Last opportunity to really just kind of comment on a passage for you. If you have your Bibles, maybe turn to Psalm 145. Psalm 145 is just a wonderful psalm of praise and recognizing who God is, what he's done, what he had done for David especially. I'm just going to read the whole psalm. I'm going to kind of work my way through it briefly. I hope it's briefly. briefly, verse by verse, and just to hopefully just kind of put a capstone maybe on this special Sunday that you have had together. I hope you realize this is not a normal event for many a church to have anniversary celebration like this, testimonies of God's grace. And just to see how God's blessed you for these years. I hope this is like a frozen moment in your time or in your mind. You find a way to remember how good God has been to you as a church, as a family, as a person, a part of this body. And I hope this psalm will help you to remember that, to focus on that. So let's look at Psalm 145. I'll read the whole thing and then point out maybe a couple of nails to stick this psalm on so you kind of remember it. And then we'll make a few comments as we go through. Psalm 145, verse one. I'm reading from the ESV. It says, verse one, 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 I shall sing aloud of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children of man, your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful. in all his words and kind in all his works. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him. He also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. Father, use this psalm to remind us of your greatness, your goodness, your grace, your faithfulness, and your righteousness. Help us to leave this place today, praising you not only for what you've done in this church and in our lives and through the people you've used, but pray that we would leave this place recognizing how good it is and how gracious you have been to us and how great you are to share yourself with us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. David, the writer of this psalm, famous person, a great sinner and a great saint. Think about King David a little bit. Pretty famous for some bad things. Had a hard time raising some of his children. A couple of his children tried to take him out. If my daughters ever try to take me out, I will consider myself a failure. Yet King David, a little different situation, but things didn't go well. Yet he finishes this great book with just a testimony to God and to his graciousness, his goodness, his greatness, his faithfulness, his righteousness. And God never changes, right? He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so I just want to draw our attention to some of these main ideas in this text. You can kind of organize this psalm around these big four ideas, his greatness, his grace, his faithfulness, and his righteousness. Certainly David was somebody who'd seen it all, probably experienced it all, you know, in more ways than most of us. And yet here, at the end of this great book, he writes this psalm. I hope it would be an encouragement to us. It's an acrostic. Each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The Hebrews did poetry different than we did. It didn't necessarily rhyme. And so often, I don't think it rhymed, actually. But they would begin, like, the first letter was one verse. The second letter was another verse. And they would begin the verses with those letters. And so this psalm is a psalm like that. It's a wonderful psalm of praise, focusing his attention, our attention, on the greatness of our God. It's something that you can tell he's passionate about. He knows who he's talking about. And I hope that's something we come away from this time, this Lord's Day, in remembering that God has done something in our midst. This doesn't happen all over the world. Many people do not have the opportunity to participate and to be part of a church, to be in the life of a church and have this kind of a body, this kind of an experience to testify to God's grace. And so I certainly hope that in your mind this morning, somehow you find this afternoon, you find a way to remember what God's done here in your life through this body. Praise. This is a psalm all about praise. What is praise? A couple definitions. We need definitions to kind of keep us on the rails here, right? So what is praise? Praise is thankful, lowly, loving worship of the goodness and majesty of God. You don't praise things you hate. Think about that for just a second. I mean, that's, that's kind of obvious, right? That's not that difficult. But if you're going to say nice things about something and mean it, which is important, right? Then you need, probably there's some enjoyment involved in this. There is love involved. There is delight involved in this. And so as we frame this whole conversation, I hope that's right front and center. And as we talk about the Lord, as we talk about our God, enjoyment, delight, Praise is undergirding everything that's happening as he describes this wonderful God that he knows. One scholar said, worship is the proper response of all moral sentient, that means beings that can feel or sense, sentient beings to God ascribing all honor and worth to their creator God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so. Draws our attention to that delightfulness. of our God. Worship is the category under which we order much in our lives. Actually, the scriptures do that for us. I grew up, yeah, attending a camp where before every meal they would have us quote 1 Corinthians 10 31. Whether therefore you eat or drink, right? Why would, did they choose that verse? Probably because we're about ready to eat or drink, right? That was, but whether therefore you eat or drink, do all So even something as simple as enjoying two cupcakes can be done to the glory of God. Such a simple, well, fairly simple experience. Two, yes, two. Someone's surprised. Even something that we do three times a day. For some of us, four times, five times a day. I discovered my brother likes cereal before he goes to bed. So he always has a small bowl of cereal before he goes to bed. I found that out recently. It's small, right? It's not a big one, it's a small one. But he delights, I think, in enjoying that cereal, right? Before he goes to bed. And whether, therefore, you eat or drink or whatever you do, something you do many times a day, right? How do we do it? We do all to the glory, to the fame, to the enjoyment, to the praising of our God and Creator. And certainly there are a lot of adjectives we could use in this. Genuine worship, one person said, is nothing more than loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength and loving your neighbors as ourselves, but also to show what a statement like that means in the concrete decisions of our own lives. You know, it's easy to get up and say, glory to God or praise the Lord, yet in here and in here, it's not happening, right? We've been part of a church body for very long or a Christian for very long. Sure, we're singing the songs and we feel awful, right? We look okay on the outside, but on the inside, we're awful. It's not pretty. And that's human life. That's just our human experience sometimes, isn't it? That's not the picture that God wants us to have at all times. And sometimes people are there, aren't they? And so I want to help it. I want to up front, help us understand that worshiping God and, and experiencing the praise and worship engaging that we are encouraged to be a part of in this Psalm includes the heart and the mind frequently. should be a part of our worship and a part of who we are to know him and to genuinely love him and to delight in him in these things. So what are we praising God for? Four simple ideas. I'm going to try just to hang the psalm on just as you come back to this again someday, you might have a reminder here of the big ideas. So we'll go verse by verse, but we'll go quickly. All right. So verse one, I will extol you. There's a word we don't probably use very often. extolling something. You're talking positively about something. You have to know it and love it to extol it. There's probably a Cleveland Browns fan here somewhere. You could probably extol something about the Cleveland Browns. I cannot. It's not that I just don't know. It's not that I have animosity. If you asked me to talk about the bears, I could do a little bit. But even that, it's pretty tough because I don't know that much. I just have memories of the 85 bears. That's about it. That was a long time ago, if you haven't noticed. If you're going to extol something, you have to know something about that. It has to be here and here for you to speak kindly and lovingly about it. I will extol you my God and King and bless your name forever and ever. David had lived a hard life. Yet he's saying this every day, every day, every day. I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. The first big idea, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable. So praise God for His greatness. You are not dealing with a normal person when you're dealing with our God and Father. Yes, He is a normal person in one sense. He is a person, but He is your God. He is great and His greatness is unsearchable. In other words, you, finite being, are going to spend the rest of your life trying to understand and search out the searchable infinite God who David is just trying to introduce you to and help you know and understand in this psalm. One generation shall commend your works to another, verse four, and shall declare your mighty acts. I don't know if the younger generation in the room here, I was taking pictures of the younger generation here earlier just to get them to loosen up a little bit around all of us old folks. And I hope you younger generation had a chance just to recognize that this happened today to you. You heard the older generation of various shapes and sizes get up and explain how God has been good and gracious to them, to you. And you may not and probably don't realize how important that is. And not only does it need to happen on a 20th anniversary, but it needs to happen on a regular basis. That the older generation gets inside the head and heart and mind of the younger generation and commends God's works in your midst. because you can go a lot of places in this world and this kind of thing does not happen. People do, the multi-generational aspect of seeing and hearing and believing and knowing and experiencing the works of God. A church the last 20 years without a major fight is, right, that's somewhat unusual, unfortunately. To have multiple pastors, Others who've been here for 20 years, charter members, right? This is an unusual event where hopefully, younger generation, you may, I've always been a Christian. I've grown up in a Christian home. I've always been a part of this church. Life is boring. You need to realize life does not stay like this. Life gets hard. It gets difficult. It gets painful. Life gets ugly sometimes. And to be a part of a body like this is something that you will need to You need to capture the moment and remember and make sure you're around it because you're going to start making decisions in the next few years that will either keep you a part of a body, maybe this body, maybe a different body, or you will wander off and your testimony won't sound like some of the ones you heard. You won't have one. The people that these, some of the folks who got up here and spoke and told you about how God has been gracious to them, he's been gracious to them because they didn't get too far away from a Bible-believing church with a loving family that loved them through thick and thin and just tried to minister God's word to them. So young people in the room and old people, right, who are here, make sure this is happening. in our lives, in your life, in this church. One generation commending God's works to another, declaring God's mighty acts, this unsearchableness of our God. Verse five, on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. You know, he uses some big words, we just kind of lose it, right? Our brains just can't handle all those concepts. So we have to like stop and think, what in the world is that? What is he talking about? What is glorious splendor? We have to go back a couple hundred years to find at least one good definition. John Gill, 18th century Baptist, explained it as the majesty. If those words were difficult for you, you really have to pay attention here. I know we didn't have any coffee over here to help you, but hopefully you had two cupcakes like me and you have lots of sugar. going through your bloodstream right now. So here we go. The glorious splendor, the majesty of the divine person of Christ, of the honor due unto him, of the glory of him as of the only begotten of the Father, as he is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, of his glory as mediator and the honor that belongs to him as such, with which he is now crowned at the right hand of the majesty on high, angels and authorities and powers being subject unto him as the Lord and King of glory. God is a glorious person. He is gracious. He is great. And as we spend our little lives trying to fathom his glorious splendor, you will come to recognize his greatness and love him for what he has shared with you in this life and in himself. So let me encourage you to get to know this God. Come to know his greatness, his glorious splendor. Verse seven, they shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. Guess what happens when you get struck by God's goodness and graciousness and greatness and you have some inkling of his glorious splendor, what do you do with that? Do you lock yourself in a closet and just hum and meditate privately and secretly? No, you don't. You do what this verse says. You pour forth the fame of God's abundant goodness. You sing aloud of His righteousness. In other words, you've got to tell somebody about it. You have to, you're going to enjoy Him. You're going to enjoy talking about Him and enjoy singing about Him. You're going to enjoy somebody telling you about Him in ways that are true to God's Word. In other words, that emotion, that passion, That enjoyment is going to bubble out of you as you know him as he's revealed himself to be. You're going to pour forth the fame of who he is. Which means you have to think about that sometimes. How has God been abundantly good to you? How is God spiritually good to you now? We've had this opportunity today to kind of hear some of that, to be reminded, oh yeah, life has not always been like this. We met in a YMCA or whatever it was. We had to deal with nobody coming to church. We had, right, there were challenges along the way. God has been so good to you as a church. Sometimes sit down and just make a list. We've had, you know, we kind of forced the issue today by saying, okay, we're having a special Sunday and you six people, you're going to get up and, you know, or volunteer. You tell us, remind us. You don't have to have a special Sunday to do that. You could just do it yourself, right? Someday, as you're having your time in the Word, make a list of how God has been good and gracious and abundantly kind and great to you. Verse 8-12, the Lord is gracious and merciful. Second idea here, praise God for his greatness, praise God for his grace, his unmerited favor to us. Verse 8, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children of men your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom." He's gracious and merciful. He's abounding in steadfast love. Does that sound familiar? If you've ever read the Old Testament a few times, that should sound very familiar. That keeps coming up in the definition, in the description of Old Testament saints when they talk about God. He is those things, gracious, merciful, slow to anger, unlike many of us, abounding in steadfast love, unlike many of us. Why does Jonah get upset? Because God's like that. He's supposed to call down fire and burn him to, you know, I burned a bagel in the toaster this morning. You know what that's like? It's kind of flaming, it's kind of hard, doesn't taste so good, right? Burned stuff. Jonah's like, Lord, toast him. But he knows God won't toast him because he's gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. We have a gracious God who doesn't leave the toaster on too long in your life. He pops it at just the right time. Just thought of that, right off the thing there. I don't know if that's a good illustration. I think it might be, because he's going to turn the heat up on you sometimes. The heat's going to get turned up. You better know how to deal with the heat. But he's going to push the cancel button. He's doing something in your life. And a bagel tastes much better toasted than it does plain. All right? So this just keeps getting better. I better stop. I'm sure it's done. I'm sure. You can't take that any farther. All your works, God's works in your life, in this church, in our lives, we'll give praise to him. They are gracious, merciful. All of his saints, All of his saints, after 20 years, should have some opportunities to bless him and speak of his glory, to tell of his power, to make known to the children of men his mighty deeds in our midst. A bunch of strange people, a part of the same body for 20 years, getting along, loving one another through thick times, hard times, difficult times. That's called a mighty deed. That's not normal. That's not natural. The world, have you ever watched television lately? Have you watched the news? What's involved? Lots of hate. I used to follow the news, the current events. It's hard for me to watch it anymore. It's so difficult and painful and everybody hates each other. That's what God has done in this body in 20 years. The love, the fellowship, the communion that's here. That's supernatural. Speak of his greatness. Verse 12, 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. He is a good and gracious and great king. He's the only eternal being. And we limited, finite beings, we desire that, don't we? We want to be eternal, but we're not. We want to be, because we want to be like Him. He's our Creator, and so He has offered Himself and given Himself to us in His Word, in His Son. Let me encourage you to know this God as He's revealed Himself in the Word. Praise God for His faithfulness, verse 13. to the end through 17. Your kingdom is everlasting, especially 13b really. And 13b is not in some of your Bibles, but it is in some of your Bibles. In the ESV, my 13b is in brackets. And if you look at the footnote, this is a little bibliology lesson here in the middle of our study, there's a full footnote that says basically that 13b is only in one Hebrew manuscript. And so They weren't sure whether to put it in or not, so they put it in there just to be safe. But some of the modern translations don't have that one. But I think it kind of summarizes what the next few verses are about, which is really God's faithfulness. And so the ESV says, the Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. God is a Faithful God. So praise God for His faithfulness. Verse 14, the Lord upholds all who are falling. Why? Because He's faithful. And raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you. Why? Because He's a faithful God. And you give them their food in due season. He doesn't hold it back. He gives it at the right time. Verse 15, you open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. Why? Because He's faithful. He makes promises and he keeps them. He doesn't say, aha, nope, tricked ya, surprise. You thought I was gonna, nope. That's not the person you're dealing with. He keeps his promises. Now, he keeps them on a different timetable than maybe we prefer, right? So you have to understand, you're dealing with an infinite, all-knowing, omnipotent creator who might know something more than you know. And he might have a perfect plan for your life that you won't, you'd never find unless he gave it to you, provided it for you. Verse 15 and 16, verse 16 especially, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. There's a lot we could say about this. Augustine, famous North African theologian, said, you have formed us for You have formed us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. Psalm 81.10 says, open wide your mouth and I will fill it. Psalm 4.13, my God shall supply all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. He is the only one who can satisfy you. Those desires you have are not going to be satisfied in a vehicle, in money, in a home, In a person, He is the only one who will satisfy you. He is the ultimate satisfier. This psalm was encouraged us to praise God for His greatness, for His grace, for His faithfulness. Last one, He is righteous. The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His works. He always does right. The Lord is near to him who calls on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him. He also hears their cry and saves him. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. Verse 17. God is declaring who he is. He is righteous. He does what is right. That's what people find in him. He is one who does right. He fulfills, he hears, and he saves. He keeps those. all creatures will ultimately acknowledge him to be a righteous person in his actions. Notice in verse 18, he is near to those who do what? He's not near to those who are out necessarily having fun and then totally ignoring him. He is near to those who are looking for him, to those who are calling upon him. Maybe in some of the testimonies we heard, but I think in many of our lives, there was probably a time in many of our lives where God, through his grace, gave us that desire to call, to say, Lord, my life is a mess. And there was a turn, and that's when God began to pour blessing and call us to himself even stronger. He is near to those who call on him in truth. Come to God, God's way. There's only one way to God. He defines how we get there and he's done that very clearly in the New Testament, more clearly in many ways. John 14.6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. There's not multiple ways to God. You come to God in truth. You come through Jesus. Christ. First Timothy, Paul says, first Timothy two, three, there is one God and one man, Christ Jesus. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator also between God and man and men, the man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. Verse 19, he fulfills the desires of those who fear him. Notice, calling on him, fearing him, desiring him, desiring to be near to him. God fulfills the desires of those who fear him. Young people, you're reaching a stage in life where you have desires, even adults. There's things we want. And God promises that He fulfills those desires of those who fear Him. Now, if you've ever studied this whole thing, you discover that your desires change when you fear Him. So yeah, I think I want that. But once I realize I need to love Him and know Him and fear Him, then I don't want that anymore. I kind of want this over here. And then that's what He gives me. God gives us, God works through our desires to give us what we desire when we fear Him. Verse 20. The Lord preserves all who love Him, but the wicked He will destroy. Judgment day is coming. Do you want to be preserved? Be one who loves Him. Do you love? What do you love? Do you love Him? What does it mean to love something? We all know what that means. Certainly levels of love. As we talk about our God, do you know Him? Do you love Him? Young person, do you know what we're talking about here? Old person, middle-aged person, do you understand what David is saying as an old, experienced Hebrew king who's seen it all and done it all as he praises his God, as he praises this person? Does this sound like somebody you know? Do you know Him? Do you love Him? Are you listening to Him? Are you drawing near to Him? Have you experienced these emotions? When it's time to sing of his greatness, are you mumbling? When it's time to praise his name and praise the Lord, do you have like six other things going through your head? We all have some different ways of doing some of those things, but at some point, In your experience, if your emotions aren't involved, if your brain isn't involved, if your feelings of love and appreciation and delight aren't involved, then you're probably not doing what David's doing. Something else is happening inside there. I want to help you to recognize that God preserves those who love Him. Do you love Him? If you don't love him, you love something. We all love something. We're into a lot of things. The things we love determine how we end up in some ways. You love him, he will preserve you. If you love something else, the Lord will destroy the wicked. Verse 21, my mouth will speak the praise of the Lord and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. The more you know this God, this Lord, the more you will want to speak of His praise and bless His holy name forever and ever. This psalm points us to God's greatness, His grace, His faithfulness, and His righteousness. I hope you've been reminded of those things in what's taking place this day as we've remembered many things, but also as we look at this testimony of King David from so long ago. Our God hasn't changed, has he? Some ages have changed, some details have changed, but he is still the same and probably not going to change in your lifetime either. We might want to get used to this because he is not going to change and we have an awful lot to be thankful for because of that. Let me pray, and then Pastor Joel will come. Father, thank you for your greatness, your goodness, your graciousness, your righteousness, your faithfulness. Lord, we are not those things. We are only when we reflect you and your glory, and only as your spirit works within us. We pray that this church would be marked by a knowledge of God that results in praise and love for you. Thankful for the saints that have gone before us, that have given us these testimonies of grace today. Thank you for the word that has been preached, the teaching we have received, the lives that have been spent in service to you. And we pray that you continue to give us grace. Lord, we've come through difficult waters these last few years, and we are thankful to be in this room together. And we pray that in 20 years, some of the young people in this room would be able to Remember this event and have similar stories of your goodness and grace and faithfulness and righteousness in their lives. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.