I'm glad that the exposition portion from this morning was on this same day. So you have it fresh in your minds, and I don't need to review it with you carefully like I did this morning for the previous week's teaching. We're in Psalm 86. I've entitled the message, The Confessions of David. David is acknowledging in the psalm things he knows to be true by faith. And I think there are three fundamental topics about which David acknowledges things to be true as a believing man. He acknowledges by faith, first of all, his great enemies, and then secondly, his great need. And these are the subjects that have occupied us so far. This afternoon I want to bring you to the third topic about which David confesses his faith, and that is the topic of the Lord Himself. David, in several of the verses of Psalm 86, confesses by faith the great Savior of his, which is, of course, the Lord, the true and living God. And he does that by addressing the Lord and then by describing the Lord in various ways. And as David prays and describes the Lord, that in itself is an act of worship to the Lord. These are confessions of David, not only of his great Savior, but to his great Savior. And clearly the great Savior that David speaks of delights to hear such praise from his beloved children. It is approved by God what David is doing. The Proverbs chapter 15 verse 8 says, the prayers of the upright are the Lord's delight. And some have some nefarious characters have seized on this that God delights in the praises of his people as a criticism for God. They have alleged that God is not a very praiseworthy deity because He's egotistical. He likes to have his ego stroked or God is insecure. And so he needs to be supported by people that tell him he's so great or otherwise he might not realize that as much. And so all kinds of ridiculous and profane explanations have been offered for why the Lord delights according to Christian teaching and the praises of the church. But I can tell you that any of the things I suggested and others that skeptics offer are false, because God is not short of divine awareness about His own infinite glory. God knows, like no creature knows, how great and good and glorious He is. His knowledge of himself is of a different order than the knowledge that mere creatures like us can have of him. Only God can know God fully. For the rest of us, we have a very small conception that's possible for us in our knowledge of God. And God is not insecure at all. In fact, he has no need of our worship and praise at all. To think of God as in need of anything at all is not to think of God, you know, because by definition, by His very existence, God is not a needy being. He is the self-existent one. Completely, He's completed Himself, completely sufficient for Himself. If people think God needs anything, they don't know God as they ought to know Him. And this is, nevertheless, a tendency that we have according to our natural thoughts of God, our pagan beliefs. When Paul showed up at Athens, he, in very plain terms, explained this to men who were supposed to be these profound philosophers. Paul said to them about this unknown God that they ignorantly worship, verse 23, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands. We may infer that this was a misunderstanding they had, that God dwells in temples made with hands. Paul says, no, he doesn't. neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing that he giveth to all life and breath and all things." So in Paul's teaching here, all the arrows of transfer of something valuable are away from God toward the creatures, not the other way around, you see. God doesn't need us. He has no divine deficit. He has no divine insecurity. He doesn't become advantaged in some way if we praise Him, because God in Himself is completely self-existent and self-sufficient. I'm afraid that some of this, these crass ideas about God as needy even creep into the churches and people think, God is happier than he would otherwise be if we worship him. Or God in some way has some benefit from our service to him. But Paul argues otherwise. He says it cannot be so, because God is the source of all the good things we enjoy. If God supplies us with every good thing we enjoy, then he's not in need of the things he gives us, you see. He can't be benefited by us. So banish any idea that we are doing God a favor to believe Him or to worship Him. That's not the point of it. Nevertheless, God delights in the praises of His church. Why is He delighted in the praises of His church? Well, let me offer a couple of other reasons, and this is not an exhaustive list. God delights in our praise because it is righteous in His sight that we should praise Him. See, He deserves to be praised by us, and it's our duty as His creatures, and now as redeemed ones, to give praise to Him. It's a right thing to do. And God being the fount of all righteousness is pleased with that in His creatures which He can approve. That's one reason God delights in our praises. He delights in our praises, secondly, because Our praises are the fruit of His gracious work in us. We, before conversion, were not those people who from the heart, according to God's truth, praised the Lord. But God had mercy on our wretched souls, and broke our bondage to the world of flesh and the devil, and turned our hearts, made our hearts alive in Christ, and taught us to praise Him and to do it with pleasure, with willingness, with happiness to praise Him. And so why wouldn't God delight in the fruit of His saving grace that's manifest in us? He's delighting in the work of His own hands, in other words, when He delights in our praises. And then thirdly, God delights in our praises because Our praising Him is conducive to His purpose for our salvation and happiness. You know, the Bible says God is love. Twice in 1 John chapter 4 it says God is love. Not God has love. God is love. And it is the nature of God Himself to give of himself to others. And so when God has saved us and when God has prompted us to praising him, that pleases him because it's a manifestation and an exercise of his love toward us, which he delights to do. God receives absolutely nothing out of any of this. Rather, we are the recipients of God's grace and favor and help. We are the ones who are blessed. And all of these blessings come to us as a gift from the God who is love. So this is the high biblical theology that underlies David's confessions about the Lord, his God and Savior. Now, as I have studied the passage of Psalm 86, I have decided to organize David's praises or acknowledgements by faith about the Lord under three headings. First of all, he says to the Lord, in effect, you are infinitely gracious. Secondly, you are absolutely incomparable. And thirdly, you're universally praiseworthy. So the remarks about God being infinitely gracious are in verses five and 15. I've read the entire Psalm three times already in this series of messages. So let's forego the reading of the entire Psalm and focus on verses five and 15. Look at verse five. For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. And now verse 15. But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering and plenteous in mercy and truth. So in this language, especially verse five, David is quoting the Lord Himself as He revealed Himself centuries earlier to the prophet Moses on Mount Sinai, I believe. It's Exodus 34, verse 6. And it almost doesn't need to be read because it's a quote. Exodus 34, verse 6 is telling us about that time when Moses said to the Lord, show me your glory. And the Lord was pleased to give Moses a revelation of himself, that is of the Lord himself. And it says that the Lord passed by before Moses and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. This is the very language that David uses in Psalm 86. When we study then biblical statements about what could be called the attributes or the traits of God, we must think of them properly in the light of the whole teaching of scripture. And among the things in that requirement is that we understand that God is not composed of these attributes. It's not as if you could take a metaphysical recipe of the characteristics of goodness and a forgiving disposition and mercy and compassion and grace and truth and long-suffering and put those things together And voila, there you have this composed deity with a bit of this and a dash of that and some of the other. No, even though God is praised according to various attributes that are mentioned like this, specifically in scripture, God himself in his essence is without parts. simple, or as it has been said, I think very profoundly and helpfully, all that is in God is God. Now this makes God absolutely unique. This is not true of the creatures. All of us, and all creatures, have what the philosophers have called accidental properties. That is, characteristics or traits that are not the very essence of the thing itself. So, for example, we have trees outside. And those trees have, right now, they have green leaves. But if they're a certain kind of tree, as the year progresses, we know what's going to happen, don't we? The leaves are going to change colors, and they're going to fall off the trees. But I ask you the question, when the leaves have changed colors and fallen on the ground, are the trees still trees? They're still trees, they're just trees without leaves, because leaves are not absolutely necessary to the essence of tree-ness. The tree is a tree whether it has leaves or not. Now, that cannot be said of God. None of the attributes of God mentioned in scripture are anything else but the essence of God. They're not accidental properties that God might be stripped of while he remains God. In other words, God doesn't have goodness. God is goodness. God doesn't just have mercy. He is mercy. God doesn't just have grace. He is grace. God doesn't have compassion. He is the essence of compassion. He is compassion itself and so forth. So don't think of these attributes as so many parts of God. Rather, we know God as He reveals Himself to us, and in the revelation of God, we see His singular glory in different ways. Because we're limited creatures, we think of God as if He were composed of parts, though He actually isn't. The revelation will highlight one aspect, you could say, of God's glory and another aspect of God's glory. But you shouldn't think of them as something apart from God or something different from God. God's attributes are just what God is, so to speak. So as we go through them, keep that in mind. Now, as I told you, the first thing David confesses about the Lord is, you, Lord, are infinitely gracious. And I think there is a very pleasing progression through this aspect of the subject. He confesses to God, first of all, that the Lord is good. The Lord is good. Verse 5, For thou, Lord, art good. Okay? You are good. And then he says, in substance, you are good to sinners. And so then there are further terms he heaps up that have to do with God's relation to sinners, or maybe better to say sinners relation to God. God is ready to forgive, plenteous in mercy. full of compassion, gracious, long-suffering, and so forth. These are relational aspects of a sinner's relationship to God. So God is good. God is good even to sinners. And then thirdly, God is plenteous in truth, that is truthfulness or faithfulness. So let me work through these one at a time. When the scriptures say, and people of God have meditated on these biblical statements over the centuries, that God is good, There is the idea that God is both good in Himself and God is good in His treatment of His creatures. Psalm 145.9 is a great summary statement of that. It says, The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. That is true. If you should ever be tempted by any thoughts that God is not good, banish them from your mind because they're a lie. It was Ulrich Zwingli, the Protestant reformer, who said about God and His goodness these words, this supreme good which is God is by nature kind and bountiful for He desires to impart Himself freely For as he is the fountain source of all things, so also is he unceasingly bountiful to those whom he begot with this one purpose, that they might enjoy his bounty. This good is so exuberantly abundant that it is more than sufficient for the needs of all, for it is limitless and loves to impart itself. Amen. This is an excellent theological description of what the Bible means when it says that God is good. That not just that he has good qualities, but he is goodness itself. And one aspect of his goodness is this benevolent disposition. This proclivity in God who is good to give of his own goodness to his creatures and to delight just in the giving as he does. So God is good in himself and good in his treatment of creatures. But secondly, he's good even to sinners. David praises the Lord as the deity who is of a forgiving nature. ready to forgive. God forgives sinners and delights in doing so. It's not a grudging kind of forgiveness. He is by nature a very forgiving deity. He is plenteous in mercy. This is a phrase that occurs twice in verses 5 and 15. He is, to quote the psalm, full of compassion, gracious, and long suffering, which means he is slow to anger and he is patient. It is a good thing for us beyond words that the Lord is good, not just in himself and not just to creatures generally, but even when we have provoked him, it pleases God to forgive. and to put up with such sinners as ourselves. It was Thomas Goodwin in his works that reveled in these traits of God that are found here in the psalm. When Goodwin wrote about it, he said this, mercy is with God, that is, It is in him as his nature and is all one as if he had said he is of himself and of his own inclination a most gracious and merciful God. Mercifully disposed to forgive, ready to forgive as the 86th Psalm expresses it. It is his name It is His name, that is, forgiveness is His name. Forgiveness is His nature. And in this sense, forgiveness is said to be with God. It is also in His purposes and resolutions of His will. Yea, it is the delight of His soul. Jesus told the parable that everybody knows, famous story about the prodigal son. who disgraced his father's name, squandered his father's wealth, indulged all manner of sinful activity against his father's will. And when the son had thoroughly ruined himself and was near to die, Jesus said, he came to his right mind and said, I will arise and go to my father. When the prodigal son was returning home, Jesus added this detail in the story. His father sees him a long way off and his father ran to greet him and embraced him and said, let's kill the fatted calf and celebrate for this my son was dead and is alive again. The father in the parable of the prodigal son is an illustration of the love of God who forgives sinners. It's in His very nature. You know, to use a creaturely analogy, it's in His DNA to do this. This is the nature of God. He's a God of love. A God of mercy, grace, compassion, patience with His enemies. The love of God is such that it looks upon rebellious and miserable sinners with plans to help. It's the love of God, brethren, that contrives a way to come to the rescue of guilty sinners who ought to be punished by rights. And instead of punishing them, to forgive them and to give them himself in his favor to their everlasting joy. that God does this without at all compromising his own holiness and righteousness is the wisdom and glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Richard Muller commenting on the long-suffering nature of God says, patience and long-suffering are the willingness of God to moderate his anger toward creatures, and either to defer punishment or for a moment withhold his wrath. The most bountiful will of God, whereby he does long bear with sin, which he hates, sparing sinners, not minding their destruction, but that he might bring them to repentance." Muller's quoting someone else here. But this is the God that David acknowledges by faith, a God who is good in himself, good to his creatures, and good even to sinners. And then he says further about this infinite grace of God, that God is plenteous in truth. This is the last phrase in verse 15. He's not only plenteous in mercy, he's also plenteous in truth. And I believe the Hebrew word truth here has a certain wonderful connotation, not of truth in the abstract, but it's, it's related to the concept of truthfulness and faithfulness. That is what the Lord says is completely trustworthy. And, and he will do what he says because he is truth. And so when he speaks, it is true and faithful and trustworthy word. So this plenteous in truth or faithfulness has the connotation of God's enduring goodness and steadfast, loyal love to his chosen people. One of the favorite phrases of the psalmist is about the Lord. His mercy endureth forever. There's one psalm, I think it's the 136th, that repeats the phrase again and again in every verse of the psalm. His mercy endureth forever. His mercy endures forever because His mercy is His very being. His mercy is also His eternal purpose. His mercy is also His covenant promise. Those He loves in eternity, He also loves in time. loves forever because he loves them in Christ who never changes. His beloved Son. So these are the ideas that arise out of the phrase, the Lord is plenteous in faithfulness. It's not unrelated to what the theologians have called the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints from the preservation of God. We believe a doctrine that's called the perseverance of the saints. That is, those who believe in a saving way will always believe in a saving way. But it's not a faith that is upheld by our own strength or any other resource within us. It is a persevering faith that is upheld by the grace of God. In other words, God who begins to save us, continues to save us and shall save us. We are preserved, as Peter says, to an inheritance undefiled, incorruptible in heaven that fades not away through faith, which is ready to be revealed in the last time. So the Lord preserves his saints. And as a consequence of God's gracious preservation of the saints, the saints persevere. That's because the Lord is abundant in truthfulness or faithfulness. Our confession of faith, the Second London Confession of Faith in chapter 17, paragraph two, describes that doctrine this way. This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election. That is, the decree of election cannot be changed. flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and union with him, the oath of God, the abiding of his spirit and the seed of God, seed, S-E-E-D, of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace from all which arises also the certainty and infallibility of the saint's perseverance." Amen. Look, as some simple preacher put it once, I may tremble on the rock, but the rock never trembles under me. The Lord keeps his people because he's plenteous in faithfulness. So God is infinitely gracious. This David confesses. And there are two more things I want to show you. He confesses in the Psalm to conclude the exposition. He says to the Lord in verse eight, you are absolutely incomparable. Look at verse eight with me. Among the gods, there is none like unto thee, O Lord. Neither are there any works likened to thy works. That is, of all the gods that are worshipped throughout the world, there's no god worshipped throughout the world that is comparable to the true and living God, the God of Israel. And there are no works done by those gods or any other creatures that are comparable to the work of the Lord God. Now the gods so-called that were conceived and worshipped by the Gentiles were either pure fabrications or demons in disguise. And in either case these non-existent beings only in their imaginations or these demonic beings that were worshipped in different pagan rites and with different images and so forth, they were all manifestly inferior to the revelation of Israel's God. And this has always been the case. When you become a student of Holy Scripture and you begin to apprehend what God says about himself in the Bible, you realize that All the other gods that are worshipped in the world are completely inferior to the God who reveals himself in Holy Scripture. In fact, the true God is of a different order entirely than any other being real or imaginary. He is in a category by himself absolutely unique. We go astray when we start to say God is like this creature or that creature. There's no creature, human or otherwise, that is really comparable to God. This is the teaching of the Bible. And these gods that are prevalent in false religions are also inferior to the true God in their works. The gods of the nations, the Psalms tell us, were powerless actually to do anything. But our God has done whatsoever He pleased. See the contrast between Him and the false gods in Psalm 115. Please, flip in your Bibles to that page if you would. Psalm 115, starting with verse 3. but our God is in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he pleased. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not. Noses have they, but they smell not. They have hands, but they handle not, feet have they, but they walk not, neither speak they through their throat. So this is a holy ridicule of the false gods that were popular in heathen lands. All they were, according to this description was images of stone or some other substance. That's all they were. Silver and gold or stone or wood. They were just crafts made by men's hands, but they were lifeless and they were do-less. The people worshipped these images and prayed to them and had all kinds of superstitious beliefs about them, but they were unable to deliver their worshippers from peril. And in verse eight, the Psalm here goes on to say, they that make them are likened to them. So is everyone who trusts in them. That is, if you worship these idols, you're gonna become stupid and incapable like they are. In contrast with those who worship the true and living God, they shall be strong and do exploits, it says in Daniel's prophecy. So there is no being, comparable to the Lord God in all of creation. There is no God, no idol, no creaturely being that really bears any resemblance or comparison to the Lord God. This is what David confesses to be true by faith. And then the last thing that I bring to your attention from verses 9 and 10, David confesses to be true about the Lord is, he's universally praiseworthy. Look at verse 9. All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name, for thou art great and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone. What we have in this part of the psalm is a prophecy of future universal worship explained on the basis of God's inherent, unique, and almighty greatness. Because the Lord God is the almighty God, the absolutely unique God, the God who is praiseworthy in all respects, It is certain to happen that all the nations ultimately will come to recognize this about God and be for the glory of God when all is said and done. Now the fulfillment of this prophecy of the true God worship throughout all the nations of the world, both in this age and at its end, is coming true as the nations come to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And on the last day, brethren, as we have been thinking of lately in the last couple of months, when the Lord Jesus Christ is glorified upon his judgment throne, it says all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them like a shepherd does the sheep from the goats. And God will be glorified willingly and cheerfully by the sheep. But even the goats will be constrained to acknowledge that the Lord is God and no other, even as they are condemned and sentenced to their everlasting punishment. Indeed, all the created reality will redound to the glory of God and our Lord Jesus Christ on the last day. One way or another, all his works shall praise him Revelation 15.4 describes this coming to pass when it says, Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? For Thou only art holy, for all nations shall come and worship before Thee, for Thy judgments are made manifest. Amen. Now we see this beginning to occur as people from all the nations of the world are converting and becoming the Church of Christ as a body of believers, universal, but the ultimate fulfillment of the promise will not be seen until the last day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns from heaven. So Psalm 86 then is intended to bring us to worship God by confessing the same things that David confessed by faith. I confess and acknowledge my great enemies, my great need and my great savior. So the point of application I would draw is simple. It's this, will you join with all the faithful by your own confessions? Will you confess the same things David confessed in Psalm 86 by singing Psalm 86 with the understanding and with your spirit and by believing Psalm 86 and praying Psalm 86 along with David. The Lord is our help in this and the Lord is our comfort. Amen.