A sermon preached by the Reverend Sarah Grondin, at St. Jude’s Oakville, on December 10, 2025.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It’s not very often you’re likely to hear a sermon on the appointed psalm, but as I was reading through the lectionary texts for today, verse 10 in particular from today’s psalm jumped out at me: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”
Psalm 103 is one of Scripture’s great hymns of praise—it’s a psalm that rises like a deep breath of gratitude from a heart that’s learned through experience, just how good God is. At the beginning of the psalm King David says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.”
When David spoke the words of this psalm, he wasn’t speaking to a congregation like I am right now; David was preaching to himself. He was reminding his own forgetful heart of the truth that sustains him: that God’s mercy is deeper than his sin, and God’s compassion stronger than his failures.
And after sitting with this text for a while, I realized that the reason it stood out to me is that I too needed the reminder that God’s grace is wide enough to cover all our sins and short comings—and maybe that’s something you need to be reminded of this morning as well.
The words of psalm 103 invite us to remember and call to mind the story of God’s grace. Because if we’re honest, sometimes we forget. We forget what God has done. We forget who God is. We begin to believe—quietly, subtly—that God treats us the way we treat each other. That God has limits. That God keeps score. That God, in the end, will give us exactly what we deserve.
But Psalm 103 interrupts that fear with the astonishing news of grace. Verse 8 says, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
These aren’t the words of someone guessing about God. These are the words of someone who has encountered God in the raw and hard places of life—in guilt, in weakness, in repentance, and in restoration. David knows what he ‘deserves,’ and yet he’s learned that God relates to him on an entirely different basis: the basis of grace.
Because you see, God doesn’t give us what ‘deserve.’ God gives us grace instead of anger, compassion instead of condemnation, and forgiveness instead of punishment.
That doesn’t mean however, that sin is insignificant or that there’s no consequence. The psalmist fully acknowledges that we haven’t kept God’s commandments, and that we’re in need of healing and forgiveness. In fact, you could say it’s only because sin matters, that this psalm is Good News. And the Good News that it offers to all of us is that God doesn’t respond to our failures proportionally. God responds to us redemptively.
If we circle back to verse 10 of our psalm, the one that originally stood out to me, we can remind our own forgetful hearts of the truth: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”
If God dealt with us strictly based on justice, where would we be? If God added up every harsh word, every selfish choice, every cold indifference, every failure of faith and love—who would be left standing? Not one of us.
But God doesn’t deal with us that way. The heart of God beats differently. Instead of measuring out the justice we deserve, God pours out the mercy we need. The psalmist says God “forgives all your iniquity,” “redeems your life from the pit,” and “crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.”
God doesn’t decide how to respond to us based on our wages earned, or the repayment owed.
Instead, God gives us gifts that are freely given. And this is the essence of grace: God giving us not what we deserve, but what only God can give—divine love, compassion, and a new beginning.
As Christians, we see the fullness of this grace displayed in Jesus. In him, the God who is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” takes on flesh. In him, God enters into our brokenness and bears the cost of our sin himself. At the cross, Jesus takes what we deserve so that we may receive what we need. And through his resurrection, Jesus opens the way to a life that’s shaped by gratitude and hope, instead of by guilt or fear.
I want to let you in on a far well-too kept secret. We love to hear reminders in Scripture, like the one we heard today, that God offers us mercy and grace and doesn’t deal with us according to our sins. Phew! What a relief that is!
But here’s the part we like to forget: Grace isn’t only God’s gift to us; it’s God’s gift through us.
I want to share a brief story with you that comes from a wonderful children’s book called Zen Shorts, and it goes like this: Two traveling monks reach a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes.
She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants, but they had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddles.
The younger monk noticed the woman first, said nothing, and walked by. The older monk however, quickly picked her up and put her on his back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side.
The woman didn’t thank the older monk, and instead shoved him out of the way and departed.
As the two monks continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “That woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then she didn’t even say thank you!”
The older monk replied. “I set the woman down hours ago, why are you still carrying her?”
If God doesn’t deal with us according to our sins, then we’re invited—indeed, commanded—not to deal with others according to theirs. To live as forgiven people, is to become forgiving people. To live as the recipients of unearned mercy, is to become bearers of mercy in a world that desperately needs it.
Today’s psalm isn’t just Good News for us, it’s also a call to imitate what we’ve received. It’s Good News for the whole world.
Grace isn’t only God’s gift to us; it’s God’s gift through us.
As we continue to make our way through the Advent Season, and wait with joyful anticipation for the arrival of the Christ Child, may we allow these words of Psalm 103 to help us prepare the way of the Lord. May these words do in us what they did in David.
So let us remind our forgetful hearts. Let us give thanks for God’s faithfulness. Let us rest in the God who meets us not with what we deserve, but with the boundless, healing grace that God desires to give.
And then let us go out into the world as people shaped by that grace—setting down the grievances we carry, so our hands and hearts can be ready to embrace all those we meet.
Amen.
