Psalm 145

Psalm chapter 145. As we get into these last Psalms of the book, praise has always been a huge part of our understanding of the Psalms and our study of the Psalms. But it is more concentrated in these last 6 Psalms or so. And I really want to encourage you that if your praise life, your time of praise with the Lord, is a bit lacking, and I think there's probably most of us can recognize that sort of a thing. We were quick to come to the Lord at difficult times. But in times of praise sometimes we struggle a little bit coming to Him. During times of victory and joy we tend to go just about our business. As soon as life starts falling apart, we're quick to run to God, usually anyway. But we need to be better praisers. I don't know how to say it better than that. We need to improve our praise life. Right? And I want to encourage you that as we get into these last psalms here, that you might consider marking these in your Bible as some helps along those lines, to just to use for praise. Because these are just amazing. And this Psalm 145, is the last psalm that is said to be authored by king David. It is titled, A Psalm of Praise. And it is very much that. David says in verse 1,

And it's apparent as we get into this Psalm 145, that David loved to praise the Lord. I don't know if that describes you or not. I don't know if you love to praise the Lord, but David loved to do it. But I don't think it was just simply that he loved to praise. I think that with David, it was that he truly saw God as deserving of his praise. And that is what generated this heart of praise is that God is deserving. And so it bubbled forth.

As we read through this, take note how many times David speaks directly of something that is true and praiseworthy of the Lord. You're going to see that a lot in this Psalm. He begins by saying in verse 3,

The first thing David says here, is that the Lord is great. The next thing he says is that, "his greatness is unsearchable." Which means unfathomable or, it's impossible to comprehend, or to mine the depths of God's greatness. He goes on to say, and this is true today. He says,

And we're doing that today, aren't we? Right now. He says,

I have to wonder, I have to wonder if one of the reasons why praise came so easily to David... And we're assuming that it did. It may not have come easily. I have to wonder if it's because of what he says in verse 5. Where he simply makes this determination that he's going to meditate on the wondrous works of God. I just... I have a sense that was it. That was his key. That was that secret, if you will. Just meditating on the majesty and the wondrous works of God. And what came forth from that was a life of praise. ---

Look at verses 8 and 9. I love these verses.

Take those verses, right? You see... You heard me read them. I assume you had your Bible there and you read along. Here's the question. Do you believe it? Do you believe what we just read? Most of us in the good times of our lives, we're going to easily say, yeah, sure! I believe that. Yeah. Hey... Praise the Lord! Look what he actually said in these verses. First of all, the Lord is gracious. And then he said, merciful. God is merciful. You understand what that means. Right? It means that we don't deserve really anything good from Him. And in fact, what we do deserve is punishment. But He doesn't give it to us. That's being merciful. And he says, God is slow to anger. He says that, He's abounding in not just love, steadfast love. That means the love that doesn't change. The love that doesn't go away. The love that doesn't run dry. That is what He is abounding in. I used to listen... I don't know if any of you know who Gail Irwin is. I haven't heard or seen Gail in several years now. But he used to frequent a lot of Calvary Chapel Pastor's conferences, years ago that I would attend. And he had this way of saying that idea of abounding in love. And he would make us all say it. And we all felt foolish. Because he would make us say, (Pastor Paul uses a singsong voice) Abounding in love. And say, come on guys, stay with me. And we're all like, give me a break. But you say it enough times and you start to think, what does this mean? There's this abounding love that God has for us. The point is, we read these verses and they just go. (Pastor Paul mimics nonchalance) And he's abounding in love. Oh, praise God. Rather than really thinking about the fact that, He's abounding in steadfast love. How we need to really lay hold of that. And the fact that we don't really hear what those words are saying sometimes, is how we respond to God in difficult times. We come to God and we say, hey God, what's going on? What... Why are you allowing this to happen. Rather than understanding that He is still abounding in steadfast love toward us.

Notice, he also says,

His whole creation. Verse 10,

One day you and I are going to see with our own eyes the glorious splendor of God's kingdom. He says,

Again, this is a great psalm of praise. Again, I want to just encourage you. If you find yourself weary. And particularly weary to the point where you're just unable to really focus on praise. Open up Psalms like this one and just read them out loud. And even if the words don't come from your heart, let the words come from your mouth. Let it start there. Just let them pour out of your mouth. And let your heart come along for the ride later. If that has to be the case. It's not hypocrisy to just speak those words. It's not hypocritical at all. You just speak them. You speak them by faith. You speak of the goodness of the Lord. There's times we need to do that, Christians. And especially during the hard times. We need to speak of the goodness of God. We need to declare the goodness of God, even if we're the only one in the room. Even if you're the only one listening at the moment. Speak it out! Declare it, because it's true! And let your heart be ministered to, by those words.