Psalm 146 "I Will Praise the LORD as Long as I Live" February 25, 2007 The last two weeks of our miniseries on the spiritual theology of the Psalter are going to focus on praise. Because that is where our experience of God is going. The book of Psalms concludes with several psalms of praise, coming to its grand crescendo in Psalms 146-150. Do you feel like you don't have time to get everything done that you want to get done? We have come up with an amazing number of labor-saving devices. Household chores that used to take all day, can now be accomplished with fifteen minutes of your time. Instead of carefully and painstakingly writing multiple drafts of your essay, you can just cut and paste and be done editing in an hour! But we don't have any more time than before. Because together with all the devices that we've invented to save time, we have also come up with all sorts of new ways to waste time! Psalm 146 says I will praise the LORD as long as I live. This is the key to using time effectively. Because Psalm 146 is all about time. The first stanza (v1-2) focuses on praising God in time (as long as I live). The second stanza (v3-4) reminds us that man doesn't have much time (when his breath departs he returns to the earth). The third stanza (v5-7) emphasizes the faithfulness of God forever. The fourth stanza (v7-9) reminds us of what God does in history. And the last stanza (v10) points out that God reigns forever to all generations. Introduction: Praise the LORD (1-2) Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! Psalm 146 begins with a command a call simply to praise the LORD. And while the first line could (and should) be taken in a corporate sense, the second line turns inward. Praise the LORD, O my soul! Praise does not always come naturally. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to praise God. Indeed, if praising God were easy and natural, then we wouldn't need Psalm 146! You see when we talk about the spiritual theology of the Psalms, we are talking about our experience of God. But the Psalms are not simply interested in describing what our experience is. That would be the psychology of the Psalms. Rather, the Psalms are calling us to what our experience of God should be and can be. So verse one calls us to praise the LORD; and verse two is the response of the soul: I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. I'm not going to live very long. In contrast with the vast scope of history, I have a rather short life. Since you are not going to live very long, don't waste your time on selfish pursuits. 1. The Futility of Trusting in Princes (3-4) 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. Whom do you trust? In princes? Politicians? If only we could get so-and-so elected president, then we could turn the country around! If only we had good Supreme Court justices, that would deliver us from the liberals! There is no salvation in politicians. Do not put your hope in a political fix. And notice the reason: it is not because the politicians are wicked. After all, the prince in Judah is the Son of David the anointed king! But the prince is mortal. Hezekiah was a great king. He delivered Judah. His prayer saved Jerusalem. But Hezekiah died, and when he died the kingdom was inherited by Manasseh. And all the good plans of the good king came to naught. The reason why you should not put your trust in princes is because even if they are as good as they appear, still they are going to die and when they die, they can do nothing to save you. This is why trusting in man is a bad idea. Because even the best of men even those who are wise and good are still mortal. Humanity is weak and impotent. Where does the praise of God begin? It begins in the acknowledgment that we cannot trust in man. And there is nothing like death to convince us of this. That kind and wonderful person who loved us is gone. And we come face to face with our mortality. When you die, your plans perish with you. 2. The Blessing of Trusting in the LORD (5-7a) Once we have recognized the futility of trusting in man, we learn to praise God as we see his faithfulness to those whose hope is in Him. 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. Verse 5 proclaims a blessing on the one who hopes in the LORD. But verses 5-7 are not really about us. We've just heard that it is a bad idea to trust in man. So not surprisingly, we now hear how good a thing it is to trust in the LORD. Notice that Psalm 146 does not tell us how to trust in the LORD. There is nothing here about method or technique. Too often we want to how. We want someone to tell us the three easy steps to having a wonderful life! Just do this, do that, and do the other thing, and everything will be fine! But that is not how life works. When you have been trusting in man when your stress level is up because you have placed your future in the hands of those around you the last thing you need is another list of things to do! The focus is not on what you do, but on whom you trust! And so the Psalmist calls us to lift up our eyes and behold the living God! Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob. 18 times in the OT God is called "the God of Jacob." 12 of those times are in the Psalms. It is a reminder of God's faithfulness to generation after generation. The God who called Abraham, and who gave his blessing to Isaac and to Jacob, has not forgotten his people. Blessed is he whose hope is in Yahweh his God. Hope is all about eschatology! It is all about what you are looking for what you are longing for. Where is your hope? What are you longing for? Because the thing you are longing for is what will rule your life. If you are longing for a wife or a husband, and if you think that a spouse is what will make your life complete, then that desire is ruling you. If you want respect, and you get all bent of shape when someone disrespects you, then that desire for respect is what rules you. These are good things. But too often we worship the gift, rather than the giver. So verse 5 proclaims a blessing on the one whose hope is in the LORD, and verses 6-7 help us understand the difference between God and his gifts: because it is the God of Jacob Yahweh who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, God created the three parts of creation: the heavens, the earth, and the seas. And God filled them with all sorts of creatures. God is one who gives us good gifts but do not confuse the gift with the giver! who keeps faith forever; When God says that he will do something, you may be certain that he will do it. This is why you are blessed for hoping in him! Your future is secure because God keeps faith forever. who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. You are blessed for hoping in God, because the judge of all the world will do right! He executes justice for the oppressed. This is both a comfort to those who are oppressed, and a warning to the oppressor! But it is also God who gives food to the hungry. I suspect that very few of you really know what it is like to be truly hungry. Maybe you miss a meal occasionally, or perhaps you have fasted for a day, but at the end of the day there was a meal waiting for you. The "hungry" are those who don't know where their next meal will come from. Perhaps their city is under siege, and the food has run out. Hunger does strange things to people. In Elisha's day, the city of Samaria ran out of food. Women were killing their children and eating them (2 Kings 6-7). But God provided food the next day. Do you believe God's promises? Do you believe that he keeps faith forever? We are called to hope in the LORD in the way that Daniel's three friends did. When Nebuchadnezzar told Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to worship his image, they said that God could deliver them, but even if God didn't deliver them, they still would not bow down to an idol. In the face of deadly hunger, do you believe that God keeps faith forever? Then praise the LORD as long as you live! Even if you are hungry. Even if you are oppressed. Because the God who created all things is worthy of your trust. And he will make all things right in the end. You might tempted to say, "But Pastor, this is pie in the sky by and by!" We're talking about people who are really suffering! Yes, and as those who are children of this heavenly Father, we are to imitate him in keeping faith, executing justice and feeding the hungry; but the point of Psalm 146 is that regardless of whether man is faithful, God will be faithful! 3. What the LORD Does for His People (7b-9) And that faithfulness is the focus from the end of verse 7 through verse 9. Five times in rapid succession the covenant name of Yahweh is pronounced. The LORD is faithful to his covenant and those who hope in him have reason to praise his name! Yahweh sets the prisoners free; Yahweh opens the eyes of the blind. What is the point of God setting prisoners free? (Think of the apostle Peter in prison and how the Lord opened the gates and letting him out) What is the point of God opening the eyes of the blind? (Our NT lesson from Mark 8, where Jesus opened the eyes of the blind man). After all, most of those who are in prison for the gospel don't get out! Most blind people never see again. The LORD sets the prisoners free and opens the eyes of the blind as a sign to the rest of us. As surely as God delivered Peter from prison, so will he deliver us in the end. And in Jesus Christ God has already delivered us from prison. We have been set free. God has opened our eyes so that we might behold his glory in Jesus Christ! Maybe you hear this and say, I don't see it. Maybe you are still in prison. God calls you to put your trust in him. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ put your hope in him and God in his grace will break your chains and set you free! Because, Yahweh lifts up those who are bowed down; Yahweh loves the righteous. This is an interesting parallel: "Those who are bowed down" "The righteous" We don't usually think of the "righteous" as those who are bowed down. But the sort of righteousness that God loves is not the proud and haughty "self-righteousness" of the Pharisees, but the meek and humble righteousness of those who know that they have nothing in themselves. Indeed, verse 9 makes it clear that "the righteous" are a rather motley assortment: Yahweh watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. Sojourners are people who are not Israelites. They are Gentiles who have come to faith in Israel's God. Psalm 146 tells us that God watches over them. He has taken the Gentile sojourner as one of his own. And the widow and the fatherless he upholds. James tells us that pure religion is found in visiting widows and orphans in their distress. In our day "the widow and the fatherless" certainly includes "the single mother." The LORD upholds the widow and the fatherless he is the defender of those who are weak and helpless. But the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. This, too, is good news. We sometimes feel uncomfortable saying that God will judge the wicked. But we shouldn't. If we believe that God will make all things right, then we believe that God will stop wickedness. Rest assured, the way of Osama bin Laden will be brought ruin. Certainly we pray that God would do this through his conversion, but one way or other, God will destroy the wicked. But this is important for our eschatology as well. God will bring the way of the wicked to ruin. Yes, God uses human means to do so. But what is the means that God has appointed? Paul's comments in Ephesians 6 are helpful. We wage our war against the principalities and powers through the proclamation of the Word of God. It is the foolishness of preaching that overthrows the wicked. We are called to preach the kingdom of God that God's rule has come over all nations in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and it is that preaching that brings the way of the wicked to an end. When the church is concerned with preaching Christ and him crucified, then society is transformed: the early church saw this in the conversion of the Roman empire; the Reformation saw it in the transformation of Europe. The irony is that when the church forgets preaching, and focuses on trying to transform culture, then the church becomes a mirror of culture, until you can't tell the difference between the church and the culture. But that's not surprising! After all, the transformation of culture is a gift of God. And any time we focus on the gift rather than the giver, we turn the gift into an idol. It's like Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." If you focus on the second half of that: "Hey, if I delight myself in the LORD, then I get what I want!" you will never actually get what you want, because you are delighting in yourself! But if you truly delight in the LORD, then your desires change and instead of wanting your own selfish pleasures, you desire to see the glory of the Kingdom of God. And when that happens, then truly God gives you the desires of your heart. In the same way, if we seek the transformation of society, we will only accomplish the deformation of the church; but if we seek first the Kingdom of God, and if we preach Christ and him crucified, then the church is transformed and as the kingdom of God grows and increases in the church, our society is transformed. Conclusion: The LORD Will Reign Forever (10) The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. We are often in such a hurry to accomplish everything. But God has time. We make a mess of things and think that there is no way to fix everything. But God has time. The LORD will reign forever. The Kingdom of God is not going away. There may be times when the Kingdom of God appears weak and feeble when it seems as though the wicked have triumphed but we need to believe that God keeps faith forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. You may think there is no fix for your situation. And maybe you will not live to see the resolution. But God reigns forever to all generations. It may only in your great-grandchildren's day that God will bring all these things together and show to your children's grandchildren why you went through this. Of course, by then, they won't even know what happened to you! But our God is sovereign, and he is working all things together for the good of those who love him. Praise the LORD (146:10). God has time to work all things together. So stop trying to figure it all out! Praise the LORD! Praise God that he is faithful, and he will make everything right in the end and that he has demonstrated this in raising Jesus in the middle of history. Praise the LORD!