As we take up this psalm in our hearts and minds together today as a congregation, I want to draw your attention to something very important now that we've come to this part of the psalter, the whole biblical collection of the psalms. Beginning with Psalm 146 on through Psalm 147, 148, 149, and 150, the whole completion of the psalter We have every single one of these Psalms beginning with an expression that you are all familiar with. Some of you even said this might be one of the most recognizable Hebrew words in all the history of the world, in every language. Sometimes translated in our Bibles as, praise the Lord, but simply, hallelujah, hallelujah. Psalm 146 begins with hallelujah, and it ends with hallelujah, and so on, 147, 148, 149, and 150. The final five psalms constitute what's sometimes called the final hallel, the hallel, the praise of the Lord. Or as Charles Spurgeon once put it, the rest of our journey through the psalms lies through the delectable mountains. pure praise, ultimate joy, pardon me, in the presence of God. Psalm 147, cries out, hallelujah, oh Jerusalem. Psalm 148, hallelujah, from the heavens and from the earth. Psalm 149, hallelujah, in the triumphant assembly. And Psalm 150, hallelujah, in his sanctuary. Now Psalm 146, our text for today, launches this great pion, to the Lord by committing to praise the Lord for his good reign. In contrast, by the way, to what any mere mortal can possibly provide, a commitment to praise the Lord for his good reign. What we're seeing here as we come to the end of the Psalms, and for those who've been with us throughout our entire journey through this altar, or even if you haven't, if you've read through the Psalms, and I hope you have, what we're seeing as we come to the end of this is really the culmination of a great epic. This time put in the form of a musical. An epic that is sung. But this is not simply a fictional epic. This is the grand story of the world. And I trust it's the grand story that all of you grasp in your hearts is the real story of the world and the story of your life as a part of that. Our world around us is always looking for grand stories. In fact, a lot of times I think nowadays we turn to things like movies to get some kind of an epic feel of the grand story of reality because we can't find it anywhere else. Nothing coheres, so we tell ourselves stories. Perhaps, I speak perhaps from ignorance here, but maybe in the last couple generations in American life, the epic that most Americans could think of would be something like Star Wars. But that's not the real story of the world, is it? That's not the true story of the world. There's actually a much greater epic going on that is real, that we're all a part of, and the psalms are singing through, and they're teaching our souls how to perceive and to participate in. This psalm sweeps us up into eternal praise for the Lord's eternally good reign. Let me read the whole psalm for us here together. Praise the Lord, or hallelujah. Praise the Lord, oh 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. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, and whose hope is on 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. This Psalm calls us into this praise of the Lord in verses one and two with giving us the very reason for our existence. Here's your soul committing to the very reason it is a soul, the very reason you exist. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. I will praise the Lord while I live, or as long as I live, or, and I think this is probably even a good way to understand this, as an instrument. That is, I will praise the Lord with my life. I will sing praises to my God with my continuance, with my very continuation in existence. In other words, as long as I exist, I am going to praise the Lord. As long as there is something recognizably that's me, my soul, what makes me me, I am going to praise the Lord. And stop and think about that, the profundity of that commitment. It actually is a perfectly right and good commitment for every single soul to make, because why are you a soul, a living soul? Where did you come from? As we heard in our seminar hour this morning, did you give yourself existence? No, you didn't. How are you actually a living being? Where does life itself come from? It doesn't come from any mere matter, just historical chance and circumstance. It comes from the Lord. In fact, you have been given the gift of life. The very reason you exist as a creature looking in my eyes right now is because God has made you a living soul. And he is the one who sustains your very existence right now. And he has made you a living soul to be able to respond to him. He is giving you the gift of life so that you will participate in his eternal life. And so the only reasonable thing to do is to give that to Him. You have been given the gift of existence. You could not exist. Theoretically, I mean, if it was left up to you, you would go out of existence. You don't have the power to keep yourself continuing to go, do you? The older you get, the more you realize that. You begin to feel that life vitality ebbing away. You can't keep yourself in existence, but there is one who can, and that's God himself. And the whole reason he does that is, as we like to say, to glorify and enjoy him forever. In other words, here's a soul saying in Psalm 146, I'm going to commit myself to the very reason for my existence. I'm going to do what I was made for. and I'm going to enjoy it. It's going to be good, actually. I think of how much our world needs this message today, how much your soul needs this message today. We talk about how people lose hope. They lose a sense of the reason for existence. In extreme forms, we see that come out in suicide. When a person, when a soul can no longer hang on to why should I continue to exist and why will that be good? But when you exclude God from the picture, there is no real answer to that question. There's no sufficient reason to keep you in existence if it isn't true that God is good and that God made all things and that he made you for his glory and to enjoy him forever. On the other hand, if it really is true, as we'll go on to confess in this psalm, the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the seas and all that is in them, then that means he gave you existence so that you could find joy in him. And so this psalm is simply giving you words, it's giving you language, it's giving you spirit and breath to say, this is what I was made for and I will commit myself to it. Enjoy God forever. In fact, that would be my exhortation to you as you begin to take up this psalm on your lips, enjoy God. Do you do that? in everything you do? Do you enjoy God in his gifts to you, the very gift of being? Every thought, every breath, every taste, every touch, everything you see is God giving you the gift of life so that you can respond to him, do it. There's no virtual world to escape into here. We don't need a metaverse. if this is true, to find some kind of an escape from the real pressures of this world into some kind of a world, an illusory world where we won't have the pains and we won't have the sickness and we won't have the sorrows. We don't need any of that. In fact, that's a counterfeit life, truly counterfeit. God has given you real life, so enter into it, enjoy it, enjoy God. In fact, I think there's a hint here, even though the Psalm doesn't go on into any doctrine of eternal life, But this is a hint at eternal praise. I will sing praises to my God with my continuance while I exist. This is going to be the very instrument by which I praise God. He gives me existence, I use it to praise God. He gives me life, I use it to praise God. When is this going to stop? Well, it's not going to stop as long as God gives me life and I'm gonna give it to him, right? This is pointing you to eternal life, true fulfillment of all you were made for forever. Eternal praise for the Lord's eternally good reign. Let me just give you one illustration that I came across this last week of this. It's a story of a man named John Janeway. I had not read his story before. He died in the 1670s. But his story is remarkable. It was recorded by a friend, not a real long, just about a 45 page little book. What's remarkable, why his life is remarkable, however, I think it's because it answers to some of the very things that we think, that we need in our day. You see, John Janeway died at only the age of about 23 or 24. Was known as a very precocious student in his youth. and went off to the university where he enjoyed great success, but gave his life entirely to God and began to serve Him and then began to die. And to us in our world's view of life today, one of the great tragedies is to die young. All this promise before you, all this ability, all this and then to die young. That's a tragedy, according to the way our world thinks. Not only did he die young, but he died a very lingering death. And if you ask people today about one of the things that they don't want the most, it's a lingering death. Yeah, I'm going to die. I hope I just get it over with quickly, right? Just, OK, not a lot of pain, not a lot of suffering, not a lot of dragging this all out. Just get it over with. That's the way most people think. And that wasn't John Janeway's experience. As his body began to fail, and it seemed evident that he would begin to die, well, the process continued. There was nothing they could do to stop it. bedbound and And yet continue to linger people thought he was gonna die and he didn't die and he continued to linger and people thought he was gonna die And he didn't die This to most people would be a tragedy and if anything if there's any situation in life I could say why would I commit myself to praising God? While I have existence in that scenario Why should I do that I know I'm not going to get better, and yet I can't die. And I just keep going on, useless, a burden on everybody, in pain, suffering, and none of my life's potential is fulfilled. What in the world is there to praise God for? And you know what? As his friend recorded his life, the one thing he dwelt on for almost the entirety of his record of John Janeway's life was his deathbed, because on his deathbed, John Janeway gave himself to praising God, simply delighting in the Lord. In fact, here's an excerpt of one thing he said on his deathbed. When ministers or Christians came to him, he would beg of them to spend all the time that they had with him in praise. Pardon me. Oh, help me to praise God. I have now nothing else to do from this time to eternity but to praise and love God. I have what my soul desires upon earth. The wants that are capable of supplying in this world are supplied. I want but one thing, and that is a lift to heaven. I expect no more here. I can't desire more. I can't hear more. Oh, praise, praise, praise that infinite boundless love that hath to a wonder looked upon my soul. Help me, oh my friends, to praise and admire him that has done such astonishing wonders for my soul. He has pardoned all my sins. Pardon me. He has filled me with his goodness. He has given me grace and glory, and no good thing has he withheld from me. Come, help me with praises. All is too little. Come help me, O ye glorious and mighty angels who are so well skilled in this heavenly work of praise. Praise him, all you creatures upon the earth. Let everything that hath being help me to praise him. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Praise is now my work, and I shall be, pardon me, I shall be engaged in that sweet employment forever. Bring the Bible, turn to David's psalms, and let us sing a psalm of praise. Come, let's lift up our voices in the praise of that Most High. I will sing with you as long as my breath does last. And when I have none, I shall do it better." That's the Spirit. He's gotten what the Psalms are teaching us, right? I have fulfillment in God. And if I can praise Him, then life is worthwhile. Everything is worthwhile. That's what Psalm 146 is equipping you to do. You see, that was a man who understood Psalm 146. So with this commitment to the very reason for your existence, the psalm goes on to develop this in an interesting way. Pardon me. A way that probably not many of us would think to do it. And I'll call it here the politics of praise in verses three and four. 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." Why bring up princes? And by the way, this is a term broad enough to not just princes in a technical sense, but anybody in a position of authority, responsibility for a community. But it would certainly be applied to princes in their role. But why bring that up here? I think we need to note that praise and politics are much more closely linked than many people imagine. Praise is for what is good. And politics, the common life of the city, is for the common good. And what you praise profoundly reveals your political faith. Let me say that again. What you praise will reveal where your faith really is for the city. What you praise, in fact, will profoundly shape and direct your political faith. When people praise something, they're revealing where their trust lies. So this psalm is not at all wandering away from religious topics into politics somehow, as if those are two unrelated things. It's actually bringing us to see all things in light of God. And so it says here, do not put your trust in princes. That is in a son of Adam, a son of man. Don't ever put your trust there. Just don't do it. That is such a temptation for us, but there's a warning being given to us here. Shakespeare has Cardinal Wolsey say in Henry VIII, oh, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors. There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have. And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again. Don't put your trust in princes. Why? Well, it says here in the Psalm, there is no salvation in them. Princes simply do not have the ability to save. It's impossible. Why? They are mortal. We hear echoes here of Genesis chapter three, verse 19. You are dust, and to dust you will return, right? What happens? When his breath, his spirit, his breath departs, he returns to earth. On that very day, his plans perish. Everything he thought, everything he planned, everything he worked for, it's all going to die with him. We are dust and we go back to dust. What intrigues me about this is this should be obvious to us humans, right? regime, what kingdom, what king or mighty ruler or great leader in Earth's history has ever not died. And all of his efforts died too. It always happens, right? We should know this. And yet notice what we tend to do as humans. If someone tells you, If you're in a difficult, let's just stick with here with a political kind of situation. You're in a difficult political situation and someone tells you, trust in the Lord, trust in the Lord. And you think, well, that's great, but that doesn't get me out of this situation. Or on the other hand, somebody says, hey, I've got this great political program. Let's do this, and this, and this, and this. And suddenly our hearts go, oh, yeah, OK, we've got something to do here. We're going to fix this problem. I think we do the same thing in all kinds of areas of life. You've got a difficult health problem. And someone says, you trust in the Lord. OK, but that doesn't fix my problem. Well, but here, go to this doctor, and he has this, and this, and this, and this he can do for you. Oh, good, now I feel better. Just ask yourself, folks, what is the survival rate of everybody that every doctor treats? They all die. Every single person that's ever been treated by every doctor in the history of the world has died. So that's the success rate of modern medicine. By the way, you understand I'm not saying modern medicine is wrong or that it's wrong to treat illnesses or anything like that. We're just talking about where we put our trust, right? What kingdom of this world has ever achieved ultimate freedom and prosperity and satisfaction? Never. So why do we keep going back to that? Don't put your trust in princes. There is no salvation there. They are going to die just like you are. This is an important lesson for us when it comes to praising. The politics of praise should direct our hearts to the truth here that we find expressed then in verses five and following, where we have a benediction, a blessedness pronounced. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is upon the Lord his God. Here's a complete contrast between all the sons of Adam, all the princes, the nobles, the ones who seem to have earthly power and earthly ability. No, you find true blessedness if you have God as your helper. Now this should ring a lot of bells for you. This is the last time in all the Psalms that this word blessed is pronounced here. But what was the very first word in all the Psalms? Blessed is the man, right? What does Psalm 1, that starts off the Psalms, and then Psalm 2 end with? Blessed. Psalms 1 and 2 have set the trajectory for the entire book of Psalms for us. They said, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, but instead meditates on God's law day and night. He is like that tree bringing forth fruits. pardon me, he will stand in the judgment, but the wicked will not. And so then Psalm 2 goes on to talk about how the rulers of this world rage against God's anointed king, and yet he laughs. And so what should we all do? Find refuge in him. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Jesus Christ his Lord. And so now throughout the Psalms, that truth has been unpacked for us. And here again, we find this now. Don't put your trust in princes. Instead, find true happiness. To be blessed means to be the truly happy man. In other words, all of life is truly fulfilled. You have abundant life because you have a right relationship with God who is the giver of life. That's what it means to be blessed. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is firmly based upon the Lord his God. Here's the kind of God he is. And this is the kind of a reign that he exercises. It goes on to expound on this. In fact, through a whole series of participles in the original. Whose hope, excuse me, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. The biblical record always go back to this, always goes back to this, always goes back to this. This is foundational truth. Who is the maker of everything? Did it just happen? Did it come of its own accord? No, there was a maker and it's the true God. He made heaven, earth, sea, everything that's in it. There is nothing that we can experience here that he did not make and therefore that he does not own and direct according to his providence for his good purposes. It's all completely under his control and it's all for his glory. This is who God is. This is how he exercises his reign. He keeps faith forever, it says in verse six. He is a faithful God. We've seen that phrase so often in the Psalms as well, that his steadfast love and his faithfulness endure forever. Same idea right here. He keeps faith. He guards or protects this firmness forever, to the ages. He will never change. That's the kind of God he is, and that's how he exercises his reign. He does not change, and he never ends. He continues on as he himself said in Malachi, for I the Lord do not change, therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. It says he exercises justice for the oppressed. This is how our God exercises his reign. He is just, he executes justice. He gives food to the hungry. He is a giving God and he opens his hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing, as we learned last week in Psalm 145. And this is the blessedness that the man has who has the Lord as his helper. And then as the psalm begins to work through these aspects of God's character and reign, it adds another layer of emphasis onto this series of participles. We sing here in this psalm five clauses now in a row, which begin with the name, Yahweh, the Lord. Here's the blessedness of the Lord's reign. The Lord sets the prisoners free, it says in verse seven. This is how he acts. He brings true freedom. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. He gives true knowledge and truth. He communicates that light to people. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. He reaches down to those who are in their neediest and gives them true life. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners. This is our God executing his reign. And that works itself out even in upholding the widow and the fatherless and bringing ruin to the way of the wicked. As you consider this today and how it calls you into this life of a whole life of praise, fulfilling what your soul was made for in praise of the Lord, ask yourself, how has God executed this very reign that the psalm praises him for throughout all of human history? You need to meditate on that often. One of the things the Psalms will never let us do is forget. You cannot forget what God has done. But they're also always pointing us to, pointing us beyond themselves to the great son of David who brings fulfillment to these praises in earth's time and history. God has executed his good reign upon this earth by sending his son with power to save, as we sang a few moments ago. You need to look at Jesus Christ as God executing his good reign on this earth. By the way, you will see in that such a complete contrast to the way every earthly ruler exercises his reign. God gives himself for the life of his people. He enters into their condition, takes it into himself, bears their burdens, and provides true life for them. So you just think about Jesus Christ in relationship to all of this psalm praises. When Jesus opened his earthly ministry, he read the words from the prophet Isaiah. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the year of the Lord's favor. And you can just walk through the Gospels, folks, and see Jesus doing exactly what Yahweh does in this text. Jesus heals lepers. Jesus went to a Samaritan woman to lift her up. Jesus fed 5,000 who were hungry. Over and over and over again, Jesus is doing, he's exercising the Lord's reign here. But for our purposes here today, let me just zero in on one example. This, the Lord's opens the eyes of the blind. Opening eyes. Jesus, several times in the gospels, is recorded as opening the eyes of the blind. In John chapter nine, for example, there was a man who was born blind. And the story opens with Jesus' disciples actually asking the question, Who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind? There's something wrong here. Why did this kind of a judgment fall on this man? And of course, Jesus had a lot to teach the people in this whole scenario. He said that neither him nor his parents sinned, so this man was born blind. This was given so that God would receive glory through this very situation. And that's when Jesus proceeded to heal this man, to astound everybody with giving sight to this man. And then ultimately, not just giving him physical sight, but calling that man to follow himself. And over and over again, you see Jesus doing this. In that very chapter, in John chapter nine, Jesus uses this opportunity to say this, I am the light of the world. I am the light of the world. In other words, if you're going to see anything at all, you have to see in me. There is no other true light. If you don't see it in me, you don't see. And that's why, you can see even through this example, what Jesus is driving at when he opens eyes. I think, in fact, it comes out very clearly in Luke chapter 24, when he appears to two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus. They are mourning his death. They don't know what to do now. They had put their hope in him, that he would be the one that would redeem Israel. And so he walks with them and he talks with them. but their eyes were closed, so to speak. They didn't understand. They couldn't see who was actually talking to them at that point. Later on in the story, as they gather together and he breaks bread, the Bible says their eyes were opened and then Jesus departed out of their sight. But then they saw. Now we know. I think what this helps us see is that even in Psalm 146, And in all the miracles Jesus was doing, and even to this very day, when it says that God gives, opens the eyes of the blind, he's not talking about merely giving bodily sight. Now that's a good gift from God. That too is to enable us to know him. But he's talking about giving us the light of himself, knowing him. You see, somebody can be very well seeing 20-20 vision with his physical eyes, and yet not understand life at all. miss everything that life is really for. What's good, what's not, because he misses Jesus Christ. You see, these things are all ultimately defined and lived spiritually. And that's what we should see Jesus bringing about. Jesus is bringing about the true knowledge of God. He's bringing about the true understanding of this whole world and all of its history. He's opening the eyes of people to see him as ultimately the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords forever and ever. And of course, that's where the psalm goes here in verse 10. The Lord will reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Here's the reign that never ends. And this is why this is worthy of eternal praise. This is why in contrast to putting trust in all earthly princes that die and their breath departs, here's a reign that never ends. This is truly where you will find blessedness. This kind of a king in this kind of a kingdom is worthy of eternal praise. The Lord will reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Think of the best and the most prosperous earthly kingdom that you can think of. Some people might even say the United States of America in recent memory. Whatever you want to pick, I don't care. Think of the best and the most prosperous earthly kingdom you can imagine. that you've ever read about in history books. You know what's true of them? They always come to an end. Always. Everybody in them dies, and that regime, that reign comes to an end. The best earthly kings the earth has ever known die, pass on their kingdom, it disintegrates. Solomon, what did he do? He passed on his kingdom to Rehoboam. What happened? The kingdom disintegrated. But here's a kingdom we're praising that goes on forever, because there's a king who never dies. There's a king who participates in full resurrection life. The Lord will reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations, generation after generation after generation, will know his reign. This is the goodness that we are praising. This is the climax of the story. This is what we are entering into in our praises. And I want to simply encourage you today Do what this Psalm says. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. Is there anything, when you have truly put your trust in the Lord, when your hope is in the God of Jacob, when he is your helper, is there anything that flesh can do to you to take away this joy and this praise? Is there anything that can happen to you that will supersede it? Is there any power in heaven or on earth that can separate you from this kind of a loving, saving reign? No. Is praising the Lord forever, committing your soul, saying this is the whole purpose of my existence, I'm going to praise God forever, is that just pious dreaming? Is that pie in the sky, hide your head in the sand from all the real problems of the world, living in an illusory world, when we live in a world full of pain and sin and suffering and sorrow, oppression, is this just worthless stuff? No, this is actually enabling you to enter into eternal praise for the Lord's eternal reign. This is giving your soul the hope and the joy that it really needs because you're finding it in the right place. Would you do that together? Folks, I really believe as God's church, and I'm not talking about just us as individuals, we all reflect this, but as God's church truly gives ourselves entirely to praise the Lord with all that we are, with our entire being, we will be advancing the Lord's cause. We will be truly telling the true ending of the story, the cosmic epic that this whole world's history is. We will be revealing even now ahead of time, so to speak, where this is all going. And that's what your soul needs. That's what your soul ultimately needs, is that kind of praise. That's the kind of thing the soul of your neighbor needs. Your neighbor needs to see true praise, true joy, true hope somewhere that's not in the Son of Man. We can do this. In fact, the Psalm is telling us to do this. It's commanding us to do this. Enter into this. Think often on the Lord's reign. Put your hopes there. Lay up treasure in heaven. And the more you do that, the more you lay up treasure in heaven, the more your heart is gonna be drawn there, and the more you're gonna wanna talk about it, and the more you're gonna be delighted with the praise of it. Enter into this praise. This psalm engages us in eternal praise for the Lord's eternal reign. Hallelujah. And in fact, today as we conclude this, I was just thinking, for our confession of faith today in response to God's word, I'd like us simply to take the words of this psalm and say, hallelujah, Jesus is Lord. Can we do that together? Hallelujah, Jesus is Lord. All of God's people together. Hallelujah. Jesus is Lord.