Let's open our Bibles now in Psalm number 145 and also our Forms and Prayers book in page 257. We will start differently tonight because we will start reading the Heidelberg Catechism and then we'll go to Psalm 145. Last week, Pastor Vandermeer, he started to preach in Lord's Day 52, and he covered the Sixth Petition, question 127, and today we will cover the last two questions of this Lord's Day Let's start with Heidelberg, then I will read the question and I invite you to answer. Question 128, how do you conclude this prayer? For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. This means we have made all these petitions of you because, as our all-powerful King, you are both willing and able to give us all that is good. And because your holy name and not yourselves should receive all the praise forever. Question 129. What does that little word, amen, express? Amen means, this shall truly and surely be, for it is much more certain that God has heard my prayer, that I feel in my heart that I desire such things from Him. We are dealing with these questions. We will deal with these questions of Heidelberg Catechism, and tonight I will not call you to open your Bible in Matthew chapter 6 verse 13. Because we have a little problem with the version that we are using for this text. I don't know if you already heard about the discussion of the manuscripts and how they decide that something should be included or not. in the Scripture, but the ESV version, when they come to the end of the Lord's Prayer, they decided that those verses, those words that we read here, for your is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, they should not be included because they are not in some specific manuscripts that they consider very important for the translation of the text. So they didn't include this final phrase in the Lord's Prayer. However, we are here covering a question in Heidelberg that includes these words and also it's bringing our attention to the fact that we are confessing these words while we are praying. The question then is, should these words be there or not? Well, other versions in English, for example, King James Version, the New King James Version, and other ones too, they include these words because they consider different manuscripts more important than those that ESV, they consider. But also, if we go through the history of the church, We will see since the first and second centuries, the fathers of the church, they were quoting the Lord's Prayer with these verses included. So, this is not something that a manuscript written after and doesn't include, it's something that should avoid us to read and consider these the words of God for us. The history shows, the confession shows, and we can see and we will see that these words, they are true also word of God because they are talking about something that God wants us to live, to learn, and to profess because His is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. And this is exactly what we will find in other parts of the Scripture. As an example, Psalm 145, the one that I choose tonight to cover and to help us to understand the meaning of these words and to go even more deeper in these words when we need to understand the knowledge of God. So, now we are going to Psalm 145. I will not read the whole psalm. I will just read the twelve first verses, and then we will pray and meditate in the Scriptures. Psalm 145, this is what God says to His church. 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. One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Your majesty and 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 righteousness. 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. All your works shall be given 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 men Your mighty deeds in the glorious splendor of Your kingdom." Amen. Let's pray once again, and then we will meditate in the Scriptures. Oh, Heavenly Father. We read the Word of God, and now we ask You, Lord, that may You help us to understand and to change our hearts according to the Word of God. Please work on us through the Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We are dealing tonight with three specific principles that Well, they are very difficult to be understood by humankind, by Christianity in all the places of this world. The prayer that we will make tonight is a prayer that says that God is the King, He has the power, and all the glory must be given to Him. And when we look into these three perspectives, this is exactly what our hearts and ourselves, we usually don't want to accept and we don't want to believe. Because we like the idea of we, ourselves, being the owners of our own kingdom. I want, I desire to guide my life as I want, to do what I want, to live as I want because my will, and this is the big deal in our culture too, it's very important. Your will is something that must be established in your life. So, to be happy, your will needs to be done. But this is not good when we say, well, God, Yours is the kingdom. It's not, it doesn't fit in this phrase, our will or our desires. The same thing is about the power of God because we want to have the power in our hands. We want to decide and to do whatever we want knowing that we don't depend on anything else besides ourselves. That's why we try to organize our finances, for example, to when we get older, we have enough to have a good life because we want to be in control. That's why we try to control our house, our health, and everything else. But the truth is that the power doesn't belong to us. It belongs to God. Jesus said to someone if he was able to guarantee if he would be alive in the next day, in the next morning. And this is a fact. No one here has the power to say that tomorrow we will open our eyes and live our lives as we want because we are not in control about that. And the glory, well, this is still a problem in humankind, and that's why the first commandment and the second one, it also speaks about idolatry and about the glory being only for God. We have one God. He must be praised. And anything else that receives our praise, it's a God in our heart. So, we don't want to give all the glory sometimes to God. We like to have our own glory because we like to be considered and we appreciate when someone looks to us and thinks good things about us. So our hearts, they become full of pride and we sometimes become arrogant and we become full of our own glory instead of giving the glory for Him forever. Well, these three statements, they are then a big problem for the church of Jesus Christ But I ask you and I invite you to consider these three statements in a different way. In a different way because this is what I said until now, it's the war that our heart has against the will of God and against the gospel of Jesus Christ for our lives. When we don't want to give Him the power, the glory, and the kingdom, it's because we are still loving ourselves and loving this world more than we are loving Him. But there are other perspectives and there are other ways to deal with that, and that's why I choose a song or a poem of David to help us to see the greatness of the perspective of the Scriptures. Because the Scriptures call us to live these deeper and still finding joy and happiness than anything in this world can give to any believer. And that's why David wrote Psalm 145. And I know you were not able to see the greatness of this psalm because it is impossible for any translation to understand the greatness of Psalm 145. This psalm is an acrostic, which means that every verse starts with the first to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So, the first one in Hebrew is Aleph, then Bed, then Gimel, then Dalet, and so on. But the idea here is that David He took a long time organizing his thoughts, preparing his thoughts to offer this poem to God to praise Him and to glorify His name using this style of writing. This style is very important for the Old Testament. Actually, whole books were written exactly like this, for example, Lamentations of Jeremiah. It's amazing when you go deeper in this book because it's a lamentation, right? He's crying, he's asking for help, he's completely lost, but he still had time to write a poem to God following all the letters of the alphabet to glorify the name of the Lord while he was crying and lamenting and asking for his help. And right there in the middle of the book, of lamentations, we will see Jeremiah saying to his people, the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him, it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Look how deep and how amazing it is. He was crying, He was screaming for God's help, but in the middle of the text, in the perfection of the Scripture, He was saying, everything is in His hands. He's in control of everything, and I can have peace. if I wait for Him." It's amazing how the Scripture includes these kinds of styles of writing to show the greatness of God. And here David is doing this and using this style to speak about three things, and I will call you to pay attention in what he's saying. First, he will speak about the praise to the king. exactly like we are covering the kingdom in the Lord's Prayer. This is verses 1 through 4. Then He will declare the power of God in verses 5 through 11, and then in verses 10 through 12, He will declare the glory of God. I don't know if this is a coincidence, but he apparently is following a prayer that was written much after his psalm being written. So, in the first four verses, David, he uses a different style into the style of the acrostic to show the greatness of God. He's using many parallels here to say the glory of the King of Israel. It's interesting because if you read, for example, verses 1 and 2, They will say exactly the same thing in two different ways. It's the same content, but David is trying to make us see that this is very important in the context of his psalm. I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Then he says, every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Extol is the same as bless, and he's saying, I will bless you, my God. And then he says, every day I will bless you, my King. He's looking to God and he's saying, King, my King, I will praise your name every day, during all the time, forever and ever." The first thing that we see here is his relationship with God, it's completely different than a formal relationship that someone that doesn't know God can have. Who is David? Well, David was the king of Israel. He was a king. He's not a normal guy like me and you. He had his court. He had an army under his command. He had the country upon his protection. He was the one who had the better house of the kingdom, a palace. He had the fortune that no one else had over their control. He was the most important man in Israel, and here he is saying, well, God, You are my King. Can you see the irony here? He's looking to God and he's saying, well, it doesn't matter what I have. It doesn't matter who I am. It doesn't matter my possessions and my power and the glory that they are giving to me. I am looking to you, God, and I am saying to you that you are my king. And not only that. He's adding to that the fact that He's the King of David and that He will extol, bless Him forever. The meaning of this is deep. The king is saying, the king David is saying that he's not the most important one in the nation because upon him someone is in control and this is God, the ruler of the universe. David knew that he was not with the control of his country on his hands. He knew that by experience because he already saw the power of God in his past. He already saw that he was nothing compared to the greatness of the God of Israel. He knew, for example, that Saul was not a good king because he was not looking to God as his king. He thought that he was the best man in the region, in the country, and he tried to rule by his own convictions, and we know the history, it was not good. David, actually, when he tried to rule with his own power and with his own ideas, he made the most deepest grave sins that we know from the Scripture. He became a murderer. He became an adulterer. He broke so many commandments because he was trying to follow his own heart instead of following God and only God. And by experience now, he's looking to the church, he's looking to Israel, and he's saying, pay attention on me, I am the most important man here alive, and I'm calling your attention to understand that God is king, he is the ruler, he must be your ruler too, and you should also praise his name every day in your life. Let God be in control of your life because we are not able to guarantee tomorrow for ourselves. He continues showing us these things in verses 3 and 4. Who is great then? Well, the only one great, it's the Lord. because His greatness is unsearchable. The power of God, the greatness of His kingdom cannot be understood by men like us. Well, David, he was a ruler. He was a ruler of Israel. He's a part of a place of land in the west that he was in control, but he was fighting against many enemies. Sometimes he could defend, sometimes he lost some battles. He was not completely in control of his land. He was always in war. He was always asking for God's help. He was always facing enemies much stronger than him, and this shows that he was not so great. But God, with God is different. Where is the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is upon everything that exists. He's strong. It's not in a palace made by human hands, and His power cannot be understood by humanity. How many atomic bombs there are in the world right now? I don't know the number. But I know that all of them together, they are nothing compared to the power of the Word of God. By the end, in Revelation, we will see the armies united to make war against God. And it's fun because by the time of Revelation, they were thinking about people with swords and horses. They were trying to make war against God like they were fighting in their time. But now it's different, right? We have tanks. We have bombs, we have nuclear bombs, we can destroy whole cities with just one bomb. Well, we must adapt the war for today. These armies, they will not be there with swords. They will have rifles, guns, bombs, and you know what? God will come with a sword that comes from His mouth. And the result of this is He will win easily. It's not even a war, actually. It's just God, Jesus Christ, fulfilling His mission. So, it doesn't matter the explosions. It doesn't matter the power, the armor. It doesn't matter the guns. They're nothing. when we are in front of this holy and glorious God. And His kingdom, well, is not a piece of land. The universe is nothing when we look to the greatness and the power of God. So, David here is trying to show us this, his greatness is unsearchable. We cannot comprehend, we will not be able to understand because his kingdom is something so great, so amazing that we will never understand completely. But what we can do then? Well, verse 4 says, one generation shall command your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. Well, we know about the kingdom of God. And that's why we must tell everyone that there is a ruler upon the universe. And this ruler, it's not the next president, it's not the next governor, the ruler is Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe. He is in control. He will do His will in this world. So, the first thing that David, the king, is saying is, the kingdom is not ours. The kingdom belongs to God. Yours is the kingdom, David is saying. But then he goes ahead and he speaks about the power of God in verses 5 through 9. He remembers about the splendor of His majesty, the majesty of God, the wondrous works, and he said that he was meditating His works. Which kind of things David could meditate by that time? Well, today in the morning, we remember some of them. When we look to the past, when we see Jesus, God, saving the people of God, guiding them in the desert, helping them to be saved for slavery, God was doing His work. God made His greatness and He showed His power during the whole Old Testament, and David, he knew that very well. For how many times, we remember David going to a battle with zero chance of winning, 300 against 5,000. A thousand against ten thousand. It was always like, you have no chance, David, just hide in a cave and wait. And when he made that to avoid Saul, he saw God bringing his enemy into the cave. and he was able to kill him if he wanted. But he feared God, and that's why he didn't. But God is in control, and this is why David is talking with the people of God and helping them to remember. Can you remember about the greatness, about the power of God? Can you remember about his mighty act? Well, we can go through the Scripture, but I will not call you to go through the Scripture right now, I will call you to go through your memory. Because I know that you can say the blessings and count all of them to remember how many things God made for you. We have our own experience with our God. And I cannot stop here to count so many blessings and so many times that God saved me and gave me grace and mercy. And I believe you can say the same. He is a good God. And we say that not only because the scripture says, but by our own experience. We have a wonderful Father. He's amazing with His people. He's saving us from so many things, but much more than everything, He saved us from hell. His perfection was so deep in the moment when He sent His Son to die in our place at the cross. And there we can see something that no one in this world will do for you because no one is able to save you from your sins besides Jesus Christ. And there He was giving His body, giving His blood to save me and you. Do we deserve that? Of course not. But He did it anyway. His mighty acts, His mighty acts, His awesome deeds, verse 6 says, We shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds and I will declare your greatness. I will not forget about all the benefits that God gave to me. His is the power and I can prove you. I can prove you by experience. I can prove you from the scripture. I can prove you from the nature itself. He's taking care of everyone. He's taking care of all, verse 9 says. God is good to all, not only for His people, but also for those that reject Him. If someone says, well, I hate God, they will find oxygen to breathe every morning, right? They will find food to eat every day. They will find the rain coming to feed the farm and to produce food, right? It doesn't matter if they are believers or not, God is being good to all because this is His character, He's good. And He's abounding, abundant, He has abundant steadfast love with His people. Verse 8 is one of the most greatness verses of this whole chapter of Psalms because it speaks about the slow anger of God, His patience with His people. We are probably experiencing this right now. We are probably fighting against some sins in our own lives, against some things that we know they are against God, and that we are acting day by day, and we know that we are fighting against God's commandments, we are fighting against God's law, and we are fighting against God itself. But you know why? What? We are still here, right? We are still finding His grace, we are still finding His mercy, we are still finding His love because He's a love, a God that loves His people and has a lot of care and patience with us. It doesn't mean that He's ignoring your sins, no. He's calling us to sanctity. He's calling us to be saints in this world. But still, He is showing His care and His love and His patience. This is the character of our God. His power is here also when He shows His patience. But one day, He will also show His power in a different direction. And that's why verse 6, well, in this version of the Scripture, ESV, we will read His, declare His greatness, we will read actually Your awesome deeds, but in the Hebrew, the word awesome that we read here, the word in Hebrew is ir, atar. And the meaning is also terrific deeds, but not in a good sense like this is good, in the worst sense like He will come to judge. Fear Him because He's good, but He also will bring justice to this world. The power of God is showed when He shows His love, but it will also be shown when He brings to judge. And He's the only one who has this power. No one should be feared besides God, because only God can save our souls, or only God can reject our souls. By the end, we will not stand against our parents, or against our friends, or against the elders, or against the pastor. No, there will be no one there besides Jesus Christ. And He will say, I know you, or I don't know you. There is no other option. The only way is to find grace through the blood of Jesus Christ and to follow Him until the end. The power of God is revealed to the world, is revealed to all people, and we must profess our faith that He is the only one who has power in His hands. But the third thing that David says is about the glory of God. And then he starts to say about the people of God, the saints of God giving thanks to God. Thanks and bless to the king. Thank you for what we can say, but the verse 10 itself answers that saying, your saints shall bless you. Why are they saints? Is it because they were very good in following the law? Well, we know that the answer for this is no. We are still not good in following the law of God. But the fact is that God is good in having mercy and giving His grace to His people, and that's why we are called saints of God. He justified His people, He adopted His people, He brought us to His kingdom, and He said, they belong to Me. It's His work, can you see? And that's why the glory needs to be given to Him. And that's why verse 11 continues saying, the saints, well, they shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power. Both attributes are here in verse 11. We should speak about the three attributes actually, glory, kingdom, and power. Well, if you go again to Matthew 6.13, that's exactly what we will find there, kingdom, power, and glory. And the meaning of this is, pay attention, David is saying to the people of God, we need to understand, we need to comprehend that we are nothing in the presence of God. Everything belongs to Him. Everything comes from Him. He's the owner of our lives. He's the owner of all glory. He's the owner of the kingdom. He is the owner of the power, so submit yourself to Him because only God should receive all the glory forever and ever. David is showing that we are nothing if we are not with Him. And remember, He was the King. We should never forget that. He was someone in his time, but here he's showing that he was nothing if God were not with him. Verse 12, complete saying, to make known to the children of men your mighty deeds and the glory or splendor of your kingdom. David is saying, tell your children now that there is a God, that the kingdom belongs to Him, the power belongs to Him, and the glory belongs to Him. And it's very interesting to see why David is using this here, because the children, well, usually, especially when they are younger, they see these things in their parents. When they look to their parents, to the father and the mother, they think, well, the kingdom belongs to them. They are the owners of the house. They are the owners of the car. The food, well, they don't know how the freezer is full with food. They just get up in the morning and go there to take their eggs, right? No explanation. The bread just pops up in the kitchen. They are not concerned, but they trust their parents. Well, they will provide. The glory, usually, it's for the parents. Well, they are taking care of us. When they are sick, they desperately need our arms. They don't want to be far from the ones in which they find security. This is a very good example because here David is saying, well, these little ones They trust you and they believe in you. So tell them that the kingdom is not yours. The kingdom come, it is for God. He's the owner. The glory, it's not ours. I'm not providing food, housing and everything else for you. No, it's because of the God's grace. that I am doing this, because He's giving me resources to do that. Because a lot of people, they don't have the same opportunity that we have to find mercy and grace every day from God's hands. But we are. So, show them that He's providing for them. and help them to glorify the name of the Lord. Don't let them raise believing in themselves more than in God. Help them to grow putting their trust in God alone and in no one else. Help them to understand that there is a ruler in this universe and we are dependent on him completely. Help them to grow knowing to pray like we are praying here. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. And it's very interesting because Heidelberg will bring the amen by the end. And the meaning of the Amen is, this shall truly and surely be. It's amazing because this is exactly what the Amen says. What is the problem then? The problem is that when we look to things like that, When we look to the relationship of David with God, and when we look to the Lord's Prayer, well, sometimes we have a difficult situation in our own hearts because we say, Amen. But we are saying Amen with a different meaning. We are not saying, this shall truly and surely be. We are just saying, amen, let's go home. And that's a problem. It's a problem because we are praying and we are not believing what we are praying. Because we are confessing something and we are not believing in the words that we are confessing. Every Sunday evening we come here to profess our faith using the words of the Apostles' Creed. Well, we are just finishing the study in Heidelberg, and Heidelberg covers the Apostles' Creed, and we saw a few weeks ago the meaning of all those words. Can we say amen for all of those? Better than that, I will read the Lord's Prayer, and then we will consider this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." Can you say amen by the end of this prayer? Can you look deeper to this prayer and say, well, this shall truly and surely be. I don't know what is in your mind right now, but I know the answer. Yes, you need to say amen. because there is no other option. If you say something different, well, the kingdom, the power, and the glory will continue to belong to God. You cannot take His kingdom. You cannot take His power. You cannot take His glory. He is God. We need Him, He doesn't need us. We are the ones here being blessed by His gracious love. In this relationship with God, when we make a prayer like this, the only ones receiving something is ourselves. God is giving, God is blessing, God is sustaining His people. The glory, well, you can say, we are giving Him glory. Oh, He doesn't need that. If we shut our mouths, the creation is proclaiming His glory every day. Right now, if you don't sing, if you don't confess, if you don't proclaim, there are millions and millions of voices on heaven praising His name day and night. And nothing can stop them because they know God not only by listening the voice of God, but they already saw Him on the throne. And they are singing, united, the glory and the splendor of God all the time. And they will continue to do until the last day. What can we do then? We can join them or we can suffer fighting against God. I don't want to be in this position. I want to see my voice united with the people of God saying all the glory and honor be to God forever and ever. Amen. Break your hearts. and let God take control of your life. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen. Close your eyes. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, thank You for this prayer, and thank You for showing us the greatness of You, God, through the confessing of these things. Help us, God, to follow Your kingdom. Help us to love Your kingdom more than we love our own kingdom. Help us, God, to trust in Your power. instead of trusting the things that we have and in the false power that we believe we have. Help us to glorify only You and to praise only Your name every day in our life, like David said. Help us to glorify your name and to say amen to this prayer, confessing, God, that you are the only one and we need you desperately. Work on us, God, and help us to fulfill this in our own lives, we pray in Jesus' name.