Turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 145. So as we continue to worship, we’re here in Psalm 145, just imagine with me you get in your car one morning and that notorious light is on on the dashboard. And you kind of lean forward—you ever do this? You’re like, what symbol is that? Is that a battering ram? Is that a panda? What is that? So, you take it to the mechanic—the only people that know how to decode those little symbols. They’re like, oh, that’s the check engine light. That’s supposed to be an engine?! They could just put the words “check engine.” That would be helpful to me. Or it could just talk to me. We’re literally putting people on the moon now, you know. It could just say, “Hey, Jason, you need to check your engine.” “Thanks, I’ll do that.”

Well, imagine—so you take it to the mechanic and he gets in and he looks at it, and sure enough, check engine light’s on. We’ll get this taken care of. Thirty minutes and you’ll be all set. So you walk down the street; you grab a cup of coffee; back in thirty minutes. And he’s like, got you all taken care of. That pesky little light won’t be bothering you anymore.

Thank you. What was it? What’d you do? How’d you fix it? Well, we just got in there. We took the dashboard apart and we disconnected the wires. No problem. Got you covered. $499.95—we take Visa and AMEX. You’re like, wait a minute, that’s not how it works. You can’t just disconnect the wires and cut the light off. Right? This is pointing to something under the hood. Like, did you guys pop the hood? Did you look under there? Like, did you check the engine? There’s an internal problem there; you got to get under the hood. Right? Just taking care of the light on the dashboard doesn’t do the trick.

I say this because sometimes maybe you feel like you’ve got a spiritual check engine light on. You feel that way sometimes. All the pieces are there; I know I’m walking with the Lord; things seem to be going well. But just—I don’t know—something’s missing. This check engine light’s on. Right? Just thinking and praying.

I think too often we do what that mechanic did. We’ll just kind of like get in there and dismantle the check engine light. Stop it. Everything’s fine and good. We look at all the externals. Okay, I’m doing this; I’m doing this; I’m doing that; I’m doing this. Okay, I must be fine. I think in the same way we have to take the time to get under the hood.

So, is there a spiritual mechanic we can go to this morning? And maybe an example of proper heart worship before the Lord? I wonder if there’s someone who could teach us a little bit about what should be happening in our hearts. A little bit about worship. How do we get under the hood of the heart—the heart of worship? Is there a good model we can look at, an example we can learn from?

Thanks for asking. I’m glad you asked and I’m glad that you all have turned in your Bibles to Psalm 145. It will be to us, this morning, that example—an example of authentic worship. True worship. I think you’ll be surprised by some of things we see.

The heading above Psalm 145 is—and we’ll read all of these verses as we go through—but the heading you’ll notice says, “Psalm of Praise.” Interestingly, as familiar as that might sound, this is actually the only Psalm referred to in this way, which is amazing because you know the Hebrews didn’t actually call the book of Psalms, the book of Psalms; they called it “Praises.” The Hebrew word literally means “praises.” That was what they called this book. And yet this is the only one that’s actually titled that, “A Psalm of Praise.”

It’s also clearly delineated a Psalm of David. David is the author of more psalms than anyone else, so that is appropriate. You know, of the 150 psalms in the psalter, David wrote 75—exactly half of them. (150, 75; good; okay.) Exactly half of them.

And this, though, this is David’s final psalm of the psalter—what do you think would be the subject matter of David’s last psalm? How would he summarize a lifetime of following God? This psalm, we’ll see, describes an ever-increasing amount of praise being brought to God as the psalm progresses. So we’ll literally walk through three portions of this psalm this morning.

In the first part of the psalm—we can actually put the outline up on the screen here—in the first part of the psalm, it’s just David singing alone. It’s David’s praise in verses 1 through 3. In the second part, there’s this large quantity of people singing about the Lord. And in the final portion, all of creation is singing to its Maker. And so we’re just going to divide it up into those headings this morning.

And I told the elders in elders’ prayer this morning, this feels a little bit like skipping a rock across the pond when you want to put on your scuba gear and go deep, you know. But when there’s 21 verses, you know, we’re going to kind of skip the rock across the pond here, so that we can actually get you out in time to go eat lunch.

1.  David’s Praise.

So, number one, David’s praise. You see this in verses 1 through 3. Look at it there in your Bible. Notice who’s doing the praising here. It says, “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” (Ps. 145:1-2). So, I will extol you; I will bless you; I will praise your name forever. David begins this thing in his own heart, his own relationship with the Lord.

And here in verse 1 we see him say, I will extol you. Not a word we use all the time. I don’t know if you find that in your vocabulary this week—extolling things regularly. What does it mean to extol something? Every time I read this word, I think of the opening scene of The Lion King. You know what I’m talking about? [African chant.] The sun is rising, you know, and the monkey is coming down, you know. And all the animals are kind of like, huh? And here goes the monkey. You’re like, oh, where’s the monkey going? Where’s the monkey going?

And the monkey’s going—he’s going up the rocks. And okay, there he goes. And there’s this baby lion there, right? Everyone’s watching and there’s Simba, the lion king. And don’t miss the symbolism there when he cracks open the little red melon thing and gets some of that stuff and smears it on his head. You know, Messiah means the anointed one, the smeared one. Right?

So here’s the lion king, and what does the monkey do? The monkey takes—something like that—the monkey takes Simba and walks out to the edge of the rock, right? And somehow in perfect timing with the music, lifts the monkey up. Right? And all of the animals are gathered around now just as the sun comes up over the—all the animals bow down to this king, the lion king.

And it’s that picture right there. Just pause the tape. That’s what it means to extol. To lift something up in order that it might be adored. To lift something up to show the great value of something. And David says here, I will extol you, God.

Stop and think about this for a second. This is David who fought battles, who conquered kingdoms, David who defeated Goliath, David who led the nation of Israel; King David, says, “I will extol you, my God and King.” David, the greatest king of Israel, celebrates and recognizes the true king.

That’s not just a distant recognition on these verses; it’s not this God who’s far off. He says in verse 1: my God—not just God—my God. David begins by saying, I will extol you, my God. He begins with his relationship with his creator. That’s a good reminder for us. That’s where all true praise begins, right? A faith-based, blood-bought relationship with our creator. It’s a good reminder for us.

He doesn’t worship—praise doesn’t begin with a guitar, doesn’t begin with a PowerPoint slide, doesn’t begin with a room full of people. It begins within the heart of each individual person as they express their gratitude for their relationship with their creator, the King.

Notice David’s praise here isn’t the “flip-it-on, flip-it-off” kind of thing. Right? He doesn’t walk into church Sunday morning—time to turn on the worship; time to turn on the praise—and then walk out. All right now, that’s my worship for the week. That’s not really praise at all, is it? That’s not really worship.

Look at your Bible in verse 1, he says, “I will extol you, my God and King and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you.” That includes like Tuesdays and Thursdays. I will bless you every day and praise your name forever and ever. Notice the repetition there, too. Forever and ever, every day, forever and ever. He describes not just the duration, but also the frequency. How long are you going to do this, David? Forever and ever. Really? I mean, how often then? Every day.

Just like the very next psalm says, Ps. 146:2: “I will praise the LORD as long as I live.” This every day kind of worship easily sounds impossible to us. I think a lot of that is because we don’t really appreciate the true nature of worship, praise. We have this notion of what worship is, what praise is. We have ideas about it that are misleading. We think worship is something we do when the music starts Sunday morning, and we’ve heard, hey, you know, worship’s more than a song; worship is a lifestyle. But it’s more than that. It’s more than just a lifestyle.

Worship is actually something we’re always doing. We were created to worship. We were created to be in awe of our creator. It’s more helpful to think about worship as something that just never turns off. We constantly are worshiping that which we value most. It’s like constantly—aiming the constantly firing gun of worship at something. Worship is constantly firing, and we ought to be always aiming at the one who is worthy of all of our praise. But too often, like Romans 1 tells us, we exchange the glory of God for creation. We aim the worship of our hearts at lesser things. We become enamored by lesser things, by the creation rather than by the creator.

This is why Matt Papa says—this is helpful—“We are all facing some deity. Some glory has swept us off our feet. And at this very moment, like a rabid animal, we are pursuing it.” That’s what life is.

We tend to think about worship differently though. You ever seen those videos of the robots that build cars? You get behind the scenes on the assembly line with sparks flying everywhere, the big pieces come in, and then down the assembly line, and the next thing comes in. Play the YouTube videos—that is just—that’s sweet. Hey guys, look at this. Right? It’s cool and it’s flashy; it’s efficient.

But here’s something to think about. Right? What if we all get up and walk out of here and instead we fill this room with cool robots, singing robots that sing to God. Right? The robots all, “I will praise you, O Lord, my God.” Right? And we all think, okay this is getting really silly. But we know that’s not worship. Right? That’s not worship.

What about this? Why wouldn’t that be worship? Because worship is not an activity to be accomplished. It’s not something to check off of a list of things Christians do. Worship is a heart attitude that treasures God as our greatest love over everything else. The songs that we sing are really just the overflow of that heart. The words that we sing are really just us saying that very thing. I treasure God as my greatest love in this life over and above everything else, all that has been made, all that my eyes have seen. Nothing compares to God. He is the greatest delight of my heart. That’s true worship.

So we tend to think of worship as an activity. A better example of worship would be when that teenager begins to talk about their favorite new song. Hey, have you heard the Wawa’s and the new Scrillex Jam? Yeah! Wawa-wawa-wawa. And you’re like, what are you talking about? Right? But they’re talking on and all their friends are like, yeah, yeah! Ahh, it’s so good! Right?

And their moms and dads have no idea what Scrillex is, but they’ll talk your ear off about coffee or you fill in the blank. Right? Coffee: perfect extraction methods and using different kinds of filters that were designed by scientists to produce the perfect cup of fresh roasted coffee with a smooth mouth feel.

And grandparents are like … But the grandparents will get out their iPhones and pull up some pictures of their grandkids. Right? And they’ll talk your ear off for an hour, like look at [pointing to imaginary iPhone]—look at that. You see how cute that face is right there? You know. And they’ll talk your ear off about how cute those grandkids are.

What do these three things have in common? The mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. We praise what we treasure. Whether you’re talking about music or sports or coffee or grandkids, the point is clear: When we see something as great, we instinctively praise without any intentional forethought. We don’t plan it. Right? It’s just a gut reaction for us, because we were created to praise. We were made to worship. And so it’s just a visceral response. We see something great; when we treasure something, we talk about it. It overflows from our hearts. We talk about it to everyone because it’s great to us.

I’m convinced that our frequent ideas of praise—our pseudo worship—can sometimes just be a robotic imitation of the real thing because we’ve not truly come to grips with how great God is. Yet that’s exactly what David is talking about here. That’s where his worship begins, with the greatness of God.

Look at it in verse 3. He says, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.” David says three times: great, greatly, greatness. You think he’s trying to get a point across here? His greatness is unsearchable—never fully realized by mankind. You can’t Google God’s greatness. It’s unsearchable. It’s so great you can’t figure it all out.

People have been charting the stars as far back in history as we can tell. The earliest recorded working telescopes appeared in the Netherlands about 1608 and we started sending people into space in 1957. Since then we’ve spent on average about $32 billion a year to send hundreds of spacecraft of all kinds—telescopes and cameras and rovers and people and animals, robotic explorers and satellites and sky labs—all up into space in order that we could see and explore and determine and photograph and sample and touch and bring back every last detail we can about space. We’re enamored by it.

Mankind has rarely spent so much money just trying to search something out. Yet even the most involved astronomers will tell you we have barely scratched the surface of space because the universe is bigger than we can measure. It’s deeper than we can discover, wider than we can figure out. There’s more in it than we can count. It’s more complicated than our minds can fathom or understand. It’s too much to search out.

Outer space is unsearchable and so is the greatness of God. All of space, every inch of the universe, is just a speck of dust when measured against God’s greatness. His greatness is an ocean without a shore. It’s a mountain without a peak. It just keeps going. It’s unsearchable. And it’s because God is great that we praise him.

We don’t just sing because everyone else around us is singing. We don’t just follow Christ because my friends do or I was raised in the church so it’s comfortable for me. I follow Jesus Christ because his glory has inflamed my heart with praise. Like Deut. 10:17 says, “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God.” I have been captivated by his unsearchable greatness. That is where true worship begins.

That’s David’s cry here in these verses. He’s so overwhelmed by this God who is great that praise erupts from his life and his lips and he begins to sing this song, looking at his own heart and confessing he’s resolved to worship God every day forever and ever. That’s what we see in verses 1 through 3—David’s praise.

2.  The People’s Praise.

Interestingly, there’s a very clear turn in this Psalm, starting in verse 4, where we begin to see the people’s praise in verses 4 through 9. The people’s praise. David shifts focus of the psalm so that it’s no longer only about him praising the Lord, but now all the people join in with him. So while we saw in the first section, I will extol, I will bless, I will praise, in the second section we see the focus on the people.

Look at verse 4: “One generation shall commend your works to another.” Verse 6: “They speak.” Verse 7: “They pour forth.” See now, David isn’t praising the Lord alone anymore. Now it’s both him and the people, like a snowball rolling downhill beginning to create an avalanche. Right?

It’s like that classic scene in the musical. I was thinking about this yesterday. We watched Disney’s Enchanted with our kids, which is now my second Disney reference in one sermon. I don’t watch Disney that much. Disney’s Enchanted. Right? And this girl starts to sing to this guy. How will she know that he loves her? And before you know it, it’s like these people over here that go—Now everybody’s in on this and then three minutes later in the song you’ve got this fountain in the background, janitors are swinging their mops around and the construction guys are in there with cones and there’s brides and grooms and the bouquets are flying through the air, and you’re like—whoa!

It starts with this one girl, then there’s three guys that start singing too, and there’s five more people, and then before you know it the whole city is singing. And that’s the picture here. That’s the kind of picture David is painting here. That’s the whole idea of this psalm. It starts with just him. It starts to branch out and now there’s more people singing.

Now you’re going to get into the third section of this psalm and all of creation is singing. Try to fit that in the camera for your musical. Look at verse 4. David says, “One generation shall praise Your works to another” (NASB). David pictures the spread of praise, not just increasing in number of people, but it’s something that’s working its way down the timeline of human history from one generation to the next. Right?

I mean there’s some discipleship happening here. This is Old Testament Titus 2, right? Older people teaching the younger people about the Lord. The primary thing that everyone is talking about in this section is, what God does for his people. And you’ll notice, if you were to read through this, each one of these three sections starts with who’s praising and then it goes to what they’re saying. Then who’s praising and then what they’re saying. And then who’s praising and then what they’re saying.

And here, what they’re saying in verse 4: “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.” Verse 6: “They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds.

So you see what’s happening there—your works, your mighty acts, your wondrous works, your awesome deeds—these are all things that have to do with what God does for his people. And that’s exactly what David says he will fill his mind with in verse 5.

“On your wonderful works I will meditate.” What a good practice for us: to meditate on the great things that God has done in our lives. It’s important to see here that’s what David is doing. He’s made it a habit in his life to constantly think about the great things God has done for him so that his praise is not just something on a checklist. It’s something that is overflowing out of hearts of gratitude from God’s people for all that he’s done. It’s overflowing from a heart that’s been meditating on how great God is.

And that’s further expressed in verse 7 where it says, “They shall pour forth.” You see the word picture there? “They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness.” Pour forth depicts this gushing speech, like you open your mouth and it just gushes out like water pouring forth from a spring. This is abundant, continuous praise flowing out of their mouths because, in their hearts, they are grateful for what God has done. And because they are enamored by him and what he’s done, they’re talking about it. They’re singing about it. They’re commending his works from one generation to the next.

How does that happen? Because the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. A good example of this—some of you are familiar with this. If I was to take this bottle of water over here away from anybody else [shakes bottle]. Question: Why did water come out? Because I shook it, right? Let me rephrase the question. Why did water come out? Because water was what was in the bottle. See, your mouth is the cap on your heart. When you open it, what comes out only shows what’s inside.

You’re hearing the words of Jesus in your mind, right? Things like oranges don’t grow on apple trees. The mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. Jesus was constantly trying to get people to see this. Go read the sermon on the mount. Right? You’ve heard it said, do not commit adultery; but I tell you whoever has looked lustfully at a woman in his heart has committed adultery. You’ve heard it said, don’t commit murder (external action); but I tell you anyone who has been angry in his heart has committed murder.

You see, Jesus is constantly trying to get people to stop looking at the externals, stop looking at what’s on the outside. 1 Sam. 16:7—he goes way back, right? David got this. The Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

So let me ask you, what comes gushing out when you open your mouth? It’s a good indication of what’s important to you. It’s a good indication of what you treasure in your heart. Sometimes what comes out of my mouth shows that what I treasure most is me. Sometimes what comes out of my mouth shows that what I treasure most in my heart is sin. It’s true for all of us.

If we’re not talking about God, it’s because the love of God is not filling our hearts. If we’re not constantly talking about how great he is, it’s because of a heart problem, not because of a speech problem. If you’re not telling of God’s works from one generation to the next, it’s not because you need four steps for better discipleship. It’s because you need to be captivated by the unsearchable greatness of God. You need to be enthralled like the people in this Psalm by what God has done for you.

You need to be blown away by what Psalm 103 says. He forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Because we do talk about that which we love most.

When these people opened their mouths in Psalm 145, what comes out? Look at what they say in verses 8 and 9. Look at it there in your copy of God’s word. 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.”

Now, maybe that just passes by your ears as familiar verses. You don’t notice what a huge deal this is that they’re saying in these two verses. But these verses, to any Israelite in David’s day as they would have read or sang Psalm 145, these words would have jumped off the page at them. This is like their John 3:16. This quote is the most frequently rewritten verses in the entire Old Testament.

See, this is from a story. These verses are plucked right out of Exodos 34. That’s interesting because when God says this, it tells us a lot about his character. It tells us a lot about why the people recount these verses so frequently. In Exodus 34, right after the people reject God by worshiping the golden calf, a story we’re all so familiar with, Moses gets angry, smashes the tablets of stone and then has to hang his head and go back up the mountain to get another copy from God. Lord, I broke the tablets you gave me. Can I get a Xerox of those?

And when you would most expect God to come down hard on Moses—Moses, seriously, the people are rebellious. I cannot believe they’re worshiping a golden calf. And then you respond in anger. Moses, you’re supposed to be their leader! God says, Moses, I’m merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving sin.

It’s no wonder the Old Testament repeats those verses so many times. That’s incredible. That’s the unsearchable greatness character of our God. When you see the depths of your own sin against God and you realize that that same God who we have so frequently rejected and turned our backs on to worship lesser things, that he’s a forgiving God, that he will look towards you with love because of what he did on the cross.

Do you realize he says things like, I don’t get angry fast. He forgives you for your sin. He wants a relationship with you. He wants to demonstrate his love for you. When you realize that, you, too, will be overwhelmed by his goodness, his mercy; and praise will fill your life and your lips because it’s filling your heart.

3.  The Praise of All Creation.

So we’ve seen David’s praise. We’ve seen the people’s praise. Now we’ll look at all of creation’s praise. This is kind of where it starts to get exciting. If you have fireworks, you can light them now. Verses 10 through 20, David again shifts the focus of his psalm so that it’s no longer just David and it’s not just the people, but now the final phase of this psalm, all of creation joins in praising God. All of creation is worshiping the creator.

Take a look in your Bibles at verses 10 and 11. It says, “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.” All your works—that’s everything that God has made and everything that God has done. All your saints—that’s everyone that God has saved; and as everything everywhere joins in the song, the primary topic here is God’s kingdom.

All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,
and all your saints shall bless you!
11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
and tell of your power,

Look at verse 11: “They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom.” Verse 12: “and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.” And verse 13: “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.” When David uses the word kingdom here, he simply recognizes God’s rule over everything since before creation to all of eternity all of the world is under the sovereign, righteous, perfect control of God.

And that’s further emphasized by the repetition of the word “all.” If you just kind of glance down the pages of your Bible there in Psalm 145, starting in verse 10, watch for the word “all.” You just pull out a pen and circles the word “all” every time you see it.

Verse 10: All your works and all your saints. Right? And then verse 13: All his words, all his works. Verse 14: All who were falling, all who were bowed down. 15: All looked to you. 16: Every living thing. 17: All his ways, all his works. 18: All who call on him, all who call on him. Verse 20: All who love him, all of the wicked. Listen to this: all, all, all, all, all, all, all, every, all, all, all, all, all, all. You think there’s some emphasis going on there? I’m out of breath reading all those alls.

It just shows the comprehensive, exhaustive nature of God’s rule over all, over everything. There is nothing over which God does not exercise complete and total control and kingship. What then is the character of that king about which now all of creation is singing?

Look at verse 13: “The LORD is faithful [faithful] in all his words and kind in all his works.” In other words, in the things he has revealed to us in his word, every last bit of it is absolutely true and trustworthy. In everything he does, he shows kindness. In all his works.

In verse 14: “The LORD upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.” When someone’s bowed down under the trials of life, when you are feeling the burdens of the broken creation, when you are bowed down under the trials of life, God upholds you. It says he raises them up.

A few years ago when my daughters were five and six we were learning to ride bikes. We had just taken their training wheels off, which is like the most dangerous moment of parenthood. And we kind of upped the ante a little bit by teaching them to ride bikes in North Hollywood Park, which is bordered by Tajunga and Lankershim and the 170 and Riverside. And so, you’re like, okay, that means I gotta run next to you the whole time, because if you go too far, you’re going to get hit by a car. This was kind of exciting.

So we had just taken their training wheels off and, I mean, you know, you just kind of know that they’re going to have to fall. That’s just part of how this is going to work. They’re going to be all right, but it’s going to happen. You know? You gotta learn the hard way.

When Sophia or Leia would fall, it’s like this earthshattering moment for them. You know? In the mind of a five- or six-year-old it’s like the sky goes black and the planets fall into alignment; it’s like total solar eclipse. Right? Jupiter smashes into the earth over here. Right? All the cars stop. All the squirrels in the trees are staring at them. You know? And they’re like—wahhhhhhh, and there’s like blood on their knee! No! You know? It’s like creation is coming unraveled. You know?

And to everyone else in North Hollywood Park who doesn’t even notice—right?—they’re just going on about their day and the squirrels are running out in front of cars, and I’m standing there like, we knew this was going to happen. Right? I expected this. They’re going to be okay. Right?

Here’s what I don’t do. I don’t walk over and go, “C’mon; you’re gonna be fine. You know, I mean, it’s not like we’re persecuted Christians in China. They’re people hiding in caves to worship the Lord right now and you’re crying about a skinned knee? You’re gonna be totally fine! Get up! C’mon!!” I don’t do that.

I respond in the way that I understand what’s going on in their heart. They don’t understand everything that I do. They don’t see everything that I see. They don’t know all that I know. To them this is the worst thing that’s ever happened or will ever happen ever again. You know? And so I run to them and I scoop them up in my arms and I squat down and I just hold them with all of my might. You know? In tears, as a dad, because my daughter is in tears. “It’s okay. I’m here for you. I got you. Everything’s okay. It’s gonna be all right.” And then five minutes later they’re back up on their bike because I was right. Dads are smart—good at this.

That’s the picture that David paints here. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. When you’re bowed down in the trials of life and you’ve fallen, the Lord knows you’re gonna be okay. He sees things you don’t see. He knows things you don’t know. He saw this coming and he understands perfectly, exactly where all of this is headed.

The picture that’s painted of God here is not him sitting on his throne going, “You’re gonna be fine; suck it up pumpkin. C’mon.” You know? No, the picture here is, “The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.” These verses depict God as the loving Father that he is, squatting down to take care of his children when they have fallen.

And it’s not just that he is there for you in difficult times, no, he’s the one who provides for you every day. In fact, look at verses 15 and 16. It says: “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.” Here we see God is not only the kind creator, wonderful protector, merciful father, but he is the very source of provision for everything alive. He holds everything together by the word of his power.

These verses picture God as the very source of all satisfaction that every living thing derives its food from. It says everything is looking to God. It’s this beautiful picture here in these verses of him—it’s like God is opening his hand and from his hand just flowing satisfaction to everything that’s alive. It’s not just the desire for food here. It’s every desire. You see, God himself is the fulfillment of every desire we have in this life.

Think about your greatest desires in this life. Think about it. God. God himself is the fulfillment of those greatest desires. And maybe you thought of something sinful. That came from a good desire for something that’s gone wrong. But at the core, somewhere, there’s a good desire there and God is the fulfillment of it.

And so we’re seeing God—it’s not only David singing praise to the Lord, then all the people join in, and as the psalm continues we see all of creation joins in the song, and notice how the final verses of this psalm bring things to a close? Verse 20: “The LORD preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.” I don’t know about you, but that phrase—“all the wicked he will destroy”—kind of stands in stark contrast to the rest of the psalm, doesn’t it? It’s like this tiny phrase that just stands out. It’s like the camera’s panning through a field of flowers and then all of a sudden—what’s Darth Vader doing here?! You know what I mean? You’re reading through it and you’re like, but all the wicked he will destroy. Wait a minute. What? What just happened?

Now, I think that’s the idea a little bit here. Right? All of creation is singing. Everything everywhere is singing. The whole psalm is God’s mercy and grace and kindness. And then this stands out: “all the wicked he will destroy.” The idea here: When you refuse to worship your creator, you stick out like a sore thumb in creation. You stand alone like a brush with no bristles, like a faucet with no water, like a cup with no bottom, like a pen with no ink. You’re not doing the very thing for which you were created to do, so you stand out.

And it’s like all of creation is singing about God’s greatness and if that same worship isn’t in your heart, it’s like you’re in black and white in a world of color. Just stand out. And if you’re here and you’re not a follower of Christ this morning, you get this. You feel this in your life. You can feel what it’s like even as we talk this morning about the greatness of God, you can feel what it’s like to be left out of the very thing that you were made for. Going through your life each week you can feel what it’s like to be empty of meaning deep inside. You can feel what it’s like to be longing in the depth of your heart for the satisfaction that only comes from his hands.

Maybe that is you this morning. You stand alone and you feel it. I have encouraging words for you. The Lord has encouraging words for you. Look at verse 18 again. Look at it. He says, “The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” Have you called on him? Verse 19 says, “He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them.”

When you think about worship, your first song must be a cry because God himself came to earth as a man named Jesus Christ and took on himself the punishment for your sin, for my sin, for our failure to worship our creator in the ways that we should, for our failure to worship him every day forever and ever. He took on himself on the cross the punishment for that sin, so that he can offer forgiveness and put a song in your heart. So cry out to him. He will hear your cry and he’ll save you.

As we’ve seen in Psalm 145 this morning, these three phases of ever-increasing praise of God—David’s praise, the people’s praise, all of creation’s praise—we’ve seen that although we often think about worship and praise like it’s something we do on Sunday, we’ve seen it’s so much more than that. It’s a category. It’s a reality that ought to characterize our lives and our hearts. We’ve seen that worship isn’t just the songs that we sing with our mouths, but rather it’s an overflow of our hearts as we recognize and are reminded of how great God really is. And it overflows in songs and in talking to one another and in discipleship and in preaching and in evangelism.

Maybe you’re here this morning as a believer and you’re thinking, I’m with you, Jason. I see everything you’re pointing out in this text. I see exactly what the Lord is teaching us here and I’m just going, like, man, my heart, my worship—it’s lacking. My spiritual check engine light is on for sure. You’re wondering, okay, so what do I do about it?

Let me tell you exactly what to do, but first let me tell you what not to do. Don’t work on your praise. Don’t focus on the external worship and singing or speaking or evangelism. Don’t try to praise more genuinely or evangelize more enthusiastically or disciple more earnestly.

We’ve seen that true praise, true worship comes from the heart. It comes from a heart that’s captivated by the greatness of God, a heart that values him as the greatest treasure over everything else. A heart that says, nothing this world has to offer me is worth anything. I trade it all for the surpassing glory of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

So, run! You know what you do? Run to your Bibles. Search for him desperately in those pages. Behold his glory, and like 2 Corinthians 3 says, be transformed from one degree of glory to another as God lets the light of the gospel shine into your hearts. Pray that he would shake your world with an authentic realization of who he is, what he’s done. Search it out in his word and beg him.

If you’ve been praying four hours a day, start praying eight hours a day asking God to change your heart and let you see him for who he is, to behold the splendor and the wonder and the majesty of our king. Pray that you’ll know, truly know, God is great and greatly to be praised. That you know that his greatness is unsearchable. And then you’re praise problem will be quickly remedied. Your worship weaknesses will rightly be strengthened from under the hood to the light on the dashboard.

Lord, that is our hearts’ desire. We want to yearn for you, God. We want you to be the greatest delight of our hearts. Passages like this remind us not only how great you are, God, but how far short we fall and then make us grateful—grateful for the cross, grateful for your Son, grateful for the free gift of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ, grateful, Lord, that you put a new song in our hearts.

Father, I pray that as we leave this place this week, God, that you would fill us with a sense of wonder at who you are. Lord, as we come back to our Bibles every day, reveal yourself to us, God. Draw near to us as we draw near to you. Show us your glory. Transform us, Lord, and make us more like your Son. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.