Hi everybody, it's Rob from Trinity Streetsville and here at Trinity we're just a group of
ordinary people learning to follow Jesus in our own day.
Hey, every songwriter at some point writes their very last song.
They might not know it's their last song, but if they did, I bet they'd want to make
a truly meaningful song that people were singing for years to come.
Well today we are going to look at one of the greatest singer songwriters of all time
and a song that he wrote 3,000 years ago and guess what?
People are still singing it today.
So what was his secret?
We'll stick around and find out.
Reading today is from Psalm 145.
I will exalt you, my God, the King.
I will praise your name forever and ever.
Every day I will praise you and extol your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise.
His greatness no one can fathom.
One generation commends your works to another.
They tell of your mighty acts.
They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty.
And I will meditate on your wonderful works.
The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does.
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desires of those who fear him.
He hears their cry and saves them.
The Lord watches over all who love him, but the wicked he will destroy.
My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord.
Let every creature praise his holy name forever and ever.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Hey, so every single musical artist at some point in their life will sing their very last
song.
And that last song could be filled with deep, deep meaning, or it could be just a trivial
song that they rattled off and they didn't know the tragedy was right around the corner.
So let's take for example, this is David Bowie.
David Bowie has written something like 400 to 500 songs throughout his life.
But just before he passed away, he released his very last single and it was a song called
Lazarus.
It was full of deep, deep meaning.
This is Janis Joplin.
Janis Joplin's very last song that she ever wrote was a song called Mercedes Benz.
And the line went like this, oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
This is Freddie Mercury.
No, that's not Freddie Mercury.
That's Freddie Mercury.
And his last song was a song called Mother Love.
It was Amy Winehouse.
Her last song was a song called Body and Soul.
And the king Elvis, his last song that he wrote was a song called Way Down.
Way Down.
Now, the final song that somebody writes isn't necessarily going to be their best song, but
I think if they knew that this was going to be their swan song, was going to be their
last song, then they would really want it to be full of meaning and be the kind of song
that people were singing and singing for years and years to come.
Well, we're in the early stages, middle of a teaching series.
We're called Summer Playlist, where we're looking at this wonderful collection of songs
found right in the middle of your Bible.
It's called The Book of Psalms.
But really, as we learned a couple of weeks ago, it's a song book.
These were meant to be sung.
And today we're going to focus in on one track in particular on that playlist.
This track number 145, or Psalm number 145.
And this is a really interesting song to look at for two reasons.
One, it was the very last song written by one of the greatest songwriters and singers
in all of human history.
And secondly, he obviously did something right because we are still singing this song
3,000 years later.
Now, you'd be like, wait, wait, Rob, what are you talking about?
Who is this singer-songwriter?
What are you talking about?
Who wrote Psalm 145?
Well, if you open your Bibles and you turn to Psalm 145, you will see right at the beginning,
right at the very top, before you even get into the song, this like super statement that
says this is a Psalm of praise of David.
In other words, this song was written by David, David Bowie?
No, not David Bowie.
The legendary King David, King of Israel.
See traditionally, both Jewish and Christian people have credited David with writing a
good portion of the Psalms found in that playlist in the middle of your Bible, including Psalm
145.
In fact, about 75 of the Psalms specifically say at the top like this, that this song was
written by David.
There are other Psalms that people think David wrote too, and there's other ones in there
that they think David didn't write at all.
But some scholars, let's be fair, some scholars would say, come on, come on, Rob, really, do
we really think that David wrote these things?
I mean, surely over time, the authorship could get mixed up and muddled up, and don't people
just attribute these to David, and they're not really coming from David's pen.
These aren't really David's songs.
This is a really, really good question.
It kind of reminds me of the question surrounding the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby.
Because Eleanor Rigby, if you look at the official credits, the song is written by Paul McCartney
and John Lennon.
But Paul McCartney says he wrote 99% of the song, and that John Lennon hardly did anything.
John Lennon says he wrote most of the song, said, pardon me, he's passed away, he said
he wrote most of the song.
And then actually George Harrison said that he wrote the very first line of Eleanor Rigby,
the line that goes, oh, look at all the lonely people.
Apparently George Harrison said, I did that.
So if there's so much confusion about a song that was written and who wrote it back in
1966, then you can imagine there would be a bit of confusion about who wrote a song that
was written back in 1000 BC.
And yet there is good reason, I think, for us to believe that David had a hand in writing
a bunch of the tracks on this summer playlist of ours.
Let me explain why.
For one, we do know that David was musical by nature.
In fact, once, when David was still very young, the king at the time, a guy named Saul, he
wasn't feeling so good.
He was one of those lonely people.
He was a little bit melancholy.
And he said, bring me someone who can play some music.
Bring me someone who can sing and cheer me up.
And his servant said, I know just the person.
There's this kid named David.
He's great with a guitar and he's great at singing.
So they brought in David and he strummed a tune and it cheered up Saul.
So right from the beginning, we see David had this musical ability, this musical ability.
As he grew up, David had this habit of writing songs whenever something amazing happened
in his life.
So for example, in 2 Samuel, we are told that at one time God rescued him from his enemies.
And so what did David do?
He sang about it.
He wrote a song about it.
And you can read that song if you go to 2 Samuel 22.
In fact, David even picked up this nickname because he was so musical.
The author of the book of Samuel referred to David as the sweet psalmist of Israel.
Wouldn't you love a nickname like that?
You're that sweet hitmaker of Israel, the sweet tune master of Israel.
David had a reputation of being musical, of being a singer.
Even Jesus assumed or believed that David was the one who was writing these songs.
Once when Jesus was talking about Psalm 110, he described that Psalm as being written by
David under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
So a whole bunch of Old Testament people believe that David wrote these songs and some New
Testament people believe it too.
Jesus himself seemed to believe it.
So I would say that for that reason, where I'm pretty solid ground if we say that at
least those songs on this list that bear his name, there is a strong, strong likelihood
that they are in fact written by David.
Now all of that, all of that just to say this, that if it's true that David wrote a bunch
of these songs, then that makes song number 145 the last song that was attributed to him
in the Psalter, the last song, the last song that he ever wrote.
His grand finale, his mic drop moment, the last hit from DJ David.
And man, this song has stood the test of time.
David knew how to write a timeless classic.
So let's take a look today at this amazing song that David wrote and maybe we can learn
a thing or two about writing a great song ourselves.
By the way, you should have received little notes when you came in today.
You can fill those in if you want, if you want to track along with my thought this morning.
So here's the first thing.
If you were to ask David, David, what is the key of making a great song?
He would say, first thing you got to do is you got to make something that's memorable,
right?
All songs that stand the test of time, there's something about them that are memorable.
They got catchy melodies.
Their words are easy to remember.
They're often repetitive.
Do you remember the song Baby Shark?
See, of course you remember the song Baby Shark.
One of you don't want to remember the song Baby Shark.
You're going to remember it because this tune was just, it just was an earworm.
It was repetitive and the lyrics just kept going over and over in your mind.
There's something about making a song memorable that makes it last.
And David did that, actually.
You probably didn't notice this.
But when David wrote song 145, he kind of pulled a bit of a Baby Shark.
He said, hey, I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to make every line of this song start with a different letter of the Hebrew
alphabet.
Right?
So in other words, if it was the English alphabet, it would be like, I'm going to make the first
line start with A and the second line start with B and the third line start with C, D,
D, all the way down to Z at the very, very end.
And this is called an acrostic pattern.
We don't recognize it in our Bibles because we don't read Hebrew.
But if we did read Hebrew, we read it in the original language, we would see that pattern,
A, B, C, D, through the whole alphabet.
Now, David, why would you do that?
What are you trying to do here, David?
To make it memorable, right?
To turn this song into an earworm, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, that people would never forget
that you can keep singing all day long.
In fact, William Gemmerin, who is an Old Testament professor in Chicago, he says, in Jewish practice,
this song was recited twice in the morning and once again in the evening, which meant
that if you were to adopt this practice every day three times a day, not once, not twice,
but three times a day, you would be singing this song.
It was so recognizable.
It was so memorizable.
And that's David's first rule of making a lasting hit, make something memorable.
But David also knew another rule, right?
And that was this.
If you want to write a timeless classic, then you've got to write something that's cross-generational.
If you write a song that is more specific to one generation, then when that generation
dies out, the song is going to die out with it.
And the kids of the next generation will say, I don't understand the song.
The song means nothing to me.
You already see this happening between the generations now.
Kids look at their parents' music and say, that's horrible.
I can't listen to that.
Parents look at their kids' music and they say, that's not music.
This rock and roll the kids are listening to today.
Geez, give me some good old stomp and tomm.
Now that's some real music, right?
But you see the good songs.
The songs that really last are somehow able to reach all generations at once.
They're cross-generation.
I came across this photo, this article of a 90-year-old grandma and her teenage daughter
who went to see Taylor Swift's era concert, right?
Together, they went together because they both love to sing and dance to Taylor's music.
That's kind of a unique thing.
And I'm not saying that Taylor's music is going to last nearly as long as King David's
music, but what I am saying is that there is some music out there that is cross-generational.
Maybe it is Elton John or The Beatles or Adele or Coldplay or whatever it is, but there
are some bands, there are some songs that every generation loves to sing along with.
And David's song is specifically meant to be sung by the generations.
He says one generation, sing the song to the other, other generations, sing the song to
the first.
Tell about God's mighty acts together.
All generations, celebrate God's goodness.
Sing about His righteousness.
This is just a beautiful thing, beautiful thing when all generations can sing songs of worship
together, whether you're 17 or you're 97.
I mean, wouldn't it be great even here in Trinity if the older generation here would
sing songs in such a way that it would inspire the younger generation about how God had moved
and acted in the past?
And wouldn't it be great if the younger generation here at Trinity sang songs in such a way that
it stirred up in the hearts and minds of the older generation the things that God is doing
now, the new things that God is doing in the present time?
Wouldn't it be great if old and young could sing God's praise with each other and even
to each other?
This is what David was aiming at, all generations praising God together.
This is a very hard thing to pull off in churches these days.
It's why you often come across churches, some of whom are filled with very, very young people
and there's nobody older there.
It's because the music and the worship is all geared to that generation.
Or you come across another kind of church which is filled with gray heads and it's a
very old congregation and that's because the worship and the music is aimed at that generation.
But here at Trinity, wouldn't it be great?
Isn't this what we're trying to do?
To create an intergenerational cross, generational experience of worship where one generation
can praise God with another and to another.
When that happens, as Marva Don says, she says, when we worship together as a family
of all ages, we're enriched by the diverse perspectives and experiences of each generation.
God is worth more praise than anyone generation can give him.
That's why David's final song has lasted so long.
It was a cross-generational song.
So David says, you want to write something that lives forever, lasts forever, make something
memorable?
Secondly, write something cross-generational.
And thirdly, sing something thoughtful.
When you worship, David is saying to us, don't just engage people's emotions, but engage
their minds as well.
Now this is a delicate balance, again, in churches because in some churches we err on one side
or the other.
Some churches might sing songs that are very intellectual, very wordy, but lack emotion.
For example, I can remember as a child growing up and I'm singing this song.
I was not emotionally engaged with this song.
All things bright and beautiful, creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all.
It's a beautiful song.
This will probably last forever, this song.
But it didn't engage my emotions so much.
I didn't even know who we were singing to in this song.
It doesn't seem like we're actually singing to God.
We're talking about God and sometimes maybe I felt like I was just reading a theology
textbook when I was singing songs like this.
There wasn't much emotional power.
Now on the other side, sometimes churches sing songs that have no theological or intellectual
thought in them at all.
They're just all emotion.
For example, I wrote this song this week that you could probably sing in some churches
around the land.
I just want to feel you, feel you here.
I just want to feel you, feel you near.
I don't know what the tune for this is, but I just want to feel you nothing more.
I just want to feel you at my core.
Guys I wrote that song, but we will never sing this song because while it demonstrates
emotion, borders on emotionalism, playing with emotion, over emphasis of emotion for
emotion's sake.
But David, he seems to get this balance right, right?
The balance between emotion and thoughtfulness.
So he begins his song with a lot of emoting, right?
He's like, I will exalt you, my God and King.
I will praise you forever and ever.
I just want to feel you.
No, he doesn't say that.
He says, every day I will praise you and extol your name forever.
I mean, he's feeling it.
He's feeling it here.
And then by verse five, he's saying, I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty
and on your wonderful works.
David's praise doesn't just come from emotion.
There's a place for that.
But it comes from careful thought.
Meditation is to reflect and to think and to engage your mind.
David is using the song as a mental exercise to remember the character of God, to remember
the great actions of God.
He's using his head.
He's using his memory.
It's leading him to praise God.
And that's why David's song has lasted so long because emotions come and go.
Emotions may be up and down, but the knowledge of God is the same forever.
And therefore, knowledge of God should lead our singing.
The more we know about God, the more we can sing to God.
David's worship was very thoughtful.
And that's why it lasted.
There's still a few more reasons why David's final song lasted for thousands of years.
Here's one of them.
David knew that if you're going to write a timeless classic, you've got to address something
substantial.
A topic that is substantial.
There are some songs that deal with really, really important issues.
John Lennon, imagine, imagine.
That song addresses themes of peace and unity and a world without division.
You could take a Bob Dylan's, Blowing in the Wind.
He's talking about social justice and freedom.
Fight the power by public enemy.
This is systemic racism and social change.
Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.
That car is about living in poverty and going through the struggles of life.
All of those are substantial topics, weighty, important topics.
And then there are other songs that spend a whole lot of time not saying much at all.
Barbie Girl is a song about a Barbie doll.
Her Ice Ice Baby is basically a song about rapper lifestyle, at least this particular
rapper's lifestyle.
It's not all that deep, right?
But perhaps the most meaningless song that has ever been created was the song What Does
the Fox Say by Ilvis.
And this song is basically just wondering out loud what does a fox say?
What kind of sound does a fox make?
This is not exactly deep stuff, right?
But no, David knew.
If you want to write a great song, write about a great topic, right?
Tackle something deep.
Tackle something weighty and substantial.
And so for David, for his swan song, for his last song, he said, I'm going to deal with
the most weighty, substantial, great song anyone could ever write.
And that is the greatness of God.
Great is the Lord.
Greatly to be praised.
There's greatness no one can fathom.
I sometimes think that our culture has forgotten what is truly great in our world.
Culture finds greatness in romantic love or sexual attraction or wealth or popularity
or celebrity.
Those are the things that we think are great.
Those are the things that so many songs are being written about today.
But David knew.
No, no, no, no.
Still greatness can only be found in God himself.
That's why David roots the song in God's omnipresence, his omniscience, his, his omnipotence.
Sorry, too many omnis here.
David's song is about this God who is so consistent and unwavering, this God who demonstrates
selfless love to all creation.
Songs about sex and popularity.
It just, they're so superficial compared to the greatness of God.
This should also be noted that David writes this is one line of his song.
I will exalt you, my God and my King.
Interesting because at the time David may have been King or ascending to the throne as King
and yet he doesn't elevate himself and his own greatness in the song.
He says, no, no.
The kingship is nothing compared to the glorious great kingship of God.
So David's song forces us to kind of ask the question, you know, how much time do we spend
pondering the greatness of God?
And how much time do we spend wondering, what does the Fox say?
So to write the ultimate chart topper, here's what you got to do.
Sing something memorable, write something cross-generational, sing something thoughtful,
address something substantial.
If you do all that then you're going to arrive at the final one which is to compose something
eternal.
There are those songs out there that we call timeless classics.
They're eternal songs.
Bohemian Rhapsody, Hotel California, Stairway to Heaven.
I don't know.
You probably got your own timeless classics in mind.
But David takes this song to a whole new level of timelessness.
Psalm 145 isn't just timeless.
It's eternal.
I will praise your name forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.
One reason why God's praise is going to last forever is because God's kingdom is going to
last forever.
People come and go, but God lives forever.
Kings come and go, but God reigns forever.
Kingdoms rise and fall, but God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom which means that
this song is an everlasting song.
That's how you make a timeless classic.
Make something memorable, write something cross-generational, sing something thoughtful,
address something substantial, and compose something eternal.
This is I end.
Some of you are saying, oh, that's great, Rob.
Thanks for the five tips about songwriting.
But surprise, surprise, I'm not a songwriter.
So what am I supposed to do with all this?
Well, to answer that, let's turn to the great songstress Dolly Parton who said, life is like
a song, sing it.
Yeah, yeah, most of us are not going to write a hit song.
Most of us are not going to record a great album, but we're going to live a life, right?
And Dolly is right.
The life we live is a song and that other people are going to listen to our lives.
They're going to see our lives.
Every day you're writing a few more lyrics, right?
Every week, every month, you're writing another stanza.
Every year you're writing another verse, another chorus, and one day your day is going to come
and you're going to set down your pen and you're going to set down your guitar, and
that'll be the end.
And people will then pick up and listen to that life of yours.
They'll listen to the song of your life.
And when they do, what will they hear?
Will it be memorable?
Will your life have been thoughtful?
Will you have lived for something substantial?
Will your life be eternal in Jesus Christ?
What kind of song are you writing today?
These are the last words of the last song that David ever wrote.
My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord, let every creature praise His holy name forever
and ever.
And with that, David puts down his pen and he puts down his guitar and he's done.
And if David had said nothing else in his long life, that would still be enough.
So today we can thank God for the songs that David wrote and sung.
More than that, though, we can sing along with those songs, praising God forever and
ever and ever and ever.
And we can remember that every day we too are writing a beautiful song with our own lives.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you, David, for this moment.