Great Is the Lord
Summer in the Psalms • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Last Sunday when we looked at Psalm 89, I began by saying that I felt Psalm 89 was a difficult psalm to preach. And the reason for that was because of how at one point in the psalm the Psalmist cries out to God and accuses him of abandoning God’s people.
46 How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire?
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Today’s Psalm is a delight to preach. It’s a delight because it speaks of a God who is great. Who is for us and who cares for us.
A psalm of praise. Of David. 1 I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. 2 Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. 3 Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. 4 One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts. 5 They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty— and I will meditate on your wonderful works. 6 They tell of the power of your awesome works— and I will proclaim your great deeds. 7 They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. 8 The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. 9 The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. 10 All your works praise you, Lord; your faithful people extol you. 11 They tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, 12 so that all people may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. 13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. 14 The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. 15 The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. 16 You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. 17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. 18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. 19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them. 20 The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. 21 My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord. Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever.
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In 2007 an atheist author by the name of Christopher Hitchens wrote a book that in many ways set itself against the truth found in our Psalm this morning.
The psalmist says,
3 Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
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Christopher Hitchens wrote a book though called “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”. His hope for any person of faith who would pick up the book and read it is that they would abandon that faith, give up any believe in a god, as religion itself is nothing more than barbarian superstition.
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At one point he writes this about organized religion:
“[Organized religion is] Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
The book became quite popular, in fact I suspect many people even today believe what he wrote, that we’d all be much better off without religion messing up people minds and lives.
But here’s, what you might call, a scientific fact. He’s wrong.
Harvard Professor, Tyler Vanderweele has studied and written extensively on human happiness and human flourishing....in particular on the intersection of human happiness and flourishing with religion and spirituality.
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In Oct 2016 he wrote an article for USA Today called, “Religion May Be a Miracle Drug” he notes that people who go to church at least once a week are happier, healthier, and longer lived that people who don’t. In his research he’s found that going to church once a week or more is almost as good for you as stopping smoking; children who are brought up going to church tend to end up being happier and having a greater sense of purpose in their lives than those raised non-religious, and that people who never go to church are as much as five times more likely to kill themselves than people who go every week. In fact at one point he says that attending religious services weekly may be the best protection against suicide there is.
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It turns out that Hitchen’s claim that religion poisons everything is entirely wrong. The evidence suggests as one author puts it: “…rather than religion being poisonous, going to church every week is like drinking a magical medicine.” (Rebbeca McLaughlin)
That same author, Rebbeca McLaughlin, citing the work of Tyler Vanderweele and others, summarizes it this way:
“Experts have found that going to church is really good for your mental and physical health. People who go to church weekly tend to be: happier, healthier, longer-lived, less likely to suffer from depression, less likely to commit suicide, less likely to take drugs or abuse alcohol, more likely to volunteer, and more generous with their money.”
Moreover, she continues,
“Psychologists have also found that many of the things that the Bible teaches are actually good for us, including: going to church, putting loving relationships first, helping others, being thankful, forgiving others, sticking with hard tasks in the long term, and not loving money.” (Rebecca McLaughlin)
So, you might be asking, what do these scientific studies have to do with Psalm 145.?
Well, I think that you’ll agree with me when I observe that the writer of Psalm 145 seems to be the kind person who is well grounded. Their life is well aligned with God and his goodness. They are content, satisfied, purposeful. Their life has meaning and they know that their ground of being is found in God alone.
I’m not alone in reading the psalm that way. In fact, in the Jewish tradition there was a custom that urged people to memorize and recite this psalm 3 times a day believing that simply the habit of speaking these words would ground one’s life in God’s eternal goodness. This practice takes the words of v. 2 quite literally,
2 Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever.
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And to underscore that tradition even more, something about this psalm that we completely miss when we read it in English, is that it is written as an acrostic. Every line of the poem begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. One obvious reason for doing that is to make it easier to memorize, which many did and still do today, but that literary structure also intends to say something about the all encompassing power and goodness of God and a life well lived.
You might call this poem, the ABC’s of thankful living, or the ABC’s of God’s goodness and splendor. You get my sense....just the structure of the poem seems to communicate that.
And one more thing.... many students of the Bible have recognized that the place of this psalm in the psalter, or the Book of Psalms, is very strategic and intentional. This Psalm begins the glorious Hallelujah crescendo that the Book of Psalms ends with.
What do I mean by that? Well the word Hallelujah, in English is simply “Praise the Lord.”
Psalm 145 ends with this verse:
21 My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord. Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever.
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And then Psalm 146 starts with Praise the Lord and ends with Praise the Lord…so does Psalm 147, 148, 149, and 150. In fact Psalm 145 begins the climactic “hallelujah chorus” that ends the Book of Psalms.
So I hope you are beginning to see how this Psalm flows out of a life that is well-grounded in the goodness and faithfulness of God.
Now if I can take you back to that list of qualities that psychologists have found that are actually good for us....remember them? ... going to church, putting loving relationships first, helping others, being thankful, forgiving others, sticking with hard tasks in the long term, and not loving money.
Notice with me how all of these qualities in some way are connected to this psalm.
Going to Church
[Much of what is contained in this psalm is precisely what we do and remember each time we “go to church” and gather together like we are doing right now. We exalt God our great King…we praise him, we joyfully sing of his righteousness and speak of his glorious splendor..... and according to the studies that I shared at the beginning you could say, WE NEED TO DO THIS....its good for us.....it changes us and makes us better people...
Listen to what John Ortberg writes about worship in his book, If You Want to Walk On Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat, writes about our needing to worship God.
I need to worship. I need to worship because without it I can forget that I have a Big God beside me and live in fear. I need to worship because without it I can forget his calling and begin to live in a spirit of self-preoccupation. I need to worship because without it I lose a sense of wonder and gratitude and plod through life with blinders on. I need to worship because my natural tendency is toward self-reliance and stubborn independence."
What about some of the other qualities:
Putting Loving Relationships first....helping others..... The psalmist writes that the “Lord is good to all, he has compassion on all he has made.”...... it is precisely this quality of God that impacts how we in turn treat others.
Being Thankful.... I think we can say that the whole psalm is a testimony of praise and thankfulness to God..
Forgiving other.... The psalmist writes that the “Lord is gracious and compassionate slow to anger and rich in love.” Again, it is precisely this quality of God that has shown mercy and forgiveness to us that transforms us to be forgiving towards others.
For me one of the most beautiful sections of this psalm is that place where we read of various attributes of God that in very specific ways affect our relationship with him. We find them in vv. 13-20. Let me list some of them for us:
The Lord is trustworthy, he is faithful, he upholds those who fall and lifts those who are bowed down. He gives nourishment and opens his hand to satisfy our desires.
The Lord is righteous, he is near to all who call, he fulfills the desires of those to turn to him, he hears, he saves, he watches over.....and then finally, the wicked he destroys.
As I read these attributes of God and of how we are to live in response to them, I find them to be a kind of defiant confession against the kind of thinking that prevails in much of our world. In our world the self-made are often lifted up. Those who are self-seeking and self-sufficiency are praised. Those who are true to themselves, those who are self-sustaining, are often lifted up. Christopher Hitchens declares enlightened humanity is great, not God.
But the psalm speaks of another way to live, a better way. A way of daily trust in God, believing his promises and knowing his care over our lives believing he is faithful in all he does.
And when in the fulness of time God came to us in Jesus Christ, he invited us to this way of living,
“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
He fills those who in humility are dependent on God, but those who are self-made and self-sufficient he sends away empty.
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
Do you hear echoes of Psalm 145 in these words of Jesus?
19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
As I conclude, let me draw our attention to v. 18 more specifically:
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
…to all who call on him in truth. Our natural inclination as Ortberg writes is to live with a sense of self-reliance and stubborn independence. That is the truth.... we are inclined to believe that God is not Great.... that is the human condition that the Bible calls sinfulness and pride. And when we acknowledge that truth, we find in God One who has come to forgive our sinfulness and pride. In Jesus Christ we hear the cry of God....”Father, forgive them.” As we confess our sin, and call on God....we can know with confidence that the Lord is near. He hears, he satisfies, he saves.