It was about 16 months ago, June 25th, 2023,
that we started this series in the Psalms.
And by the way, if you're visiting with us
for the first time, you're like, oh great,
the tail end of a series, sorry about that.
But that means next week is fresh and new, so come back.
June 25th, 2023, we started preaching through the Psalms.
And I went back this week.
I found my sermon from that morning,
and I looked at what I said at the outset of that message.
And here's what I said.
I said, it's always an exciting day
when we get to launch into a new preaching series.
For me, it's like waking up on the day
that you're about to leave on a vacation.
And you start to wonder, well, what is ahead of us?
What's the journey going to be like?
And in the end, what will we learn,
and how will we be changed by our time together?
And then I said, I'm not sure what
the answers to those questions are right now,
but that too is part of what makes this moment so exciting.
Because I know whatever the Lord does and wherever he takes us,
it'll be for our benefit and for his glory.
And so here we are today, wrapping up
the series, October 20th, 2024.
And we can now look back and answer some of those questions.
I know I can look back and see what the Lord has done
in my life, what he's done in my heart through the Psalms.
And it has been life-changing.
And from the feedback I've gotten
from a lot of you guys over the last 16 months,
it's been life-changing for many of you as well.
Not because my preaching is so good,
but because the Psalms are so amazing.
It's been a great journey.
And we have the Spirit of God to thank us for all of it,
for carrying us through, for being our guide and our teacher.
So like we said earlier in our call to worship,
praise the Lord this morning.
Amen?
So how many Psalms did we actually cover?
I ran a list last night.
And among the five collections of books
within the Book of Psalms, we covered 45 Psalms.
So almost a third of them.
In fact, here's how it breaks down in the five books.
You can see that we are definitely heaviest
on the front end, because that is primarily
where most of David's Psalms are located,
but also pretty busy in the final collection, where
we find so many of the great Psalms of praise.
And along the way, we not only study the works of David,
but we listen to the voice of a man named Asaph.
Remember the skilled musician at the tabernacle
in the days of David, and also this great Levite family known
as the sons of Korah.
We even heard the voice of Moses, who wrote Psalm 90,
and of course covered a number of Psalms
that where the writer remains anonymous.
And I think we covered just about every type of Psalm
that I promised on the front end.
Let's see.
Praise Psalms, thanksgiving, wisdom, lament,
penitential, liturgical, messianic,
and we even covered three imprecatory Psalms,
which were a great challenge, if you recall.
So we got through, I think, every single type of Psalm.
And as we did, a whole number of really important themes
sort of rose to the top for me.
First of all, the massive, massive number of times
that the name of the Lord, Yahweh, is invoked.
It's everywhere, isn't it?
The consistent references to Jerusalem and to Zion,
this place that God says, I have chosen as my dwelling place
forever.
Obviously, praise and worship, huge theme, right?
And we're going to see that one last time this morning.
And along with praise, we saw such an incredible emphasis
on prayer.
And not just prayer for the sake of prayer,
like checking a box, but deep, deep, emotional,
and authentic prayer, where the psalmist, especially David,
right, just poured his heart out before the Lord
because of all of the great needs that he had.
It's interesting also, we heard a lot about the enemies of God,
right, and how God is going to condemn the wicked, those who
stand opposed to him, especially those
who stand opposed to his anointed king, David.
We saw so many familiar verses, which we recognize
we see them later cited in the New Testament
by the authors of the New Testament.
And along with that, all these incredible messianic psalms,
which point forward to Christ.
And we should never forget that as Jesus died on the cross,
he died with Psalm 22 on his lips.
And finally, what stands out to me
were the many, many references to the chesed of God, right?
The loving kindness of God, his steadfast covenant love.
How many times do we hear that phrase,
according to his loving kindness?
126 times.
You find the word chesed in the Psalms.
So it's been an amazing journey, guys,
and we need to finish well this morning.
So grab your Bibles, and we're going to go to Psalm 147.
This is where we are going to end things.
By the way, what's coming up next?
Reformation Sundays, plural.
Because Reformation Sunday is the 31st.
It falls right in the middle of the week.
So I said to the elders, give me two Sundays.
Two Sundays for Reformation.
Just again, to study more about our historical and spiritual
roots as a non-denominational independent church in America
today, we should know our history.
By the way, grateful to Adam for filling in for me last week
while I was trying to figure out the stomach bug that just
wouldn't go away.
And he did such a great job in Psalm 144.
On about 12 hours notice, put together a 30-minute devotional
that was fantastic.
And I'm just so blessed by our elder team here.
The one thing that Adam didn't cover that I wanted to cover
when I was going to do Psalm 144 was the statement in verse 1.
And by the way, he knows this.
Jesse's laughing.
He knows this.
But in verse 1 of that Psalm, David says,
blessed be the Lord who trains my hands for war.
And that is a pretty controversial statement
for many in Christendom today.
And so my thought was I wanted to talk about what
is a biblical case for a righteous war.
So I didn't get a chance to do it,
which means I'll probably do a podcast at some point.
So pay attention for that.
OK.
I've known that I wanted to finish with Psalm 147
from the very beginning because it is such a great summary
psalm that brings us back to a whole bunch of the themes
that I just mentioned.
Now, this may sound familiar to you.
About three months ago, we were in a section of the Psalms
called the Hallel Psalms.
Psalm 113 to 118, we covered two of those six.
And back then, I explained that the word Hallel in Hebrew
means praise.
And when you take that word and you combine it
with Yah, which is short for Yahweh,
you get this everybody's favorite Hebrew word,
halleluya, which simply means praise Yahweh or praise
the Lord in caps in your English Bibles, right?
Now, as we come to the end of our series,
to the end of the book, guess what?
There is a second set of Hallel Psalms, the last five Psalms
from 146 to 150 are also Psalms of praise.
Each one begins with the phrase praise the Lord or halleluya
and also ends with that exact same phrase, praise the Lord
or halleluya.
So let's talk about the historical background
of these Psalms.
And so you know I'm going to squeeze in a little history
before we go here.
Scholarly consensus puts these final Hallel Psalms
in this period that we call Judea's post-exilic era.
So this is after the destruction of Solomon's temple in 586.
This is after the 70 years of captivity in exile in Babylon.
And once the remnant of faithful Jews
returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the city.
And that restoration process began in 538
with the first return of exiles from Babylon
under the leadership of Zareh Babel.
And the second temple was then rebuilt and completed in 516.
Then in 458 Ezra the scribe, very important figure
in the post-exilic period, brought a second wave of Jews
back to the land, followed 13 years later
by this amazing man by the name of Nehemiah in 445 BC.
And it's under Nehemiah's brilliant leadership
that Jerusalem's protective walls and city gates
are rebuilt in just 52 days.
Incredibly impressive.
And that number is actually recorded
in the book of Nehemiah.
So what did it look like?
Some of you guys, you know, you've
sort of seen what this must have felt like in your mind's eye.
What this would have looked like is Nehemiah directing
the building of these walls.
And you see soldiers, they had to have soldier station
all around.
Every family was building right in front of their dwelling,
building the walls.
So you're going to build that wall pretty well,
aren't you, when you're building in front of your own dwelling
place.
So they built the walls, and they
had to have guards with spears and swords stationed
all the way around.
Because the enemies of God did not want those walls rebuilt.
Now, this is a really cheesy model,
but it gives you an idea of sort of the size of the walls that
were rebuilt.
You see a much smaller second temple up on Mount Moriah.
The first temple, Solomon's Temple, was larger than this.
But you see all these walls and these city gates
with towers, which were so important to defend the city.
You see on the bottom left, the Dung Gate, and then the Water
Gate, and the Fountain Gate, and the Eastern Gate.
And all the way around, they were
able to build the walls and the gates.
So this is likely the setting behind Psalm 147.
The dedication of the walls and the gate,
and the celebration that the Israelites, the Judeans,
went through in finishing that project.
In fact, if you want to jot this down,
Nehemiah 12 gives us the whole recording
of this great celebration, where the Levites all went up
on the top of the walls, and they encircled the city,
and they led the community in this incredible time
of praise and worship, singing what?
Psalms.
Singing Psalms of Thanksgiving and songs
with the accompaniment of cymbals, and harps,
and lyres.
And the text of that amazing day finishes like this.
It says, then, after they were up on the wall singing,
then the two choirs took their stand in the house of God.
So they went into the temple on Mount Moriah,
along with the officials and priests.
And on that day, they offered great sacrifices,
and they rejoiced.
Because why?
Because God had given them great joy.
And the joy of Jerusalem, it says, was heard from afar.
It's one of the most special days in all of Jewish history.
Now, as we always try to do, we want
to try to slip on the sandals of the folks, the Jewish people
in this moment.
Why were they so moved to celebration and worship?
Well, we talked about this not long ago,
but let me just reiterate.
None of us here this morning have ever
had to witness the sight of an invading army coming
into your land, to see your village burn to the ground,
your city, your home destroyed, to see friends and family
members slaughtered and others taken captive,
to be driven out of your land by a pagan enemy,
forced to resettle in a foreign nation completely removed now
from your life of worship.
Your temple gone, never to return.
There are no words to describe the physical, emotional,
and spiritual experience of what the Jews went through
in that time.
And now, as the return happens, you're now probably
a second generation exile.
Many of your ancestors had to die apart
from the land in Babylon.
But try to imagine how you would feel upon being released
from slavery in Babylon to return to your precious land
to be able to see your temple rebuilt,
to see your city come back to life,
and to reestablish your entire life of worship.
And then to see your city walls go back up and your gates
to finally feel safe and protected from your enemies.
Guys, listen.
How deep and filled with joy would your worship
be in that moment?
It'd be off the charts.
You would be worshiping like you would never worship before
because of the Lord's goodness.
Well, that is the story of these last five Hallel songs.
It is truly the height of praise and worship.
So unlike so many of the other psalms that we've studied,
in these you will not find lamenting.
You will not find sorrow.
You will not find complaining.
No shadow of doubt.
No fear.
No despair.
It is simply the height of exaltation.
So let's read the psalm all the way through.
Actually, before we do that, I have a picture.
You know how I was going to do this.
Did you know today you can still see parts of Nehemiah's wall?
In Jerusalem?
It's amazing.
That picture on the left was a picture
I took the very first time many years ago
that I first went to Israel.
And the guide said, that is a section of Nehemiah's wall.
And they said, go touch it.
And I went, what?
I can walk up and touch?
He goes, look, it's been there for 2,500 years.
You're not going to break it down.
But in Israel, you just walk up and touch things
that are 2,500 years old.
It's amazing.
Now, the picture on the right is much more recent.
As they continue to dig in the city of David,
they're finding more and more sections of Nehemiah's wall.
It's still there.
Man, God is just amazing.
OK, so let's read together.
Verse 1.
Praise the Lord.
In Hebrew?
Hallelujah, very good.
For it is good to sing praises to our God.
For it is pleasant, and praise is becoming.
Now, listen for the language that speaks of that history
I just mentioned.
Verse 2.
The Lord builds up Jerusalem.
He gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
He counts the number of the stars.
He gives names to all of them.
Great is our Lord in abundant in strength.
His understanding is infinite.
The Lord supports the afflicted.
He brings down the wicked to the ground.
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving.
Sing praises to our God on the lyre,
who covers the heavens with clouds,
who provides rain for the earth, who makes grass
to grow on the mountains.
He gives to the beast its food and to the young ravens
which cry.
He does not delight in the strength of the horse.
He does not take pleasure in the legs of a man.
The Lord favors those who fear him,
those who wait for his loving kindness.
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem.
Praise your God, O Zion.
And here comes more language that
fits at the rebuilding of the walls.
Verse 13.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates.
He has blessed your sons within you.
He makes peace in your borders.
He satisfies you with the finest of the wheat.
He sends forth his command to the earth.
His word runs very swiftly.
He gives snow like wool.
He scatters the frost like ashes.
He casts forth his ice as fragments.
Who can stand before his cold?
He sends forth his word and melts them.
He causes his wind to blow and the waters to flow.
He declares his words to Jacob, his statutes
and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not dealt thus with any nation.
And as for his ordinances, they have not known them.
Praise the Lord.
All right.
So now when you step back and look at this structure here,
you can sort of get the big picture.
You see three stanzas here, first of all.
1 through 6, 7 through 11, and 12 through 20.
And each of these stanzas, you see highlighted in yellow,
starts with a unique call to praise.
Praise the Lord.
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving.
In verse 12, praise the Lord, O Jerusalem.
And then, of course, thank you.
You get a final praise the Lord at the very end.
So you get bookends, right?
Praise the Lord, hallelujah at the front,
and praise the Lord, hallelujah at the bottom.
And by the way, in each stanza, after the call to worship,
then you get a list of reasons why you should be worshiping God.
And so we'll walk through some of those today.
OK.
Let's go back up to verse 1.
We have to start there because verse 1 sets the tone
for the entire psalm.
It really is the key verse.
Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God,
for it is pleasant.
And praise is becoming, or praise is fitting.
So right out of the gate, the psalmist
tells us three things about worship.
First of all, it is tov, it is naim, and it is nave.
It is good, it is pleasant, and it is fitting.
And who can argue with that?
It is a positive good any time God's people come
into His presence with songs of praise,
but not just songs from the lips,
but with songs engaged with the heart, right?
We don't praise just to check a box,
but with our hearts engaged.
And then second, it's also a pleasant thing, he says.
And that Hebrew word there can mean delightful.
It can mean lovely.
And I hope that's how you see your praise and worship here
at Oak Hill.
Is it delightful to you?
Is it lovely to you?
Now listen, not all of us are musical, me included.
I could not, if you said, hold a note to save your life,
I'd be a dead man.
Ask Tanya.
But if we know the Lord, regardless of our skill,
if we know the Lord, if we love Him, if we truly cherish
the grace that He's poured out upon us,
then we will find praise and worship
to be pleasant and lovely and delightful.
And of course, finally, it's fitting.
Why?
Every creature, and we sang about it already this morning,
every creature ought to come before his Creator
and sing praises, especially when that creature is completely
dependent on the Creator for every single thing.
Every single thing he needs in life.
It's fitting, right?
For every breath he takes, every good gift he receives,
comes from his Creator, so every creature should come
and give praise to the Lord.
So it is good.
It is pleasant.
It is fitting.
And so here's my advice to you guys about worship.
Somebody told me this a long time ago,
because when I first got saved, I'll be honest with you,
I didn't get the whole singing praises thing.
It was just, it was hard.
I needed to grow into that.
Somebody advised me, don't be afraid to enjoy God.
Don't hold your voice back.
Right?
Don't just mumble under your breath.
Don't worry about what other people might think of you.
Lift your joyful noise, on key or not, lift it up
and magnify his name.
Because listen, here's the reason given to me.
That's actually what you were created for.
You were created for this.
You were saved for this purpose, to magnify the name
of your Creator and Savior.
So why would you hold back?
Sam Storms, one of my favorite guys, great quote.
He often says this.
Listen, fish swim in the water.
Birds fly in the air, and God's redeemed, sing his praises.
It should just be natural outflow of your heart.
It's as simple as that.
And so this morning, if you were like me many years ago
and you struggle to praise him, it's
important to be honest about that, to take note of it.
And to do some heart work and say, well,
what's going on there?
Why don't I want to praise his name?
Is there something going on in the heart
that I need to bring to the surface
and come alongside a spiritual counselor
and examine that to figure out what's going on?
Because the consequences of failing to worship the Lord
are not insignificant.
This is something we don't often think.
Found this great quote from an Englishman by the name
of Edward Pulsford.
Never heard of him before, but this is a great quote.
He says, there is no heaven either in this world
or the world to come for people who do not praise God.
If you do not enter to the spirit and worship of heaven,
how should the spirit and joy of heaven enter into you?
So praise the Lord, friends.
He is worthy.
So what does the psalmist now say?
What does he believe about God that
warrants such deep and thorough commitment
to praise and worship?
Well, listen, this psalm, he piles up
a whole bunch of reasons that we're going to walk through.
But to make it simple, we could go through the structure
all carefully.
I just want to break it up into two simple categories.
Because Psalm 147 gives us perhaps
the most obvious example in the entire Bible
of both the transcendence of God and the imminence of God.
Let me define those words for you.
God is transcended in the sense that He exists outside
of His creation.
He exists outside of both time and space.
He has no source.
He is what we call assay.
He is from Himself, meaning He is non-contingent.
He depends on nothing.
He has no beginning.
He has no end.
He is infinite in all aspects of His nature and being.
And you're like, I don't get it.
I know.
But this is what we're told.
He's transcendent in that sense.
Yet, big conjunction, yet He is also imminent in the sense
that He is replete throughout every square inch
of His creation.
He is present everywhere.
He sustains every molecule according
to the power of His word.
And He graciously chooses to be involved
in the lives of His creatures.
So in layman's terms, we would say,
God is, first of all, far off.
But second, He is nearby, all at the same time.
He is holy enough to consume sinners in His wrath,
yet tender enough to draw our hearts into relationship
with Himself and save us for His pleasure.
Think about that.
He's powerful enough to balance all that we need for life
in this cosmic world.
He's powerful enough to know our life in this cosmos
and intimate enough to know our every thought
and the number of hairs on our head.
He is far off, and yet He is nearby.
And scripture doesn't back away from declaring
both of those truths.
Even if for us, it seems impossible to understand,
scripture is very clear.
In fact, we haven't made that up.
No man would make that up, that picture of God.
God Himself told us, that's who I am.
Look at, listen to Isaiah 57, 15.
He says, the high and exalted one who lives forever,
whose name is holy, God says this about Himself,
I dwell on a high and holy place, far off,
and also with the contrite and the lowly of spirit nearby,
in order to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
And as worshipers, it is so important
that we balance our thoughts about God
and our thoughts about Him, and we
balance both ends of that spectrum.
Because here's the thing, when we
lose sight of God's transcendence,
and we forget how awesome He is, how magnificent and high
and lofty He is, we will fail to honor Him as we should.
We will fail to stand in awe of Him as we should.
But if we lose sight of His eminence,
then we're going to fail to relate to Him as we should,
to love Him as much as we should.
But when we balance the two, we get in this sweet spot,
we love His magnificence, and yet we're
able to abide with Him in relationship
as we would with a friend.
Think about that.
How amazing is God?
So what exactly do we see in Psalm 147
that reveals God's transcendence?
We'll start at verse 4.
Look at verse 4.
He counts the number of the stars,
and He gives names to all of them.
Now, we've already walked through some of the science
behind this multiple times in this series.
But just as a refresher, there are somewhere around 100
billion stars just in the Milky Way,
just in our little corner of the universe,
which is a pretty small corner, 100 billion stars.
It's so much bigger than that in reality.
When you look at the fact that astronomers say there's
10 to 20 trillion galaxies that exist,
and each of those trillions of galaxies
has hundreds of billions of stars in each,
the numbers are just ridiculous.
The numbers are unfathomable for us.
And by the way, God designed it that way.
But it's not ridiculous for God.
Now, I don't think we should take this poetic language
and think, well, God right now is literally up in heaven.
One, two, three, four.
Right?
He's not out there, OK, your name is Bob.
Your name is Fred.
No.
I don't think we should take the language that literally.
The truth is actually greater than that.
He doesn't need to count the stars,
because he already knows how many there are.
That number that you can't fathom,
he already knows, he doesn't have to count.
Because nothing goes out of existence without his approval,
and nothing comes into existence without his approval.
And he already knows the label of each one.
He knows every star in every galaxy, its size,
its lifespan, its movement, its location, all of it.
He already knows it.
It's actually greater than what the psalmist
describes in the poetry.
And then moving on, we see in verse eight and nine,
he covers the heavens with clouds.
He provides rain for the earth.
He makes grass to grow on the mountains.
He gives to the beast its food.
And then in verses 16 to 18, he gives snow like wool.
He scatters the frost like ashes.
He casts forth his ice.
He causes his wind to blow and the waters to flow.
So we praise God for his control over all of nature.
Nothing in creation exists or happens
apart from his sovereign hand,
both in the sky above and in the earth below.
And aren't you glad that he provides rain for our food?
We forget.
The food doesn't end up in the market by magic.
It grows from the ground.
Aren't you glad for the rain?
He feeds us.
He brings the beasts of the earth.
He brings about snow and wind in its season.
That's important for water, right?
He causes rivers to flow from their source to their end.
And he does it all without a sweat.
A fact is, friends, stop and think about this for a second.
We are pretty helpless creatures.
We really are.
If you remove one of those things,
you remove one essential ingredient from the world,
we're in big trouble.
Water, meat, plants, you remove those things.
If those things don't work according
to God's sovereign hand, we are all in big trouble.
So praise God.
Every day you have something to praise him for.
He graciously provides for all of creation, for his creatures.
If the rain falls, praise him.
If the grass grows, praise him.
If the animals are fed, praise him.
Even the weather, which we all complain way too much about,
including me.
Got to stop this.
Tanya's laughing.
It's all for a purpose.
And so we praise him.
And by the way, this isn't mother nature at work.
Stop me with that materialistic nonsense, right?
There's a reason and a cause and an intelligence
behind all of the things that we call natural processes.
Any man who believes that all of the design that's
built into our universe, that it just randomly happened,
or that it all holds together and works in perfect balance
by sheer chance, that man has way more faith than I do.
Way more faith in his so-called science.
God is at work.
And we should praise him for it.
Finally, all these transcendent ways of the Lord
get summarized in verse 5.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength.
His understanding is infinite.
Listen, there's simply no way that you or I can step back
and go, OK, I understand God now, fully.
There's no way.
All we can do is three things.
And whenever you're talking about somebody
who doubts the existence of God or doesn't know God,
these are three things to talk about.
Number one, look around at creation.
Marvel at the beauty and the complexity
of the world around us.
And ask the question, how did it get here?
Where did it come from?
How is it held together?
How do you know when you wake up tomorrow
it'll still be held together?
So look around.
First of all, second, look within yourself.
Where did my soul come from?
Why do I love?
Why do I forgive?
Why do I do those things?
I'm not just an animal operating off of instincts.
I'm so much more.
Well, why?
How did that happen?
So look out, look within, and then look into the Scriptures.
Because that's the only place where God has said, listen,
I know you can see some things about me in the world
around you.
And you can know something about me from your own soul,
your own conscience.
But ultimately, you need my word to know who I truly am.
And so God revealed Himself to us.
He breathed out His instructions to us through human authors
and gave us great promises and gave us answers for the reasons
why all of this exists.
Before we move on to eminence, I want
you to listen to what Isaiah says about this topic.
He has a whole chapter, chapter 40, which is quite remarkable.
And so for anybody here this morning who questions
the transcendence of God, I just want you,
I'm going to read portions of it, not all of it,
but I'm going to read portions of it.
So just listen and be amazed.
And if you need to close your eyes, close your eyes.
But this is what Isaiah says.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of Yahweh's hand
or marked off the heavens with the span of His hand?
Who has gathered the dust of the earth in a measure
or weighed the mountains on a balance
and the hills on the scales?
Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord?
Who has given Him counsel?
With whom will you compare God?
What likeness will you set up for comparison with Him?
An idol?
Something that a smelter casts in a metal worker
plates with gold?
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been declared to you from the beginning?
Have you not considered the foundations of the earth?
God is enthroned above the circle of the earth.
Its inhabitants are like grasshoppers to Him.
He stretches out the heavens like cloth.
He spreads them out like a tent to live in.
He reduces princes to nothing and makes judges of the earth
like a wasteland.
They're barely planted, barely sown.
Their stem hardly takes root in the ground
when He blows on them and they wither.
And a whirlwind carries them away like stubble.
To whom will you compare Me?
Or who is My equal?
asks the Holy One.
Look up and see.
Who created these?
He brings out the stars by number.
He calls all of them by name.
Because of His great power and strength,
not one of them is missing.
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Yahweh is the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth.
He never becomes faint or weary, and there is no limit
to His understanding.
That's what God has declared about Himself.
Do you believe it?
It's your choice to believe it now, right?
To say, yep, I believe it.
OK, now here's the thing.
As we move into the second aspect of God's nature,
His eminence, consider what I just
read from Isaiah 40, who that God is,
and then try to grasp the fact that He knows everything
about you.
That God knows everything about you and about me.
See, in His majesty, it extends to both extreme directions.
From the furthest galaxy in our universe
to the unique needs that you have in your life.
Think about that.
So vast a universe and yet so small the affairs of men.
Now, earthly kings, how do earthly kings
relate to peasants and commoners?
They distance themselves.
But the King of kings, the God of the Bible, does the opposite.
And this is a mind-blowing thing considering who He is.
He draws near to the lowly.
He draws near.
And it brings to mind the question
that David asked in Psalm 144 last Sunday.
It says, what is man that you care for him, O Lord?
What is man that you care?
What is the son of man that you would even think of him?
Man is like a breath.
His days are like a passing shadow.
Guys, that is a legitimate question to ask ourselves
and to ponder the answer, to even share with somebody
who doesn't know the Lord.
What is man that God would even be concerned?
In this world of self-centeredness and narcissism,
where everybody feels entitled to things,
feel like they deserve not just what they have but even more.
But the question is, honestly, why?
Why do you feel entitled to that?
Why do you feel you deserve it?
What does any man that God should care for him?
In light of our sinful ways and the way
we rebel against our Creator, why should he provide anything
for you or for me?
The fact is, not only does he care,
he pours out his grace lavishly upon the earth.
He makes mankind the object of his loving attention.
It's too much to even fathom.
The psalmist makes it clear, though,
that God's special delight and pleasure
is in one particular category of people.
Look at verse 11.
The Lord favors those who fear him,
those who wait for his loving kindness.
So God's not a human.
He doesn't favor the strong or the swift or the powerful.
He's not like human beings who are
super impressed by celebrities and athletes and politicians.
God's the opposite of that.
He delights in men and women who are humble and reverent
and worshipful, men and women who recognize not a sense
of entitlement, but recognize the great need that they have,
that only he can meet.
He delights in those who honor him
by trusting his word, by putting their hope
in his steadfast love.
And those are the marks of new life in Christ.
If you're wondering, what does it look like to be a Christian?
That's it.
A greater fear, a sense of awe before God,
but also hope in him alone.
We fear because we know in our hearts that we're sinners,
but we hope because God is a God of grace.
And we balance those two things, right?
We know, I am a sinner, but I am saved by grace.
Now, the fifth century BC, the time the psalm is being written,
you see in the text that Yahweh had his eye
upon his chosen nation, Israel.
You see it in verse 2.
Jerusalem, Israel.
You see it in verse 12.
Jerusalem, Zion.
You see it again in verse 19.
Jacob, Israel.
And the reference here in verse 2
seems to be tied to those events of Nehemiah coming back
to the city and rebuilding the walls.
The Lord builds up Jerusalem.
He gathers the outcasts of Israel.
In other words, he brings them back from exile.
Verses 13 and 14.
He strengthens the bars of your gates.
He blesses your sons within you.
He makes peace in your borders.
He satisfies you with the finest of the wheat.
Guys, all of these things, Yahweh has done for his people.
Securing, protecting, providing, and blessing.
And not because they deserved it.
This is what we got to get straight.
Not because they deserved it, not
because they were entitled to such things,
because we know about the people that came back
to the land from Babylon.
They were not all godly people.
They had lots of problems.
They were very imperfect.
Here's why God did this.
Because he had promised it.
That's it.
We have got to get this through our thick skulls.
We're always talking about scales and weighing things.
Well, if I'm on the good side of things,
then God will do this.
No, God does things because he says
he's going to do them in spite of you and me.
And so that's what he did.
He promised to restore Jerusalem and to restore his temple
and to restore his people.
And so by grace alone, he faithfully brought that about,
ultimately for his glory.
So we could say, those are my people in my chosen land.
And they will praise my name.
Because he wanted the world to see that.
By the way, just so we don't get arrogant,
because we have a tendency to look back on ancient people
and go, oh, those fools.
We're no different.
We're no different, right?
Christ said he would build his church with people like us.
Sinners saved by grace.
And just like the fifth century Jews,
we don't deserve that blessing.
Yes, it's for our good.
But ultimately, it's for his glory,
because he's gathering people from all over the earth
and bringing them into this thing called the church
so that we might praise his holy name.
It's all by grace.
Same thing, fifth century BC and today.
Now, in addition to those who fear him and hope in him,
Yahweh also favors those who are special object of his care.
Look back at the first stanza.
Verse 2, he talks about outcasts.
Verse 3, he talks about the brokenhearted.
Verse 6, he talks about the afflicted.
So for those who fear him and hope in him who are suffering,
he gathers, he heals, and he binds up their wounds.
Again, be amazed by this.
The same God who can count the stars
is concerned about people who are hurting on the earth.
That is amazing.
Spurgeon.
I have to go one more time.
By the way, somebody finally asked me,
why so many Spurgeon quotes in this series?
It's because he's got the greatest work called
the treasury.
It's his personal treasury of commentaries on the Psalms.
Look it up.
It's absolutely amazing.
That's why.
And it's just a joy to read each and every week.
He says, behold, the most high is with the sick
and the sorrowful, with the wretched and the wounded.
Few will associate with the despondent,
but Yahweh chooses their company and abides with them
till he has healed them by his comforts.
He himself lays on the ointment of grace
and the soft bandages of love and thus binds up
the bleeding wounds of those who are convinced of their sin.
Don't forget that last phrase.
Not for the strong, not for the powerful, not for the arrogant,
but for those who are convinced of their sin.
When Jesus came to earth, God the Son in human form, right?
He goes into the synagogue and He opens up the Word
and He preaches from Isaiah 61.
He says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed.
This is God's heart.
The same God who knows all the stars,
this is His heart for you and I.
Paul spoke of this as well.
Paul talks about the believers in 1st century Corinth, right?
And here's what he says.
God has chosen the foolish things of the world.
Ha ha.
Right?
We should all just say it.
That's us.
Foolish things of the world.
The weak things of the world.
The insignificant things of the world.
The despised God has chosen, he says.
The things that are not,
He has chosen to nullify the things that are.
For what reason?
Paul says, so that no man may boast before God.
In verse 6 of our Psalm,
Yahweh also promises something else,
to bring down the wicked.
Those whom the world looks to and says,
oh, those are the beautiful people.
Those are the powerful people.
Those are the celebrities, the elite,
and they glory in themselves.
God says, in the end, I will bring them down.
But God will give grace to the humble.
To those who acknowledge their sins.
To those who repent.
To those who fear the Lord and hope in Him.
And this brings me then to the final great promise
in Psalm 141.
God is near to the outcasts and the brokenhearted
and the afflicted and the humble.
And to these, the psalmist says,
he sends his word.
Did you catch that in the reading?
He sends his word.
Starts in verse 15.
He sends forth his command to the earth.
His word runs very swiftly, the psalmist says.
Again in verse 18.
He sends forth his word.
Now both of those are references
to how God commands the natural world.
But then when you get to verse 19,
you see something altogether different.
Not natural revelation, but what we call what?
Special revelation.
He declares his words to who?
To Jacob.
To Israel.
His statues and ordinances to Israel.
So the same God who creates, orders,
and directs the natural world through his word
brings the revelation of who he is.
The revelation of his heart and mind
through his service to the world.
Through his servant Israel.
The Jewish people were granted that incredible privilege.
Paul talks about it in Romans 3.
The Jews were given the oracles of Yahweh.
They are the guardians of his revealed word, which by the way
is why Jesus, when Jesus is talking
to the Gentile woman at the well, what does he say?
You worship what you don't know, but we Jews, we know.
Because salvation is from the Jews.
And of course it is.
It runs through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
because salvation is only accessible to those
who have God's word.
Who have the good news of the gospel.
And then believe and trust in God's promises.
Salvation is through the Jews.
And so guys, we're to praise the Lord above all other things
for the fact that he has manifested himself
to us through his word.
I mean there's a million great promises we can look at,
but without the word we would not know them.
Think about this.
Do you sense the height of God's love
and knowing that he cared enough about you
to reveal himself to you through his scriptures?
Do you see that his affection and care for you
is found in the Bible to show you and I how we can experience
the fullness of joy in this abiding relationship
with our creator and savior?
That Bible you have in your hands,
whether it's a book or it's on your phone,
is God's greatest gift to you.
And you say, well, no, salvation is.
Without the book you wouldn't even know what salvation is.
That's why we put Bibliology first
in all of the list of systematic theology.
Because without the Bible we can't know the rest.
I read an article a few years back written by Mark Devere,
who's a great historian.
And he was in London at a conference
and he was doing a talk on the Puritans.
And he was telling the audience how back in England
in the 1500s, this cracks me up, Puritan churches would take
a pulpit like this and they would hang a big hook, iron
hook on the front of it.
And on the hook they would put a big hourglass
and fill it with sand.
And as the preacher was preaching,
they would give the preacher two turns of the hourglass.
Yeah, scary, huh?
And we think of that and go, oh, man, those guys really,
they really wanted to limit the time of the preacher.
But no, that wasn't it.
Because here's the thing, people living in the 1500s,
early 1600s in England, as they sat in churches,
they could still smell the smell of burned flesh,
of fellow Christians who'd been burned at the stake,
because they had the audacity to be
in possession of an English Bible.
Think about that.
And so the turning of that hourglass
gave the people listening in the pews,
they were reminded about how short the time was
that they had to hear God's word preached.
So every time somebody got up and flipped it,
they would say, look how short our time is.
To hear the Bible in our own language
and to hear it preached, that's amazing.
Now, the question is, do we treat the word of God that way?
As that level of a gift that we have it in our own language
we all have multiple Bibles in our home.
It's on our phone.
We can listen to it in the car.
What a gift we have.
Without it, we could only speculate about who God is.
We would only be able to guess about how we can know Him.
Without the written word, we wouldn't even
know our own hearts.
We wouldn't know even about our own selves.
We wouldn't know why we were created in the first place,
or how our sins could be forgiven.
So friends, I know it's really easy to slip
into complacency, but do not take for granted the fact
that you hold in your hands this morning God's revelation
to you.
Amen?
Well, it's time to wrap up both the Psalm and the series.
And of course, where are we going to end?
Look at the very end of Psalm 147.
What's the last word from the psalmist?
Praise the Lord.
Hallelujah.
That's it.
So the psalmist has drawn for us this spectacular picture
of two things, countless stars and humble hearts.
And we need to keep striving to hold those two things together,
to hold out the great thoughts about God
in everyday moments of life, because it's
in the everyday moments of life that we need
great thoughts about God.
Does that make sense?
In this fallen world, we need to know the great glory of God
and the great grace of God in our lives,
to know that He is the God of the universe
and also the God of our souls.
And especially to know Jesus, God the Son,
who took on flesh and walked among us as one of us.
Jesus the Christ, the one who the Bible tells us simultaneously
holds all things together by the power of His Word
and is also moved with compassion
by seeing people without a shepherd,
both far off and nearby.
There is no one like Jesus.
He truly can and does save.
He is all of those things.
He is holy and merciful.
He is full of grace and truth.
He is both a sovereign and a servant.
He is fully God and fully man.
He is overall, through all, and in all.
And so may our thoughts and our praise increasingly
reflect the reality of who God says He is,
who He has told us He is, both for our endless joy
and for God's endless praise.
Amen?
Let's pray together.
Father, what a series it has been
to walk through Your Word in the Old Testament,
to hear Your voice in the Psalms,
to find out more about You,
to find out more about ourselves,
to discover more about the various places in our hearts,
our need for prayer, our need for worship and praise.
So many, many lessons that You have taught us
in this series, God.
Lord, it strikes me as we finish
just how endless Your Word is to teach us.
How many of us in this church have read through the Psalms
over and over again, yet every time we pick it up,
we see more.
We see more of Your goodness and Your grace.
We see more of Your majesty and Your love for us.
So Father, help us not to be the end
of our study of the Psalms.
May You grant us many more years as a church,
as individuals, to continue to work
through this amazing book, and that by it, Lord,
You'd be glorified and that we would grow
to be more and more like Christ.
So thank You for the series,
and thank You for our time this morning
in this beautiful psalm.
It's all for You and Your glory.
In Jesus' name, amen.