Psalm 145:6-9

 

"They shall speak of the might of Your awesome deeds, and I will declare Your greatness.  They shall pour forth the fame of Your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.  The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  The LORD is good to all, and His mercy is over all that He has made."

This is the last of the Psalms written by,  or at least attributed to, King David.  (He wrote 75 of the 150 Psalms!)  Psalm 145 is noted as a Song of Praise; and according to theologian James Montgomery Boice, "It is indeed a monumental praise psalm, a fit summary of all David had learned about God during a long lifetime of following hard after the Almighty." If you are a devout Jew, you are reciting this psalm twice in the morning, and once in the evening.  In the first verse, David acknowledges the chain of command--God is God, and David is not;  David is king over Israel, but God is King over All.  He heaps praise after praise on God, using words like "great, unsearchable, mighty, glorious splendor, majesty, wondrous works, awesome deeds." That is highest praise from a mere human trying to grasp the greatness of His God.  He lets the works of God speak for themselves, and he just sings along.  (loudly!! verse 7) In our verses of the day, we find David repeating the age-old truth "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." Chesed.  He is not only good to His people, He is good to all.  The same "common grace" that Jesus explained in Matthew 5:45-- "He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."  Creation displays God's wondrous works, but only the faithful have the privilege of kneeling before Him and making His power known.  God grabs ahold of those who are falling, and raises up those who have already fallen.  He defends all who love Him, but He will wipe out the wicked.  

"The heart cannot love what the mind does not know" (-Jen Wilkin) is a phrase I repeat a lot!  Although our study technically starts in verse 6,  I am changed starting in verse 4.  "One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts."  How can we take God's story and hand it over with confidence if we don't Know it?  How can we repeat mighty acts if we've never studied them?  The answer is we can't.  We can never rightly communicate the steadfast, unchanging, stubborn, unwavering love of God to someone else if we've never experienced it ourselves.  God's Word should be first in our minds, first in our hearts, and first out of our mouths.  The next generation is counting on it.