SPEAKER_00: Well, friends, we will be in Psalm 145.
SPEAKER_00: If you do not own a Bible, feel free to use the Pew Bible in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: And you can take that home with you if you do not own a copy of God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure everybody has access to God's special revelation.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not used to the Bible, the big numbers are the chapters, the little numbers are the verses.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to follow along, but again, Psalm 145, we're going to take a break from the book of James because, in light of our anniversary and celebrating the gift of baptism, I thought, man, wouldn't it be good to just spend a Sunday just magnifying the greatness of God?
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're going to do.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 145 is, if you didn't know, this was David's last recorded psalm.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, in many of your Bibles, you might have a heading there that tells you it's a hymn of David.
SPEAKER_00: This is a song David wrote to praise and exalt the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's his final recorded psalm, his last public confession we have in inspired scripture, which is fitting to, for our context, to understand the last psalm David wrote was one of just going all out for 21 verses, exalting the transcendent glory of his God.
SPEAKER_00: He spends his last ink magnifying God's character so that the next generation will not forget who God is.
SPEAKER_00: Because, friends, this is important, forgetting God is deadly for our individual eyes as Christ followers, but even as a church.
SPEAKER_00: Churches rarely implode just out of nowhere suddenly.
SPEAKER_00: It's normally incremental.
SPEAKER_00: It's a slow leak, for instance.
SPEAKER_00: One forgotten praise at a time when people lose their awe of God, when they lose sense of their great, the greatness of God, so to speak, they end up settling for the smallness of man instead and replace God with lesser things.
SPEAKER_00: And then that health, that culture of that church starts to corrode slowly and slowly over time.
SPEAKER_00: So what I want us to focus on this morning is this you must proclaim the greatness of God because his glory demands to be known and multiplied through you.
SPEAKER_00: You must proclaim the greatness of God because his glory demands to be known and multiply through you.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 145 keeps us from shrinking God down to our size, but rather it expands our hearts to see who God truly is so that we can declare him faithfully from one generation to the next.
SPEAKER_00: So, what I want to do is to walk through these verses and give several reasons why you must magnify God.
SPEAKER_00: Starting with the first, verses one through seven, you magnify God's greatness because his character is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: You magnify God's greatness because his character is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: So looking down at Psalm 145, verse 1, I extall you, my God the King, and bless your name forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: I I just love that opening right there.
SPEAKER_00: So King David, Israel's greatest king in history, says, I exalt you, my God, the king, recognizing who's the true sovereign ruler of all things.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2, I will bless you every day.
SPEAKER_00: I will praise your name forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is great and is highly praised.
SPEAKER_00: His greatness is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: One generation will declare your works to the next to the next and will proclaim your mighty acts.
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Verse three, if you look down, verse three anchors the entire psalm, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
SPEAKER_00: His greatness is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying the fact that God is the embodiment of greatness demands that he is greatly praised.
SPEAKER_00: We should attribute to a great God that which is great, because he demands it and he is owed it.
SPEAKER_00: And I love there's certain language in the Bible that I believe, uh, or even language we use in our vernacular that should be reserved for God.
SPEAKER_00: Like when he says God is unsearchable, meaning you can't, you can't bother him out.
SPEAKER_00: You can't exhaust everything about him.
SPEAKER_00: He is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: You can't master God, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And when David is using this language, he isn't exaggerating, he's confessing.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's praising, he's bursting out in praise and doxology.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot exhaust the greatness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Think of it like this: imagine if you took the biggest coffee mug you have in your in your house or one of those, you know, what was the fad when everybody had those um tumblers?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you went to a beach and you had the task to drink the entire ocean with the largest mug you could find.
SPEAKER_00: You can start the task, but you will never reach the bottom of that task, will you?
SPEAKER_00: Because the idea of being able to drink the entire ocean is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: You can never come close to its death.
SPEAKER_00: That is what God's greatness and glory is like.
SPEAKER_00: You can study the glory of God until you die, and you still will have understood a fraction of his character.
SPEAKER_00: He is infinitely powerful, he is infinitely wise, he is infinitely sovereign, he is infinitely good and merciful.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the beauty of those of us made in God's image and those who walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, theologians will use the phrase God's communicable attributes and incommunicable.
SPEAKER_00: Those are just fancy words for incommunicable or attributes that God does not share with us, uh, such as his sovereignty and his eternality.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's communicable attributes, meaning there are some attributes that we in a lesser fashion do reflect because we are made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: But think about this: we reflect God, but any goodness, any attributes of God that we find in ourselves are borrowed.
SPEAKER_00: They don't originate with us.
SPEAKER_00: So any goodness in us, whether it's love, whether it's mercy or kindness, whatever it may be, it's borrowed and limited because we are reflecting back what God is like.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not how it is with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: His goodness, his faithfulness, his love, his holiness are all original with him and they are endless.
SPEAKER_00: So what I mean by that is his immense glory runs through every attribute of God.
SPEAKER_00: So God is not like compartmentalized.
SPEAKER_00: He's not 25% holy, 25% love, 25%, you know, justice.
SPEAKER_00: No, he embodies every attribute holistically.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is why I love how uh Paul responds in Romans 11 to just the glory of God and his character when he says in verse 33, oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways.
SPEAKER_00: God's attributes are never fully exhausted, which means he is not, for let me give an example.
SPEAKER_00: God is not just wise, he is wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: God is not just loving, he is love.
SPEAKER_00: God is not holy in his character, he is holiness.
SPEAKER_00: He's the embodiment, the standard of all of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Even as we live our Christian lives and we fall flat on our face and we sin, what convicts us when the Holy Spirit helps us understand how we have fallen short and reflecting the holiness and character of God, because he is the standard.
SPEAKER_00: But this is our calling to speak like David.
SPEAKER_00: Our calling is to declare what the next generation must not forget, which is a tremendous privilege, friends.
SPEAKER_00: I am all I'm the longer I'm a Christian, the more humbled I am at the reality that God, this magnificent God that David is praising, would choose to work through the means of broken sinners like you and I to accomplish his divine purposes.
SPEAKER_00: When he didn't need to, he desired to.
SPEAKER_00: So we have this privileged responsibility, every Christian in this room, to declare what the next generation must never forget.
SPEAKER_00: There's a dominant theme throughout the Bible of remembrance.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before.
SPEAKER_00: I think we neglect that in our culture because we're so worried about tomorrow, next week, I gotta, I gotta get to the next thing.
SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, there's a whole lot of, let's reflect on God's mighty acts on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And when we reflect, let's praise that God for all that he has done on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: David is trying to do that.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to, he's writing a song that people would sing.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we we are very careful about the songs we sing here.
SPEAKER_00: We want to sing songs that are rich with biblical truth, like this verse, so that when we sing them, it's almost like we're all catechizing ourselves with gospel doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: We're reminding ourselves of God's character, his faithfulness, what he's done, our sinfulness, his wrath, and justice, everything we can think of in scripture, we want to rehearse those things to ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do that, whether it's through singing, the ordinances, the preaching of God's word and prayer, all that we do is meant to take the glory of God and just lift it up.
SPEAKER_00: Even when someone preaches, the goal should never be listen to me and think that I'm some gifted orator, but rather I'm just trying to like put a hand on your chin and lift your gaze up to the cross and to see more of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Think of a microscope and a telescope.
SPEAKER_00: A microscope takes tiny things to make them look bigger than what they really are.
SPEAKER_00: A telescope, rather, takes something that is unimaginably massive and brings it into a clearer frame of view so you can better understand it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're trying to do every Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to take a unsearchable God and like a telescope, help us magnify him and see him for what he is worth and respond appropriately to what we find.
SPEAKER_00: But look in what uh in verse four, where he emphasizes that one generation will declare your works to the next.
SPEAKER_00: Notice, friends, that that is not that is not optional.
SPEAKER_00: David is not saying this is something we should think about and maybe give consideration if you have time and capacity and resources.
SPEAKER_00: He says, one generation will declare your works to the next.
SPEAKER_00: This is not optional.
SPEAKER_00: It is the Christian mandate.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, you are commissioned by God to make sure your children, your spouses, your friends, your fellow church members, everyone in your spirit of influence knows the wondrous works and the greatness of your God.
SPEAKER_00: That is what you are here for.
SPEAKER_00: Not to pursue career, not to save up for retirement.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all good things we should plan for this earthly life.
SPEAKER_00: We are here.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we say this every Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have some fancy church mission statement.
SPEAKER_00: We take what Jesus said in the Great Commission.
SPEAKER_00: We exist to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: One generation will declare your works to the next.
SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest evangelistic ministries we have as a church is happening down that hall right now, this Sunday morning, with those little kids, teaching those children, teaching them the truths of God so that they, when they grow up, can do the same and pass the baton of faith on and it goes on and on.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we do this?
SPEAKER_00: Why does David, why does inspired scripture tell us to remember and to pass on?
SPEAKER_00: Because when a generation forgets the character of God, everything collapses.
SPEAKER_00: When a generation forgets the character of God, everything collapses.
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe me?
SPEAKER_00: We have several examples in the Bible, but I love Judges chapter two, where we see Joshua was faithful and all God has called him to do and leading the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But then we get this sad commentary on the nation.
SPEAKER_00: A whole generation rose up, according to the text, who did not know the Lord or the works he had done.
SPEAKER_00: That's sad.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: A whole generation of people did not know the Lord or the works he had done, but you're the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: You have like the greatest testimony in history of God delivering your people over and over again by a mighty hand, and yet because some were not faithful to pass on the testimony of God's greatness and his mighty works to the next.
SPEAKER_00: The text says, A whole generation did not know the Lord or the works he had done.
SPEAKER_00: Not because God has stopped working, but because God's people stopped declaring his works.
SPEAKER_00: I love how Paul puts this in 2 Corinthians 4 15.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about, you know, the various sufferings he has endured uh during his ministry, but he says this in verse 15 everything is for your benefit, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of my favorite passages for just a philosophy of ministry of why we do church the way we do.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we preach the word of God?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we share the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
SPEAKER_00: For everyone's benefit, so that grace extends to more and more people.
SPEAKER_00: As we preach God's word, as we evangelize, the grace of God is extending to more and more people, which then leads them to come to faith in Christ, which then causes thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because when people transfer from darkness, from the dominion of sin, death, hell, and Satan to the family of God, that that does something to them called thanksgiving, where they praise God's glory and gratitude for what he has done.
SPEAKER_00: And then they want to tell everybody about what God has done, as they should, as David tells us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And then other people here come to faith as grace has been extended to them in salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And then in their thanksgiving, they give praise to God, and it goes on and it goes on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the trajectory.
SPEAKER_00: We who are faithful saints declare God's mighty works.
SPEAKER_00: Grace spreads, thanksgiving rises, and God gets all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty simple.
SPEAKER_00: So if you want to know how we should do church, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Declare his works, he sovereignly spreads his grace, people come to saving faith, and thanksgiving rises, and God gets all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: But God is not only unsearchably great, he is also abundantly good.
SPEAKER_00: Another reason we must magnify God is because, or rather, you magnify God's goodness because his grace holds you.
SPEAKER_00: You magnify God's goodness because his grace holds you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's jump in at verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great and faithful love.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is good to everyone.
SPEAKER_00: His compassion rests on all he has made.
SPEAKER_00: All you have made will thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The faithful will bless you.
SPEAKER_00: Notice in verse 8, he's quoting from Exodus 34, which is one of my favorite Old Testament passages, just showing us God's character, that he is a gracious and compassionate God.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this, friends.
SPEAKER_00: When Moses had this interaction with the Lord in Exodus, where he asked him, like, Father, show me your glory, and God's like, bro, you don't even know what you're asking for.
SPEAKER_00: You will die.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I'll do I'll let my goodness pass by you.
SPEAKER_00: But when God opens his mouth, think about this.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of ways God could have described himself.
SPEAKER_00: He could have chose to emphasize his wrath, he could have chosen to emphasize a host of things.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what God chose to say to Moses.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in faithful love.
SPEAKER_00: When God chose to describe his own self, that's what he wanted to communicate.
SPEAKER_00: I think that kind of flies in the face of all these accusations of, well, the God of the Old Testament is just anger and wrath and justice.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's him speaking right here.
SPEAKER_00: And he's describing himself as a gracious and compassionate God who is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: But friends, moving on, your calling, our calling is to testify of God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Testify to God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: He says, They will give a testimony of your great goodness and will joyfully sing of your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, your lives, your testimonies, your stories, your words should carry the fragrance of God's kindness.
SPEAKER_00: We should be the biggest evangelists for the goodness and the kindness and the love and graciousness of God, especially since we have tasted his goodness and salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We should have our tongues just carrying this fragrance of, I just want to exalt the grace and love of my God for all that he has done.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what your testimony is.
SPEAKER_00: If you live like the devil and got saved in your 30s or 50s, or if you grew up in a Christian household, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: You were once dead in your sins and trespasses, but God showed you grace and mercy because that is his character.
SPEAKER_00: And that should lead you to let that mark your tongue that you share of God's goodness as this fragrance of kindness, whether it's your speech, your life, the stories you tell of God working in your life, that is what should come out.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of us who maybe got saved later in life, maybe you can more vividly just have that experiential knowledge of God's goodness towards you.
SPEAKER_00: Because you can still remember your life before Jesus, how you were heading straight towards God's wrath, and yet he intervened and saved your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you were so close to hell, you still to this day smell like smoke.
SPEAKER_00: But it reminds you of the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is a very lengthy quote.
SPEAKER_00: I don't normally do this, but I would highly commend a book to you guys by a Puritan named George Swinock, uh, called The Blessed and Boundless God.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to read this because he beautifully captures the graciousness and the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this, and as you listen to what I read, I want you to picture God and how he saved you.
SPEAKER_00: He says, God manifests wondrous grace in taking care of our temporal concerns.
SPEAKER_00: We would think it a great grace for a human king to take care of a poor beggar, to provide him with food, shelter, medicine, and safety, to supply him and all his needs, to support him and all his weaknesses, protect him in all his dangers, and deliver him in all his distresses, to spread his table, provide his food, clothe his body and make his bed, to protect him, counsel him, and assist him.
SPEAKER_00: The King of kings, to whom all earthly kings are but dirt and dung, does more than this.
SPEAKER_00: He sends us food, shelter, and clothing, and makes them refreshing to us.
SPEAKER_00: He is with us in our goings and comings to keep us alive, enable us in our motions, relieve us in our needs, and defend us from all adversaries.
SPEAKER_00: Is not his condescension worthy of all admiration?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what grace that the incomparable God, who has millions of glorious angels serving him, should serve poor worms like us.
SPEAKER_00: This incomparable God manifests even greater grace in his care of our precious souls.
SPEAKER_00: Here he shows the exceeding riches of his grace.
SPEAKER_00: It is, is it not grace in the highest degree for this perfect, self-sufficient, incomparable God to look on us?
SPEAKER_00: When we were naked, restless, famished, wallowing in blood, grasping for breath, waiting for demons to escort us to the dungeon of darkness, God looked on us with favor.
SPEAKER_00: He clothed us with his righteousness, and satisfies with flesh that is meat indeed, and blood that is drink indeed.
SPEAKER_00: He gave us rest in his bosom, he bound our wounds, raised us from the dead, and freed us from bondage to Satan, sin, death, and hell.
SPEAKER_00: He adopted us as his children, accepted us as righteous, married us to his only begotten Son, and made us heirs of all things.
SPEAKER_00: He dwells in us by his spirit, carries us on eagle's wings, leads us through the wilderness of the world, and brings us to a heavenly Canaan, to fullness of joy, rivers of pleasure, crowns of life, and weights of glory.
SPEAKER_00: There we will reign in his incomparable majesty for all eternity.
SPEAKER_00: What grace is this?
SPEAKER_00: The incomparable God has no obligation to us, and he has no need of us.
SPEAKER_00: He does not receive anything from us.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, he has all the reason in the world to destroy us, yet he is pleased to be as studious and solicitous of our welfare as if it were his own.
SPEAKER_00: Yet he is pleased to be I'm sorry, it is not a w is it not a wonder that the incomparable God should wed himself to us.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, that is the greatest.
SPEAKER_00: Of God.
SPEAKER_00: That is the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I can understand why David in 2 Samuel 7 responds.
SPEAKER_00: The text says, He sat in the Lord's presence and said, Who am I, Lord God?
SPEAKER_00: What is my house that you have brought me this far?
SPEAKER_00: That should be our heart posture towards an infinitely holy God.
SPEAKER_00: The more you understand God, the better you understand yourself, right?
SPEAKER_00: The more you understand God's holiness, you're reminded of your weakness and sinfulness.
SPEAKER_00: The more you understand God's love and grace, the more you recognize I am not as loving and gracious as I should be.
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't lead you to just gaze inwardly and in depression, in spiritual depression, but rather to say, why was such a great God?
SPEAKER_00: Move an inch towards me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have an answer other than the blood of Christ, which I plead, which gives me access to him now as my father.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where I stand.
SPEAKER_00: I love that language in Romans 5 where Paul talks about the doctrine of justification.
SPEAKER_00: He says it's a standing.
SPEAKER_00: We stand in a new standing with God because of the crosswork of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I love how uh my man ended here where he says, Yet he is pleased to be as studious and solicitous of our welfare as if it were his own.
SPEAKER_00: If you ever question God's love towards you, just know he pours out all of his spiritual resources upon his children as if he's pursuing his own spiritual welfare.
SPEAKER_00: That's how committed he is to your spiritual flourishing friends.
SPEAKER_00: And this good this goodness I'm highlighting isn't confined to just one generation.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant to overflow until the earth is full of the knowledge of God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings me to another aspect of why we should magnify God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: You magnify God's kingdom because his glory must cover the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Look down at verse 11 through 13.
SPEAKER_00: David says, They will speak of the glory of your kingdom and will declare your might, informing all people of your mighty acts and of the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, your rule is for all generations.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is faithful in all his words and gracious in all his actions.
SPEAKER_00: Now we see God's character is glorious and sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: Just notice how you just go down these verses, and David is just focusing on different attributes of God.
SPEAKER_00: And notice if you go back to verse one, notice this pattern of him weaving in and out of the singular and the plural.
SPEAKER_00: He starts out, I exalt you, my God and king, and bless your name forever.
SPEAKER_00: I will bless you every day, I will praise your name.
SPEAKER_00: And then down he goes in uh verse six, they will proclaim, verse seven, they will give a testimony.
SPEAKER_00: This is corporate language, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I individually will praise God for all that I've seen him do, but we as a follow as followers of Christ corporately will do the same in singing his praises.
SPEAKER_00: And verses 11 through 13 emphasize the sheer weight of God's sovereign rule over the cosmos.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest empires of history, whether it's Rome with its unmatched power and Babylon with its towering wealth, both rose and fell and are now found in our history books and reduced to ruins.
SPEAKER_00: America is the so-called greatest nation in the world, and one day we too will be a footnote in history.
SPEAKER_00: But there is one kingdom that will never be reduced to ashes.
SPEAKER_00: There is one kingdom that all the history books should be about, and that is God's kingdom because only his kingdom will outlast all earthly kingdoms because it is everlasting, it is unshakable, and Jesus is its king.
SPEAKER_00: His kingdom is majestic, his kingdom is powerful, his kingdom is transcendent and filled with grace and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And we never, for those of us who belong to God's kingdom, we never have to fear of our safety.
SPEAKER_00: We never have to fear, well, will we be, will God's kingdom be invaded one day and maybe we lose and we lose all our liberties?
SPEAKER_00: Nope, friends, it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_00: There's no election cycle with God.
SPEAKER_00: He's not looking for any running mates.
SPEAKER_00: He's not trying to get a party's vote or endorsement.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have any rivals, he doesn't have any term limits, he doesn't have any peers.
SPEAKER_00: He reigns from age to age, and he doesn't need your vote and never asked for it.
SPEAKER_00: I love how Habakkuk 2.14 says this is where all of human history is headed, friends.
SPEAKER_00: The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord's glory as the waters cover the sea.
SPEAKER_00: So we need to talk about, like we were in Ephesians, we talk about spiritual warfare.
SPEAKER_00: We know that there's an enemy, the devil's real and his fallen angels.
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to thwart God's gospel from advancing, and they're gonna work on and on until the Lord returns.
SPEAKER_00: But according to God's inspired word, no matter their efforts, no matter the efforts of those who oppose God and his word, whether it's our culture, other countries, I don't care what it is, God says, one day, this is a promise, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord's glory as the waters cover the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's those praising God as their Savior, or those who will know the Lord through his eternal wrath and justice.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news is this the God who reigns over creation is also the God who draws near to the faint-hearted.
SPEAKER_00: He is not this majestic guy who just wants to stay away from his creation, his people.
SPEAKER_00: He longs to have fellowship with us.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about this single chapter we're looking at this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We know all these things about God because he chose to reveal them generously in a book called the Bible so that we can know his heart and his character.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 145 is like the anthem of that prophecy I read in Habakkuk.
SPEAKER_00: God's glory spreading through God's people who declare God's greatness.
SPEAKER_00: So a good barameter for all of us today is how consistently are you declaring with your mouth and your life the greatness of God?
SPEAKER_00: Because it is a privilege to be used by the Lord to communicate his truth.
SPEAKER_00: Every last one of you in this room, if you're a Christian, came to faith by Jesus working through the means of his spirit illuminating his gospel, his word, which likely came from the mouth of somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody else in your life who chose to obey the Lord and enjoy, open their mouth and declare God's works in the gospel to you.
SPEAKER_00: And because they did that, the Spirit illuminated his truth to your heart, convicted you of your sin, brought you to saving faith, made you a new creation, a new creation, I mean, demonstrating God's glory, spreading through God's people, declaring God's greatness.
SPEAKER_00: I've shared this before, but you know, there's several things I'm looking forward to on the new heaven and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: After I meet Jesus and ask him all my questions, I want to know: is there gonna be like a theater somewhere we can go to and we can just type in whatever we want and just see like a visual of like Lord, show me when I came to faith, show me the like the domino effect all the way back to like your earthly ministry.
SPEAKER_00: So show me how the person who shared the gospel with me came to faith, who shared it with him or her, and then go back and go back all the way to the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's how God has chosen to advance his kingdom through his people, declaring his works, so that people come to faith in Christ, and God's glory is magnified.
SPEAKER_00: And this is our privilege, this is our calling to proclaim the majesty of our King.
SPEAKER_00: God's people speak of the glory of God's kingdom and make known his mighty acts, as David says.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news is this God wants to work through you and me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care how weak of a Christian you might think you are, I don't care how mature or immature you think you are as a Christian, if you can read and understand and comprehend the gospel and in faith open your mouth, God can use you.
SPEAKER_00: And God wants to use you.
SPEAKER_00: If he can use a donkey, there's hope for all of us, friends.
SPEAKER_00: But my next point, verses 14 to 21, friends, you magnify God's nearness because his faithful, because he's faithful, and because his hand sustains you when you fall.
SPEAKER_00: We magnify God's nearness because he is faithful, and he sustains us when you fall.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 14 through 21.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord helps all who fall, he raises up all who are oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: All eyes look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.
SPEAKER_00: You open your hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all his acts.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is near all who call out to him, all who call out to him with integrity.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just highlight a few things.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14 The Lord doesn't just help those who help themselves.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord doesn't help those who are most worthy of his help.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord helps all who fall.
SPEAKER_00: He raises up all who are oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: I love the language here in verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, the Bible shows nothing but the heart of a generous God.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
SPEAKER_00: Fact-check me on this, be a good Berean.
SPEAKER_00: The first commandment given from God to man, to Adam and Eve, was one of generosity and abundance.
SPEAKER_00: He told them to essentially enjoy all that he created for them.
SPEAKER_00: That was the first commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy all that I have created for you.
SPEAKER_00: Just stay away from one thing.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that one thing was the one thing they desired.
SPEAKER_00: But God's character is near, he is tender, and he is attentive to his people.
SPEAKER_00: These verses show his care.
SPEAKER_00: Picture I think sometimes we we view our Christian walk as I'm confident that I'm a mature Christian and that God loves me and I have his favor.
SPEAKER_00: As long as I'm doing a great job of clinging firmly to Jesus, as long as I'm working hard and I'm clinging to Christ and I have confidence, yes, God loves me.
SPEAKER_00: He hears my prayers and he's gonna bless my life because I am doing a good job.
SPEAKER_00: But the more I'm a Christian, I would say it's more like a father helping his toddler learn to walk.
SPEAKER_00: When a dad grabs his child's arms and is helping them, trying to teach them to walk, and that child's all both bow-legged, struggling, stumbling, taking a couple of steps.
SPEAKER_00: And that child might think, I'm I'm scared, I'm gonna fall and hurt myself.
SPEAKER_00: But what that little child doesn't know is no, you're secure, not because of how well you're gripping onto your dad's hands, but because of how firmly your dad is holding on to you.
SPEAKER_00: That is that is the Christian life, friends.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about how good of a job we're doing and holding on to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No, church, your Christian life isn't held together by your grip on God, but by God's grip on you.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why we can talk like David in Psalm 145 when we look at our own life, just the past three months, and look at all the ways we have failed God and failed others and poorly reflected his character, and yet we can still stand here this Sunday morning and say, and despite all those failures, I'm a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: I am justified.
SPEAKER_00: None of those things communicate my identity.
SPEAKER_00: He does.
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that in the courtroom of heaven, he has declared me eternally justified and forgiven, giving me a new standing with him, where he goes from a God who's going to pour out his wrath on me to my heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: Your Christian life is based on God's grip on you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a perfect moment, I think, to bring these truths in Psalm 145 to bear on our story as a church family and on celebrating the ordinance of baptism.
SPEAKER_00: As we celebrate three years as a church, this is just to humble all of us, this is in no way, shape, or form a celebration of our strength in any way, shape, or form.
SPEAKER_00: We don't celebrate Redeemer is some great, strong church.
SPEAKER_00: It's a celebration of the character of God displayed through weak people, through the weakness of his people.
SPEAKER_00: We, God is great, we are small and finite.
SPEAKER_00: God is all powerful, we are not.
SPEAKER_00: We are fragile.
SPEAKER_00: God is faithful and we are often forgetful and faithless.
SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign and we all know we are not.
SPEAKER_00: We are limited.
SPEAKER_00: God is worthy of all praise, and you and I are but dust and ashes.
SPEAKER_00: God is self-sufficient and we are desperately needy.
SPEAKER_00: This is Paul's point in 2 Corinthians 4 7 when he says, We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever we see something in the life of our church that brings joy to our hearts, we should say what Paul just said.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we just we we should um we should be always committed to transferring the glory, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: Like whenever the Lord uses you to do something, like we should be very careful with our language.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, oh yeah, I led this person to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't lead nobody to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You just share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: God led somebody to Jesus through you.
SPEAKER_00: We have to be careful and make sure we are always transferring the glory.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm like, I bless y'all's hearts when sometimes you encourage me about a sermon or something, and I'll just instantly say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: All glory to God for using his word to minister to his people.
SPEAKER_00: Because I want to guard my heart from any kind of pride of, like, yeah, I did do a good job, didn't I?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: No, we transfer the glory because we have this treasure.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that language.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says it's a treasure.
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is the Christian's joy.
SPEAKER_00: It is, we have this treasure and jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
SPEAKER_00: So we should be known as a church body where people might see evidence of God's grace working in our in our fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: And we just say, isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_00: Because we're all dumb.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: We're all broken sinners.
SPEAKER_00: All glory be to God, because there is no way we did that on our own.
SPEAKER_00: There must be a God.
SPEAKER_00: As a church, we've gone through a whole lot in three years.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually kind of ironic to think this three years, if to me, it feels like seven.
SPEAKER_00: But we have not survived because we grip to God tightly.
SPEAKER_00: We have survived because God has gripped tightly on us.
SPEAKER_00: When we reflect on three years as a church, here's five things we can praise God for.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, he has upheld us.
SPEAKER_00: When I look at verse 14, the Lord helps all who fall, he raises up all who are oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen that God has given us growth.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not just referring to numerical growth, even though praise God for that.
SPEAKER_00: We want to help as many people worship the Lord because he gets more glory, but I'm talking about spiritual growth.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul in 1 Corinthians says, I planted Apollos' water, but God gave the growth.
SPEAKER_00: So then neither one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
SPEAKER_00: It has been a great joy to see how many people the Lord has brought to this church family and who have just fallen in love with God's word and have grown.
SPEAKER_00: And we've seen the fruit of the Spirit working in their lives, and we just praise and rejoice with you.
SPEAKER_00: We have also seen and we can praise God for how He has guarded us as a church.
SPEAKER_00: If someone gave me a blank check and said, Cameron, write the story of Redeemer, however you would like it to go, I would say it has not remotely gone any way I have planned, other than we were going to preach the Bible and love whoever came.
SPEAKER_00: But God has providentially led us, protected us, and strengthened us, which is a fourth reason we can praise God because He has strengthened us.
SPEAKER_00: We have experienced immense suffering and brokenness since we started this church.
SPEAKER_00: We have seen loss, miscarriages, people lose family members, people be sinned against, all the byproduct of living in a fallen and broken world.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, every last one of you are still standing saying, My God is a good God, and I will forever praise his name because he has subjugated our hardships to strengthen our resolve in following him and to deepen our love of who God is, and to grow our experiential knowledge of his love.
SPEAKER_00: But we could also lastly praise God, and I can go on all morning.
SPEAKER_00: We can praise God for sustaining us through conflict, pain, joy, and change, showing that God is sovereignly building his church.
SPEAKER_00: And we, this is how I think about God's providence.
SPEAKER_00: God is writing the story of every last one of our lives, and we just get the joy of just being on the journey.
SPEAKER_00: You should just wake up and say, God, I'm ready for today's episode.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have the script.
SPEAKER_00: I'm improvising, but I'm trusting you, and that everything you bring about first has to travel through your good and sovereign hands.
SPEAKER_00: And as I highlight the beauty of baptism today, today, baptism is living proof of the truths we're looking at in Psalm 145.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism says a few things.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, it says God saves weak sinners, not strong ones.
SPEAKER_00: No one comes to saving faith because they still like, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: God could really use me in his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I got this figured out, I've mastered this.
SPEAKER_00: Like, God, you could really use me.
SPEAKER_00: No, friends.
SPEAKER_00: God saves weak sinners, not strong ones.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, God displays the gospel so that the church can rejoice and remember.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we say this often, it's even on our church website.
SPEAKER_00: We come to sing the word, pray the word, preach the word, and see the word through the Lord's Supper and baptism.
SPEAKER_00: In baptism, we get to see the word of God, the gospel made visible, so to speak, as people go public with their faith to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But we also see that God brings dead hearts to life through baptism.
SPEAKER_00: I love baptisms and I love the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: As this line gets longer and longer when y'all walk up here, it's just a visual reminder like God is saving sinners and building his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He saves people and brings them to new life.
SPEAKER_00: Before if God adds through baptism and salvation, God adds one more voice to the choir of praise in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a day where we will be a part of the ultimate worship service, where every tribe and tongue will be praising and exalting the glory of God like David is in Psalm 145.
SPEAKER_00: Think again of 2 Corinthians 4.15, friends.
SPEAKER_00: As grace extends to more and more people, thanksgiving increases to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism is God spreading his glory through saving sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the pattern we as his disciples declare his works.
SPEAKER_00: Grace spreads, thanksgiving rises, and God gets the glory.
SPEAKER_00: So in conclusion, magnify God with your mouth, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Magnify God with your mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Speak of him, proclaim his greatness and his mighty acts.
SPEAKER_00: Not just from the Bible, but look at your own life and notate evidence of evidences of God's grace in your life and tell somebody about them.
SPEAKER_00: Tell somebody about the magnitude of God.
SPEAKER_00: Look down at verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: He says, My mouth will declare the Lord's praise, let every living thing bless his holy name forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's about.
SPEAKER_00: That is where the Christian life should end.
SPEAKER_00: My mouth will declare the Lord's praise.
SPEAKER_00: Let every living thing bless his holy name forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, this is why our church ends every single service with a doxology.
SPEAKER_00: We end with a doxology because God's greatness deserves the last word.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a tagline to the end of the service, it's us responding to all that we have just seen and heard in worship to God and exalting him.
SPEAKER_00: Just think of the end uh doxology we sing.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
SPEAKER_00: Praise him, all creatures here below.
SPEAKER_00: Similar language to David, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Praise him above, you heavenly host, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_00: And the gift of baptism, friends, is this our sister Liza today is going public saying, I pledge my allegiance to following Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You and I, members of Redeemer Church, we are also going public this morning saying we believe that she is our sister in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And through the blessed ordinance of baptism, we receive her into our church family as a fellow sister and extend the team jersey of Christians, so to speak, and bring her to access the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Well, before I conclude, finally, friends, we can't gloss over verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 20, he says, The Lord guards all those who love him, but he destroys all the wicked.
SPEAKER_00: Every Sunday morning I am prayerfully reminded of a reality that in this room, there's always going to be likely three audiences: those who are Christians and following Jesus, those who are not Christians and you know it, and those who profess to be Christians, but as the Bible would say, you are self-deceived.
SPEAKER_00: Look at David's words in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord guards all who he who love him, but those who keep resisting him stand exposed to God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Friend, I would encourage you if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, or if you profess to be a Christian and yet you are indulging in habitual patterns of sin that you are not turning away from and turning to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Just know I don't want you to walk out of here unprotected from the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: You too can talk like David in these verses we're learning today.
SPEAKER_00: If only you would trust in Jesus Christ and come to him even this morning, right now.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus still stands ready to forgive, ready to hold and to love and to bless every sinner who turns to him.
SPEAKER_00: God is a God of wrath, and because he's a God of love, he must pour out his wrath on all wickedness and injustice.
SPEAKER_00: But he's also loving and patient that he's waiting to give more and more people opportunity to repent and trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: I think about my own life.
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord were to come when I was a little younger, or if I would have died in my sins when I was living in the world, I would be in hell right now.
SPEAKER_00: But because he is patient and long-suffering, and his kindness is not meant to be abused, friends, his kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: But let me put the fire under our feet as well, as members of Redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Even though that is true, all that I said, remember, God has ordained the means by which He will bring people to saving faith in His Son.
SPEAKER_00: And that's through you and I opening our mouths, declaring His mighty works, so that people come to faith, and thanksgiving rises, and the God and God's glory increases.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.