Sermon series: A SUMMER IN THE PSALMS

Psalm 145
"I will extol You, my God, 0 King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty, and on Your wondrous works. Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts, and I will declare Your greatness. They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness, and shall sing of Your righteousness.
The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over His works. All Your works shall praise You, 0 Lord, and Your saints shall bless You. They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom, and talk of Your power, to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations.
The Lord upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look expectantly to You, and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, gracious in all His works. The Lord is near to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He also will hear their cry and save them. The Lord preserves all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh shall bless His holy name forever and ever."

Our psalm is a psalm of worship! Someone has said: "Christian worship is the most momentous, the most urgent, the most glorious action that can take place in human life." Worship is the dramatic celebration of God in His supreme worth in such a manner that His "worthiness" becomes the norm and inspiration of human living. If the celebration of God's worthiness is meant to lift us into the light of His presence, that elevation will provide a place from which we see our lives in a fresh light. To be meaningful, worship must address God the Creator who is at once above us and yet gloriously near, "the beyond who is in the midst." Worship is an exercise of the human spirit directed primarily to God! The worshiper embarks on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy his needs or to make him fell better or to minister to his aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself. Worship by its etymology means "worth-ship."
True worship will entail a response that is thoughtful, costly, and worthy, appropriate to the high occasion and in line with the serious intent of a person's coming into the presence of the all-holy, gracious God!

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True worship is that exercise of the human spirit that confronts us with the mystery and marvel of God in whose presence the most appropriate and salutary response is adorning love. Adoration confesses that there is more in God than our finite minds and limited capacities can absorb; love rejoices that this God, "the beyond in our midst" wears the human face of Jesus Christ whose distinctive name for God was Father.
The psalm we are studying today is called "David's Psalm of Praise." This is the only psalm thus described. It is a psalm of pure worship, a fitting end to the Davidic psalms. It brings all of David's other hymns to a climax. It forms an end, too, to the main body of the book of Psalms itself. The remaining five psalms are an appropriate appendix of appreciation for God, a supplementary doxology!
This psalm is also the last of the acrostic psalms. All the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are present, with the exception of the letter NUN, the fourteenth letter of the alphabet.
This psalm is about God! It begins with: "I will extol Thee, My God." Nobody can praise God apart from this personal relationship. To try to worship God in the abstract is unsatisfactory. Such concepts as "providence" or "nature" do not touch the chords of our hearts. But to think that the God of suns and stars, the God of singing seraphim and adoring angels, is MY God...that can set our hearts to singing and our feet to dancing!
When David says..."I will extol Thee," he is saying that he will lift up the name of God and he will praise Him so that his praise will be heard from afar!
"0 King, I will bless Thy name for ever and ever."
David had long since surrendered his sovereignty to God. God was his King. He was a man under authority and was therefore fit to be a man with authority! And David did not contemplate any end to this lordship in his life. It was for ever and for ever! This is why he wanted to praise Him! Someone has suggested that if we do not learn to worship and praise our God here on earth, we will be uncomfortable in heaven! When John peers into the glories of heaven, he writes: "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." (Revelation 5:11-13) We are going to be worshiping and praising God throughout eternity...so let's start now! As we receive blessings from God every day, it is proper that we should render to Him daily praise and thanks; as God is the same always--"yesterday, today and forever"--it is proper that He should receive from day to day the tribute of praise!

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Verse 3 starts by extolling God for being great! "Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom." David is thinking here of the greatness of God displayed in His mighty works. When we read of "mighty acts," "glorious splendor," "wonderful (or awesome) works," and "great deeds" it is natural to think of God's works in nature, which is not a bad place to start in our praise! If you can look at the surge of the ocean, the glory of the mountains, or the splendor of the sky on a cloudless night and not be moved to praise God, you are more to be pitied than a person who has lost his or her physical sight. Yet wonderful as God's works of creation are, a person who has come to know God's goodness in Jesus Christ can hardly stop there. The greatness of God's works are His salvation works. In the case of Israel, these were always understood to involve God's power in delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt and bringing them into their own land. For us above all else God's salvation works are His work of saving us from sin through Christ's death upon the cross and His resurrection from the grave.
"Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable." David is talking about the great I Am, the God whose name is ineffable and unpronounceable, the God who met Moses at the burning bush with the demand that he remove his shoes from off his feet because he stood on holy ground. He is a God so unsearchable that no human mind can comprehend Him. He is so vast we can touch but the fringes of His garment.
He is a God who has revealed Himself in three persons as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one and one in three! He is a God who is without beginning or ending of days, eternal, uncreated, self existing. We go back before the dawn of time, before the first star glimmered in the sky, before the rustle of an angel's wing disturbed the silence of eternity, back into the dateless, timeless past, into the void of nothingness—and lo! God was there and had been there, glorious, sublime, needing nothing. Surely, with David, we must fall down and worship at His feet!
Verse 7: "They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great goodness, and shall sing of Thy righteousness." God is a good God, morally good. It is impossible for Him to be anything but good! God is not the author of sin—sin did not begin with God; it began with Lucifer. God always does good things, things consistent with His righteousness. Because He is good, God has to punish sin. But because He is good, He never does so vindictively or capriciously. He is good and righteous. Therefore He always does what is right. When sinful people call God's goodness into question, it is because they are blinded by sin. When all the facts are in, at the judgment seat of Christ and at the great white throne, everyone will be forced to acknowledge, and that for all eternity, the fact of God's moral goodness, even if they are in a lost eternity. "The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy."
His goodness is not just a cold, impassive rectitude. It is a goodness that reaches out warmly in mercy and compassion to the lost, the erring, and the fallen.

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Verse 9: "The Lord is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works." He makes His sun to shine on the bad as well as on the good. He metes out His tender mercy to the stubborn elder brother as well as to the repentant prodigal son. He loves the vilest sinner just as much as He loves the most virtuous saint. The greatest manifestation of that mercy was at Calvary when Jesus prayed for those who nailed Him to the tree: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." "All Thy works shall praise Thee, 0 Lord, and Thy saints shall bless Thee." All God's works in creation will sing His praise; all His works in redemption will sing His praise. That is what we have in the Book of Revelation. In Revelation 4:11 we see Him worshiped as the Lord of Creation: "Thou art worthy...for Thou hast created all things." In Revelation 5:8 we see Him worshiped as the Lamb of Calvary: "Thou art worthy...for Thou wast slain." The seraphim sing creation's song. The saints lift the anthems an octave higher and sing redemption's song. So meaningful are these two themes that they occupy the minds of the highest of all created, unfallen intelligences in the universe on the one hand and the rapturous songs of the redeemed in heaven on the other.
NOW WE COME TO A THEME...THE KINGDOM OF GOD...which fills the heart of David with awe and wonder and fills the pages of the Gospels over one hundred times!
"They shall speak of the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy power; to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations."
In the Old Testament the Kingdom of God was political and material--a kingdom like the kingdoms of this world.
Sometimes it was to be realized by the work of the prophets of Israel, or the return of one of them, like Elijah; sometimes by a human Messiah, a greater scion of the house of David; sometimes by a heavenly Deliverer, the Son of Man from heaven; sometimes by God Himself--'The Lord himself shall suddenly appear in the temple.'
For centuries the Jews cherished this hope of the Kingdom in that vision of the kingly rule of Jehovah, or His representative, in Jerusalem, when He should establish an order of peace and prosperity for His chosen people, and justice and righteousness reign in the earth. And so there grew up the hope expressed in the vast apocalyptic literature, that some day God would break into history, in judgment upon Israel's enemies, and bring His people into their long-promised heritage.
The Kingdom of God is one of those leading ideas of the Jewish religion which Jesus Christ accepted, and in accepting transfigured. We preached a Kingdom of God indeed, but a Kingdom very different from their expectation, a new world that was indeed the gift of God, but in a manner of which they never dreamed, and could not understand. It was human society organized according to the will of God...it means the will of God done in earth, as it is in heaven. The Kingdom of God consists of people who love and serve God in spirit and in truth...Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within us.

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In Matthew 3:1-2 we read: "In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye; for the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is at hand." John the Baptist, the prophet who introduced the Christ, commenced his message with the proclamation that the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven was imminent!
In Matthew 4:24: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." The heart of the message of Jesus Christ was the gospel of the Kingdom, and to understand the heartbeat of Christ, we must seek to grasp the gospel of the kingdom!
In Acts 1:1-7 we read: "In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven, (the author of Acts is Luke who also wrote one of the gospels, thus his reference..."in my former book.") after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles He had chosen. After His suffering, He showed Himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the Kingdom of God. (Note: Not only was the gospel of the kingdom the heartbeat of Christ when He commenced His ministry...Luke tells us that it was the main part of His message during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension back to heaven.) "On one occasion, while He was eating with them, He gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised which you have heard Me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." So when they met together, they asked Him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel?" He said to them: It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority."
As I have already noted, the people of Jesus' day thought only of the kingdom of Israel...a literal time in history when the Messiah would come and they would rule the world! The kingdom was a theme that quickened the pulse of every Jew who heard it discussed. They were aware of Daniel's writing which referenced this promised kingdom (Daniel 7:14, 18 and 27). "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him."
With Jesus and John, the term "kingdom" has the spiritual, not the national idea!

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As Jesus used it, KINGDOM means essentially the reign of God in the heart. Sometimes the idea is possession or kingly authority or kingship, sometimes the idea is rather that of the subjects of the rule of God, but never does Jesus use the term KINGDOM in the sense of territory or country.
Again, returning to the Old Testament, we find in 2 Samuel 7:13-16 this reference to the KINGDOM. "I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son...my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me, your throne will be established forever."
THIS WAS A PROMISE TO DAVID, THE KING OF ISRAEL. For the person who listened to Christ teach, that promise of history was yet to be fulfilled. The Assyrian and the Babylonian captivity inaugurated a long period of servitude for the Jews. Except for the Maccabean era, the Jews never recovered independence, thus the guiding star in Jewish politics and theology was the hope of national independence and world dominion.
To get the whole picture, we really have to go back to the beginning pages of Biblical history. Twenty-five hundred years before Christ, Abraham became the beginning of a nation. For fifteen hundred years, there was no king but God! Going where God sent them, doing what God commanded them to do, ready to serve at His command, Abraham's descendents grew to became a great nation.
Approximately one thousand years before Christ, Saul became the first king of the Israelites. A young man with many talents, Saul could have been a great king...but impatience, disobedience and jealousy brought his kingship to an end in suicide. David came to the throne. His colorful kingship lasted thirty-three years. He found Israel a collection of tribes and had left her a strong nation with the city of David, Jerusalem, to be her capital. A man of great courage, a born leader of men, David, the king, evidenced great capacity to forgive and show gratitude. He was a man after God's own heart.
But when David died, his kingdom became divided and for centuries it was battles, captivity and bloodshed for the nation of Israel. Except for the brief era of the Maccabeans, the Jewish nation served other nations...their kingdom did not exist. Centuries of servitude, oppression and tears, caused their hearts to yearn for peace and their minds to dream of a day when God would break into history and subject every nation to the Jews so that Jerusalem would be the capital of the world and every nation would admit Jewish sovereignty!
IT WAS THEIR DREAM OF THE GOLDEN AGE! It was to be a time of plenty when all men had enough and none too little, when man and animal would live in peace--the day when the Jewish nation would became master and ruler of all the world. Their concept of the kingdom was nationalistic. Christ's concept of the kingdom was spiritual. HERE WAS THE GREAT MISUNDERSTANDING!

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Not only did the nation of Israel misunderstand Christ's concept of the KINGDOM OF GOD, but it has been a theological battleground since the ministry of Christ here on the earth.
In the Scriptures, the phrase...KINGDOM OF GOD or KINGDOM OF HEAVEN are interchangeable. Matthew uses the phrase...KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, Luke and Mark use the phrase KINGDOM OF GOD. If in the notes of your Bible, the author seeks to prove that the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN and the KINGDOM OF GOD are two separate kingdoms...then I would suggest you disregard those notes...they are in direct conflict with the teachings of the Bible!
Let's notice some of the scriptures in which Christ speaks of the KINGDOM.
Matthew 7:21
"Not everyone that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven."
From this verse, the truth we lean is that being a part of God's kingdom is in doing what God wants us to do and obedience to His commandments.
Remember, the Kingdom of God consists of people who love and serve God in spirit and in truth. The entrance gate into God's kingdom is repentance and faith—a new attitude towards God—and the Kingdom means a new order of things in a man’s personality through the redeeming love and power of the Christ within us. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation," a new kind of man, a different kind of man. We is not merely changed on the surface, not merely one who gives up some bad habits, or forms some new habits, or takes on some extra duties, or begins to do a bit of service in Christ's church. He is so changed that everything else is changed. A man who has been in vital contact with Jesus Christ is so different that the whole world around him vibrates with a new challenge and suggestion; everything has a new look about it; everything has a new meaning.
His allegiance is now to Jesus Christ who is his Lord and Master and Saviour. He has ceased to have self as the center of his being, but the love of Christ by His Spirit now guides and rules his conduct of life. He is not thinking only of his own rights, but also of the right of others. He is not out merely for his own advantage; he seeks to serve God and his fellowman as life opens up opportunities to serve and love. His passion in life is do the will of God! That is the man who is in God's kingdom.
When Pilate asked Jesus concerning His kingdom. His answer was very clear and understandable. "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is My kingdom not from hence."
The Pharisees asked Christ about the Kingdom...listen to His answer: "And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation; Neither shall they say, Lo here! or lo there! THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU."

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The Apostle Paul explains his understanding of the kingdom with these words:
"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." (Romans 14:17)
A KINGDOM THAT IN NOT PHYSICAL OR MATERIAL, A KINGDOM THAT IS WITHIN US, WHICH RESULTS IN RIGHTEOUSNESS, PEACE AND JOY IN THE HOLY SPIRIT...that is the Kingdom that Jesus talked about!
When Jesus came preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, the nation of Israel responded with out-right rejection and hate!
Luke 19:10-14
"For the Son of Man is come to seek and save that which was lost. And as they heard these things, He added and spake a parable, because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.
He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN REIGN OVER US.
Verses 26 and 27 continue:
"For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away. But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before Me."
The message was clear...to those who listened for they understood the parable! The real kingdom, said Jesus, in My rule and reign is in your hearts and lives. The kingdom of Christ begins in the heart that responds to His gospel of forgiveness and love through Calvary. It begins when Jesus Christ becomes Lord and Master of our life, our time, our talents, and our goals and values!
HIS NATION RESPONDED...JESUS CHRIST...WE DO NOT WANT YOU TO REIGN OVER US! Jesus Christ drew the battle lines, and everywhere He went, the religious leaders of His nation were not interested in His kingdom, nor His reign.
JESUS SAID THAT HIS KINGDOM CAME WITH HIS COMING!
"And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. BUT IF I CAST OUT DEVILS BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD, THEN THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS COME UNTO YOU!" (Matt. 12)
The message of the kingdom of Christ is forgiveness and healing, power and victory, joy and peace! And Christ's invitation is...COME JOIN THE KINGDOM.
When David, in our ancient psalm, wrote about the kingdom, he must have had a glimpse into future, the reign of Christ, and thus he could write: "Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom...for Christ's kingdom never ends!