The psalm begins by talking to itself. 1"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!" David tells his own soul what to do, as if it needed telling. The command loops. The soul is told to bless, then the angels, then the hosts, then all his works, and at the end the psalm turns back to where it started. "Bless the LORD, O my soul!" Between the two stands one warning. 2"forget not all his benefits." The danger is forgetting.
The list of benefits moves from the inside to the outside. 3"who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." The word for "benefits" comes from a root that means to pay back what is deserved, and in verse 10 the psalm says God does not repay us according to our iniquities. What God repays to us are benefits because he refuses to repay our sins.
Where does the psalm get such confidence? It says so in verses 7 and 8. 8"The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." These are the words God spoke to Moses after the golden calf, at the lowest moment in Israel's story. Mercy is the shape his glory takes, and it does not cancel his justice.
Three pictures follow. The first measures height, as high as the heavens above the earth. The second measures distance: he removes our transgressions as far as the east is from the west. East and west, unlike north and south, have no pole where they meet. The third is a father's compassion. The line after it is the gentlest in the psalm. 14"he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." He made us from the ground, and he knows what we are made of. That knowledge is the reason for his patience.
Then the psalm looks straight at human frailty. 15"his days are like grass." 16"its place knows it no more." Psalm 102 has just lamented this at length, and here it takes one stanza. And then the turn. 17"the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting." The grass is here and gone, and the steadfast love was before it and is after it. It reaches to grandchildren, which means that faithful people who pass on what they know of God are doing something with eternity in it.
The last verses sweep the world into the praise. 19"his kingdom rules over all." Angels, hosts, and all his works are told to bless him, and when everything in creation has been called, the psalm gives the last line back to one small voice. "Bless the LORD, O my soul!"
The New Testament hears this psalm in a house in Capernaum, where a paralyzed man is let down through the roof and Jesus tells him his sins are forgiven. The scribes object that only God forgives sins (Mark 2:5-7), and they were right about the psalm, since the one who forgives all your iniquity is the LORD. Mary borrowed the psalm's mercy for her own song (Luke 1:50).
"Forget not" is a command about attention, because what we forget is what we stop living from. Take one benefit from the list and name a time it was yours.
Prayer
Father, we are dust, and you know it. Forgive us for forgetting your benefits and treating your mercy as a fact we already knew. Thank you that you do not deal with us according to our sins, that you have removed our transgressions as far as the east is from the west, and that your steadfast love outlasts every grass and flower. Teach our souls to bless you. In Jesus' name, amen.