Reading Psalm 145 while engaging your heart is an assault on cynicism, hopelessness, and despair. If you will lift your eyes to this King, whose “greatness is unsearchable,” the negativity of your life is confronted and can be conquered as you learn to hope again.
The breakdown of this chapter is encouraging and inspiring:
I. Praise God for His Unsearchable Greatness (145:1-3)
II. Praise God for His Abundant Goodness (145:4-9)
Commend God’s goodness to the next generation (4-7)
Cherish God’s goodness in salvation (8)
Consider God’s goodness in creation (9)
III. Praise God for His Kingly Greatness (145:10-13a)
IV. Praise God for His Satisfying Goodness (145:13b-21)
The Lord helps the weak (14)
The Lord provides food for all his creation (15-16)
The Lord answers prayer (18-19)
The Lord protects His people (20)
Nothing lifts our spirits, and awakens joy within us, like doing just what Psalm 145 says:
Psalms 145:1-7 I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. 2 Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
“Every day” I will bless the Lord! This is daily, consistently, tenaciously even when it isn’t convenient.
Psalms 145:3-7 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. 4 One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. 5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. 6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. 7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. ESV
God’s eternal plan requires more than just our generation!
No generation can effectively disciple itself.
God’s plan is to bridge the gap between generations relationally so the experiences and stories of one generation serve the purpose of empowering the next!
“Every day I will faithfully, consistently and tenaciously bless you and praise your name!” I focus on your goodness then they focus on your goodness. I declare your greatness then they declare your greatness.
No matter how I feel, as I begin to speak out loud to God and tell him how good and wonderful and kind he has been to me, it is like God himself breathes his joy and his presence into my heart. Modeling this in your home before your family is our charge from God! Praise is spoken. Praise is not quiet! We cannot just think God is great, we have to say it, sing it and sometimes shout it.
Verse 7 is a great personal prayer to pray over your children. “They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness” (145:7, ESV).
David longs for the next generation to not only speak about the Lord, but to have a heart to praise Him! Do you truly long for this for your children, and for the children in our church family?
Parents long for their kids to do well in school, stay out of trouble, get a good job, etc. Longing for our kids to have a heart to know and praise God should be at the top of our list!
Your authentic pursuit is central to effectively training up our children in the way they should go in their pursuit of the Lord.
You never want to communicate the disconnect of our words saying one thing, but our lack of passion saying another. Effective discipleship involves both information and adoration.
The primary responsibility for training the next generation falls on the parents (Deut 6:4-7; Ps 78:5-7; Eph 6:1-4). Our role as a church family is to help equip parents to disciple effectively (Eph 4:11-12).
It is the Biblical duty of every generation of Christians to see to it that the next generation hears about the mighty acts of God. God does not give new Biblical writings from heaven to every new generation.
God's way of shaping children into radically committed, risk-taking, countercultural, wise, thinking, loving, mature Christians is through parents who teach and model a God-centered, Bible-saturated worldview to their children.
That's the link with Psalm 145:4: "One generation shall praise Your works to another, and declare your mighty acts." What we want from the next generation is not just heads full of right facts about the works of God; we want heads full of right facts and hearts that burn with the fire of love for the God of those facts - hearts that will sell everything to follow Jesus into the hardest places of the world.
Deuteronomy 6:4-7 says,
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. (See also Deuteronomy 11:19)
Centuries later, Asaph says in Psalm 78:5-7:
[The Lord] established a testimony in Jacob And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers That they should teach them to their children, That the generation to come might know, Even the children yet to be born, That they may arise and tell them to their children, That they should put their confidence in God And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments.
And in the New Testament, Ephesians 6:1-4 says:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
The Biblical pattern is for parents, especially fathers, not to relinquish their role as the primary teachers and shapers of their children's mind and heart - not even to the church. The Biblical pattern is for parents to impart to their children a God-centered, Bible-saturated vision for all of life. Education for Exultation is not primarily a vision of how to replace parents with church, but to restore parents to their God-ordained role. This is one reason why David and Sally Michael are called Pastor and Minister for Parenting and Children's Discipleship, not simply Pastor and Minister for Children.
That's principle #1: Parents educate their children. The Church Is a Partner With the Parents in Educating the Children
There are lots of reasons why this is important. Practical ones include the facts that 1) some children don't have believing parents; 2) some single parent homes are so stressed and overworked that they need all the help they can get; 3) there is a whole range of competencies in moms and dads that may need supplementing in the world the way it is (if not the way it should be); 4) even the best home-teaching will benefit from reinforcement in a corporate setting; and 5) some aspects of God's character may be caught better in a larger corporate setting than at home.
Psalms 145:11-13 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, 12 to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. 13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations [The LORD is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.
GP2RL: Thank someone this week in a meaningful way for helping you grow deeper in your faith. (Write a card, make a call, etc.)