 103 means at the older-walking depth. Not a wall verse. The believer’s slow act of preaching herself, daily, into the path of the grace that has never stopped flowing. Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The renewal is real. It is not the return of literal youth. It is the soul-renewal that happens when the older believer remembers, again, that the mercy is abiding, the grace is going out, and the only labour left is the small daily putting-of-the-soul into His way.

What this looks like over a year of small daily prayer

A year of small daily prayer through Psalm 103 will slowly turn the self-sermon into a habit of the soul. The mornings begin with bless the Lord, O my soul. The evenings end with the recalling of one specific benefit the day held. The forgetting, which had been the slow tide of the previous year, gets reversed by small daily naming. The benefits move back into the foreground. The soul, which had been forgetting, learns to be addressed, gently, until the addressing produces the answering.

By the end of the year, the psalm will read differently. Not because the words have changed. Because you will have become the older-walking believer who knows how to preach to her own soul, and the inside will have caught up to the outside again, and the bless the Lord that used to go past will land where it was meant to land all along — in the chest you have been quietly learning to keep slightly raised in receiving.

(The sibling essays in this verse-by-verse series sit at what Hebrews 11:1 means — Owen on the substance of things hoped for and what Psalm 42 means — Spurgeon on the deer panting. Same slow reading, across other load-bearing passages.)

That is what Psalm 103 actually means. Not a hymn to be sung when the praise is full. The older believer’s slow self-sermon, preached to a forgetting soul, until the abiding benefits return to the foreground and the soul, gently addressed, blesses the Lord again.

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A daily home for the practice

The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the small daily anchor that keeps the soul addressed, the way David addressed his own, until the inside catches up with the outside again.

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The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Spurgeon’s slow vocabulary — David’s self-sermon, the abiding benefits, the soul put in His way — into a daily companion built for the older-walking believer whose evenings are looking for a quiet structure to walk the blessing back into life.