Psalm 145. I stand here tonight. Feeling very
thankful. Very thankful. And very humbled. And very overwhelmed by the goodness
of the Lord to his people. Our Lord has been so good to
us. He has been so good to us, and
I'm not just talking about this congregation, I'm talking about
every sinner who has been saved by grace. Every sinner. But in thinking of the Lord's
dealings with us. With this congregation. I am so glad. that he crossed
your paths with Henry Mahan. He did that. And your path with
Henry Mahan and your path with Henry Mahan and yours and yours. And I'm so glad that the Lord
brought Brother Tom Harding here all those years. Aren't you so thankful for all
those years? Right here. All those years, I am so thankful.
I'm so thankful for what the Lord did in bringing the gospel,
in blessing the gospel. I'm so thankful. I'm thankful
to the Lord for Putting that desire in Brother Tom, and I'm
thankful to Brother Tom for being faithful to come. I'm very, very
thankful. I am so thankful for the fact
that the Lord brought me here. And my family here. And I went
through the pews and thought about each one of you. Starting
with you. I'm just so thankful with how the Lord, you know how
you get a call or you hear the news or and here they come. She came, so he came. But look at what he's done. Just
look at what he's done. I'm just so glad the Lord has
brought us all together and I'm so humbled by what he's done. I'm just so humbled. I'm humbled
by everything that he has done for us physically, yes, but spiritually. And I don't want to say this
assumingly, but I'm talking about in me. In us. His work, but I'm just so humbled. I'm
humbled, but not only by what he's done locally here in Kingsport,
but I'm humbled, humbled by everything that he's done collectively with
all of his people, wherever he's raised up the gospel. I'm just
humbled. I'm humbled. that we're a part of it. We have
these assemblies that we love. We have these places. You say
the name of the town. Where it has been revealed to
you, a man is there who's preaching Jesus Christ crucified, and there
are people there who love Jesus Christ crucified, and you hear
the town and you think, I love that town. I love the God that's
preached in that town. I love what the Lord has done.
He's allowed us to be a witness. Just like he's raised up all
of these other witnesses and all of these other places with
all of our other dear brethren, he's allowed us to be a part
of them, a part of the ministry and a part of the kingdom of
God. We are a part of the kingdom of God. Just amazing. I'm humbled by it. John the Baptist
said, I must decrease. And I say amen. I say amen, I pray. That I will
continue as time goes on now. I pray that I will continue to
decrease. Being humbled, decrease being
humbled by the things that the Lord has done. Seeing what the
Lord has done. I pray that we all as we move
forward. Now here we go. I pray that we all will continue
to decrease. That's what I pray for us. I
pray we will decrease not in wisdom. Not in faith. Not in love for
Christ or love for each other. Not in fervency for the gospel
or fervency for worship. Not in numbers. But in self. And in pride. And I pray we will
decrease by way of seeing how great things the Lord has done
for us. It's just humbling. When you
see how great things the Lord has done for us, it's humbling,
so humbling. It is not what great things that
we have done for the Lord. Really. People love to sing a song called
Working on a Building. You ever heard that song? I'm
working on a building for my Lord. It's not what great things
we have done for the Lord. It's what great things the Lord
has done for us. I pray that we will decrease
and decrease and decrease by way of seeing him higher and
higher and higher. As time goes on, I pray we will
see him higher, greater, higher. May he be exalted more and more,
just exalted more and more. Now, What I want us to look at
for this message is Psalm 145. I want us to so simply go through
this Psalm verse by verse. And the reason is because what
David says right here perfectly expresses this thankfulness and
perfectly expresses this desire that I'm feeling. So let's enter
into this together by seeing what our brother David wrote
right here in Psalm 145 verse one. He said, I will extol thee,
my God, O King, and I will bless thy name forever and ever. Extol means lift up. Raise up,
I will exalt thee, my God, O King. I love how that's worded. My
God is the king. The king is my God. And he said, I will bless thy
name forever and ever. That means bless means in this
particular sense, it means kneel before. I will kneel before thy name.
I will exalt thee, my God, O King, and I will kneel before thy name
forever and ever. Does that make you excited at
the thought of that? Verse two says, every day will
I kneel before thee. Bless thee. And I will praise
thy name for ever and ever." Honestly, I get excited about
thinking about that. That makes me happy. That makes
me look forward to it. By His grace, by His saving hand,
by His work in His chosen people, all because of Him, we get to
do that now. We, in our heart, kneel before
Him. We're going to get to do that
forever, forever and ever. It says. We'll get to lift up
and kneel before and praise the holy name of our Lord. What is
that holy name? Jesus of Nazareth. The Lord Jesus
Christ, we just sang precious name. Oh, how sweet hope of earth,
joy of heaven. That's what he is. He is the hope of earth and the
joy of heaven for all eternity. His name will be the name above
every name. And we will bow and we will exalt. We will lift up. Verse three
says. Great is the Lord and greatly
to be praised. And his greatness is unsearchable. I love that great greatly. Greatness. Worthy, worthy, worthy. Worthy is the lamb. He's so worthy
to be praised. His worthiness is unsearchable. Verse four. One generation shall praise thy
works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts. One generation
shall praise thy works to another. All right. One generation shall praise thy
works to another. And to another. One generation shall praise thy
works to another. And to another. And to another. Generation to
generation. I'm so thankful for that. I'm
so humbled by that. I have so much hope for our children. And our children's children.
Our Lord has given that to us. I'm so glad our Lord wrote that
in his word. May God be merciful to the next
generation. I pray that I pray the Lord will
establish the gospel and be merciful to the next generation. Verse
five. I will speak of the glorious
honor of thy majesty. And of thy wondrous works, honor
and majesty, that is language fit for a king, honor and majesty. He said, I will speak of the
wondrous works. That means the wondrous things,
the wondrous words of the king. That's what we have right here.
We have the wondrous words of the king. Beautiful words, wonderful
words, wonderful words of life. Verse six. And men shall speak of the might
of that terrible acts, that word terrible means full of all awful. Just full of all men shall speak
of the might of that terrible acts And I will declare thy greatness. That's our message, isn't it?
His greatness. That's our message, His greatness. This is our worship, His greatness. Verse 7 says, They shall abundantly
utter the memory of that great goodness. And we do, don't we? We abundantly utter the memory
of his great goodness. The centerpiece of our worship. The centerpiece of of our message
is the remembrance of his great goodness to us. He said this
do in remembrance of me. The remembrance of his great
goodness. What was his great goodness?
He removed our sin from us every now and then. We get a glimpse
of our sin. And in that moment, that's when
we enter into the glory of the fact that he removed our sin
from us. He removed our sin by wearing
our sins and bearing our sins. Shedding His blood and dying
on a tree to put them all away. You're all a bunch of sinners. You're all a bunch of sinners.
I know that because I'm one too. We're all a bunch of sinners.
That's what we are. We're sinners. And we know what it's like to
wear sin. We know it all too well. We know what it's like to wear
sin, but I'll tell you this. We have no idea what it's going
to be like to wear righteousness. No idea. We can enter into sin. But one of these days we're going
to get to wear righteousness because Christ gave us his. He
robed Himself in everything that we despise about ourselves. And He robed us in everything
that we love about Him. His glory, His goodness. That
was His great goodness to us. That trade before the judgment
throne. Our sin, His righteousness. What
a great goodness. Verse 7 says, They shall abundantly
utter the memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy
righteousness. And we do songs of thanksgiving
for all of his rightness, all of his perfectness, all of his
glory. Verse eight says. The Lord is
gracious. And full of compassion. Slow
to anger. and of great mercy. I thought
all this while I was studying it, but even as I read it in
our scripture reading a minute ago, I thought this is amazing
that this is who our Lord is. It is amazing that this is what
it says about our Lord. What a message for sinners. What a message for me and all
of my sinful, vile, wretched, miserable sins. Four points in this one verse
message, all it's all comfort, it's all good news, it's all
the gospel. Number one, the Lord is gracious. Full of grace, he is so giving.
It's what grace means. We will find out as time goes
on, we will truly find out the Lord is giving and giving and
giving. He gives and he gives and he
gives. He just keeps giving, freely
giving. That's what grace means. Freely
giving. The Lord is gracious. And full
of compassion. Toward who? Who does he have
pity on? Sinners. You say, how do you know it's
sinners? How do you know he has compassion on sinners? It's because
the third point is he's slow to anger. And the fourth point is he's
great in mercy. And that's who needs mercy, sinners.
Verse eight says the Lord is gracious and full of compassion,
slow to anger and of great mercy. He will have great mercy because
He freely gave great blood to great sinners who greatly needed
it. He did that to greatly appease
an angry God, a holy God. Verse 9 says, the Lord is good
to all and His tender mercies are over all His works and He
is, the Lord is good to all. The fact that men and women are
allowed to breathe air proves that to us. That's His air. His sun shines on the just and
the unjust. His rain falls on the just and
the unjust. His restraining grace is out
there. We're enjoying it just as much
as anybody is. He truly is good to all. Man
is not good in return, but He truly is good to all, and He's
worthy to be praised for that. Verse 10 says, All thy works
shall praise thee, O Lord, and thy saints shall bless thee. God has a people. He has a particular
people, and they truly do bless Him. Again, that means kneel
before Him. They truly do bow before him. They truly do cry, not unto us,
O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give all the glory.
You have it. We want you to have it. We give
you thanks because you have it. Verse 11 says. They shall speak
of the glory of thy kingdom and talk of thy power. That's going
to be the conversation of heaven. They shall speak of the glory
of that kingdom and talk of that power. That's that's what we're
going to talk about for all of eternity. That's what we talk
about right now. The glory of his kingdom. All of the glory of his power.
It's all his verse 12 says to make known to the sons of men
his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. It's
his power, his work, his kingdom. And we want everybody to know
it. We want everybody to know it. Salvation is of the Lord. We want to tell everybody that.
We want all the sons of men to know. There's a song that I learned
as a child, and I'm sure you learned it, too. You know the
song. The song says everybody ought to know. Everybody ought to know. Everybody
ought to know who the Lord Jesus Christ is. He's the fairest of
10,000. He's the bright and morning star.
He's the lily of the valley. Everybody ought to know. Everybody
ought to know who he is. Verse 12 says to make known to
the sons of men his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his
kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations."
Have you ever had the thought, I wonder how long eternity really
is? Have you ever had that thought?
Will it ever end? Does it give you much happiness
to know it is an everlasting kingdom? Of His kingdom there
shall be no end? That makes me happy. Makes me thankful. I'm so happy
and I'm so thankful every time I hear this, look at verse 14.
The Lord upholdeth all that fall. Again, are you just amazed by
everything it's saying about our God? Who he is? The Lord upholds all that fall
and raises up all those that be bowed down. That is so wonderful. Because of the nature of our
sin, we are going to fall. Wait for it. We're going to be bowed down.
But if we're His children, He will pick us up every single
time. Verse 14 says the Lord upholdeth
all that fall and raises up all those that be bowed down. The
eyes of all and that's all who have been given eyes to see outside
of Christ. Men and women are blind and they
can't see. But if God has given eyes to
see the eyes of all wait upon thee. And now give us them their
meat in due season." Everything is from Him. Everything is of
Him. Everything is through Him. Everything
is to Him. This is our message. It's all
to Him. It's all of Him. To Him be all
the glory for everything. Christ is all in everything. Verse 17 says, The Lord is righteous in all
His ways and holy in all His works. To that I say, Amen. Amen. Everything that He does
is good and right and perfect. May He let us remember that as
things happen. And, you know, I mentioned our
dear brethren here. Everything that our Lord does
is right. Sometimes it's painful. But it's
right. It's good, it's perfect, everything
that he does is perfect. And if you have a center margin
in your Bible, you'll see that the word holy translates merciful. Bountiful, oh, how merciful,
oh, how merciful, bountiful in mercy, plenteous in mercy. Verse 18 says. The Lord is nigh
unto all them that call upon him. To all that call upon him
in truth, what is it to call upon the Lord in truth? It's
to call as a sinner who has nothing and needs everything. That's
what it is to call on Him in truth. If we're going to be honest
before Him in truth, it's to call as a sinner who has nothing
and needs everything. I need everything from you. Verse 19 says, He will fulfill
the desire of them that fear Him. He also will hear their
cry and will save them. He will fulfill. He will hear. He will save. He will do all
these things. The Lord will do all these things.
Everything that's needed, he'll do every bit of it. Verse 20
says the Lord preserveth all them that love him, but all the
wicked will he destroy. Who are the ones that love him?
Who are the ones that love him? It's all of those who have had
their wickedness covered in his blood. We're all wicked. We're
all wicked in our nature, but. We love him because he first
loved us. In every soul who understands that all of his wickedness has
been covered in the blood of the lamb, that soul loves Jesus
Christ outside of Christ, where if we're left to ourselves. There's no hope. But in Christ. in the blood, but for the grace
of God, it would be all of us. God's grace is the only thing
that's made the difference. So verse 21 says, My mouth shall
speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless His holy
name forever and ever. By God's grace, Our mouths shall
speak the praise of the Lord. Praise Him. Praise Him. Tell of His excellent greatness.
Praise Him. Praise Him forever. Forever. Let all flesh bless His holy
name forever and ever. Because of His mercy and His
grace, that's all we can speak of. What do we have that He hasn't
given to us? What has he accomplished? What
has been accomplished that he hadn't done? We owe everything
to him. We owe every single thing to
him. Let's remember that. Let's not ever forget that. Let's
tell our children that generation to generation. Let's tell our
children that. Let's tell everybody that. May
God allow us to lift up and bow before the name of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ, forever and ever, forever and ever. I want to say. For myself, standing right here
as I have been now for 10 years. I just want to say thank you,
Lord, for everything you've done. Really. Thank you for everything
you've done. As we leave this place, whether
that's, you know, we'll find out tomorrow. This is could be
the last message here. And I live here. This is my home.
I spend more time here than I do at my own home. So it may be
a little more nostalgic to me than anybody else. But whether it's Tomorrow, next week,
whenever it is, I want to leave this place saying, thank you,
Lord, for everything you've done. I just want to walk out with
that statement, all praise to you and glory to you. Thank you for everything you've
done. And would you continue to have your hand on us? Would
you do for us there what you've done for us here? Be merciful. Don't leave us. We'll just stay grateful. We'll
just continue to be grateful. Here and Lord willing forever. Thank you for everything you've
done. Alright, let's all stand together.