Psalm 145, “The Kingdom of God, Strong and Kind”

The Kingdom of God is one way to talk about God in a way humans can understand. Because we all live with some kind of authority in our lives: mothers and fathers and teachers and governors and presidents, and kings. The Kingdom of God is not one place. It is God’s authority to rule and reign over the universe He created. What kind of a king is He? He is a cultivator. His dominion, His rule and reign results in fruitfulness and flourishing for His creation.

The Kingdom of God also helps us understand ourselves. God created us in His image. He wants us to share and participate in His dominion over creation. Whether you are an adult or a child, a boss or an employee, a teacher or a student, God wants us to cultivate fruitfulness in the lives of others and in creation. That begins with cultivating our relationship with God. When our relationship with God is flourishing, we get better at cultivating fruitfulness in the lives of others.

But we are also in another election year. We have choices to make about who we grant authority to run our country. The choices we make reflect the health of our relationship with God. And those choices determine to some degree the level of flourishing for the humans that live in our country. When we have people in authority who reflect the kingdom of God, we have justice and everyone can flourish, living lives of peace and wholeness.

Over the next two weeks we’ll compare the way that God reigns as king with the way humans reign as His partners. We’ll see what we should look for in a good human ruler. They should reflect God’s rule. This week we have a psalm that was written by a king in praise of God, who is his King. We will see that worship cultivates trust in God, who is a strong and kind King. King David will begin with a call to worship for himself.

I Have a Reason to Praise God Every Day

Psalm 145:1–3 (ESV)

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.

What kind of a King is God? He is a great king. We use the word “great” all the time, and we forget what it means. But the word for “great” in the Hebrew Bible means big and strong. His dominion is universal. His power is ultimate and unrivaled. There is no place in this universe you could go to escape God. He has all the power in the universe.

The reason King David is drawn to extol God, to bless His name, and to praise Him forever is that His greatness is unsearchable. If God was like a mountain, you could never reach the top of His greatness. If God was like an ocean, you could never reach the bottom or the other side of His greatness. If God were a spring of refreshing water, His greatness would never run dry.

Psalm 36:5–6 (ESV)

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O Lord.

David says

Psalm 145:2 (ESV)

Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.

Do you have a blessing for God every day? Could you really praise the name of the LORD forever and ever? There is nothing that will cultivate your relationship with God like worship. Find some reason to praise God every day and you will reshape your thinking and your affections according to God’s higher power and better plans. Your trust in God will grow and give you peace.

What are some ways you have found to build worship into your daily habits?

The reason most people don’t trust God is they either don’t trust His power or they don’t trust His goodness. They look at the problems in our world or in our lives and it’s easy to think, if there is a God, either He isn’t strong enough to change things or He isn’t good enough, He doesn’t care. So, David is going to address both of those.

Verses 4-13 tell us that God our King wields the power of love.

Worship God, Whose Power is Love

Psalm 145:4–5 (ESV)

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.

David will go back in forth in these verses between saying that we should tell of God’s power to the next generation but we should also meditate on it ourselves. God does mighty, powerful things. Every generation has some story to tell of some powerful work God did.

What are some powerful acts of God that you talk about with the next generation? What are some mighty works of God that you meditate on?

From verses 4-13, David will describe God’s works with words like mighty, wondrous, and awesome. He describes God’s glorious splendor of majesty, His greatness, His righteousness, His power. David focuses on God’s kingdom. He says it is an everlasting kingdom,

Psalm 145:13 (ESV)

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

You can’t escape God’s authority. So, the way God wields power and authority is significant if we are going to trust Him. These verses form a chiasm, which is a fancy word that means the words he begins with are the same words he ends with, and the words in the middle are the most important.

David begins and ends this section (verses 4 and 13) by saying that every generation can tell of God’s work in our world. But what is that work? It is formed by God’s heart. To represent that, David describes God’s heart in the middle of this section, in verse 8.

Psalm 145:8 (ESV)

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

David is quoting God’s own words about Himself. When Moses saw God’s power and asked God to reveal His true identity, these are the words God chose. How does God wield power? He uses the power of HIs love. At His heart, God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

What kind of a King is God? He uses HIs kingdom authority to cultivate fruitfulness in others.

Psalm 145:9 (ESV)

The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.

In our human nature we don’t trust power imbalances. If one person has all the power in a relationship, we try to find ways to balance that out. How do you balance out the power dynamics in our relationship with an all-mighty Creator? He has all the power. He has all the authority in our lives. There is literally nothing you and I can do to somehow balance that. But He can. And He has. He chooses to wield His power and authority in goodness and mercy.

Worship God, Whose Kindness is Powerful

(The Father’s Day portion of today’s message) I heard a psychologist speak once about a pattern he had seen in his patients. Men who had problems in their life all seemed to have had a difficult relationship with their father. Their fathers all had an imbalance. They were either strong, but not good, or good, but not strong.

We as humans, but especially our culture, has difficulty balancing two truths at the same time. Some parents want their boys to be strong, The message is, “do sports, don’t cry, achieve success, pick yourself up by the bootstraps.” Not always, but often these boys can grow into men who use their power to be self-serving and arrogant. Other parents want their boys to be good. This comes across as, “sit still, calm down, be nice.” These boys can grow into men who become passive and timid. We are really pretty bad at training our boys to be men who are both strong and good, to use their natural power to be kind.

When we look at God we see a different kind of person. He is all-powerful. But look in verses 14-20 at how God uses His power.

Psalm 145:14 (ESV)

The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.

He doesn’t take advantage of the weak. He lifts up those who can’t lift themselves up. He gives advantage to the disadvantaged. He takes care of His creatures.

Psalm 145:15–16 (ESV)

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.

In humans, we know people who are either righteous and unkind or kind and overly tolerant. God is both righteous and kind.

Psalm 145:17 (ESV)

The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.

God doesn’t compromise holiness for love, or vice versa. In fact, God’s kingdom is the cultivating of our flourishing in fruitfulness. And the ways we flourish are not limited to our material prosperity. He certainly is able to provide us with food and clothing. But He also cultivates our spiritual flourishing.

Psalm 145:18–19 (ESV)

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.

We can only flourish as humans if we learn truth and the fear of the Lord. But the truth we are learning is that the Lord is near to those who recognize their need. When we recognize our spiritually poverty and call on God to help us, He comes near. When we cry to God out of a desire for more of Him, He hears us. He saves us from our spiritual poverty, our sin, our self-serving nature. He cultivates new desires in us. We want to love Him more. We desire to live holy lives that please Him.

This leads us to Jesus. Jesus said,

Matthew 5:3 (ESV)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

When we recognize our poverty of spirit, we see our need to come back to the kingdom of God. To surrender to His rule and reign. To give Him authority in our lives. But in our sin, we are consumed with self-serving and self-centeredness. We corrupt power into domination over others. We become passive when we should actively cultivate fruitfulness in others and with God. In our sin we are incapable of helping ourselves or anyone else. We can only cry out, “God save me.” But as the Psalm said,

Psalm 145:18–19 (ESV)

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.

When we confess our sin and repent, He draws near, and when we call on Him for salvation, He hears our cry and saves us. And this is why He sent Jesus. When the whole world was groaning in sin and helpless under the corruption of rulers who were powerful but not good, God sent Jesus. His death on the cross was a mighty act of God’s mercy to atone for our sin. And Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was a wondrous work of God’s power over death and His vindication of Jesus’ righteousness. All to demonstrate His heart.

Psalm 145:8 (ESV)

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Communion

When we have received God’s love for us, He begins to cultivate this even further. Look at the closing verses of Psalm 145,

Psalm 145:20–21 (ESV)

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.

The imagery is God tending His garden. He preserves the fruitful things and the pulls out the weeds. The fruitful life in God’s kingdom is the person who loves God. The weeds, according to this psalm and the teaching of Jesus, are those that have seeds of evil in them. They continue in their self-love, using their power to take from others instead of cultivating fruitfulness in others. These have no place in the kingdom of God. God removes them.

But for those who repent of their sin and believe in Jesus as our Savior, we are restored a loving relationship with God. He cultivates that love in us for the sake of His world. We live more fruitful lives of worship. And we call others to worship God forever and ever.

Doxology

Questions for Discussion

What are you thankful for this week? What is going well? What has been difficult this week?

What is leading you to praise God right now? What are some ways God has worked that lead you to worship?

What do we learn about God in Psalm 145? How does verse 8 help us understand the heart of God’s nature?

How does God’s justice for the wicked fit in with this nurturing love for whose who fear and love Him?

What do we learn about ourselves in the passage?

When we consider how God demonstrates His power, what does this teach us about His character?

When you think about God drawing near to you, does that give you fear, peace, or something else? Why?

What are some things that lead you to cry to God?

What are some ways you are telling the next generation about God’s kingdom and work?

How will you respond to this passage this week?