Sunday 07 • 08 • 18

We're looking at Psalm 145 this morning. You know that we've been doing a series on Jesus in the Psalms and when we announced this series, one of our ruling elders, Matt Hornack, was very eager to take on preaching this summer and he picked Psalm 145, which I was very sad about because I wanted to preach Psalm 145 but he picked it before I claimed it. So, he gets it. He called it first. So very excited to hear Matt preach this song. But let's listen to Psalm 145.

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, oh 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 works 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 desire of those who fear him and 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. — Psalm 145

The word of the lord. Thank you, James for reading the scripture for us this morning.

So, as many of you know, our senior pastor, Jeff Bradford, is out on sabbatical this summer and I always like to follow in his leadership. So, after today, I will definitely be taking a preaching sabbatical for a while. If you all don't know me, my name is Matt Hornack and like James said, I'm one of the ruling elders here at CTK and this Sunday is my first time preaching—like ever, ever preaching.

I think of it as like March Madness. When your team is crushing the other team, they're about 20 points up and there's a minute left. The coach usually walks down to the end of the bench and says, "Alright, you, come on, just get out there." That's me. And so when that happens, I usually scoot to the edge of my seat and think, "Man, please, just score. Please make it." And as the clock ticks down, I'm like, "Well, this is boring. Just do something dumb. I wanna be entertained."

So hold on. It might get a little wild this morning, but I'll pray for us before we get started.

Lord, I thank you so much, Father, for this opportunity to share your word with this church and to share with myself. I pray that you would speak clearly through my mumbling mouth and that hearts would be changed, visions cleared, attitudes corrected, and disciplines enacted starting with myself, Lord. I pray this in your name. Amen.

The Matrix and Truth

Okay. I'm going to summarize the movie The Matrix in like twenty seconds because most of you all have probably seen it. In this movie, you've got machines and humans that fight and the world's destroyed. The machines need an energy source. So they put all the humans into a coma and take their energy. To make sure they don't know, they put them in a virtual reality called The Matrix. Some people unplugged and are able to fight against the machines and try to win back Earth. There's this guy that's kind of like Judas in the Bible. He meets with the machines and wants to give up something—he just wants them to plug him back into the matrix and forget about everything.

He says this quote about leaving reality: "I know the steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it's juicy and delicious. After nine years, I realized: ignorance is bliss."

This quote really set with me. I might be dating myself a little bit, but I saw this movie in middle school and even as a kid, I remember thinking, "What's up with this guy who knows the truth?"

He knows reality and yet he's willing to just give it all up for pleasure and the illusion of happiness. So I'm glad today that James was able to read the words of David from Psalm 145. I'm gonna do my best to mention David's name a lot because it's important that we remember who wrote this Psalm. The big statements about God that David makes mean a whole lot more when we think about David's life and how he remained in the truth in the midst of dark years and how he is a man who clung to truth through times when he likely felt abandoned and forgotten by God.

I have three points for the sermon, and I'll go through them slowly: God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. You've already heard this one. Today, we're gonna look at Psalm 145, and we're gonna talk about the greatness of God and his goodness and how we should respond in praise to him because all of this has been revealed in Christ.

God is Great

As we first look at Psalm 145, David tells us repeatedly in verses one through three how great God is. He says in verse one:

I will extol you, my God and king, and bless your name forever and ever. — Psalm 145:1

David is placing God higher than anything else. He's pledging his full commitment to him and all of his praise will be directed towards God. This word "extol" is not a word I use every day, but it has the connotation of power and prominence. I thought this was pretty cool. We see the same word show up a couple other times in the Bible. One is when Jacob sets up the pillar of remembrance to God. Another is when Moses lifts his staff up to perform God's miracles. Then another time this word shows up is when God lifts up the ark during the flood. So the same word is often used in reference to God's protection and care for his people.

In this simple statement that David's making, he's just saying, "I will extol you, my God and king"—claiming the greatness and power of God throughout all of time. By committing to bless God's name forever and ever, he's proclaiming that God's name alone is worthy of praise and deserving of our reverence.

Now, in verse two, not only is David saying God's great and he's gonna praise him forever, but he's saying he's gonna do it every day. Even before Christ's incarnation, David knew that God was necessary in our daily lives. God is not just one of those daily vitamins that you can choose to take or not take. He's not a meal that you can choose to fast from. God is someone that we can't live without, and David knows that this need coupled with our God's provision for us will result in daily praise.

Are there things in life that we improperly treat this way? What are the things that you think about before you go to sleep at night? What are the things that pop into your mind when you wake up in the morning? If you're like me, those are often really selfish times, probably the most selfish times of my day. I usually think, "Man, okay, I gotta go to work. How am I gonna go to work and be successful today and get everything done that I need? How do I keep this house from falling apart?" I think Clemson football, Clemson football, Clemson football. Every now and then, I think, "Okay, how can I be a better dad and a better husband so that I look great?" So it's not exactly representative of a life lived with the intent of blessing God every day. It's not representative of a life that believes in the greatness of God.

As I preach this sermon to myself today, I urge you to focus more on the worthy God and less on your needy self. Let God work that attitude into the fabric of your life so that you can really bless others around you with a humble and transparent spirit.

Now, verse three has a funny phrase in it, and we see this in other parts of scripture: What does it mean that greatness is unsearchable? This also shows up in Romans 11:33 when Paul says:

O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? — Romans 11:33-34

It is a mystery to us how God chooses to judge between us and how God determines to reveal his providence on Earth. For me, it always seems unfair. No matter what God does, it always seems unfair. Either, "I don't deserve this," or "They don't deserve this pain." You flip it the other way: "Well, why do I deserve this blessing or why do they deserve this?"

Friends, don't lose sleep trying to fully understand the why and how of everything related to God.

God tells us in Isaiah 55:

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. — Isaiah 55

We read that and we see that he wouldn't be God if we fully understood it all. So instead, let's marvel in this mystery and let's rejoice in how God is revealed to us—which pretty much this whole sermon will be discussing. Let's rejoice in how his greatness seems to expand and grow each day.

I was thinking about that when preparing this sermon. How is God's greatness shown? How is his endless, limitless greatness shown in our world? So I did some googling and found an article from the LA Times that mentions that scientists found new species in the year 2016. Does anybody know how many they found in 2016? They found 18,000 new species. That's a lot for a culture that claims to be a bunch of know-it-alls. I mean, we've got Google, right? We can figure this out. We don't need somebody to go and do this research. Man, God has placed us in a world of such great detail, distinction, and beauty. 18,000 new species within a single year.

I really wanted to put some examples up on the screen, but my wonderful wife Catherine was like, no, you don't want to do that. And it's probably for the best because most of these species are the creepy crawly type that would cause some of you to not be here tonight. My favorite out of all of them was the sorting hat spider—it has this cool wizard-looking cap on its head. I didn't know what a sorting hat was before I read the article, and then even after it said it was something from Harry Potter, I was like, I don't know what this is. I'm one of those good Christians that never read the Harry Potter books. Hashtag witchcraft.

If you're like me, come talk to me afterwards. And I know what you're thinking—I started off this sermon with a confession that I watched a rated R movie in middle school, so I'm not really that good. If one of these spiders bit me, I'd probably get sorted to Slytherin.

But seriously, we serve a great God, and his greatness knows no ends. All of the greatness we experience in our lives is just a passing reflection of the full greatness of God. In these first seven verses of Psalm 145, we hear of a people that will pour forth the fame of God's abundant goodness and sing aloud of his righteousness.

Does your life point to a God whose fame you proclaim? I see the word fame and I think about how last year I had no problem talking to my coworkers about this guy they call the King who's moving to LA. Any mention of God to them? Nope. Has LeBron ever been good to me? Nope. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's never done anything for me. So logically, if I'm speaking of this guy's fame, I should be overjoyed to speak of God's greatness and abundant goodness. Singing aloud his righteousness—you know what that doesn't mean? I'm going to spare you my singing.

Singing the righteousness of God—is it labor to worship God? For some of you, it is labor to worship God. I know that some of you woke up this morning in pain and had trouble getting out of bed. For some, church reminds you of a deep pain from the past or even one in your present. But God, he is life. He is refreshing us, and we get to view his greatness in so many others. Look around the room. We were all created in God's image. Rejoice in the Spirit and don't let the Old Testament outdo you in praise because they didn't even have the Holy Spirit to the same degree that we have. So it's ridiculous that we don't worship in this way. God is great and worthy of our praise.

God's Word Preserves His Greatness

One of the ways that God's greatness is revealed to us is also a way that he's so good to us, and that is through his word. Verse four says that one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. God does not leave us alone, but he has spoken throughout time and given his people his word. One of the ways he's been so good to us is by how he preserved his word for us.

We obviously see that because we have the Bible and it's been around a long time. But the cool thing is that even the disciples felt the care of God in the way that he preserved his word for them. Peter says in First Peter 1:

Love one another since you have been born again through the living and abiding word of God. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. — 1 Peter 1

God has blessed us all through the preservation of his word and through the continual preaching of it. I'm thankful for a church like CTK where we can come weekly and hear the word preached. Reflecting back on this last week with July 4th, I'm thankful for a nation where it's not illegal to preach the word. I was nervous to get up here and preach today for the first time, but if I was in a different country, I'd have a different reason for being nervous than just, "What if I slip up and say something dumb?" That's a privilege that I think, if we're honest, many of us take for granted.

We can't sit back and expect God's word to do all the talking for us. If we look at verse four, it's not really talking about just teaching people theology and making sure they believe in God. That's not exactly what it means when it says one generation shall commend your works to another. Look at some of the language in these verses. Commend can mean praise. Glorious splendor is used. Might of awesome deeds. Sing aloud of his righteousness. God wants us to lead others in praising God so that they learn to praise God as well.

If we don't do it, God will, and he has assuredly shown us that he can use broken families and messed up churches to lead people to him and build his kingdom. But that's never been his design, and that's not the way that he commands us to do it. Throughout generations of the Old Testament, God spoke to his people through the prophets in the Bible. We also see this call for us in his command to teach, instruct, and model praise shown here in Psalm 145. This command even shows up in Deuteronomy.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I'm commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. — Deuteronomy 6:4-7

That's a life of praise that's modeled for others. In the New Testament, we see how God raises up leaders for us so that he can equip the saints and build up the body of Christ, which is the church. Seeing God's goodness requires regeneration, but we also need spiritual discipline and we need others to help us. It can be difficult to see God's goodness alone.

In verse five, David says, "On the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I will meditate." Sometimes God's greatness and his goodness is not something you explicitly see in your life. It takes the right kind of focus. It takes a life that regularly meditates on God to notice the ways that God cares for you. Sometimes this can be taken for granted, chalked up as luck or coincidence. If you hang out with me, I'll flippantly use those words all the time and say, "Oh man, lucky about that one." But I disagree with those statements on principle. It's just something I say.

Look, if you're a parent, the one thing that you can't do for your child—which is save them from eternal danger—it's been done in Christ. You can helicopter over your kids and try to shelter them from whatever, but once they move out of the house, who watches out for them when they sleep? Who takes care of them when they're out late at night with their friends?

This is from the Huggable Bible. Yes, it's a soft, huggable Bible covered in faux sheep skin. I personally love it. It says, "It's God who kept him in his care, and he'll keep you too no matter where." That's such a simple truth and a blessed assurance, not just for the children that are read to by their parents, but also for the parents who are reading it to them. You can't secure them in ways that only God can. So this has been a huge comfort for me, especially with our two kids when they've been in their first few weeks of life. It's been so comforting to know that I can't keep this kid alive. Only God can. If I started thinking that I could, I would most definitely have a heart attack from all the stress.

This same thing goes for anyone. Anyone that has a loved one or significant other—even if your top loved one is yourself—still goes for you. This sounds silly, but who cares for you in ways that you can't? Who makes that drunk driver run through a light a split second earlier, hitting the front of your car instead of the side where you're sitting? Who makes that child in the back seat able to warn his parents about a train down the tracks at night that they couldn't see?

We're not talking about City of Raleigh lights and train tracks here. We're talking about out in the country where you just have a stop sign and that's it. Look, both of these are unexplainable stories from my own life of how God showed up in a mysterious way. And I know if you think hard enough, you've got some of your own, because God is true.

Some of you may have had experiences like mine that didn't turn out the same way. Like you might have had a car accident that left you with sorrow and pain instead of rejoicing. And believe me, I know that circumstances and tragedies can make it harder to clearly see that God is good. But we have the promise from Scripture that He is, even when it isn't plain to us.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. — Psalm 34

So just seeing is probably not enough. We need a tasting to make us more aware of all the ways that God is good to us.

Tasting and Savoring God

As we just talked about, it takes the proper focus to see God working in your life. And this takes a savoring of God that becomes more difficult if you taste the way I do. My wife, Catherine, is definitely better at tasting than I am. And so she's probably better at savoring God than I am. She takes twenty bites to eat a Kit Kat bar. Okay? Me, I regularly choke on my food because I don't do it enough.

And it doesn't stop at food. I can read a book and I'll miss all of the cues that foreshadowed some future event. I'm just in it for the plot—what happens, entertain me. Okay, cool. I miss all that stuff in the middle.

And so my style of tasting is the equivalent of reading your Bible religiously by yourself and always looking for some self-help tips or how it applies to you, and never taking the time to discuss it with others, never taking the time to spend in prayer, and never looking for Jesus to be revealed in the Scriptures. It's going to leave you feeling confused, empty, and alone.

God's goodness needs to be rested in. It needs to be trusted in. And then it needs to be shared with others. And so as we do this from First Peter two, we see that it's God's goodness that then leads us into salvation. And this is even clearer in John three sixteen.

He so loved you that He gave His Son for you. — John 3:16

God is good enough to forgive. He's good enough to give us what we need. He's good enough to love us forever. And it's all in here.

So open up the Scriptures and let them comfort you.

Psalm 145:8-9

Now verses eight through nine. I love verses eight through nine, and they're separated out in my Bible. And I like to think that as David was writing this, he was writing about God being great, writing about the goodness of God, and then he had this coming to his mind. He's like, "Oh man, this is awesome. I need to say this, but I can't just say it. I've gotta put it by itself."

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. — Psalm 145:8-9

To be honest, these two verses are the whole reason I wanted to preach on Psalm 145. And it's not because they're easy to preach—if you read these, you probably can think of times in your life when something like this would be really frustrating. But these verses have left tears streaming down my face.

When I sit and think about the fact that I'm a sinner and that God still lets me live. Like, in the midst of a dreary cloud of sin hovering over my life, this passage has broken through at times and just slapped me in the face. And this passage reminds me that God has authority over me and He's worthy of my life and He can do with it as He pleases. And yet, He sends His Son in the place of me and you dirty sinners and gives us salvation for nothing. That's Jesus in my place for sure.

And so in those moments when your friends would be embarrassed to know you, God spares you through His Son. In those moments when you feel like nothing, God who is everything gives you everything.

Say it another way: His Son Jesus became an embarrassment to His own friends so that in our most embarrassing moments, in our most desperate moments, those aren't the defining moments of our life.

The Struggle Today

And so what does this passage mean to us today as believers? What does it mean when we struggle to cope with a lost spouse, a lost child, the everyday difficulties of life, the weeks that turn into months of just never having a break going your way and you're just exhausted?

Lord, gracious and merciful—is He good to all? Where is it for me? Some? But in case you're not convinced, God even says this about Himself.

In Exodus 34:6, God passes before Moses and declares himself: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." — Exodus 34:6

I would hope that these last few minutes have reminded us how true this is. If God said it's true, then it's true.

The big question that's always asked is: Is God good in my suffering? And I think we can agree that God's only good if he's strong enough to suffer with us. And he's so good. God not only suffers with us, but he suffered for us. David clearly thought God was good. I mean, in light of all that he went through in life, he still thought God was good.

Look, he started out with everything working out for him. He was the youngest of all his brothers, and his dad couldn't keep up with all those boys. David got to wander off and sling rocks at lions and bears, which sounds pretty awesome. And then he even took down Goliath when Goliath taunted the Israelites and had them frozen in fear. And then after that, he was named king at a young age.

But then things started to look like God was absent and he'd forgotten about him. He had to trust God when King Saul continually pursued him to kill him. And then he lost his dearest friend at a young age. And then he had indirectly but intentionally killed a close friend because he was obsessed with his wife. And then he soon married her, and then their first son died. And then after that, he was ran out of town by one of his sons who claimed his throne as his own. And that's just part of it.

Talk about a life. I mean, if that was my life, I'd be down in the dumps. But David chooses to praise God.

This Psalm is not just written by someone whom God bribed into loving him. A common protest is that people will say, "You only love God because he's been good to you in life, and you only love him because of the good things he gives you." Sure, we've already talked about that God gives good gifts. But I'm not naive enough to think that because I have an average healthy body and a car that runs that that will be the case tomorrow. As Job said:

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. — Job 1:21

Blessed be the name of the Lord because there's a gift that he's given us that he can't take away. And so for this one gift, he's worthy of our eternal praise. If you don't know what this gift is, then think about it and talk to me after if the rest of the sermon doesn't lay it out.

This Psalm is not just written by someone whom God bribed into loving him. No. This Psalm is written by someone who truly loves God and knows what it means to praise in the midst of real life. Someone who knows that God is good and that while this life and this creation point to God, they are not themselves God, and they are not the end of his beauty and goodness.

How to Respond to God's Greatness and Goodness

David shows us how to respond in the first few verses and in the following chapters of Psalm 145. This is an awesome chapter because you have all the Psalms—all the prayers to God and the songs to God. But in this chapter, David lays it out: God's great. God's good. These are the things he does for you. Let's praise him. And then the last five chapters are all about praising God. If you look in your Bible, the last five chapters all start with the phrase "Praise the Lord."

Listen to verses 10 through 12:

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. — Psalm 145:10-12

These verses combined tell us that God works for his glory, and this is evident in our salvation. Not to us, but to your name be the glory. That's a Chris Tomlin song, I know. But more importantly, it's Scripture:

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. — Psalm 115

Salvation was not for our sake, for God could justifiably have left us to die. Salvation was completed so that God's name may be lifted higher than any other name.

David here lays it out similar to Paul in Romans 1: God's works themselves tell us about the glory of his kingdom, his power, and how they are evidence to us of God. What a chapter to hinge the book of Psalms on. It's "Praise the Lord." Why do we do that? Because even when we try to ignore him, he's there. He's convincing us daily through all his works that he is good, that we should rely on no one else and especially not ourselves. And so we praise God for who he is.

God's providence or his goodness is revealed to mankind through Jesus Christ and that revelation should result in our eternal praise of God. I was listening to NT Wright the other day and he says something like this: "How long, oh Lord?" is the common refrain that you hear throughout the Psalms. But we know just as the New Testament writers did that the Psalmist's desire and their hope is fulfilled in Jesus. And so because of Jesus, we can celebrate not just the future, but we can also celebrate the present. In Christ, God nourishes us and meets all of our needs.

Let's look at verse 14.

The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. — Psalm 145:14

This should be a familiar refrain, especially to you all who've been here for the past year and a half because we've been working through this. There's a banner over here about it. And the theme verse for that is:

Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. — Zechariah 4:6

Here in Psalm 145, we have the greatness of God's kingdom on display. And what is it that David uses to wrap up the Psalm to display God's greatness? Is it a mighty army coming to rescue his people? Is it God's power and dominion over everyone? No. It's the Lord's condescension to his people. It's that God upholds those in hard places that can't hold themselves up. When God sees his people laid out before him in reverent submission, he doesn't look inward and say, "Man, I'm a great king. I'm so strong. Look at me." No, his kingship and lordship is plain to all. This is shown in how God cares for his people, supplies their need, and protects them.

He's promised to uphold you and raise you up. Brother and sister, if you're feeling beaten down this morning, cling to this promise. We have a guarantee of this promise in Jesus. And each week, we have the chance to take part in the Lord's Supper where we taste and see that this promise is true and has already been paid for and made good in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And not just this promise in verse 14, but Jesus is our guarantee of every promise listed at the end of Psalm 145.

So if you have your Bibles, follow along with me. There are some summaries of each verse that we'll go through.

Verse 15 says:

The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season. — Psalm 145:15

So we see from that Christ is the bread of heaven. We look to God and he gives us Christ the bread of heaven.

Verse 16:

You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. — Psalm 145:16

So Christ is our ultimate fulfillment. And also God is open-handed and he offers this ultimate fulfillment to all.

Verse 17:

The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. — Psalm 145:17

In Christ, we see the ultimate righteousness and kindness of God.

Verse 18:

The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. — Psalm 145:18

Christ brings us near to God.

Verse 19:

He fulfills the desire of those who fear him. He also hears their cry and saves them. — Psalm 145:19

Christ is our salvation. Remember the cries of "How long, oh Lord?" Those are fulfilled in Christ.

Verse 20:

The Lord preserves all the wicked he will destroy. — Psalm 145:20

Christ is our victorious protector. He preserves those he loves. He destroys his and our enemies.

So Christ is the revealer of God's greatness and goodness to man. Earlier in the sermon, we talked about how God's greatness is unsearchable. And Paul spoke about this in Romans 11. Paul also speaks about this in 1 Corinthians 2:16, but he adds one huge piece. Listen to this:

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. — 1 Corinthians 2:16

Having the mind of Christ means that true believers have in Christ the Spirit of God, and they're able to understand enough of the mind of God. Enough for what? Enough to comfort you in your sorrow. Enough to settle you in your fears. And enough to heal you in your hurt. Christ is enough.

In Christ, God has been revealed in human flesh to meet us in our sin and shame and offer us redemption that we were otherwise infinitely and eternally separated from. And Christ's death bridges that great divide, and his resurrection points us to the Father.

So in this sermon, we've talked about "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food." And why do most of you all know that phrase? Most in here, I'm sure you say that and everybody knows, "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food."

Well, somewhere along the way, someone taught this to you, or you heard somebody else reciting it, and then you took it and said, "Okay, let me teach this to my kids or repeat it to myself." In doing so, you pass the truth of God so simply onto another generation. But the problem is this phrase and all of the truth that's held within it can become so familiar that we ignore it. We start to think otherwise. Something so familiar can't be true, or "That can't convince me anymore. I'm gonna choose something else." So instead of holding on to the truths which we once believed in, we ignore them and choose to hold on to ourselves, our thoughts, our concerns, our fears, our regrets. Ignorance, my friends, is not bliss.

A Call to Non-Believers and Believers

And so if you're here this morning and you're a non-believer, I would urge you to look at the greatness and goodness of God revealed in the word. If you don't think you can see it yourself, that's totally understandable because we can't either. Go find someone else. Find someone to help point you to God's greatness and good word. And then pray for Christ to be revealed as the ultimate greatness and goodness of God. Believe in Christ and know that he guarantees all of the promises of Psalm 145 for you if you believe.

And if you feel today that God has it out for you, look at David's life and how God preserved him. Look at the life of Paul in the New Testament.

The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. — Psalm 145

And for my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, don't be deceived. This world is not the end. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord said this about himself before Christ incarnate. David then repeated it before the incarnation. And then now we're able to lean on it because of Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

And so, yeah, there are gonna be times when life feels like too much. I know when I was writing this sermon a couple weeks ago, I just felt totally worn out with the drudge of life and felt kind of alone. But thankfully, God gives us time. There's still time to grow into maturity like David and return praise to God daily in abundance.

If you're a believer and profess Christ, you have received all of the promises of verses 14 through 20. So read those this week and let that soak in. Brothers and sisters, look to Jesus and live.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.