Psalm 145
Let’s hear God’s word together.
This is Psalm 145, a song of praise and of David, King David. And King David says this, I will
extol you my God and King and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and
praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and greatly
to be praised. and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall commend
your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. On
the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous
works, I will meditate. They shall speak of the might
of your awesome deeds and I will declare your greatness. They
shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall
sing aloud of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good
to all and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your
work shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall
bless you. They shall speak of the glory
of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children
of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your
kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures
throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his
words and kind in all his works. The Lord upholds all who are
falling. He raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all
look to you and you give them their food in due season. You
open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His
works. The Lord is near to all who call
on Him and to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the
desire of those who fear Him. He also hears their cry and saves
them. The Lord preserves all who love
Him. but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak
the praise of the Lord and let all flesh bless his holy name
forever and ever. Amen. If you go to a fireworks
show, you know, they start out small and end big, usually. I
can remember some years ago, and I bet you remember because
you were there, there was a fireworks show at the city park. And the
grand finale happened about 30 minutes early because all the
fireworks got lighted. You remember that? And I have
never, I’m like a cat, traumatized. I’ve never gone to see fireworks
again up close. But this is the grand finale
of the Psalms. If you look at the Psalms like
a firework show, And and they get to the end and
maybe you’re listening to that. Is it the 1812 overture? Banging
and booming and powering this is this is that this is the the
the climax of the 1812 overture and of the Psalter, and so in
145, you have David’s final psalm, and then when you get to 146,
147, 148, 149, 150, by the time you get there, it says, let everything
that has breath praise the Lord. Remember, the psalms are a book
of books, five books, their structure, the psalms are not necessarily
in chronological order when they were written, Moses wrote some
psalms, David wrote some psalms, the sons of Korah and others,
and so there’s a rich history of authorship and themes and wonderful theology in the Psalms
and you look at the Psalter as a whole and it’s helpful here
to see this is the grand finale. These are the six final hymns
and they are explosive in individual praise like Psalm 145. This is
David saying, I will, I will, I will, I will. And then you
get explosive and congregational praise. The congregation, the
whole world, the whole earth, all creation praises the Lord. And so this is David leading
in praise of Yahweh. In fact, this is the only psalm
that has this title, a song of praise. And then of course it
is of David. Now this is an ABCDE psalm. This is one of those acrostics.
So it follows the Hebrew alphabet. Most of the acrostics have every
letter in them, but the letter N. But this one has the letter
N inserted. Maybe some of you, as you were
following along, noticed that the back part of verse 13 is
in parentheses. The Lord is faithful in all his
words and kind in all his works. You look at your footnote. These
two lines are supplied by one Hebrew manuscript. That’s one. That’s not very many, right?
So it’s a variant. It’s in one manuscript. It’s
in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament,
and it’s also in some Syriac. text as well. Most people say
it’s in there, it works, it’s good, it’s a good letter in,
it’s a good verse, makes sense, helps out. So we’ll take it as
one of the verses. So this is David’s praise, A
to Z, if you will. There’s a lot to think about
here. So we’ll just dive right in. Verses one to two, David
is having an outburst. If you’re taking notes, just
put it’s an outburst. It’s David’s exuberant praise of God. And
usually when we have an outburst, it’s negative, right? We go on
a tirade. We profane people and names and things. We say things
we regret. But this is a positive outburst. What comes out of David’s mouth
praise, praise, praise, worship, worship, worship, extol, bless,
all kinds of wonderful worship words. But what else comes out? The character and the action
and the promises of God. And so David is exploding here
with praise to God. He exalts him, he praises him,
he blesses him, he extols him. And three times he says, I will,
I will, I will. His desire, his lips are full
of the praise of God. And notice what he says, I will
do it every day and I will do it forever and ever. Some have
said that this Psalm ought to be recited every day by every
believer in God. It would probably be helpful.
It’s a good one. It’s a good one to memorize.
It’s a good one to call to mind the tune Duke Street Jesus shall
reign wherever the Sun that’s a good tune and you could memorize
this You could steal one of these books Borrow it permanently temporarily
whatever you could Xerox it copy it whatever But you could memorize
it in that version with that tune in mind if you wanted to
but it would give you something to say every day and and forever
and ever. And so this is David’s outburst. This is his praise, his exaltation
that he wants to do and he will do day by day and into eternity. Well, look at verses one and
two. I will extol you, my God and
King. I will bless your name forever
and ever. Every day I will bless you. Every
day I will praise your name. And I’ll do it forever and ever.
And why? Because the Lord is great. He
is greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable. And that’s the second thing we
want to think about, verses three to seven. If we’re going to explode
with praise, why do it? Why do people go to church? Why
are people spiritual? Well, they want to cover their
guilt. They want to get God on their good side or get on God’s
good side. They want to have their emotions
settled. They want to get worked up. All
kinds of reasons. Christianity, I think, is first
a head religion. We need to know things. And what
does the head affect? The head affects the heart. But
if we have only a heart religion with no head, we just say things.
We just do things. They don’t mean anything. And
that’s what American Christianity loves. They love feelings. They
love rock and roll band. They love the lights out. They
love the pulse of the music. They love getting worked up into
a frenzy and then a motivational speech by some guru instead of
a preacher. But I think Christianity, we
got to understand, is a head religion. And it’s a head religion
that hits the heart. And what does the heart then
do? It praises, it serves. And so we need reasons for praise,
not emotional or work up reasons, but rational reasons. And so
we worship God for, well, mainly three things, character, action,
promises. Who God is, what he’s done, and
what he will do. And so reasons for praise. Well,
look at verse three. He’s great. He’s greatly to be
praised. His greatness is unsearchable. Generations shall commend his
work. The glorious splendor of your majesty and your wondrous
works I will meditate. They’ll speak of the might of
your awesome deeds. I will declare your greatness. They’ll pour forth fame of your
abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.”
He is saying here, I will do this and the generations whom
we tell will praise you. It’s good to be an old Christian.
It’s good to be a middle-aged Christian, but isn’t it neat
to have little young people in the faith, singing God’s praises
as well. This morning, I could hear the
little voices of some of the younger people saying the creeds
and singing the hymns. And I think it’s wonderful in
our church. You know, we have people from age 90 on down to,
I don’t know, our youngest is maybe three, I believe. We have
a couple tied for that age. and we have all the ages in between,
and to hear them speaking of, singing of God’s majesty, his
glory, his unfathomable greatness, his works, his mighty acts, and
his deeds is a wonderful testimony to the generation by generation
witness of God’s church in the world. And there’s two things
that we should do when we praise God. We should speak of it and
we should meditate on it. Let’s think about the meditate
on it first for a second. If you don’t meditate on God
and his goodness, his greatness, his character, his actions, his
promises, the things he’s done, the things he will do, things
he has done in the past, all that, if you don’t think of it,
you don’t have much to say. I took a little mental note this
morning. We sang a couple of Isaac Watts
hymns today. We sang one by Horatius Bonar,
Go Labor On. Did those men just sit down with
a legal pad and a pen or a parchment and a feather and say, I think
I shall write a hymn? Those hymns came out of their
entire life. You know, they probably took
literature courses. They probably had read poetry. They probably
were good students of music. They were well-rounded people,
but most importantly, they knew the word of God. That’s very
true of Horatius of Bonar. That’s certainly true, I think,
of Isaac Watts. But we cannot praise God in a
fitting way unless we first meditate on him. And we’re very blessed
to come to church and open a hymn book and have the pages right
there, the music for us, and we sing what others before us
have meditated on. But it’s good for us to do the
same. And so I encourage you, read your Bible with a pen and
paper. And maybe you can categorize what you read. God’s character. He’s holy. He’s righteous. He’s
just. His actions. He saves. He seeks. He provides. He cares. His promises. I will come again.
I’ll prepare a place for you. I’ll never leave you, forsake
you. All those things you can write down. You can also read
your Bible with a piece of paper, I think, and have your adoration
and confession and thanksgiving and supplication. And this will
help you have a better day. This will help you grow in grace.
I think we’re too full of TV. We’re too full of the news. We’re
too full of the programs we watch. We’re too full of noise. And
I think if you really evaluate it, if you got too much noise
in your life, you’re getting less. and less of this. And so we have to be careful
to keep some quiet, keep some time for meditation and thoughtfulness. It’s something David commends
to us. But under this reasons for praise, God’s majesty, glory
is unfathomable greatness, his works, his mighty acts and his
deeds. Yes, we meditate on it, but we also speak of it. We speak of it together when
we sing. But what if you read your Bible in the morning and
you jotted down these things and the first thing you said
to somebody when you saw them was, I can’t wait to tell you
what I just read in my Bible. Instead of, oh, you know what
I saw on TV last night? Watch this movie on Netflix or
this ball game or, you know, the news tomorrow will probably
be Phil Mickelson won the PGA down at Kiowa. I mean, that’s
pretty exciting. He’s the old guy. I’m cheering
for him. And those are good things to chitchat about. Those are
water cooler conversations. But isn’t God wonderful? Isn’t
he praiseworthy? Isn’t he gracious, kind, generous? We ought to meditate on it, but
also speak of it. tell it and proclaim it. So David’s
outburst of praise, his reasons for praise, including the meditate
on it, speak on it thing. Let’s think in this third section,
verses eight through 13, about evangelism and missions. I think
you’ll see why. The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That’s a gospel,
isn’t it? That’ll preach. The Lord is good to all. His
mercy is over all that he made. All your work shall give thanks
to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. They
shall speak of the glory of your kingdom. They shall tell of your
power to make known to the children of man, your mighty deeds, the
glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom. Your dominion endures throughout all generations. Why
do we have evangelism? Why do we have missions? We have
those things because yes, they’re commanded. But I like the way
John Piper put it. We have missions. because there
is no worship. In his book, Let the Nations
Be Glad, he made sure that we understand the reason we do missions
is because there is no church. Missions, I think, is falling
on hard times today, even evangelism. We’re afraid personally to tell
others about faith because we’ll get labeled something or censored
or maybe a job demotion, that kind of thing. And we should
be wise and careful, but we should also pray for opportunity and
be bold. But missions is falling on hard times. A couple weeks
ago, I was on a Zoom call doing budget work for our denomination. And there was a lull in the Zoom
call about budget. Somebody was on the calculator
crunching numbers. And so I very naively asked this question.
Probably was perceived as a big jerk, but I asked the question
nonetheless. How many ministers do we have
on our missions agency role who are weekly serving word and sacrament
in a local church on the foreign field. And you know what the
answer to that was? Like two? Or three or four? What are we doing sending people
but not sending the church? How shall they hear if there
is no preacher? How shall they hear if there
is no word proclaimed? Oh, we do VBS. Oh, we do coffees
with people. You can get a job in Europe or
in Asia or somewhere. You can get a job and make a
living and do coffees with people. That’s what you guys do, isn’t
it? Y’all aren’t foreign missionaries doing coffee with people or saying
hi to your neighbor. It blows my mind. But the church
exists to let the praise of God be known on the face of the earth. And where God’s glory is not
worshiped, that’s where we go establish churches. And what
do we say? We say that we have a God who
is compassionate. He is a God who forgives. Everybody
has guilt. Everybody wants to do something
with that guilt. And so we can say he is rich
in grace. He is kind to all who call on
him. Yes, he is angry at sin, but
if you come to him by faith, repenting of your sin, you’ll
receive his grace. He could have left Adam and Eve
in their sin. He could have left the generations that followed,
left them in their sin and destroyed them by death, but instead he
has sent his son into the world to save. Look at verse nine. What an evangelistic, kind verse. The Lord is good to all and his
mercy is over all that he has made. People are wanting to make
sense of this world. They’re wanting to make sense
of the mess of their lives. And you take those two big picture
things, verse nine and then back into verse eight. God is good
to all that he’s made and he is gracious and merciful, compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. You have something
to say to this generation that seeks after help in hard times. Well, think about God and his
provision next. Verses 13 to 16. Your kingdom
is an everlasting kingdom. Your dominion endures through
all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his
words. He’s kind in all his works. He
upholds all who are falling. He raises up all who are bowed
down. The eyes of all look to you and
you give them their food in due season. You open your hand. You
satisfy the desire of every living thing. If you were to meditate
on God’s word and read through your Bible, you would see that
God is a bunch of big things. He’s creator. He’s sustainer. He’s redeemer. He’s provider. You would see these big picture
themes. And these verses speak of God
as creator and sustainer. What he makes, he takes care
of. God is not the deist God who
made the world and he spun it on his finger like a basketball
player and he just whirled it up in and it’s going to spin
and spin and spin without his intervention until it quits spinning. No, God upholds everything he
makes by the word of the power that he spoke and it existed
that that same powerful word he upholds the world and everything
in it. So he takes care of all that
he makes, but he also has pity on those who are small, who are
weak. Think of the song of Hannah and
Samuel and the song of Mary and Luke. In both their cases, he
takes the lowly servant girl and he makes them a mother. He
takes the poor and he lifts them up from the dust heap. He has pity on Ruth in providing
Boaz and in so doing provides for Naomi, both destitute women
but redeemed by their kinsmen. The rain falls. on the just and
the unjust. And so God takes care of the
world that he’s made and unrighteous people get the blessings also. I think of this verse, got a
little note by it here. Verse 15, the eyes of all look
to you and you give them their food in due season. We’ve created a monster in our
house. The dog comes in the back door and he expects a treat. It’s like a participation trophy.
And we ran out of treats for a couple of weeks because we
got busy. And now he thinks that when he comes in and gets his
treat and toodles off with it, he eats it. He comes back for
seconds. And I think it’s reparations for those couple of weeks. But
his little eyes just look at you. And that’s what this verse
reminds me of. I mean, we could drive through,
right? Us pitiful men, if our wives left us, we could hit the
drive-through. We could cook out it and McDonald’s
it and all the rest. But what about our pets? What about our children? They
look to us and we feed them. When we don’t feel like grocery
shopping, we remember the children. When we have a hungry family, we look
at their eyes and say, we will feed them. And what do they do
on those TV commercials with the starving children? They show
a little kid and his eyes, those puppy dog eyes are looking. That’s
verse 15 and 16. The eyes of all look to God.
You give them their food in due season. You open your hand and
you satisfy every living thing. So that’s the eyes of the children. But I want in verse 17 through
20, you to think about the eyes of his children. The rain falls
on the just and the unjust. God cares for the world and everything
in it, but he has a special care for his children. He is kind
to all, but he is especially kind to his children. Look at verse 17. The Lord is
righteous in all his ways. He’s kind in all his works. In
verse 18, here it is. The Lord is near to all who call
on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire
of those who fear him. He hears their cry and he saves
them. The Lord preserves all who love
him, but all the wicked he will destroy. So the wicked live life.
They get rain. They get to see the colorful
tulips. Their grass is green. They get promotions at work.
Yes, their cupboards are full. Their fridge has plenty in it. But in the end, they will die.
He will slay the wicked. But what about his own children? Here very often people ask this
question or make this declaration, God loves everybody. Well, he
does. He does and he doesn’t. He loves
everyone in the sense that he is a kind God. He makes the world
and everything in it, and he provides for the world and everything
in it. And so when the rain falls on
the just and the unjust, yes, God loves everybody in a general
way, but does God love everyone in a salvific way? No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t love those who hate
him. In fact, he judges them now and he will judge them in
the last. And I don’t understand how people
can say, God loves everybody. He’s good to everybody. God’s
pretty doggone hard on those who hate him. I mean, wouldn’t
you say? But how about those who fear him? How about those
who call on his name? How about those who trust in
Jesus for their salvation? God has his eyes on all the children
of the earth, but he has his eyes especially on his children. Yes, he gives everyone food in
due season, but he’s near to those who call on him, verse
18. He fulfills the desire of those
who fear him, those who call on him, those who fear him. He
hears their cry and he saves. Verse 20, he preserves all who
love him. So do you love God? Do you fear
him? Do you call on him? If so, you have a special relationship
with him that the world does not have. Let’s think about David
here in conclusion, verse 21. He says, my mouth will speak
the praise of Yahweh. And then he issues a desire, let all flesh bless. His holy name forever and ever. If you’re gonna open your mouth,
it ought to be biblical and beneficial, right? What’s the little saying?
It’s think, we’re doing acrostics tonight, an acrostic psalm, adoration,
confession, Thanksgiving, supplication, acts, and then character, action,
promises, cap. How about think? Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it inspiring? Is it necessary? And is it kind? There ought to be a P in the
word think though. Is it praise? Does it lift up the name of God? What comes out of our mouth ought
to be praiseworthy. You know, we’re cynical. We’re
cynical because we see too much of human nature. We listen and
read too much of the news. But if we poured through our
Bible and saw the character, actions, promises of God, we
saw his mercies, his kindness, his love, his steadfastness,
all those things, the cynicism would be tempered, wouldn’t it? But this is David’s desire. This
ought to be ours. My mouth will speak the praise
of the Lord. And the hope is through our evangelism,
through our example, all flesh will bless his holy name forever
and ever. So the Lord is great. He is greatly
to be praised. What’s our little saying? What
does saved people do? They sing. But how do you sing
well? You meditate and then you speak
of God’s goodness. Let’s have a prayer together.
Father, we pray that we would take David’s example, take his
instruction. and that we would so order our
lives that we would meditate on who you are and what you’ve
done and what you are doing and will do so that our lips, our
lives will show forth your praise and that the goal of this psalm
will be met, that all flesh will bless your holy name forever
and ever. This we ask in the name of the
Lord Jesus. Amen.