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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)

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Right at the heart of psalm 103 is this familiar title for God: \u201ccompassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.\u201d\xa0 It\u2019s the title God used as he proclaimed his name to Moses, way back on Mt. Sinai\u2014on 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.\xa0 Within the 40 days that Moses spent with the Lord on the mountain, the people had forgotten their God.\xa0 Which is odd, because God had made known his ways to Moses, and his deeds to the people of Israel.\xa0 They had seen the mighty pillar of fire.\xa0 They had watched the sea roll up so they could pass through on dry ground.\xa0 They had seen God\u2019s 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.\xa0 But in just a little over a month\u2014they forgot.\xa0 And it was then that the Lord more clearly showed them not only his deeds, but also his ways.\xa0 Because God, knowing what the people were up to down there at the foot of the mountain, put aside his anger at their idolatry.\xa0 God forgave his people.

We all have a tendency to forget who our God is.\xa0 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.\xa0 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.\xa0 \xa0\xa0\xa0

Psalm 103 puts our feet back on the ground in our relationship with God.\xa0 He is near, like that Father who has compassion on his children.\xa0 He is intentional: he knows our sins.\xa0 And yet he is also very good and gracious\u2014"he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.\u201d\xa0 His love is as high as the heavens, and his ability to remove transgressions from us is limitless.\xa0 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\u2014that 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.\xa0 Our God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.\xa0 Tuck that word away in your heart, remember it throughout the day no matter what happens, read it again tomorrow.\xa0 Remember it, and believe.\xa0 Our God forgives.\xa0 Thanks be to God.\xa0

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