A lot of people believe that there's a bar. You're under it. And before any of the good stuff would actually apply to you, there's some tidying up to be done first. Nobody sat us down and taught us that. We seem to arrive at it on our own.

Psalm 103 was written by someone who'd stopped believing it. It isn't an argument and it doesn't build to anything. It's a list of what God is like and what He has already done, written by a man who can't quite get over any of it. This week Matt Edmundson took us through it, and the awkward, freeing thing about the list is that not one item on it was earned.

A quick note before we get into it. Kate Sopwith recorded this talk earlier in the week, and the recording came back with no sound on it at all. So this is Matt, at short notice, on a psalm Kate had already done properly. Kate will be back.

Why David is so worked up about a list

The psalm is David's, written roughly a thousand years before Jesus. Same David as the shepherd boy and the giant, later king of Israel.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. (Psalm 103:1)

All that is within me. Not a nod in God's direction on the way past. This is the same king who danced in the street over who God is, to a certain amount of confusion from everyone watching.

Which is a bit foreign to us, if we're honest. Being British, we'd generally rather be slightly stifled about it. It would be interesting to see King Charles have a go.

But the exuberance isn't really the point. It's the symptom. The question worth asking is what David had been looking at that produced it.

Sin, and the fun police

The first item on the list is the one everyone thinks they already understand.

He forgives all your iniquity. (Psalm 103:3)

Sin is a word that's been used badly often enough that it lands as either quaint or aggressive, and not much in between. Matt was straightforward about how it looked to him before he was a Christian. Sin meant no fun. It was a simple equation - no sin equals no fun, and God was the fun police.

What changes, as faith grows, is that it stops being about fun at all. It becomes the thing that separates you from God. And the shift that follows is the useful one - you learn to run to God with it rather than away from Him.

Kate had a definition of it, Sin is something distorted from its original design.

Which reframes everything, because a design means there was one. And the claim the Bible makes is that it's there before we are. God knows us before we're born and calls us fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Each of us a wonderful creation regardless of the situation of our conception, our birth, or our family. There's more on that here.

God wrote a love poem

There's a verse in Ephesians that says we're God's workmanship (Ephesians 2:10). The word behind it can be translated poetry.

God wrote a love poem and I'm it. (Matt Edmundson)

I don't have to have everything sorted to come to Him. It's a love I cannot earn. (Matt Edmundson)

Compare that with what Adam does in the garden when it all goes wrong. He sneaks off and hides. What Psalm 103 gives us instead is a man who's fully aware of what he's done, and more aware of the forgiveness than the failure.

There are no conditions on it, other than coming.

Heals all our diseases

The second item is the one that gets churches into trouble.

He heals your diseases. (Psalm 103:3)

Crowd has been round this a fair few times - instant healings, healing that arrived alongside the medicine, and people who prayed and didn't get better. So this gets handled carefully rather than claimed loudly.

The word behind diseases is wider than physical illness. It reaches grief, and sickness of heart. Soul sickness, which a lot of people are walking around carrying without a name for it - a brokenness, a wound, an emptiness that turns up without being invited.

Matt's position is that God still heals bodies, that he's experienced both physical healing and the slower restoring of his inner being, and that God doesn't always give the instant healing we want. The Bible is full of stories like that too.

So what survives the caveat is smaller than a guarantee and considerably more durable. God wants us whole. And the resolution on offer is eternal rather than immediate.

There are people on earth that can't walk, but when they get to heaven, they'll be running down the streets of gold, sliding along in their socks. I'm going to be right beside them. (Matt Edmundson)

If you've been on the wrong end of a promise that healing was coming and it didn't, that distinction matters. It's the difference between a God who has failed you and a God who isn't finished.

Rescued from the pit

He redeems your life from the pit. (Psalm 103:4)

There's a lot in that one sentence. It reaches the question most of us get to eventually, which is what happens after we die, and it answers it with a kingdom where there are no tears and no pain and things get put back.

Hebrews calls that hope the anchor of the soul. Which is a good image, because an anchor doesn't stop the weather. It just means you don't end up on the rocks while it's going on.

The crown, and a word we don't use

He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. (Psalm 103:4)

Most of us haven't worn many crowns. Tiaras, if there were daughters in the house. A wise man's crown in a school nativity. Not many since.

But a crown makes a statement about the person wearing it. Position, celebration, occasion. And the thing written on this one is steadfast love and mercy.

Steadfast isn't a word we use much, so it's worth asking what actually qualifies. Your house is fairly steadfast, unless it's got subsidence, and even then it probably hasn't fallen down while you've been reading this. The seas and the oceans are vast, but are they steadfast?

And then the questions get closer to home.

Is your job steadfast? Is the place you've put your security steadfast? Are the relationships you're relying on steadfast?

Most of us know the honest answer. Which is the point of asking.

You don't need to be perfect to qualify

Mercy is undeserved goodness, and Psalm 103 is under no illusions about who's receiving it. It says plainly that we're like dust and our days are like grass. Not around long. Not very strong.

You do not need to be perfect in order to qualify. In fact, no one has ever been perfect enough to qualify for this apart from Christ. We're never going to be that perfect. That's why Christ came, because we could never earn this. (Matt Edmundson)

That's the whole thing in four sentences. The bar was real. It just wasn't yours to clear.

Why we forget all of it

The psalm ends where it started. Bless the Lord, O my soul. And near the front, David tells himself not to forget the benefits.

Which reads as an odd instruction until you notice who's saying it. He was a king, with a country and a court and a family, and no shortage of distraction. One of them, if you know the story, did him no favours at all.

We're not short either. Politics, wars, relationships, what we have, what we don't have, what we think we're entitled to. Forgetting isn't usually a decision. It's just what happens when the loud things crowd out the true ones.

And the choice underneath it is sharper than it first sounds. Do we bless the Lord, or do we bless ourselves? Our fantasies? Our appetites?

Something to do this week

1. Read it out loud. Open Psalm 103 and say it to yourself the way David does. It feels odd for about ten seconds.
2. Run the list slowly. Forgiven. Healed and being healed. Rescued. Crowned. Slowly enough to mean it, rather than fast enough to tick it.
3. Name the condition you assumed was there. Most of us are carrying one, some private entry requirement we've never said out loud or checked against anything. Say it out loud, then hold it against the psalm.
4. Ask what you're actually relying on. Job, security, relationships. Not to make you anxious about them, just to notice what you'd called steadfast that isn't.

If the "no conditions" part is the bit you can't quite believe, that's worth taking somewhere rather than sitting on. Alpha is built for exactly that kind of question, and the next course starts on Wednesday 9 September at 7:30pm.

Where this leaves us

Psalm 103 doesn't ask you to feel anything in particular. It asks you to look at something, and it assumes that if you look properly for long enough, the feeling will follow. David looked and ended up dancing in the street.

The benefits were never the reward for getting it right. They're the terms, offered to people who are like dust and know it.

So what's the condition you've been assuming was there? And what would this week look like if it wasn't?