is the title of the message. And what a good portion of scripture
to start the new year with, a psalm of praise. No request is made
in this psalm, it s just a praise of God for who He is and what
He s done. I put my introduction in the
bulletin After I read it I thought, I m just going to put that in
a bulletin because we should start, we should start every morning with praise and
thanksgiving for it is the ESSENCE of worship. It s the very ESSENCE
of worship. And those who know the Lord will
praise Him. But it's the best way to start
a day. It'll set the tone for the day. When we wake up and
our first thoughts is on the Lord. Thank you, Lord, for saving
my soul. Does that ever get old? I love
that more and more. I thank the Lord for saving my
soul more than I did 40, almost 50 years ago. I thank Him more
now. for saving my soul, for making
me whole. And we ought to wake up, those
who especially who know the Lord, wake up praising and thanking
Him. We ought to wake up and praise Him in our hearts, and
then praise Him in songs, and praise Him in our conversations
throughout the day. You know, when God created Adam,
He created him with the ABILITY, this is before the Fall, He created
him with the ABILITY to praise Him in WORD, no animal can do
that, to praise Him in SONG, and to praise Him in CONVERSATION,
and to do so INTELLIGENTLY, INTELLIGENTLY. Psalm 47, 7, For God is the King
of all the earth, SING YE PRAISES WITH UNDERSTANDING. And that reminds me of what John
said in 1 John, The Son of God hath come and given us an understanding. And we sing praises to Him with
that understanding that the Son of God has come and given to
us. Now, where there is no praise,
you can be sure of this, there's no worship. There's no worship. If there is no real praise and
adoration and awe of God in our hearts, there is no worship. It s the essence, as I said,
of worship. You know, there were singers
set apart just for singing God s praise in the Scriptures, in
the Old Testament. 2 Chronicles 20, And when he had consulted with
the people, he appointed singers unto the LORD, that should praise
the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and
to say, Praise the LORD for his mercy endureth for ever. There
were singers appointed just for this, when they went out to battle.
They were men standing over there SINGING the praises of God when
they went into battle. You can go over to Nehemiah 7
and read where the singers were set up to praise the Lord. Now, this psalm can be called
a Hymn of Praise. It�s called a David�s Psalm of
Praise. We can call it a Hymn of Praise,
we just sang. We just sang this song. It is
a hymn of praise. It highlights God's greatness,
God's goodness, God's mercy, and it calls on all of creation,
all of God's creation, all the works of His hand to praise Him. Praise Him. There's a lot of
things we can do too much of, but praising God is not one of
them. Worshiping God is not something we can do too much of. Now here
in verses 1 and 2 we have a declaration of David's praise. First of all, we have his personal
vow to praise God. He said, I will extol thee, I
will bless thee, and on down through there verse 1, 2, and
3, I will bless thee, I will praise thee. David doesn't call on anyone
to praise God, listen, before he calls on himself. This is
very personal. It starts with me. You know,
as a pastor here, I'm not coming out here to call on you to praise
God this evening, and I do not do that, and I haven't first
done it before I even came out here. And so David, he calls
upon himself to be the leader in this praise. He starts it.
You know, we all ought to be leaders in praise. We ought to
be leaders when it comes to praise. And our greater David truly could
say, I will extol thee because he did. He extolled and he praised
and he glorified God the Father, didn't he? He did. However, every
one of us And David says this, I will,
you know, and there are some who say we shouldn't say that,
but here's what I believe he's doing. Every one of us ought
to be determined by the grace of God to praise Him every day. Lord, by Your grace and by Your
help, I want to praise You today. In word, in conduct, conversation,
I want to praise You today. In Psalm 33, verse 1, Rejoice
in the LORD, O ye righteous, for praise is comely, pleasant,
with the upright. Because that s what it says in
Psalm 147, verse 1. Praise ye the LORD, for it is
good to sing praises unto our God. It is pleasant, and praise
is comely. It s pleasant, it s beautiful
when God s children praise Him. Wouldn t you like, would you
not like to hear right now, the praise that s going on in glory
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Wouldn t you like to hear all
that? Would you not like to hear the whole host of heaven right
now, those who are there by the grace of God, saved by the blood
and righteousness of Christ, and all the holy angels singing
praise! Singing praise to God, and they
re doing it with us right now! Except for you and I have problems
with sin, You know, we have to rest our minds about every two
or three minutes and bring it back. One day we won't have to
do that. We won't have to. And then he
says here in verse 2, you know, this whole psalm, I looked at
it, and this whole psalm outlines itself. It's really an outline
in itself. but He gives here a COMMITMENT
to praise God, not only every day. He said, Every day will
I bless thee, and I will praise thy name for ever and ever. It's not just today, this goes
on into eternity. What we are doing right now will
go into eternity with us, but it'll be without sin. But we
will praise Him forever and ever and ever. I can just keep saying
that, can't I? I can just keep saying that because
it's never going to end. Everybody here, every person
here, every person on this earth, you know you're going to die.
You're going to leave this world. That's what you know. You know
you're going to leave this world. But in that world to come, in
that eternity, it's hard to even put into words, there's no end
to it. It's eternal day. It's timeless. And we'll praise the Lord forever
and ever and ever. He said, I'm not only going to
do this today and tomorrow, but it's going to be forever and
ever and ever. And then he speaks here of God's
greatness. You see, he speaks of, he's going
to extol the Lord. He's going to bless the Lord.
He's going to praise the Lord. And then the greatness of God
rises up in his mind, in his heart. He says in verse 3, Great is
the LORD, and greatly to be praised. You can't overdo it in your heart. In your heart, you can't overdo
it. And His greatness is unsearchable. Who by searching can find out
God? GOD HAS TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO
US AND THEN WE CAN ONLY GRASP IT A LITTLE AT A TIME. As Paul
said, we know in part and we preach in part. We only know
part, but one day that part is going to be done away with and
we are going to KNOW HIM AND LEARN OF HIM FOREVER AND EVER. WE WILL NEVER, AND I CAN'T COMPREHEND
THIS, I CAN'T COMPREHEND THIS, WE WILL NEVER EXHAUST KNOWING
GOD. We'll never find the end of Him.
You can know Me, and then there's a point where that's it, you
know Me, but not God. His greatness is unsearchable.
And David lets us know up front that God is greater than our
praise could ever be. God is great and greatly to be
praised, but His greatness is greater than our praise could
ever be. We can never exhaust that. I know people for the most
part, they want a God they can comprehend, they can logically
figure out, they want a God like themselves. You thought I was
all together, He said, like yourselves, but not God's people, not God's
people. I don't want a God like me, I
don't want a finite God like me, God who is infinite in wisdom
and knowledge and He's unsearchable. unsearchable. And our praise
should rise to the greatness of our God. And then in verses
4 and 5 he says this, he says, One generation shall praise thy
works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. One generation! One generation shall praise thy
works. There is the perpetuity of the
gospel. You know, sometimes it looks like it's going to be put
out, doesn't it? It looks like there's just a flicker of life
left. But our Lord assures us here,
one generation, one generation shall praise thy works to another. I thought of Matthew when he
read, he read back there in the study tonight for the first time,
21 years old. Not 69 years old, just one generation
to the next, and then that generation is going to carry it on. That
generation. God is going to raise up these
younger people, He'll raise up some, and they'll carry it on
when you and I are gone. There was a time when you were
young, and some of you here, you were really young when you
started, right? And here you are now in that
older generation, and Rupert's gone. Many of them are gone now. I've buried some of them. Here
you are. Here you are now. You're the
older generation. This thrilled me. This thrilled me. The perpetuity of the gospel
doesn't rest on me. It's called the everlasting gospel.
When those old folks are gone, God will raise up another generation.
TO DECLARE HIS MIGHTY ACTS. 1 GENERATION SHALL PRAISE THY
WORKS TO ANOTHER, AND SHALL DECLARE THY MIGHTY ACTS. Oh, you'll declare God's mighty
acts according to the Word of God, you'll tell the truth on
God, you won't sugarcoat it. 1 GENERATION SHALL PRAISE THE
LORD, NOT ONLY FROM WHAT THEY HAVE READ, BUT ALSO FROM WHAT
THEY HAVE HEARD. The Lord is going to save sinners
in every generation through the preaching of the gospel, and
that's going to go on until time shall be no more. We have an assurance here that
the gospel will go on. And then he says here in verse,
look here in verse, he says in verse 5, I'll speak of the glorious
honor of thy majesty. I love that, I love that term,
your majesty. Don't call that, don't call anybody
else that, that belongs to God. your majesty, the glorious honor
of the majesty in thy wondrous works. I see sitting in front
of me the wondrous works of God that a wretched people like me
and you would believe the gospel. You are the wondrous works of
God. I used to see creation and I still see creation as the wondrous
works of God. But I see this now more than
I ever, ever have in the past. I see you and I see me as the
wondrous works of God. I know who you are and you know
who I am. And we are the wondrous work
of God. You know, it took the same power
of God to save us, to create us anew in Christ as it took
to create the heavens and the earth. That same POWER He used
to create Heaven and Earth and to command LIGHT and to command
CREATION, He used that same POWER to create a NEW LIFE, a NEW BIRTH,
to make us NEW CREATURES in Jesus Christ. and men," and I'd rather read
it like this, He said here, "...and they'll speak of thy wondrous
works, and shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts, and
I will declare thy greatness." You know, God's terrible acts
will be remembered and spoken of by His preachers and by His
people as well as His acts of mercy. Our message is not one-sided. WHAT IS MOST OF THE PREACHING
TODAY? I LOVE YOU! GOD LOVES YOU! I LOVE YOU! GOD
WANTS TO SAVE YOU! HE WANTS YOU TO BE HAPPY! HE
WANTS YOU TO BE HEALTHY! HE WANTS YOU TO HAVE ALL THIS! GOD'S A CONSUMING FIRE ALSO!
LET'S NOT FORGET THAT! THE GOD THAT SPARED NONE OF IT
BURNED DOWN SODOM AND GOMORRAH! The God that had nowhere to build
an ark and saved Him and His family and the animals we have
on this earth also DROWNED MILLIONS, MILLIONS of people. You know, people don't fear a
God who loves you, wants to save you if you let Him, wants to
give you everything. Nobody fears that God! The Scripture said,
He that believes not is condemned already! He's CONDEMNED ALREADY! He's
got the NOOSE HANGING AROUND HIS NECK! THAT'S WHAT WE NEED
TO TELL THEM! THOSE WHO DON'T BELIEVE! SOMEBODY
THAT DOESN'T BELIEVE, I'M NOT GOING TO SAY, THE LORD LOVES
YOU AND HE WANTS TO SAVE YOU! I'M GOING TO SAY, YOU KNOW, IF
YOU'RE OUTSIDE OF CHRIST, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE! YOU'RE IN DEEP TROUBLE! YOU'RE UNDER GOD'S CONDEMNATION!
WHO SAID YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE UNTIL TOMORROW? There's nothing
written saying you'll live to tomorrow. The same God that saved sinners
by His grace will also cast sinners into hell. Is that too hard? It's being honest. It's being
honest with people and it's being honest about God. And now David praises God in
His attributes for who He is. You know, when we talk about
praising God, we're not, we're not like most of today is well
praise the Lord. We'll praise God. Well, who is
he? You only praise someone if you
praise, you praise their attributes, right? You don't just praise a name.
It's just like an empty name. You just, who is you talk about? You want to praise God? Who is
he? You praise God. by praising Him
for who He is. That's how you praise God. And He says here, listen, verses
7 and 9, They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great
goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness. The Lord, He's
saying here now, the Lord Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ, this is
the Eternal God, is gracious, Yes, He is gracious and full
of compassion and slow to anger. It means He s long-suffering,
He is, and of great mercy. As Ralph Barnard said, He s got
plenty. He s got plenty. This is who
He is. If you re going to praise God,
this is who He is. And the Lord is good to all.
And His tender mercies are over all His works. You know, a lot of people enjoy that sunshine
today that don't believe God. A lot of people enjoy the rain
as it falls on their garden that do not believe God. God's goodness, I've read this
in Strong's, that word goodness there is in the widest sense
of the word. It's over all His works. Who takes care of these
animals out in the woods? Who looks after them? I don't
even think about them. I don't think about them. But
He takes care of every living creature on this earth. You know,
not even a fly goes unnoticed to God. Things that you and I
would exterminate, He takes care of. He honestly takes care of
them. So David here mentions that the
Lord is good, and the people will joyfully sing of God's abundant
goodness. You know what we sing about?
In all our songs we sing about His goodness. And His character, His attributes. And His goodness extends to all
His creation. As I said, the Lord is good to
all and His tender mercies are over all His works. And then
look in verses 10 through 13 we have God's care of all things
His sovereign rule over all things in verse 10 and all listen all
thy works shall praise thee you know everything God's made shall
praise him we may not see it but he does and he will make
it praise you know the wrath of man praises him that's what
it says and the rest he restrains HE MAKES EVEN EVERY MAN'S ANGER
AND WRATH, AND HE MAKES SATAN'S EVIL TO END UP TO OUR GOOD AND
SERVING HIS ETERNAL PURPOSE! Everything, nothing is out of
control. There is nothing out in this
universe, this creation, none of it is out of control. It is
all under His eternal POWER, CONTROL, and PURPOSE. All thy
works shall praise thee, O LORD, and thy saints shall bless thee.
Oh, yes, they will, and they'll do it forever and ever and ever. And they shall speak of the glory
of thy kingdom and talk of thy power. Now, brethren, if you
want to talk about power, let's talk about God. When He said, Let there be light,
what happened? There was light. When He called
forth creation on the earth, what happened? THE EARTH BROUGHT
FORTH, THE SEA WAS FILLED. When he said to the demon, COME
OUT OF HIM, what happened? He came out. When he commanded
Satan to leave me and to leave you, when he broke his power
and commanded him to leave us alone, he had to leave us alone. He had to let us go. You and
I at one time were in the Kingdom of Darkness. We belong to the
Kingdom of Darkness. But it says in Colossians that
God the Father has translated us from the Kingdom of Darkness
to the Kingdom of His Dear Son. He did that. What a glorious
Kingdom! It is the Kingdom of Righteousness! Well, one day we're going to
really understand what it is to be in a kingdom where it's
righteous. Everybody's your friend. Everybody
truly loves you. Thinks well of you. It's a kingdom
of righteousness. It's to make known to the sons
of men his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom.
That's what we do. You know, we have missionaries
out there. We preach, you know, We were preaching on radio here
at one time, but others preach on radio or television We make
known the mighty acts of God and we don't apologize for them
We never apologize for God Ever And thy kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom this one's doomed the kingdom of men is doomed isn't
it it's doomed The time is about to run out on it When it says,
and I believe it's in Revelation, He placed one foot on the sea,
one foot on the shore, and He declares, TIME SHALL BE NO MORE! There's literally an end to this
somewhere down the road. But His Kingdom is everlasting!
It's the everlasting Kingdom. In His dominion, here's His sovereign
rule. Here's His sovereign rule. and
thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. We've seen leaders come up and
leaders taken down, haven't we? We've seen presidents come up
and presidents go down. You can just look over history,
they're up, they're down, they're up and down, not God, not the
Lord Jesus Christ. His dominion, and I tell you
this, His dominion has no boundaries. All these states and all these
countries have boundaries. They have fly zones and no fly
zones. Not God. He told Peter, He said,
The gates of hell shall not prevail against thee. You know what He
is saying to him? The gates of hell will not keep you out. The
gates of hell will not keep the gospel out. In fact, the very
seat of Satan was in Rome. And Paul writes to the church
in Rome, and he writes probably one of, if not the greatest letter
of his epistles. One of the greatest books in
the whole Bible is the book of Romans. You understand the book
of Romans, you understand the gospel. You understand the book
of Romans. Everything is in that book you
need to know, in the book of Romans. And the LORD hath upholded
all that fall, How many times have you fallen since you believed? How many times? You can't count
them. But He upholds us, don't He? He upholds us. I could think of many times He
could kick me out, but here I am. Here I am. He upholdeth all that
fall and raises up all that be. Bow down, anybody bow down here
this evening? Look to the Lamb of God. I've
learned this, looking to the Lamb of God, looking to Jesus
Christ is not something you did one time, it's something you
do all the time. We look to Him constantly. And the eyes of all
wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season.
All, all of creation, all, everything that has breath, everything that
has existence, they all wait upon Him. I'm telling you what,
if He doesn't send the rain, we're in trouble. IF HE DOESN'T MAKE THE CROPS
GROW, WE ARE IN TROUBLE! IF HE DOES NOT GIVE THE INCREASE, WE
ARE IN TROUBLE! THE EYES OF ALL! WHAT DO YOU
DO WITH THE EYES? YOU LOOK! ALL OF ME SAY TO YOU,
ALL LOOK TO YOU! Look to you you can take the
hardest criminal ever was put him in a foxhole in the war and
buddy. He's He's trying to find out where
God is But here the eyes of all look
to him for sustenance Take care of him and he gives them their
meat and listen induces it THEY WILL OPEN US THINE HAND AND YOU
SATISFY THE DESIRE OF EVERY LIVING THING. YOU OPEN YOUR HAND AND IT GIVES US FOOD. IT GIVES US
WHAT WE NEED. THE LORD IS RIGHTEOUS IN ALL
HIS WAYS AND HOLY IN ALL HIS WORK. YOU CAN'T CHARGE GOD WITH
FOLLY. GOD CAN'T BE CHARGED WITH FOLLY.
It's like that man sent me a reply on one of my messages. He said,
God failed man in the garden. No, you don't know God. You don't know God. I bet that
same man contends for his free will. I bet he does. And yet he blames God for allowing
Adam to do freely what he wanted to do. He's righteous in all his ways
and holy in all His works. The Lord is
nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon
Him in truth. Call upon Him in truth and you'll
find Him. He said, He that seeks Me with the whole heart will
find Me. We're not seeking Him out of
curiosity, we're seeking Him in truth, in sincerity. We're seeking Him in His Word.
That's where you're going to find God, in His Word. And He
will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him. What's your desire? You that fear the Lord, what's
your desire? David said, I'll be satisfied when I wake with
thy likeness. I have this desire, and I think
it's in every child of God. I have the desire that the Lord
enable me to truly walk by faith, live by faith, and walk in a
manner that's pleasing in His sight, walk in a manner that
does not bring reproach on His name, and have me to conduct
myself in conversation and wherever I'm at in a way that is honoring
as a son of God. And then when I lay down to die,
to be with the Lord. I'm not going to be dead, I'm
just going to drop this body off. No believer is going to
die. Christ said that. He that believes
in me shall never die. We just go from here to there. HE WILL FULFILL THE DESIRE OF
THEM THAT FEAR HIM. HE ALSO WILL HEAR THEIR CRY AND
WILL SAVE THEM. CRY TO HIM. Is your heart troubled? If not, it will be. If it is
not now, it will be. What was it Scott said? You are
either going in trouble, going through trouble, or coming out
of trouble. It is one of the others. But he said, listen,
HE WILL HEAR THEIR CRY AND WILL SAVE THEM. Lord, have mercy on
me. You see, here's a promise you
can take to the throne of grace. Here's a promise. Lord, you said
here in this verse 19 that you would fulfill the desire of them
that fear Him. Here's my desire. Forgive me.
Have mercy on me. Save my soul and make me whole. And the Lord preserveth all them
that love Him. You love Christ. If He saved you, you love Him.
You do love Him. Peter said, Lord, you know all
things. You know, I love you. You know it. Now we know He first
loved us, but in response, we love Him. We do love the Lord. We love the Lord. That's one
of the statements that Henry made. I can't even remember the
message, but when I heard him on television, God's sovereignty
stood out to me. He didn't have to save me. He
could leave me alone. But he asked this question, Do you love
the Lord? And I never thought about that. Because everybody
else just said, Do you believe? You don't believe on Him, you
don't accept Him as your personal Savior. But boy, when you talk
about love, that's a relationship, that's a whole different matter.
Love is a relationship of the HEART. You love somebody, you
have real affection for them. THE LORD PRESERVETH, HE TAKES
CARE OF, HE KEEPS ALL THEM THAT LOVE HIM, BUT ALL THE WICKED
WILL HE DESTROY." Who are the wicked? The alcoholic? No, that's just a man being a
man or a woman being a woman. You remember those Pharisees
that everybody thought were the holiest people around? They were
the wicked, the self-righteous. THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS. THEY ARE
THE WICKED. THOSE WHO ROB GOD OF HIS GLORY,
OF HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. THE
PHARISEES WOULD NOT BOW TO HIM BECAUSE OF THEIR RIGHTEOUSNESS. SIN, LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING,
SIN WILL NOT KEEP YOU AWAY FROM CHRIST. SIN WON'T KEEP YOU AWAY. SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS WILL KEEP
YOU AWAY. You don't need Him. You don't need Him. Sin doesn't
keep sinners away. That sinner said, Lord, be merciful
to me, the sinner. That Pharisee said, Lord, I'm
glad I'm not like that sinner. And the Lord said that that sinner
went down to his house justified. That Pharisee didn't. He didn't. And my mouth, you know, God gave
us a mouth, didn't He? He gave us a mouth. He gave us
a voice. He gave us a heart of mine. SO MY MOUTH SHALL SPEAK
THE PRAISE OF THE LORD. It doesn't matter who's around,
I'm not going to shut up. I'm not going to shut up. If
they're going to come in lying on God, I'm going to tell the
truth on God. Now, I'm not going to cast my
pearls before swine. If the Lord doesn't give me anything
to say, I'm going to leave. You don't want to cast your pearls
before a swine. Who was it, Hezekiah? I thought
about this when I studied the Bible lesson last week. You know,
if you go on in those chapters, I think it's chapter 20, he took
the Syrian king in there and showed him all that treasure. He showed him all of his treasure,
all that gold. You know, and I know the Syrian king is looking
at the other one going, remember this, spot and steal. But when I read that, that scripture
hit me, DON'T CAST YOUR PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. And that's really
what Hezekiah was doing. Showing him all that gold in
there in the Lord's house, temple, stuff. But my mouth shall speak
the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh, the black, the white, the yellow,
all nationalities, LET ALL FLESH BLESS HIS HOLY NAME FOREVER AND
EVER. Isn't that a good psalm to start
the year with? It's outstanding. A psalm of
praise, no requests, just praising God for who He is. This is David's
crowning psalm, his psalm of praise.