Father, we need You more than
we ever know we need You. We need Your holiness because
in Your holiness You are just and You are worthy and You are
right and You are perfect and You are glorious. Father, we need Your majesty,
for as we look upon this world and its decay, we see just a
glimpse of Your glory. Father, one day You will set
all things new. You will set all rights, all
wrongs right. And You will set all injustices
just. So we need Your majesty, Lord.
so that we can truly, as we sit in this side of eternity, say
it is well with our soul. But Lord, we know the depths
of the waves and the darkness and the blindness, and if it
were not for Your wonderful grace, we would be unable to see any
wellness at all. So as we embark on hearing Your
Word and trusting You through it, fill
us with all Your fullness. that we may know the length and
the depth and the height and the width of the love that is
in Christ Jesus alone. In His name we pray, Amen. 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 works 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 your children of men 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 and raises up all who are bowed
down. The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season. Your open hands,
you satisfy the desires 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, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills
the desires of those who fear him. He also hears their cries
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. Amen. We'll hear the songs. Sometimes are. guided as the
Proverbs are in our in our in our walk. And the Psalms are
confusing, sometimes we understand that they are actual songs that
were sung. It's poetry, that's the genre. And yet, among this poetic music,
we find prophecy. We find thanksgiving and praise,
exaltation. We find coronation songs about
the king and his rule. We find messianic songs that
talk about the Messiah. Some of the some of the royal
songs that we see that were sung about the king, sung about the
Davidic line, sung about the kings of Israel, we see that
they're talking about physical kings, but then yet they also
have a prophetic word and that they also parallel the one who
was to come, the king of kings. And sometimes, just as we would
the Proverbs, we sort of take them one at a time, but in all
reality, the Psalms, though they can be understood and enjoyed
individually, they are indeed ordered in such a way that the
narrative that there is somewhat of a poetic narrative. A poetic
narrative of God and His grace and His goodness and His sovereign
rule over all things. And the outcome of what we see
in the Scriptures about the church is that we come to a place where
we see in Revelation where there will come a day where every Christian,
every person who is Israel, every part of the church, all the same,
of every tongue and nation and tribe. God's holy people will
sing praises to the Son of God forever. I believe that the Psalms
will be a great portion of that. I believe that our eternity will
be spent expounding and expanding the Psalms of God. Unfortunately, We live in a world
today that is so right with busyness, so right with conflict, so right
with frustration that we put our time and our minds on things
that are futile and worldly. And you might think, well, what's
the remedy of that? How am I to push away the world? How am I
to take the world by the throat and just set it out of my way?
Because it's always there. And I don't love the world, but
sometimes the world gives me pause from life. Well, I'll tell
you what does it. It's the Word of God. And I'll
tell you what will plant it in you harder than anything and
deeper than anything is to read the Psalms. It's to celebrate
the glory of God. Through the. Voice of the psalmist. Because there is no way for us
to. Subject our souls to these words,
I will extol you, my God and king and bless your name forever
and ever and get up and go fix the sandwich. It's good work. It doesn't work. You might say, well, the Word
of God doesn't move me that way. Why not? Why is it that a good drama on
television bring us to tears and affect our dream state? Or
a wonderful fiction book that gets our heart pulsing, which will fade away. Every day
I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great
is the Lord and greatly to be prayed. And His greatness is
unsearchable. That doesn't give us pause. Why? I don't understand it. I don't understand it, beloved.
Because only through God's Word does the power of God's grace
live and live again in His people. There's no hope for the church
in celebration or holiness apart from the Word of God. Is it that
we have become so callous to spiritual things that we can
brush them off? Like the person who gets the
news that they have cancer and they have a week to live, and
they go, oh well, I better go feed the fish. Is it really what's
on top of mind when we hear the gravity of reality? And friends,
there's nothing more grave than the reality of a holy God who
set the world afire with His Word and it came to be explosively
and truly. And He created every living being
that came to be by the power of His spoken Word. And then
He breathed life into all of them. And He breathed life into
Adam. And He breathed life into Eve.
And He breathed life into you as He knit you together in the
womb of your mother. And the miracle of birth is so
that you, if you are the Lord's, will give Him praise for His
grace forever. What else is there in life? Read Solomon. Read Ecclesiastes. Read the reality of everything
and all the joys of this world. They will not last. They are
futile. They are worthless. It is over. There is no hope except that
the Lord God Almighty be praised. Fear Him and live. Here's a psalm of David. Friends, there is no place in
the preaching of God's Word for complacency. I'm sorry, my dear
brothers in pulpits, if you're complacent with the ho-hum exposition,
and this means that and this means this, good job, good day,
goodbye. Where is the power of the Word
of God there? And if you do this and this and
one, two, three, fill in the blanks and let's all see the
wonderful, magical words. Put it on the refrigerator and
work it out this week. Zippity-doo-dah-dingy-day. And
live so that Jesus can say, hey, I'm glad you made it. Sound like
Dr. Seuss there. Friends, we ought to hear the
words of God and it ought to make us just crumble and then
explode. How do we fight anger? How do
we fight frustration? How do we fight illness? How
do we fight depression? How do we fight sin? How do we
fight lust? How do we fight brokenness? How do we fight poverty? How
do we fight all of these things? How do we fight divorce and death
and cancer and disease? How do we fight social injustice?
How do we stand under the weight of the world that hates us, that
hates everything about us, and hates the Lord God who made us
and gave Himself up for us? How do we fight it? Through the
words that He's given that is life to all men who hear and
believe and savor in the satisfactory goodness of His filling. You
know what a hundred years on this earth is? Being the greatest
doctor, the greatest mother, the greatest father, the greatest
theologian. It's worthless. We spend more time worrying about
what other people think about how we accomplish worldly, mundane,
ridiculous things than we do about the ineffable, eternal
face of God that we will stand before forever. Friends, if you
believe that heaven will be boring because we'll stand in attention
forever in absolute celebration, singing the Psalms of God to
His face, you, my friend, have nothing to worry about, for you
will not stand in His glory. You will stand in His judgment. And if that hurts your feelings,
praise be to God in heaven that your heart might be stricken
with first anger and then repentance and then joy above joy above
joy above all joys. Who cares if you invented the
cure for the cold? Who cares if you painted the
Sistine Chapel? Who cares if you created the
most magnificent building? Who cares if you fed 50 billion
people on their way to hell? It's just dust. When we die, somebody will throw
our crap into garbage. And with it, all the learning,
every piece of paper on our wall dies. My great-grandmother's diploma
from 1920 7, 28, 38, something. No, it's 32 is sitting
on the floor of a storage room rotting. And all of her siblings
are dead. And all their stuff is rotting. And no matter how many generations
clean it up and put it to use, there's never an opportunity
for that to be worth anything in eternity. The collections of this world
are dust. So let's prepare for what is
not dust as we hear the words of our mighty God. Psalm 145 is a psalm about the greatness
of God. There's songs of lament, songs
of complaint, songs of all sorts of things. There's royal songs
and then there's messianic songs that are royal. And then the reality of it all.
There's some songs that are absolutely pointing only to Jesus. Psalm 115 is one of those. Where
David cries out, Oh, the Lord of my Lords, the Lord spoke to
my Lord. Psalm 145 talks about the expression
of the worthiness of God. Let's look at this for a second. In these first few verses, in
these first few stanzas, Here, David sings this song about praising
God. Extol, praise, worship, adore. He calls Him, My God and My King. The word God means High One.
Exalted One. It's not a name. God is a word
that expresses the character of the being to which it is described.
That's why when you can say there are no other gods but our God,
whose name is hidden, but we call him Yahweh. Or in the English,
Jehovah. It's not a name in itself, but
the first letters of his name. But God is the high and exalted
one, the divine one, and King, of course, we see is the one
that rules. Bless your name forever and ever. And the way that Jesus taught
the church to pray, He says, pray in this way. Our Father who is in heaven, holy is Your
name. Your kingdom come. Your will
be done. See, it's the same thing, but
there's something different about the way Jesus taught us to pray
and the way David was praising. There's God and King, which talks
about a kingdom, which talks about His rule and His authority,
His holiness. But Jesus is to pray, Our Father. And there's an intimacy there
that we see. And what I don't see in word in David's psalm
here is there in inference. And that He will bless His name
forever and ever. He will praise His name forever
and ever. Friends, there's an intimacy
there. It's not a reverence that is subject to a complete fear
and respect in a worldly way. It's a reverence that includes
that, but also goes to an intimate level that there is an intimacy
with God. Great is the Lord and greatly
to be praised. And His greatness is unsearchable. See, I could just preach those
three verses today and talk for two hours. No one knows the greatness
of God. No one knows the ineffable mercies
of God in its completeness. See, we have a misnomer in our
teaching in the church today where we answer kids' questions
when they say, hey, preacher, or hey, dad, or hey, uncle, or
hey, mom, or hey, sister, or whatever. What does it mean this?
What does God think about this? How are we going to know this?
Why this? Why that? That's the natural way we learn. And I remember being taught a
lot of things in reality to say, this is what it means. This is
what it means. This is what it means. And then there was sometimes
where you were told and you have all experienced this where you're
told we don't know. But when you get to heaven, you'll
understand all things. You'll know all things. It's true, in part. Our questions
will be answered. Our our humanistic. Stain will
be erased so we can see the justice and mercy of God as it is perfect. and right all the time. And we
won't take God and measure Him by our worldly understanding
of divine things, but we will measure Him by His own expression
of those things. But in no way will we have all
knowledge completely. Why? Because God cannot be fully
known forever because He is ineffable. He is unsearchable. In other
words, He is forever able to teach us more about Himself because
He is infinite. You see that? Who's got time
to do anything else right now? Think about that. If God is unsearchably
infinite, and yet we have seen the fullness of His glory in
the face of Christ, when we stand face to face with Jesus Christ
to worship Him with myriads and myriads and thousands and thousands
forever and ever, praising God, Every second of our being in
eternity, we will be learning more and more and more about
the depths of the unknowable, unsearchable God. It's never
ending. We won't get to the end and go,
huh, I finished. I did it. I got it. I got you. Now I'm going to go play chess. I got you. Now I'm going to go
up here and read a little bit about Now I'm going to write
a volume. I'm not going to be writing volumes.
I'm going to be learning volumes. Friends, if nothing else, I want
you to understand that even David, as he lived before God, chosen
unworthily to be the king, He was a man after God's own heart
because God made him that way. And one of the greatest things
that David saw about God, though God did not erase the consequences
of his rebellion and sin, it cost him his kingdom, it cost
him his family, it cost him his reputation, it cost him everything. But it did not cost him his intimacy
with the God of the universe. David knew the unsearchable greatness
of God. And he sings it to us as we sing,
as we hear, holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty. Cherubim and seraphim praising. Do you see God? in this vast
bigness? Or have we placed God into a
nice little package that fits into our day planner? Have we
placed God on a list of priorities that may be number one? Or is
He not even a part of our lives at all? Friends, being in church and
reading the Bible, studying the daily bread, Watching a few sermons
and listening to a few podcasts. That's not what it means to be
with Christ. If you're listening to something
about the gospel, if you're listening to the Word of God, no matter
how mundane it might be given. The power of God's Word strikes
a nerve in you, His child, and you have to stop. You ever listen
to a sermon and then all of a sudden you realize it's over because
you're stuck there in that place and you're going, wow. Driving
when you're by yourself and you put on a sermon and you're listening
and they get to a verse like that, greatly to be praised in
His greatness is unsearchable. And all of a sudden 30 minutes
goes by and you're still stuck there and you go, I didn't hear
a thing. So you start it back over and you get stuck there
again. Do you get stuck there? Are we so American in our idealism
of Christianity that we're completing our relationship with God each
day? Well, I got Jesus done. Now I deal with that. And I've got to get ready because
Tuesday night and Wednesday night and Thursday night and Friday
night. And I've got to get all these things done for the week.
And then Saturday is sort of my day. And then I give God Sunday. The psalmist exclaims in his
song, he says, one generation shall commend your works to another
and shall declare your mighty acts. Where is that? Where is it? Children, how much
do you think about the mighty acts of God? But I tell you what we do share.
The mighty acts of Superman. The mighty acts of the Transformers.
What are you getting at? I'm just making a comparison.
The mighty acts of Congress. The mighty acts of us. Oh, look at what we saw artificially
created on the screen. Look at what we read imaginatively
created on the page. Look at what we did creatively
with our hands. Where are the works of God commended? Where is the declaration of the
mighty acts of God? Do you know that God with a word
went and created the universe? And do you know in the vastness
of the knowledge that God has given humanity, we have measured
the universe as infinite and yet God holds it? Do you know that God by His own
decree. created a people for His own
glory, and through generations and generations, set them into
slavery, and yet He preserved them, even in their rebellion.
Do you know that when God set the Israelites free from Egypt,
He did it through mighty works and mighty power, and He put
plagues upon Egypt? And when His judgment came upon
the Pharaoh and his people, the Pharaoh in his brokenness submitted
and repented. But when God gave His mighty
grace, which was a mightier work than His justice, the Pharaoh's
heart was hardened. It's not just a mighty work and
a mighty act that God sent fire down from heaven to destroy the
crops of the Egyptians. It's a mightier work that He
stopped the fire. It's a mightier work that He
didn't kill every man, but just the firstborn. But I think it boils down to
where we put our mind, isn't it? How we order our day. We have a problem because our
flesh orders our day. Our world orders, look at verse
5, on the glorious splendor. When have you ever used those
words? Do you go into the kitchen after
you've created a meal and say, oh, the glorious splendor of
this roast. No, we say that smells nice.
I love that roast. Or when we clean the yard. Oh,
look at the splendor of the beauty of the yard. We don't use those
words. Nobody uses those words anymore.
And one of the main reasons is because there's nothing anywhere
in the world to define as glorious. Or splendid. Much less glorious
splendor as a noun. Of what? Of your majesty. Is this where our mind is? Own
and own the glorious splendor of Your Majesty and own Your
wondrous works. I will meditate. The world crashes down around
us, church, but we, as the people of God, meditate on His glorious
splendor. It's very, very, very close to
the stories that you hear about these war-torn soldiers. Especially
in the first world wars. When these boys who could barely
drive are carried overseas to Europe and other places. And
the only thing they have is a picture of mom or a picture of their
high school sweetheart or a picture of their wife. And the letter that might come
that took months to get there. And as they laid in those bunkers,
as they laid in those trenches and they'd look at that dirty
old ragged up picture, they would say to themselves, oh, I will
meditate on the wondrous beauty and the affection I have for
this person because it takes my mind away from all of this. I have hope one day I may sit
in the arms of my beloved again. But even that's temporal. So even apart from that, we should
meditate on the splendor of the magistry of the wondrous works
of God. 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. You see what's happening here
in these three verses. The psalmist is saying generation after generation
after generation will sing of your might, of your glory, of
your beauty, of your majesty, of your goodness, of your righteousness,
of your holiness. What is the abundant goodness
of God? What is the fame of the name of God? Well, we see, we
know it. David understood it in his way. Hoping and knowing that the only
hope he had was in the greatness and the goodness and the righteousness
and the mercy of God, and it was fulfilled in absolute completion
at the coming of Jesus Christ. Do we proclaim the works of God
through Christ? Is our advice sweet and divine,
or is our advice worldly and dead? Sinister and dead. Do we preach to ourselves, the
woe is me, or do we preach to ourselves the wonder of He? Look at verse 8. The Lord is
gracious and merciful. This is expressing the goodness,
the abundant goodness of the righteousness of God. Here now
we see the graciousness and the mercifulness of God. And this
is expressed in this way. He's slow to anger and abounding
in steadfast love. Do you know what the gospel is? The good news of God. The gospel
of Jesus Christ is the good news of God in Jesus Christ. So the
goodness of God is abundant. The abundant gospel of God shall
ring aloud of your righteousness. The goodness of God and his righteousness
is that he does not let wickedness go unchecked. But though he allows
wickedness and forgives wickedness, it means that he is gracious.
It means that he has mercy. It means that he's slow to anger.
And he's abounding in steadfast. That means it stands without
fail. God's love never fails. And God's love is not only seen,
but it's satisfied in the giving of His Son to be put to death. What is the gospel about? What
is the church supposed to be doing? Proclaiming the gospel
of Jesus, the gospel of Jesus, which is you are dead in your
sins and your trespasses before the holiness of God. And it is
absolute justice. He should and will absolutely
destroy forever all who are sinful, you and me and everyone. But in His love, because of the
great love with which He loved us, He has made us alive with
Christ. For by grace you have been saved.
See, Paul just throws that in there in Ephesians 2. He can't
contain himself, even in pen. The graciousness and the mercy
of God. You know what's crazy? You know
what stresses me? You know what burdens me? That
people hear this and they go, oh, this is just... is it time
to leave yet? Oh, that sermon's 50 minutes? I don't have time to listen to
that. How many? There's this little app that
you can look at on the Internet right now and you can go in and
click on it and you can, you can, all the popular TV shows
that have had season after season after season. You know what I'm
talking about? The ones that you and I watch
through the years. And you say, oh, yeah, I've seen
all these episodes and I've seen them sometimes more than once.
And it tallies it up. As to how many hours, days, months
and years you've watched TV. I wish we could see an out of
how many times we've read and studied God. And then put that
on our Facebook. I've watched TV for six years,
three hours and 21 days and nine minutes. And I've studied the
Bible for four hours. That's what it would look like,
wouldn't it, if we were really honest? And you think, well, if I was
a preacher, it'd probably be more. It probably wouldn't. The gospel of Christ. is that God is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And it is seen
perfectly in his love for us as the giving as he gave his
son to die for us. The church is to be about the
gospel, not the social gospel. Not the politics. Not the program,
not social strata. Not resume building or politic
building. The church is not about those
things. And any congregation who sits into that type of organization,
I'm sorry to say, sits under judgment. But if we do that, then the seats
will be empty. Just like in John six, when everybody
but the twelve left. 20,000 people who just saw Jesus perform
a great miracle walked away when He says, I'm not giving you anything
else to eat because I myself am enough bread for all of you
for all of eternity. Labor for me. What must we do
to be doing the work of God? You see right there? Every church
growth expert in the world, had he been the one standing there
instead of Jesus, would have said, take out your notebooks
and write out this five points and I'll show you what you need
to do. One is you need to, two is you need to, and it would
probably be alliterated. It would probably all start with
A. You need to assign which group
you're going to target first. You need to assimilate that group
into the church. You need to, you need to, you
need to. All your works, verse 10, shall
give thanks to you. See the outcome of the gospel?
Do you see the outcome? Do you know what praise is? Do
you know what worship is? Thank you, God, for who you are.
Thank you, God, for what you've done. Thank you, God, for rescuing
me. Thank you, God, for hearing me. Thank you, God. Thank you,
God. Thank you, God. And it's forever, for the grace
of God's gift is forever. God doesn't just say, here you
go, pop. And then you get to look at it. You know what happens
when we get something new? Or we want something that we don't
have that's going to be new? What do we do with it? We think
about it a lot. We love it. We clean it. New
pair of shoes. We clean it. Then what happens
to those shoes? How many of us have got a pair of shoes that
we've had for 20 years that still looks brand new? Wait a minute,
that's a bad question, because I do. But in reality, most of our shoes,
what? Wear out. But I'll tell you what, even
those that still look good, when we first get them, we take care
of them. We're stepping like we're in a room full of elephants
or something. Don't step on my shoes. You go outside to get
the mail and you get a scuff and you come in and you get the
409. I've got to wipe that off. A new car. What do you do? You
love that smell. I've got some friends who like
to leave the sticker in the window just for a couple of weeks so it makes
it feel like they haven't bought it yet. But again, they smell it. You
don't drink in it. You don't smoke in it. You don't
chew tobacco in it. You don't eat cheeseburgers in it. But
after a while, about a year goes by, you know, you park it, first
few days, and oh, dust. You're dusting it off. You park
it in Kmart to walk to Walmart. Because it's important. It's
top of mind. But after a while, it's just
what? Man, I hate this old car. Man, these shoes hurt my feet.
I mean, let's watch that and keep time. These glasses are
way too old. My hairdo just needs changing. Don't we? I mean, I know people that change
furniture with the seasons. They have five or six sets of
furniture in storage and they just change it out. And you go
in and they're like, whoa, what in the world? I've had this for 20 years.
I just change it out. I don't know if that's good stewardship
or insanity. I don't want to move furniture
when I'm moving, much less for the heck of it. But we take care
of this stuff, we do so much to take care of these simple
little earthly things, and I'm not saying we shouldn't, but
we worship them, we spend time with them. And when it's new,
we're thinking about it. When it's old, it's no big deal,
like birthday presents. Where's that nice toy you got?
I don't know. There's one piece of it and there's
the leg and the head. I don't know. Puppies, everybody
loves puppies, but when they're 80 pounds, who cares? What's the point? We treat our
relationship with God the same way. We think the gift of his
grace is something he gave us and we stick it in our pocket
and then we forget about it. Friends, we don't forget about
it. Well, I think I have forgotten
about it some. But then get your mind into the
Word of God and meditate on His absolute mercy and His wonderful
splendor and His majesty and His works and remember. Because I promise you, if the
desire is not there, there's a major problem. Paul called it. There will come
a time when people will not endure sound teaching, but will gather
up for themselves teachers to teach to scratch their itching
ears. You know what that is? That's
people who hear exposition of this psalm and go, I'd rather
hear a 20 minute homily about how to be a better husband. I want to be a good husband too,
but you know what will help me be a better husband? When the
power of God rests in me. And when I see that my picture
of myself as Andros, as head, is just a shadow of Christ, because
I'm really a bride pretending to be a head. And the outcome of that is gratitude.
Verse 11, they shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and
tell of your power in order to make known to the children of
man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom."
Now, I want to just talk about that for a second. What's he
saying? Verse 11 and 12. Okay, we get
it, David. They shall speak of all the goodness
of God. But not just speak. They shall
speak of the glory of your kingdom. You know what that includes? It includes an exclusion of the
kingdom of the world. That the kingdom of God, in its
completeness, excludes all nations of kings. That's why Jesus is
called King of Kings. That's why Paul, when he says
it very clearly, that all rulers and all kings and all kingdoms
have been created by Him and for Him and through Him, and
he holds them up. And one day they will fall. to
be under His feet. So the glory of Your Kingdom,
what is that? That's as we teach. We are to
do it and tell of the power of God in order that we make known
to the children of man the Gospel, the power of God, the glorious
splendor of Your Kingdom. Who cares if our children know
the literary classics? If they don't know the God of
heaven. What's better? To go to heaven,
dumb as a rock, or to be a Ph.D. of a Ph.D. of a Ph.D. and go
to hell? And I think that applies to us scholarly
theologians. Those scholarly theologians.
I don't want to put myself in that category. What does Jesus say? It's better
to pluck out your eye and call up your hand. It's better to
go to heaven as a piece of a person than go to hell as a whole person. What are we pushing? What are
we making known? What are we proclaiming? They
shall speak. Friends, here's the reality of
it. I can preach and point this sermon in a way that makes us
all so guilty, but oh, we're just such a failure as Christians.
And that's not the intent of this song. The intent of this
psalm is that David was expressing and extolling the power and the
majesty and the name of God because he was overwhelmed and filled
with all the fullness of God. And he could not do anything
but express it. And he realized that the reason
he expressed what he was expressing, as well as all those who are
from generation to generation who will, they do it because
God is surely powerful among them. And so the only level of
conviction that should come to this is if we have no inclination
to praise, to meditate, to desire, to devour the greatness of God
through His Word, we have no desire to walk in holiness, we
have no desire to be made right, then we have no place in the
Kingdom of Heaven. I've made it simple through the
years when I say it this way, but I think it needs to be said
that it's not that we do not sin. or struggle with sin, but
we do not snuggle with our sin. We're not complacent with it
and satisfied in it. We hate it. Even the sin of not adoring God. Even the sin of not wanting to
worship with the saints. Even the sin of not desiring
to be in the Word. So what? Why do we make known
Why not all the kingdoms of the world? Look at verse 13. For
your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Your kingdom and your
dominion endures throughout all generations. All generations. You see this song? You know what's
really interesting about our philosophy, our theological position
of worship through song, is that it needs to be about God to God. Even when it's about who we are
and what we are, it's about what God has done to make us that
way. Oh, the bliss of this glorious
thought. My sin not in part, but the whole. See, we could make that about
us, couldn't we? But it's a praise because Jesus is nailed to the
cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Oh, my soul! It's not about us, but we benefit,
don't we? Why? Because God is a loving
God and He loves us. And God's kingdom is forever.
No one will remember Aristotle in eternity except he be a brother
with us in worship. No one will remember Shakespeare. Except He be a brother with us. And look at how the Lord's Kingdom,
in these last few verses, functions for the people of God. The second
portion of verse 13 says this. The Lord is faithful in all His
words and kind in all His works. Verse 14, He upholds all who
are falling and raises up all who are bowed
down. So here is a piece of graciousness,
a piece of text that shows us about the graciousness of God.
When we see Jesus preaching in the Sermon on the Mount, He says
that blessed are the meek. Blessed are the lowly. Blessed
are the humble in spirit. For God rises them up. God gives
them the earth. God sets them apart to be exalted. Who are these people? These are
the people of God. These are the saints in Christ. King David was a saint in Christ prior to the cross. The fullness
of God's revelation to David. David's full hope was in the
satisfaction of God's justice against him through the coming
of Messiah. And then when Jesus came and
died, God set the record straight. He had forgiven David. He had
forgiven Joseph. He had forgiven Noah. He had
forgiven Moses. He had forgiven Eve. He had forgiven
Abram. And that's wrong of God to do
that. But when God satisfied His justice with Jesus Christ,
it made all that forgiveness right. Because there's no record of
sin. It's on the cross. It's been taken. It's paid. So God upholds those who are
falling, raises up all those who are bowed down. The eyes
of all look to you. They look to you like an infant
looks to its mother. For satisfaction, for sustenance
and for intimacy. All look to you and you give
them their food in due season, you supply their every need.
What does it do? What does this do for you? What
are you waiting for God to do? Stop. Stop wishing God would do something
else. And sit in wonder of what he's
already done. Your needs are met, beloved. Your needs are met. The lowest
common denominator of need in our culture somewhere got involved
with cable TV and cell phones. I don't know how that happened,
but it is. Somewhere it got involved with
electricity and groceries and a refrigerator. And I look at
that and I think, I don't want any of those things to go away.
My life would be awful, miserable and dysfunctional, but it would
be alive. And if the ground shook out from
under us, and every structure in this city was laid to ruin,
we would care less about those things anyway. I don't think God's in the business
of paying phone bills, to be honest with you. And when He
does, praise be to God. And when He doesn't, praise be
to God, because we're here and our fullest needs are met in
the season in which God knows they should be met. There's a
deep theology there. And we're just too rich of a
nation to see past. I can't see it. I can imagine
it, but it doesn't hit me. As poor as we've been riding
in a broken down car, had to keep a hammer to keep it running,
going door to door selling crap out of our trunk trying to buy
groceries, I still had every need, man. to the place where we had our
groceries delivered every day to our front door and had our
every need met. And when Paul says, I've had
much and I've had little and I prefer little, because in little
the grace of God abounds more and more and more and more and
more. For I can do all things in Christ
who gives me strength. That's what David's saying right here. And you give them food and you
open your hand. Picture this. You open your hand
and you satisfy the desires of every living thing. I have a tree on my front porch
that I'm nursing. I'm a murderer when it comes
to ficus trees. And I kill them because of aesthetics.
I don't like the way it looks over there. I don't like the
way it looks there. See how poor we are in America? And the leaves are
turning. So I'm moving. I'm moving inside
and outside. I water it too much. I water it too little. And the
leaves are falling off and it's turning. I'm killing it. God's hand is
open to that tree to provide its needs. What's up with that? The squirrels that terrorize
my yard and eat my pecans, God has His hand open to them. God
has His hand open to the sparrows that fall in the thousands every
day. And God has His hand open to
the hair that is or may not be on my head. How much more, what
does Jesus say? How much more important are you
than sparrows and hair? See why I say there's a fatherly
affection here with David. He satisfies the desire. What
does it mean? What's the 23rd Psalm say? The
Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. What's that
mean? That means I have no desire for
anything. I'm completely satisfied. It's like I'm sitting in a hammock
being strolled along into luxury, not even thinking what shall
I eat, nor even knowing that my stomach is hungry. You might say, well, What if
I don't see it? What if I don't see the Lord's
work here? Look at verse 17. The Lord is righteous in all
His ways and kind in all His works. That is a series of sermons. That one sentence. That means
that everything the Lord does is righteous. When the Lord purposed
Satan to tempt Eve, it was right and for the good of His people.
When the Lord sent Satan to destroy Job's life, it was good and for
the good of Job. When God sent calamity through
Babylon and Assyria. To destroy Israel and take them
into captivity and to push them into exile, he said he would
use these nations as the rod of his anger. For their good. Quit slicing the sovereignty
of God into the nice, fit American pieces of pie. Well, yeah, God's
sovereign over everything but that. And stop looking. You know what pantheism is? Pantheism
is a pagan theology that says that God created everything and
then went, now work. And spun it like a top and then
stepped back and let it do what it's going to do. Like a roulette
wheel. He just throws it in and spins
it and lets the numbers fall without. That's pantheism. And that's not the God of heaven. Nature doesn't run itself. Christ
holds it up. And when a tornado rips through
a home, God holds it up. And we don't know why. And it's
not necessarily judgment. But God holds it up. When a hurricane
comes in and kills a city, God holds it up. With the power of his words,
he could turn it away, but he doesn't. He's righteous in all His ways
and He's kind in all His works. And the Lord is near to all who
call on Him. See, here's where the peace starts
to come in. For all who call on Him. To all who call on Him
in truth. You see, there's a difference
in just calling on the Lord and calling on Him in truth. That's
why there's a qualifier there that David sings. You know what
calling on Him in truth means? That means that we're not calling
on Him after we've exhausted our efforts. We're not calling
on Him to do that which we desire in our way. We're calling on
Him as a child, as we look to Him saying, Lord, only You will
see this through. And I think these are the ways.
What does James 4 say? Don't say we're going to go here
and there and do this and that. But if the Lord wills, we shall
do these things. Don't boast in our own abilities.
We must call on the Lord in truth, knowing that He is the truth,
that He is the only way. Jesus says those words in combination. I am what? The way. I am the truth. I am the life. And no one comes to the Father
except through me. We can't call on God to do what
we call Him to do. We call on God to do that which
God does. Verse 19, we see more of God's
graciousness as He fulfills the desires of all those who fear
Him. He also hears the cry and saves them. What does it mean
to fear the Lord in this way? Well, let's put it this way,
based on this text. If we fear the Lord and cry out
to Him in truth, it means that our satisfaction is certainly
coming from Him alone. And so the desires of our hearts is really Him. We fear Him in reverence. We
fear Him in worship. We fear Him with all that we
are. And he saves us. Because we fear
in a way to know our place, but most importantly, we fear in
a way to know that without God, without Christ, without the Lord's
hand, we shall not escape that which we are headed, that which
is set upon us, that which is placed before us. Most certainly,
God's just judgment. The Lord preserves all who love
Him. Do you love the Lord? the God
of Scripture, the Christ who came to save your soul, is your
trust fully in the Gospel, the goodness of God, in Jesus Christ. That Christ is God in the flesh,
born of a virgin into the world that He created by His Word,
that rejected Him, though in their rejection He came to die
in their place, that He might make a people for Himself on
the back of Himself so that throughout the ages of the eternal and steadfast
kingdom, because of His love, He will receive praise through
His glorious grace. Because if we love Him, we will
not be destroyed. But the wicked He will destroy. So then the psalmist closes,
My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord. And look what he
says. And let all flesh bless His holy
name forever and ever. Is that the praise of our lives? Is that the praise of our lips?
Is that the praise of our heart and our mind? Is all of our flesh
blessing the holy name forever and ever? No, but as a people
who covenant together by the grace of God, we are to strive
for this. Christians aren't into religion. They're marked by righteousness
collectively. What burden rests against the grace of God
in your life? What banner is raised up above
His righteousness? With what boldness do you proclaim
in this world above the gospel of peace? Friends, the Lord upholds
all who are failing The Lord's love endures forever. He's gracious
and merciful. We've seen His mighty works.
Let us worship Him forever. See the face of Christ in the
psalm of David. Let's pray. Oftentimes, Lord, we sing songs
that seem to be quoted straight out of the Scripture. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Worship His holy name. Father, are we just singing? Or are we confessing that which
is true in us? Are we rolling with tradition
and churchy things, or are we really living as the church? God, You know our hearts. And
You know even in the doubts of our souls, You can satisfy our
doubts. You can satisfy our desires. You can become our delight. Delight yourself in the Lord
and You will give us the desires of our heart. Father, if You
are our delight, we have it all. Let us rise up. Not from worshiping
You. but from being bowed down to
the woes of the world. Help us trust in You to rise
us up and send us into this world, into each other's lives, that
we might know You and see You and be satisfied in You, through
Christ and for His namesake. In His name we pray, Amen. Amen.