In so many ways, Psalm 145 really is like so many other Psalms. As Elder White pointed out at the beginning here, there are a lot of similarities, for example, there between Psalm 145 and 146. Psalm 145 is a song of praise, we're told, at the beginning, telling the wonder of God's mighty deeds and the glory of His being, as we're told throughout the Psalter. It's one of seven acrostic poems in the Psalter, and you remember what those are, each succeeding verse beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, that could have been for, as a mnemonic device to help memorization, it could have been for beauty perhaps, which is a motive in and of itself at times. We're told in the heading that this is a Psalm of David, It's one of 73 Psalms that are directly attributed to David and the Psalter. There are a couple in the New Testament that might add to that number, or a couple of references in the New Testament that might add to that number. And yet, there is something distinct about this Psalm. It is at the head of the last six Psalms in the book, Psalm 145 to 150. And these are all Psalms of unbounded praise to God because he alone is worthy of praise. Psalm 148, 13 puts it, his name alone is exalted. And the Psalter ends on this note of great praise, particularly That's particularly striking when you go from 140 through 144, where there are these cries of deliverance, these appeals to God for his salvation. 145 through 150, these songs of great salvation and praise belonging to God. And yet, this is the only psalm to actually use the word praise as a categorical description in the heading. Now that surprised me when I came across that in one of the commentaries. I didn't find that out because I researched every word in the Hebrew throughout the entire Psalter. That was one that one of the commentaries pointed out here, and I went back and looked at it. It is the only time that that word praise, as a song of praise, is used in the heading, in the title of the psalm. This is also the last of the psalms that is attributed to David. Now, we can't really know if this is the last one, which means it is the last psalm he ever wrote. We don't know that. But it is a powerful summary of all that we have heard from David's heart of faith, channeled through his pen by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. All the wonder and the praise that his cries lifted up to his father in heaven, to his covenant God, all get summed up here in this great declaration of praise. So the purpose of the psalm seems very clear. David wants to draw all people into the praise of God, not just because he is great, but because his greatness is unsearchable, as he says in verse three. I want you to just take a moment and let that sink in, please. God's greatness is unsearchable. Can you begin to conceive what that means? The idea here is that his greatness cannot be fathomed. I'm reminded of a time when we lived on Okinawa. A friend of mine was a dive instructor, and I didn't want to get fully certified in scuba diving, but I loved the water, and so we went snorkeling one day, and there was this perfect spot where there was a shelf on the reef that went out about, oh, 100 feet, and it was maybe 15 feet deep, and it was perfect because you could see the fish. It was wonderful. And we swam out, and as we swam out, we went over the edge of this shelf, and it just was a drop of hundreds of feet into this beautiful blue abyss. And I found myself paddling back. And I lifted my head out of the water, and Joe lifted his head out of the water, and he said, what's the problem? I said, that's really deep. And he said, you can drown as easily in 15 feet as you can in 15 fathoms. There was something scary about it because I knew I could not touch bottom in that. God's greatness is unsearchable. Our feet don't touch bottom. anywhere in the being of God. He can be searched and investigated. He makes himself known, yes, but we can never get to the bottom of him standing on our own two feet as if it were we have neatly defined and summed God up and put him down in our book and placed him in our pocket. Never. You see, David is declaring what Job knew all too well. It's interesting when you go back through Job because that word search or unsearchable is used a lot in Job. Job is repeatedly rebutting his false counselors by reminding them that God cannot be figured out the way that they think he can. And the Lord himself rebukes those counselors at the end of that book. Job reminds the counselor in chapter nine, verse 10, he says, speaking of the Lord, he says, he does great things beyond searching out and marvelous things beyond number. Even when we can affirm so many true things about God, Job says, behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. How small a whisper do we hear of him, but the thunder of his power, who can understand? David's declaring what Isaiah declared in Isaiah 40 verse 28, have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not grow faint or weary. His understanding is unsearchable." David's also exalting in the psalm here in the same way that the Apostle Paul does. There in Romans 11.33, in the psalm of this unspeakably glorious gospel that he has been declaring for 11 chapters, and he breaks into this moment of praise, he says, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable in his ways. This is the testimony throughout scripture that this is who our God is. And if you and I would have a proper view of him, it has to take into account his unsearchable greatness. Now, an unbeliever might hear this and say, you may even be saying this today. I'll see, you know, God is incomprehensible. The Bible says it. No one can ever really know anything about God, even if he really exists. We can't say anything true about God because he's beyond knowing. We can try, but we will never really know him. Now in academic theology, some people take that route and it's called apophatic theology. It's a big word. Negative theology. It focuses on everything we don't know about God, rather than cataphatic, rather than what is revealed about God. But that's not what David is talking about here. David is speaking as a believer, as one who lives by faith. David and Job and Isaiah and Paul are all affirming that it's not the hidden things, it's not the secret things, as Deuteronomy 29, 29 describes it, that are unsearchable. It's true, there are things that are hidden from our sight. There are things that are secret in the mind of God and we will never know them. We cannot fathom them. But that's not what David is talking about when he talks about the greatness of God being unsearchable. You see, it's what we do know. It's what he does reveal to us that bowls us over and puts us on our faces and leads us to the cry, your greatness is unsearchable. To the child of God, That draws us out in faith, doesn't it? There are many who would hear that and say, well, you know what, what's the use? And they're pushed away by their unbelief. But I trust that's not true of you today. By faith this draws you out that you would continue to pursue him and to know him because he's made himself known and to continue to praise him now and forever knowing that you will never be able to ever get to the end of that praise because his greatness is unsearchable. David begins the psalm in these first three verses with a very personal expression of how overwhelmed he is by God's greatness. He expresses this not as if he's talking about an abstract concept. In the way many theologians might tend to do, as if this is just something more than he can understand. There are things out there, they're just, yeah, I just can't get them. He's not speaking in the abstract. He's speaking in the concrete, in the concrete context of relationship. Because David speaks as one who lives in real, vital relationship with this God, whose greatness is unsearchable. He says, 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. He says that this is what he will do. It's an expression of his desire, it's an expression of his intent by faith. He takes great joy in extolling and blessing and praising God who brought him into covenant with himself. Notice that David doesn't put any sort of time constraints on this. He says he will do this now, every day, and for eternity, forever and ever. And again, you might look at that and think, well, that makes for a nice poetry. I will love you forever and ever, honey. Roses are red, violets are blue. It is not just poetic flourish. David knows that he can praise God day by day for eternity and that he will never exhaust God's praiseworthiness. The Lord is great and greatly to be praised now and forever because his greatness is inexhaustible. We can't even begin to fathom this. We might think even that David could have stopped right there and say, enough said. That alone, those three verses alone are worthy of our meditations through eternity. That this would be the position that he would bring me into as a child of God. restored and reconciled in a relationship with my maker and with my redeemer, that I should think that I could now and forever take his praises on my lips because he's great. Because his greatness is greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable. It could happily end right there. But he doesn't. You see, he goes on to declare God's unsearchable greatness by meditating on the wonder of his works and the mercy of his works. You see, it's what he knows. It's what God has revealed and declared to him that draws him more and more and more into this praise, which leads him to more and more wonder at the majesty and the mercy of his God. In both of these, David does not separate, he doesn't drive a wedge between God's works in creation and his works in redemption, as if these are two sort of distinct things that, like, God created, and then at another point he redeemed. He sees that this one living and true God that he is creator and redeemer, that all of his works tell of his greatness. He is the God who both sovereignly creates and recreates. His greatness is unsearchable. So, first of all, in verses four through 13, David seems to focus more on the majesty of God's works. The picture that David describes here in these verses is like a great theater, if you could imagine it, with a never-ending drama going on. That drama is the glorious splendor of God's majesty and his wondrous works, as he says there in verse 5. And there is this ongoing call and response, call and response from generation to generation. Here you have David in the midst of the generations. there in the presence of all of God's works. And there is this call back and forth between God's greatness. David says, I will extol you. And the generations say we commend God's works to one another and creation itself speaks the might of God's awesome deeds. On and on and on. David's is just one voice in the midst of this antiphonal praise. Notice the way that he moves back and forth between this, one generation shall commend and your work shall speak of the might of your deeds. I will declare your greatness together, day by day and forever. We are all declaring God's greatness. Friday afternoon seemed like the first real break I had during the week, and it was wonderful. I was able to get away from work a little bit early. It was an amazingly beautiful day, and I'm sitting on my patio in the afternoon reading Psalm 145, meditating on this, making my preparations for today, and there I am thinking about this, and I realized I'm sitting in the theater. As my own heart was being drawn out, I heard the birds singing, the wind in the trees, kids down the street playing. I heard planes overhead, a train in the distance. lawnmower, cars going up and down the streets. And it struck me, these are all the works of the Lord. Not just his immediate works of creation, the birds, the wind, the kids, me, but the immediate ones too. Those things that have been created by the gifts and skill and ingenuity that God has given to men and women, lawnmowers and weed eaters and cars and planes, these are the works of God too, aren't they? And they all, day by day, declare the praise of God. Think of that tomorrow morning when you get in your car and you put the key in the ignition or the little fob in the little slot or whatever it is now, and it starts. That engine is declaring the might of God's works and telling His glory. This is what creation is doing. We can never escape this ongoing chorus around us day by day telling us the splendor of God's majesty and the fame of His abundant goodness. We just have to have ears to hear and eyes to see. This is precisely what Psalm 19 tells us, isn't it? Heavens are declaring the glory of God and day by day pours forth speech. They're telling us the unsearchable greatness of God. It is inescapable. When in verse seven, David says that God's works shall sing aloud of your righteousness, well, what are they declaring actually? And it's interesting that David goes immediately to the words which the Lord himself has declared concerning his name, his revealed person to his people, where he says here, In verse 8, echoing, recalling there Exodus 34, 6, when God made himself known to Moses, the Lord, the Lord, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. When all of these works are singing aloud of God's righteousness, what are they declaring? The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. It's the proclamation of the name of God as he makes himself known to his people. It's that proclamation that reverberates throughout scripture when we hear this again and again and again. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and steadfast love. This is the word there, probably familiar with this, it is his chesed, it is his covenantally faithful love that speaks of his integrity, his faithfulness, his affection, his tenderness to us, all of this, as the one who has drawn us into covenant with himself. In verse 9, notice the scope of all of that goodness and mercy that is declared, that he is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. So verses 10 through 13 say this all again and tell us that this really is the purpose of creation. to declare the goodness of God, to declare his mercy, to declare him to us. So, in verses 10 through 13, we get those same words used again. We give thanks to you, bless you. The works speak, they tell, we will make known the deeds of the Lord. The same words that he's used earlier, but now they are exercised to say something particularly about God's kingdom. And in this context, all of these works together with all his saints make up his kingdom. It is his works of creation and redemption. It is his saints. It is every creature. It is all of his works in creation. That when we look at actually what give rule and order to the very world in which we live, that if indeed he is king of kings and lord of lords, that is not simply over his church, but over all things. Believer and unbeliever alike, this is his kingdom. And his kingdom, if you read carefully there in verse 13, his kingdom has that same unsearchable quality, doesn't it? That it's everlasting, it's enduring through all generations because it is your kingdom, oh Lord. It is your dominion that endures. The second half of verse 13, which, if the ESV, put parentheses around this part, okay? In verse 13, in the English Standard Version, which I read, you'll see brackets around the last half of verse 13, the Lord is faithful in all his works and kind in all of his words. There's some discrepancies between manuscripts, some include this, some don't include this, but this fits in with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the noon, what you might think is like an N. It's the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet and is supplied in there and has been testified through the various translations and compilations here of the scriptures that this is faithful to the text of this psalm. So this second half here, verse 13, is so good for us because it sums it all up in declaring that the Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all of his works. And that word kind is that same word as love has said. He is loving in all of his works. If you listen carefully to these verses here, verse 4 down through verse 13, you can almost hear a certain breathlessness in these verses, much like what you hear from Paul in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 14. David is overwhelmed with the wonder of God's majesty. He is overwhelmed with the might and the glory and the majesty that is declared in all of his works. And yet he knows, to borrow Job's words, that these are just the outskirts of his ways, a whisper of his power. Because David has a heart after God, because he loves him, David is willing to sit down and just be patient and meditate. Just to stop and think about this. One of the things this calls us to do is just stop. Consider the works of the Lord. Take a moment and just meditate, let your mind reel at the wonder of God's majesty. Take a moment and let yourself be amazed, whether it is his works out there or it's his works in here. That the one who spoke and brought into being all things that have been made, the one who by the word of his power upholds all things right now so that we can be here doing what we're doing and we're not just vaporized in a moment. We're here and then we're not here. At this same one is pleased to change my heart. We need to take time to meditate on the majesty of God's works. Now, some people might look at that and say, well, that's not practical. You should be doing practical things in your Christian life, things that have impact, things that are missional. There's nothing more practical and missional than you letting your heart simply bask in the wonder of God's greatness and the majesty of his works. It's one of the most practical things you and I can do. But in the second part of the psalm here, he goes on, verses 14 through 21, to focus. He's looked at the majesty of God's works. Now he zeroes in and he's focused more on the mercy of God's works. In these verses, he shifts his focus now more toward the object of all of his works. And the object is on sinful men and women, on its creatures. And the theme throughout here is mercy. That mercy is marked with compassion that is comprehensive, almost to the point where it is almost uncomfortably non-discriminating by God. It's a good reminder, God is not like us. But the words here, verses 14 through 21, you get this repetition of all, all, all, all. And when God shows his mercy, there is a wideness in it. When he demonstrates this compassion, there is a wideness to it, that there is a comprehensiveness in his gracious dealings with all of his works. In verse 14, he shows tenderness, tenderness in his power. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. He shows generosity in his care. He says, when the eyes of all look to you and you give them food in their due season, verse 16, you open your hand. God comes to us with an open hand. Which means that he is not a tight-fisted miser who begrudgingly gives, you know, a speck here, a speck there. As if just to tantalize and sort of bait people along, that is not who our God is. I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite Christmas movies, pardon me, It's a Wonderful Life. and Mr. Potter. And that moment, one of the climaxes in the movie there where George is ready to finally be able to go to school after the death of his father and they're in the boardroom and they're trying to settle the accounts, the matters there for the Bailey Building and Loan and Mr. Potter speaks up and he says, no, we should just liquidate everything. I mean, look at this. Look at this rabble that you're doing business with. Guys who sit in their taxi cars on the curb and they should be thrifty and they should work and save so that one day they could be able to have a house. It's all that George Bailey can take. And he says, look, I don't know why my dad ever started this business in the first place, but he did. And he says, what is it that people are supposed to wait for? How are they supposed to raise their children? Why don't you want them to have this? He says, I don't know about my dad, but he says, as far as you are concerned, Mr. Potter, you are a warped, frustrated old man who sees people as cattle. There are people who think that's who God is. Just cattle to be done with as he pleases. Tight-fisted miser. He doesn't delight in giving to his people. Or we might even say, well, he delights in giving to his saints. No. That is not what David is saying. He comes to every creature with an open hand. He's full of compassion and generosity beyond searching out. Even says here, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. And we might read that and think, well, that's backwards, isn't it? Something's wrong here. I thought we were made to satisfy God's desires. I thought my chief end was His glory. But you open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. What do we do with that? See, some people look at this and think, well, maybe David is referring here to animals. God cares for the animals, that he gives to them all their needs. How could God do this for sinful men and women after all? Jesus gives us the helpful correction that we need here, doesn't he? In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, where he says, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Even to the evil and the unjust, God comes with an open hand. And if we would be sons and daughters of our Father in heaven, we would do the same. He shows his tenderness, his generosity. He also shows his nearness, his presence. And now he does say specifically that there is a particularity about God's nearness, his presence to his saints. To those who do call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him. He preserves all those who love Him. That there is a uniqueness about God's nearness to those who have been drawn to Him in faith. And that it is a faith that is marked by holy love and holy fear. Again, there's no division here. He is the God who loves and saves, and he is the God who judges and destroys. Call the wicked, he will destroy. And it's all of this that tell us that his greatness is unsearchable. This is the story that David's mouth says, I want to tell this story. I want to extol you, my God, and my King for this. And he's calling all flesh, bless the Lord's holy name forever and ever. Let all flesh bless his name, he says. This is his desire. everyone would be brought into this worship, praise of God. So, when was the last time that you were overwhelmed by the greatness of the Lord? Not overwhelmed by what you do not know, That's pretty easy, and yet it seems I've heard a phrase, you don't know what you don't know. When was the last time you were overwhelmed by what you do know about Him? Overwhelmed by His power, His mercy that has been exercised for your sake. so that you find yourself and your heart being changed. Have you ever had a moment where you've recognized that the Lord has changed your heart so that you can love people that you know you have no good reason to love? He's changed your heart. Have you ever found yourself hating the thing you do and desiring the thing that you don't do? Because he's changed your heart. Do you find yourself ever mourning how little your faith is and crying out to him, Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief? Because he's changed your heart. Are you ever overwhelmed with how unsearchably great the gospel is? He should save us. You see, our sin takes us in a direction where we tend to make God small and we make ourselves fat. Fat and happy and sassy along with it. See, it is my sin, it is my desire to really be God and to rule my universe that tells me that I can figure God out and keep him neatly in my mental and experiential boxes. But this is that lie that was told in the garden, isn't it? And the serpent, in all his craftiness, approached Eve. And in that craftiness, he demonstrated his presumption that he could tell Eve what God was really thinking and doing. Did he really say? Because he knows. When you eat of it, you'll be like him. It was in his craftiness that he deceived her by thinking that he could tell her something that God wasn't willing to, that the serpent understood God better than God understood himself. This is the lie that has been told from the beginning. Do you ever hear that lie? I heard it recently. I was waiting to speak actually with my commanding officer, the admiral at Surf Lant, and there I was in the waiting room, waiting because that's what you do when you go to see the admiral. And thankfully they had a nice bookshelf and magazine rack, and it wasn't People Magazine, things like that. It was the Naval War College Journal and important things like that. And so I went over to the bookshelf, and there was a book by an author whose name I recognize, Ray Kurzweil. And the book was about the, now the word, bring it with me, the word is right out of my head, the, not serendipity, the moment where artificial intelligence passes human intelligence. What is that called? Starts with an S. Singularity? Yes. I think that's it. Forgive me. Senior moment. And there's a passage, a paragraph in his first chapter there where he says, you see, this is what's coming. We will know everything. We will be able to heal our diseases. We will be able to answer the things we've never been able to answer. We will be able to master our universe. And there it is, same lie from the garden. Same thing that men and women have believed throughout the ages, making God very small, very searchable, and ourselves of infinite worth and value. The commentator, Hodge, actually writing on Romans 11, says this. He says, we can only wonder and adore. We can never understand. And it is well that it is so. What can be understood must be limited. What is fully comprehended no longer exercises, excites, or enlarges. It is because God is infinite in his being and incomprehensible in his judgments and his ways that he is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and blessedness. You see, if you think you have God figured out, You are no longer being exercised in faith, your heart is no longer being excited in love, and you are no longer being enlarged in compassion and mercy toward your neighbors, because your God has become so small. Calvin, in his preface to his commentary on the Psalter, says that the Psalms serve two purposes for us. They teach us how to praise. Psalm 145 is such a wonderful example of that, teaching us how to praise, giving us our language of worship in so many ways. But he says there's another purpose to the Psalms, and that is they teach us cross bearing. Psalms teach us how to bear the cross. Now, for Calvin, which, by the way, if you've never read his golden booklet of the true Christian life, it is a pearl of great value. Sell what you need to and go get it. It is a wonderful little booklet. It's a portion of his Institutes, but it's for centuries, it's been used in and of itself as a freestanding volume. But for Calvin, cross-bearing is shorthand for living the Christian life. Calvin is taking Jesus at his word when he says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. So what does that sort of cross bearing, taking up our cross and following Jesus look like? Well, why did Jesus bear his cross? Wasn't it in love? What does cross bearing look like? Cross bearing looks like love. Love to God and love to neighbor. Love to the unlovely and unlovable. Love that is shaped by the unsearchable greatness of God. How can that be? Because you see, it's when I stand before this unsearchable greatness that, and when I see Him and hear this by faith, I'm humbled. Who am I? It's a humbling thing to stand before the unsearchable greatness of God. Who am I to not love my neighbor? When God has come to me with an open hand, when he lifts up all who are falling, when he gives food in its due season, satisfies the desires, who am I to withhold? It leads us into this life of love. This really is why Paul sums up his declaration of the gospel there in Romans 11.33. Oh, the depth. That unfathomable depth. The riches, the wisdom, and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. This leads us in faith to him. And it leads us on in worship today. And it will be our song of praise throughout eternity. And Lord, give us hearts to take joy in that today. Amen.