Psalm 145 - Pastor John Harmon - August 23rd, 2026

I am blessed to be able to stand before you this morning and share the word of the Lord while Kyle is away.

I'm thankful for the opportunity and excited to get to continue in our series to the book of Psalms.

This morning we're going to be in Psalm 145.

So you can go ahead and turn there in your copy of God's word, Psalm 145, this morning.

And we are going to begin by reading the Psalm in its entirety.

So if you are able to stand for the reading of the Word of the Lord, I would ask that you do so now.

And we will read together.

This is the word of the Lord.

I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name for ever and ever.

Every day I will bless you and praise your name for ever 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 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 and 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, to all who call on him in truth.

He fulfills the desires 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.

Let's pray.

Gracious Lord, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the power of it.

I pray now that as we study your word together, that you would speak through me, that you would set aside any intelligence that I uh claim or believe to hold and speak only what is true through the power of your Holy Spirit, and that your Holy Spirit would work in the hearts and minds that are here to hear your word, to be changed by it, and to walk away from this place differently than we walked in.

These things we ask in your name.

Amen.

You can be seated.

So before we dive into the text, there's a couple interesting things that I want to share with you about it.

First is in the book of Psalms, this is the last psalm that is ascribed to David.

Now we do not know if the book of Psalms are chronologically listed out.

Um, so we cannot say that this is the last psalm that David wrote, but it is the last one recorded in the order of the book of Psalms.

Uh, the remaining five are not attributed to David.

But there's a more interesting fact about this psalm that I love a lot.

Uh, and I was thinking about how I want to talk about this.

Uh this psalm is an acrostic.

Now raise your hand if you know what an acrostic is.

We have we have quite a few in the room that probably do.

All the teachers are like, Yes, I know what an acrostic is.

Uh, and hopefully all the students know what that is too.

But that's what this is, and um specifically, this psalm is an acrostic of the entirety of the Hebrew alphabet in order.

So I I began thinking of why that was relevant, and I I began thinking about how I teach my daughter words, and how I teach her letters, and how we go through that process.

And I thought, just because it's a pretty common thing, we could try that this morning, okay?

Are you willing to try that with me?

Oh, I got I got some laughs, I got some yeses, and I got some lean backs, like they're not quite sure.

It's simple, okay?

We're gonna do fruit, okay?

Because fruit is common.

So if I were to ask you to fill in this blank, A is for nice, very good.

All right, B is for, all right, the easy ones.

C is for okay, this is where things get different, right?

Where something like the standard has changed.

I heard cantaloupe, I heard coconut.

If we go to D, it'll get even more confusing because we'll go in a lot of different directions.

But yes, that's how I'm teaching my daughter words and and letters, and that's what her books all look like.

And I began to realize something that that points to the the main idea of this text.

Kevin, if you'll throw that main idea I have up there.

It's the main idea of today is who God is and what he has done should be remembered and cause us to praise.

And I believe wholeheartedly that it's that remembered portion that is so relevant in the makeup of this psalm.

See, this psalm was part of the daily Jewish tradition.

They would pray this psalm twice in the morning and once in the afternoon.

And the idea of it was simply this: that as you would say it, you would know the order because you knew your alphabet.

And as you proclaimed each truth that David speaks of, you would remember them.

They would seed in your mind the truths of who God is.

And then inevitably, the goal would be that as we remember who God is, and we remember what God has done, that would lead us to praise.

That would lead us to praise of who God is and what God has done.

For some of my students who have been in our student ministry for a couple years now, they probably remember our study on worship, and I spoke a lot about how worship has two motivations.

There's the motivation about who God is, and there's the motivation about what God has done.

And both of those motivations are important.

I believe sometimes the world would, and even in the church, would argue that, well, what God has done sounds circumstantial.

So the reality is we should really only worship God for who he is, but that is just not true because we know that everything God has done has been for his glory and our good.

So, how would the things that God has done not lead us to worship?

The only reality of why is if you are misattributing the acts of God, or if you are misattributing things that are happening in your life to God doing them as opposed to allowing them.

There's a significant difference there between what God does and what God allows.

The active God is good.

And we're gonna see that this morning.

So one through three, we see, 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.

There's a lot of repeated words in those first three verses.

The first is obviously praise, which is where we're at in our study of the book of Psalms.

Uh, Kyle talked about how we're gonna break up and see that there are a variety of different psalms that fall into different subcategories, and this is a psalm of praise, as is evident not only by the title of it, uh, in most things, a song of praise of David, but also in the vocabulary of it, where it repeatedly speaks of praise.

But there's one other thing that is repeated in this intro that I believe is very important.

And I'm a student pastor, so I'm gonna ask you what it is.

Say it again.

I see extol.

That's that's praise.

I think I heard it over here.

Yeah.

Forever and ever.

You see, David is setting up what he's gonna talk about with the reality of there's not a point where we stop praising God for who he is and what he's done.

The heart and the goal of the life of the believer is an eternity of praise to Almighty God.

And David echoes this idea that there is an infinite time to praise and extol the name of God.

And then I love the way verse 3 ends.

Uh, it's always fun when where I fall on Sundays really is interweaved with where we're at on Wednesday nights in student ministry.

So we kick back off this past Wednesday, and uh in our student ministry, we've started talking about the attributes of God.

We started to study this past week that's 10 weeks long, where we're gonna talk about who God is.

And at the end of Wednesday night, I told the students the reason that we study who God is is because the better we know God, the more we love God, the more we praise God, the more we trust God, the more that we surrender to God because we know Him better.

But I started off by asking our students how well they thought they knew God.

And it was a really uh for my leaders, they can they can attest, it was a really interesting thing to watch as our students.

I started 100% and I worked my way down asking, okay, when you think you know that percentage of God, will you just slip your hand up?

And we watched as students waited and waited, and then some hands began to go up, and then more hands as we got lower.

And I I I was reading this third verse, and it it ends with, and his greatness is unsearchable.

We're gonna talk about who God is and what God does this morning and the reality of that bringing us to praise.

But there is also the reality of we're never gonna know everything that God is or everything that God does, because as David says, it is literally unsearchable.

If you believe you know everything about God, I promise you you don't.

There is more to know.

There will always be more to know about the infinite God of the universe who loves us.

And David realizes this here, and it's the last thing he says before he dives into this first section.

So the first point this morning is this we praise God because he is great.

Because he is great.

And we see that in the first, uh in verses four through seven.

Obviously, in the intro, we talk about the greatness of God, but we we see in verses four through seven that greatness come about.

In the beginning of verse four, we see that picture again of remembering.

And it was also this picture that made me think about teaching my daughter because it begins by saying, one generation shall commend your works to another.

That literally means, hey, the the generations are gonna tell each other about what God has done.

In this room, we have many generations of people that have loved God for a long time.

And I can't help but know that those of you that are older in life have have had a long time to see the works of God.

And I believe that you've told your kids about what God has done in your life, you've told your grandkids about what God has done in your life.

Some of you are blessed with great-grandkids, and you've told your great-grandkids about what God has done in your life.

And this is the picture we see here.

We see a picture of not merely bottling up the joy and the reality of the work of the Lord in your life, but sharing it.

The other reality is this this word generation is not exclusively familial.

You see, many of you have served in this church with kids and with students.

Over the course of your life, you have told the next generation that isn't even your kids and grandkids, the truth of who God is and what he has done.

You know, I end up sharing about every time I'm up here.

Some of you poured that into my life as I grew up here.

I know about what God has done in your life because you've told me what God has done in your life.

You have a desire to make the greatness of God known.

It says that you shall declare his mighty acts on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

David changes to a personal reality.

Yes, it is important to share what the Lord is doing, what the Lord has done.

But it's also important that we spend time on our own thinking about it.

If you're in here and and you spend time meditating on the the blessings of God and the the wonder and majesty of God and the wonderful works of God in your life, I I wonder, do you get overwhelmed?

Not in the negative sense where you're you're you're so worried about the reality, but overwhelmed in the truth of how much God is and how much God does, and the abundance of the love of God.

That is what the word great means.

We think of the word great, and we we ascribe to it obviously this idea of superiority, and that's true of God, but great also has to do with quantity.

God is great in all that he does, in the abundance of it.

In the in the truth of it, it is great.

David says he meditates on it.

And then he goes back and he speaks again of the people that they shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness.

We see that abundance again.

There is the the might of the awesome deeds.

Awesome's a fun word.

Awesome.

If you look at it, you know it it contains the word awe.

That idea of being just mind blown, if you will, and then some literally refers to quantity.

Awesome means a mind-blowing amount of who God is.

Does that not get you excited?

I know that may not be your vocabulary, but man, the Lord is awesome.

And he calls us to meditate on it and tell people about it.

He says, They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness.

We see it there again, abundant.

We see the scale of God repeatedly, and the truth is the words that David is using are the biggest words he can think of, and they're still not big enough.

I can't tell you a word that will allow you to properly comprehend the truth of how great God is.

It doesn't exist.

Because our vocabulary is as finite as our minds.

And there's no word for infinite other than that.

And that word is just an estimation of a concept we can't understand.

He ends this first section with, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

I like that.

Because we've talked a lot about majesty and and splendor and works.

But David ends this this first kind of section with the righteousness of God.

The the reality of the set apartness of God, the example, the standard of who God is that leads us to sing.

I love that it uses the word sing there.

So often we see the word praise and we see the word worship, we see the word extol, and rightly we understand that those words far exceed the concept of singing the praises of the Lord.

Worship is with the life.

But sometimes we decide that those words exclude the singing of the praises of the Lord.

Well, I don't have to sing because I I worship the Lord in the other ways of my life.

I hope you realize that singing to the Lord is a commandment of Scripture.

And I want you to hear this because I've heard all the excuses of why people don't sing in church.

Well, no one wants to hear me sing.

God does.

God wants to hear you sing, and no one else's opinion matters.

That's the reality.

If someone gets up and moves from you because you're singing or they don't like it, that's on them.

The Lord loves what you're doing.

I'm gonna pick on my mama for a moment.

My mama will tell you that she does not have the most beautiful singing voice in the world in the world's standards.

Uh, she somehow raised some very musical children that all played instruments, sing, all of that.

My mama sings.

I watched her sing growing up, and I didn't know it wasn't good at first.

I learned that it wasn't good as I grew up, but you know what?

I never wanted her to stop singing.

That was never my heart.

Because what I learned through that was it wasn't the worldly perspective of the singing that mattered, it was the heart behind that, and I knew that my mama wanted to sing praises to Jesus.

Sorry, I'm gonna get mo choked up real quick.

She wanted to sing praises to Jesus, and she wanted her kids to see that, and she didn't care how it sounded because it wasn't for anyone else, it was for him.

You say, Well, I don't know the the words to the songs, they're right there.

Every week.

In English and in Spanish.

You can pick your language.

You may not know a new song the first time we sing it, but Pastor Allen's real good about not singing songs once.

Because he knows, well, maybe that first week they need to hear.

But you come back and you've heard that song and you can catch on and begin to sing.

David says that we sing of the righteousness of God.

So that first point is that we praise because God is great.

The second point is this we praise God for He is gracious.

Now this was an interesting one because I almost use a different word, but uh and it was funny because it related to childhood.

I almost put God is good, and I all I could think about was the blessing that I said as a kid.

God is great, God is good.

And it's true, but I liked the word gracious.

I felt like it more encapsulated the entirety of this section of the text.

So we see it pick up there in verse 8, and it starts out the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

We begin to identify who God is.

And that graciousness informs a lot of those attributes.

The students taking notes, they're like, I'm getting previews.

These are all things that we're gonna discuss over the next 10 weeks.

So they're just getting a little uh taste of the next nine weeks that we're gonna be together in that.

But it says the Lord is gracious and merciful, he's slow to anger, and he abounds in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.

That's a big one.

We know that the grace and mercy of God is what brought about salvation for those that would believe.

We know that that grace and mercy is extended to any who would believe.

We know that the the slowness of anger of God is what even allowed us to get to a place.

Can you imagine if God was quick to anger?

We wouldn't be here.

It'd just be like that.

If if the Lord were quick to anger, I'm pretty sure Adam and Eve would have been the end of it.

Just we're done.

Didn't work, move on.

But that's not who God is.

He's slow to anger.

He has self-control like we do not.

And that's steadfast love.

I love that word steadfast.

It it means it's true and standing and it's unchanging.

Whereas our students learned this past week, immutable.

The Lord is good to all.

It doesn't say the Lord is good to some, it doesn't say the Lord is good to most.

The Lord is good to all.

And his mercy is over all that he has made.

There is a mercy and a goodness of God that is available to all.

And then we move back into this pattern of praise.

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 the children of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

David gives us this glimpse of the attributes of God, and then he goes back based on those attributes to say we are gonna tell people about who God is.

And we're going to bless the Lord.

We're going to thank the Lord.

I think that may be the prayer that's most interesting.

All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord.

I remember.

I keep seeing childhood and being raised right in this text because it's there.

We're taught to say please, and we're taught to say thank you.

And the the people of God are being reminded that that God deserves thanks for his works.

But sometimes we just check it off as that's what God is supposed to do.

Why would I thank God for just doing what he's supposed to do?

Well, we have this idea of supposed to is some equation to has to.

And we find ourselves with the expectation of God to just do everything that we need and want.

And what happens is when God answers a prayer in a way that we disagree with, we decide that God didn't do what he was supposed to do.

And then we say, Well, why would I ever thank God when he doesn't do what I want him to do?

That's not what David says.

Remember, all that the Lord does is for his glory and your good.

But sometimes we blot out the his glory, and all we care about is our good.

He again points to the idea of sharing the truth of who God is and what he does.

They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power.

Make it known to the children of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

And then he defines the kingdom.

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

And you see, 13 points back to the intro that we saw.

You see, if in fact God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and his dominion endures throughout all generations, then our praise also endures.

And we see that forever and ever come back around.

There is a reality of the dominion and the kingdom of God's eternity, and the natural reality that if we praise God for his dominion and his kingdom, and if it's eternal, then the praise of God is also eternal.

One can't stop if the other's not going to.

If the source of our praise is unending, then why would our praise ever end?

And we see here that reality of, well, it's because we allow circumstance to define our praise.

We think back to that main idea that the praise of the Lord is informed because of who God is and what he does, but we allow other things to inform the source of our praise.

We allow emotion and feeling and we allow circumstance and bitterness to inform our praise.

Selfishness.

But none of those things are meant to inform the praise of God.

We find our praise of who God is and who he is and what he has done.

One note if you're a biblical scholar, you may look at this text, and we're gonna get to this little parenthetical moment here and discuss it quickly.

That there are 21 verses in Psalm 145.

Anyone know how many letters there are in the Hebrew alphabet?

There's 22.

And the question then is, well, why?

Why is there one missing?

Well, if if you read DSV as I do, then you'll have a parentheses section at the end of verse 13.

And if if you look down at the bottom, you probably have a footnote that reads like this These two lines are supplied by one Hebrew manuscript in the Septuagint, in the Syriac of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This is the letter nun in the Hebrew alphabet, and this is the representation of that letter, and in at least one manuscript that has been found, it exists.

And the question then is like, well, should it be there, should it not be there?

Is it a scribal error that it was forgotten and ended up not moving forward into later texts that we found?

Is it an addition that someone believed was supposed to be there?

Because why would it not be?

Was it intentional by the author David not to include the letter none because of the connotations it would have to death?

These are the various camps, and I'm gonna give you the answer that some pastors never want to say.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know why uh some texts have it and some don't.

I don't know if David wrote it or not.

I don't know David.

I've never spoken with him.

One day we could ask him together.

But it's here, and I will tell you, its inclusion does not break the context and theme of this text.

So it was not omitted because it somehow didn't fit.

It says the Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all of his works.

Those are true attributes of God, they're not in any way incorrect, and there is a very strong reality that yes, it was in the original that David wrote and somehow was miscopied.

If you don't know, we didn't have copiers back then, they just did it all by hand, and someone could have miscopied, and then that copy could have been copied more than any other, and we lost a singular verse, or someone could have added it thinking it belonged, and maybe they wanted a full alphabet.

Regardless, it is available as a note to be considered, and it does not in any way hinder the text in its truth.

And it also brings us into our final point, which is this praise God because He provides.

And the provision of God is explained beautifully in these last three verses.

We see beginning in verse 14, the Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed low.

We see our first provision right there.

Now, when we first think of provision, what is usually the primary thing that comes to our mind?

If you're like me, it's it's food.

I was raised in the South.

I love food.

That's the first thing.

But it's not where David starts.

We'll get to it, but it's not where David starts.

David starts with the one who is struggling.

I feel like that makes a lot of sense when you know David.

How many times in the life of David do we see him downcast and fallen, broken, scared, confused, uncertain of what is next?

That feels like the theme of the life of David at times.

So why would David not start with the provision of God that he knows most intimately?

And he knows that God provides care when we are lost and broken, when we are falling, when we are downcast.

Because he has experienced it firsthand.

We see in verse 15, the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season.

Yes, the Lord does provide for the nourishment of the body.

But we also know that Jesus would inform this text further, and that physical foods are all the food we need.

We also need spiritual food from the word of the Lord, and that also is provided by God.

There are some of you in here that have probably felt most intimately connected with the provision of God when it comes to food.

I don't know all of your life stories, but in a room this size, there are people in here who have struggled to know what and when the next meal will be.

There are those of you in here who faithfully serve in our food ministry, and you meet people every week who the God that provides they meet most intimately is the one that is providing for their physical need of nourishment to survive.

Do not get confused in the reality that the provision of physical is meaningful.

Sometimes we we twist the idea of the physical being unnecessary.

Don't hear me say the spiritual need of provision of all people is primary.

But secondary doesn't mean irrelevancy.

If meeting the physical needs of someone points them to the reality of a greater need in their life, why would we not?

David trusted that God would provide for physical needs, and we know where this is informed.

See, David, just like he speaks of, has been told by previous generations and generations of the truth of who God is.

And how could he not know the story of the mamma that falls from heaven?

Of the quail that comes, of the water that comes from the rock, of a God that sees his people in desperate need of physical sustaining, and says, I will take care of the physical need.

David knows, David remembers what he has been taught.

We see in verse 6, and you open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

God doesn't just to sustain us, he sustains all of creation.

Who in here is a gardener?

Will you raise your hand?

Just curious.

I'm not a gardener.

Uh don't let me use your garden.

I'll probably kill something.

It is not my strong suit to raise up plants to live.

But you who garden know that there's patience, there's care.

But there is also the reality that ultimately the thriving of that plant is not in your hands.

That is true of any animal or plant that lives on this earth.

God sustains all of his creation.

We see that in scripture that all things are made by him, for him, and they're held together by him.

God sustains all of creation.

And in sustaining all of creation, he is also providing for his people.

We see verse 17 the Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.

He goes on, the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

And we begin to see the shift in provision here.

We begin to see a shift from physical provision, from emotional provision.

And David brings us to the reality of the providing that is most essential, provided by God.

You see, God is righteous and he is kind.

He is near to all who call on him in truth.

He fulfills the desire of those who fear him.

He also hears their cries and saves them.

David's understanding of salvation is always beautiful in the Psalms.

See, he points to a clear picture of salvation here.

He points to one who calls out and fears the Lord, which is the beginning of knowledge, the beginning of the truth of the heart.

Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

It's right here.

Anyone who calls on him in what?

In truth.

We see the picture of salvation in Psalm 145.

Long before Jesus would step foot on this earth, David knows where salvation comes from.

It comes from one who calls out to the Lord in truth, in fear, in the reality of their need.

David points to a cry.

A cry is someone in desperation.

The need for salvation is the most desperate need of any person on earth.

And that moment when you, if you are in Christ, were met by the reality of your sin, and the truth of the gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit was made clear.

What better picture than the cry of the heart out to God to say, God, I need you.

Yes, God will provide for you in your brokenness.

Yes, God will provide for you in your physical need.

But most importantly, God has provided a way for you to be made right with God in salvation.

And there is not a more important thing in this text than the reality of salvation.

Because if you sit here this morning and you are not in Christ, this is the invitation to know Christ.

This is the invitation informed by a reality of who God is: a God who is merciful, a God who is gracious, a God who is loving and slow to anger, a God who is providing, a God who is great, and a God who loves you and has made a way to provide for your greatest need.

The IMB currently has a slogan.

I hear it often at conventions.

Paul Chitwood is the president of the IMB, and he will say, the greatest need in the world today is lostness.

It's people to know the truth of the gospel and be changed by it.

But there's another characteristic of God that is clear at the end of this section.

Verse 20 says, The Lord preserves all who love him.

If you are in Christ, we understand.

We see in Scripture, nothing can pluck you from the hand of the Lord.

There is preservation for those who love him, but there is also a destination for the wicked.

The wicked will be destroyed.

You see, this last attribute of God that we see in Psalm 145, that yes, also brings him glory, and yes, also calls for praise, is that the Lord is just.

And I have a couple questions for you to answer this morning by yourself.

The first is this, most importantly, have you accepted the provision of salvation offered by the Lord?

Are you in Christ, a new creation?

Because if the answer to that is no, then nothing else of the text can be applied until that answer is yes.

It can be listened to, it can be stowed in the mind, but it cannot be applied to a heart that is not in Christ, because it is informed by the truth of Christ.

If you are in Christ, there are several questions for you.

The first is, does the reality of who God is and what God has done cause you to praise?

And if it does not, the question then is, what motivation have you allowed to involve itself in your praise that does not belong there?

Because as we have seen, the only reaction to who God is and what God does is praise.

So if it's not calling you to praise, there's something else in your life that you have allowed to inform your praise.

Are you remembering and meditating on who God is and what God has done?

Are you sharing with others, both those that are in Christ and those that are not, the truths of who God is and what God has done?

However, the Lord is moving in your life, I pray that you would be obedient to his moving.

There'll be pastors down front.

Would you pray with me?