WWUTT 1284 For Future Generations (Psalms 144, 145, 146)

We are to share the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

Tell it to this generation and the future generations when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the

Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our

Q &A on Friday. Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We are closing in on the end of the

Psalms. This lesson and the next lesson and then that'll be it. After a year and a half, we'll have finally come to the conclusion of the

Psalms. I think we've got, what, seven left here? Psalm 144, 45, and 46,

I think is how far we'll get today. And then we have 7, 8, 9, and 50. So that's seven left.

We'll see how far we get with this lesson. Psalm 144 is a Psalm of David. Blessed be the

Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.

He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom

I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me. O Lord, what is man that you regard him?

Or the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath. His days are like a passing shadow.

Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down. Touch the mountains so that they smoke, flash forth the lightning and scatter them.

Send out your arrows and rout them. Stretch out your hand from on high. Rescue me and deliver me from the many waters, from the hand of foreigners whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

I will sing a new song to you, O God. Upon a ten -stringed harp,

I will play to you, who gives victory to kings, who rescues David his servant from the cruel sword.

Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

May our sons in their youth be like plants, full -grown, our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace.

May our granaries be full, providing all kinds of produce. May our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields.

May our cattle be heavy with young, suffering no mishap or failure in bearing.

May there be no cry of distress in our streets. Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall.

Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. Now this is a royal -sounding psalm, and we have a reference to David in the psalm, being a psalm of David himself.

It is asking God to give victory, not simply to David, but to the reigning heir of David.

Who would succeed David on the throne of Israel? May God give victory to him.

And this demonstrates the blessing of God upon his people.

We also have some references here that seem to harken back to previous David psalms, like for example, in verse 3,

O Lord, what is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him?

Man is like a breath, and his days are like a passing shadow, sounds very much like words that we heard in Psalm 8.

And of course, we've seen references continually to the Lord being a rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle, and that all goes into,

Lord, bless the heir of David with success, with victory over our enemies. Now, we who are in Christ, we're not fighting physical battles against our enemies, but we do fight a spiritual war every single day.

Every day we are called to take captive those thoughts and make them obedient to Christ.

We have in 2 Corinthians 10, 4, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, for as it says earlier, we do not walk according to the flesh.

Though we walk in the flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh.

They have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey

Christ. In Ephesians 6, we have a reference to putting on the armor of God so that we may be able to stand against the devil's schemes.

We are regularly fighting a war. It is not a war of flesh and blood. It is a war against the spiritual forces of darkness.

So in that understanding, we can read Psalm 144 and ask that we have fingers and hands prepared for battle and know

God is our fortress and he subdues people under us. As we're reading in Romans chapter 8 right now, when we come back to that study in Romans 8, we will read about how we are more than conquerors through him who loves us.

Verse 5, bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down, touch the mountains so that they smoke.

This is hearkening back to God's presence on Mount Sinai back in Exodus chapter 19 on as God gave the law to his people and as Moses went up and received the law, the mountain burned as with fire and the smoke went up like a kiln, flash forth the lightning and scatter them, send out your arrows and route them.

Those are references also to Mount Sinai. Stretch out your hand from on high.

Now notice here that God's hand is one that rescues and delivers me. But the right hand of foreigners is a right hand of falsehood.

So that right hand was that hand of loyalty, that hand that draws close. The right hand of a foreigner drives away.

It is not a hand of truth. It is not a hand that offers goodness and salvation and deliverance.

It is false. It pushes away to destruction. Verse 9,

I will sing a new song to you, O God, upon a ten -stringed harp I will play to you. You who gives victory to kings, who rescues

David, his servant, from the cruel sword. Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners whose mouths speak lies.

And we have this reference again to whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown. And we can certainly pray that God would give us children who would grow up firm in the word of God.

They are rooted in God's word. They are fed by God's word and they grow up strong. Our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of the palace.

We would desire that our children might be pillars in the house of God, the spiritual house which is his church.

So we could pray for our literal offspring in this way, but we also have spiritual offspring.

Those whom we lead to salvation by sharing with them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And may they be planted like trees beside the nourishing waters of Christ and his spirit.

We have a reference to that in Psalm 1, the tree that is firmly planted by the waters of God. And our daughters like corner pillars, those women who are led to the faith by the gospel that we share with them.

They have a share in the palace. May our granaries be full providing all kinds of produce.

May our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our field. We are fruitful and multiply.

We are fruitful and we multiply spiritually as the gospel goes forth.

Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall. Blessed are the people whose God is the

Lord. Amen. Psalm 145. Now this one's a little bit longer, so I'm going to break this one up as we go.

This is a song of praise of David, and it's the last David Psalm in the

Psalms. The next five that come after this are actually not attributed to any author.

So it's the last Psalm with an author on it, and it's the last Psalm of David. 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.

As we're coming to a close in our study of the Psalms, resolve yourself to be that way, that you would praise

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

May God be so gracious to us that we may know his name every day of our lives and call upon the

Lord our God who saves us from sin and delivers us into his eternal kingdom.

Verse 4, one generation shall commend your works to another.

So as we spend all our days praising God for his goodness, may we pass that on to another generation that they may also praise the

Lord. We see the interconnectedness between these two Psalms here, 144 and 145, in the sense that we've talked about our generations flourishing in both

Psalms. They shall declare your mighty acts. We go on in verse 5, oh, the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works

I will meditate. 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 righteous goodness.

This is what's being done by that next generation that is being taught the word of God that he may continue to be proclaimed from one end of time to the next until we're all together with him in glory.

So once again, Psalm 145 verse 4, one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.

Let me pick up in verse 8, 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.

We have this set of God also in the book of Exodus, the way that God passed in front of Moses.

This is what he declared of himself, that he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

And praise God for that. He is slow to anger. He has been patient with us so that we would see his goodness and patience toward us was meant to lead us to repentance, as it says at the beginning of Romans 2.

Verse 10, all your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you.

They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

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

We still have the generations mentioned here. Now in verse 10, where it says, all your works shall give thanks to you,

O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. This is still a reference to another generation giving praise to God for they are his work.

We who come into the faith, we are the work of God. When we read in Ephesians 2 .10

that you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared for you beforehand, that you should walk in them. This isn't saying that any and all people are the good work of God, though we are certainly all made in the image of God.

But this is talking in context. This is talking specifically about those who are followers of Jesus.

We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

We're being made into the image of Christ. So we are those works that will give thanks to the

Lord and the saints shall bless you. Those who are being sanctified. The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.

That's like an addendum there in verse 13. We go on to verse 14. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.

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.

There were questions that God asked of Job when Job was lamenting and he was sorrowful and he was justifying himself, wondering why

God would allow such a thing to happen to him when he had not done anything wrong. And the

Lord said of Job, are you the one who feeds the beasts of the field? Do you do that?

How do the beasts of the field find their food? God is the one who gives them their food in due season.

There's plenty of things that are happening in the world around us. We don't even set our eyes on.

Our senses are not even aware of those things. But God is working these things out.

He is the one that is in whom all things hold together, as it says in Colossians chapter one in Christ, all things hold together.

We talked about that yesterday, too. Verse 16. Verse 16 is what I read. Verse 17.

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

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. 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.

Again, those who sing praise to God are human beings. There are times when we read about creation personified, giving glory to God.

But those who are predestined to give praise unto him are we who have been made or are being made in the image of Christ.

Remember that the Pharisees said to Jesus to tell the people to be quiet and stop singing his praises. And Jesus said to them,

I tell you, if they are quiet, the very rocks will cry out.

And we are those rocks, once hard -hearted people, that have now been given the Holy Spirit of God so that in his name we may proclaim his praise and to a future generation.

Psalm 146 now. We're done with the David Psalms. This is Psalm 146. Praise the

Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord as long as I live.

I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. On that very day, his plans perish.

That's a good word, a good reminder, especially in this election year, that we put our trust not in princes.

There's certainly a side of this political civil war that is going on.

Political civil war. I mean, it's Republicans and Democrats. You wouldn't necessarily call that a civil war, but it is in the sense that they serve the same government, and yet they cannot seem to work together.

So there is a side that you're going to want to have win before November, when

November comes around, when the election comes around. And it's not the Democrats, at least

I hope not. Not the baby butchers and not those that want to squash religious liberty.

Not those that are behind the riots that are going on and the race baiting, attempting to keep people divided.

This is the Democratic platform. It is not godly in any way. We should not cheer for that side.

But the Republicans can be extremely disappointing to us as well. We vote for them believing that they uphold conservative values, and then we watch one election after the other go by, and those things that they promise still don't come to fruition.

So this is just a reminder to us that we put our trust not in princes. There's a certain way we want things to go in this world, certainly, so that things are easier for us to be able to proclaim the gospel.

But we don't put our trust in these things. Our trust is in the Lord. His kingdom come.

His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Verse 5, blessed is he whose help is the

God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.

The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners.

He upholds the widow and the fatherless. But the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.

Praise the Lord. There is a reference again to those generations. So you see that being kind of a consistent theme going on here in the three psalms that we've read today.

Psalm 144, 145, and 146. Proclaim the praises of our

God and proclaim those praises to a future generation so that your sons and your sons' sons and on and on down it goes.

They may hear the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, turn from sin, put their trust and their faith in him and so be saved.

Amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt

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