And as Brian mentioned, our text is Psalm 147 today. Hallelujah, oh Jerusalem. In our journey through the Psalms now, we have emerged onto the summit, if you will. The summit of history, the summit of life, the summit of God's relationship with man. Last week, we entered this summit of praise, by shouting hallelujah for the Lord's eternal reign, Psalm 146, the first of the final five great psalms of praise, hallelujah, praise Yah, praise the Lord, that all of these psalms begin and end with. And we're gonna continue in that praise today, exploring more of the ramifications of God's greatness and goodness in relationship to his people. I really believe it's important to remind us now as we start here, too, what we've heard from the beginning of the Psalms. From Psalm 1 forward, the Psalms shape our souls to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. They become the songs of our pilgrimage to the kingdom of God, to direct us there. In fact, they become our songs, our songs, because they are the songs of the great son of David, the Messiah himself. And now as his people, as his body, they become our songs and we enter with him into his triumph, the triumph of Jesus Christ. In that way, the Psalms really are the Lord's prayer foreshadowed. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, He said, pray like 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, pardon me, and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil. If you take every phrase in that prayer that Jesus just taught us, You can see it unpacked and enlarged upon and lifted to the Lord in the Psalms. This is exactly what our relationship with God should look like, and God is giving it to us right here. These are beautiful songs, and they're songs that teach us what life is really all about. In this psalm, now Psalm 147, another great psalm of praise, we're gonna see the Lord's providential government of the entire universe revolving around his good purposes for his people. Everything God does in his greatness, everything he does in all of his goodness and all of creation and his providence actually revolves around and comes to rest upon his good purposes for his city, Jerusalem. Pardon me. And I want to give you a couple just framing thoughts before we walk through the whole psalm together to take it into our hearts to make it part of our praise to the Lord. And the first one of these framing thoughts is the beautiful hallelujahs of verse one. Here, the psalm begins, praise the Lord, or hallelujah, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and a song of praise is fitting. Here it calls upon each one of us to praise the Lord, to lift up Him, exalt Him. And then it tells us more about that. It says three things about that. It is good, it is pleasant, and it is fitting. That's how verse one describes this. I think we need to pause right there before we rush on too quickly just to think of this as some kind of a a generic commendation, hey, you should praise God and here's a good reason why to do it, okay? This is a good thing to do. True enough, but there's something much deeper going on here. It says we should praise the Lord because this is good. This is good. As we go through this Psalm, we're gonna see this Psalm evoke creation pardon me, as revelatory of God's work over and over and over again. It's going to talk about God's dealing with his people and transition, sometimes seamlessly, sometimes almost unexplainably, into talking about creation. But this isn't by accident, because I think the psalm is teaching us to see God's work in creation and God's dealing with his people as truly inseparable things, revealing his true nature. When God created this earth in Genesis chapter one, six times he observed what he created and said it was good. And then a climactic seventh time when all was done, he said it is very good. And so when the psalm says this is good to sing praises, What we're finding here is the abundant goodness of creation is being elevated above itself when it finds expression in the praises of the creator. We're finding goodness crowning goodness, goodness producing goodness. This is a true entering into the true nature of the world and what's going on in it. You realize praise, this is why praise is such a central thing. You want to, The good life, like Pastor Justin was talking about in our seminar this morning. What is really good about life? In a way, we can sum up this, the best thing that is the most good for you, the most good for your neighbor, the most good for creation itself and this whole wide world, the way you participate in the deepest possible way in the very meaning and structure of the universe is praising the Lord. That's how central this is. Like you don't understand creation if it doesn't result in this, right? This is where goodness goes. This is what goodness is for. It's to produce greater goodness even in the praise of the creator. Why did God create? To make a theater for his glory, to bring forth praise to his name. And it is good for us to participate in this. This is goodness at its deepest. It also describes it here as Pleasant. Now, what is pleasant is this term just means delightful, lovely. Let me give you some examples so you can contemplate this for a minute. In the Song of Songs, the best song, if you will, in the Bible, the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, as we often call it, in chapter one, verse 16, the bride responds to her man with Behold, you are beautiful, my love, even pleasant, here's the word, delightful, lovely, pleasant. Indeed, our bed is green. But if we come back to the Psalms, we've explored this term already in the 16th Psalm, where it says in verse six, that the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places or in pleasantnesses, in delightful ways. But then it goes on in verse 11, and here we have a verse that is quoted in the New Testament as directly ascribed to Christ. Christ himself says, pleasures are at your right hand forever. True delight, true loveliness is at the right hand of God forever, and that is what the Christ himself achieves and enjoys. That's what our psalm is talking about here when it says that praise is pleasant. Praise itself is part of the very joy of the world. In fact, it's the joy of God overflowing in his work of creation, through his work of the Messiah in redemption, bringing all things to consummation in his kingdom. This is God taking joy in his creation and bringing it to himself in consummation and giving his creatures a share in it. This is what's really good and pleasant. And then so it adds another description here in the psalm. A song of praise is fitting. And again, we can illustrate this term from the Song of Songs. In chapter one, verse five, the woman sings, I am black, but fitting or beautiful. Let me translate it either way. I am black but beautiful. In chapter 2 verse 14, the man tells his dove, as he calls her in this text, that her appearance is fitting, beautiful. And then in 4.3, the man tells his lover that her lips are like a scarlet thread and her mouth is fitting, beautiful. And finally, in chapter 6 verse 4, he tells his beloved that she is beautiful as Tirzah and then fitting or beautiful as Jerusalem. He compares her to the city of Jerusalem and says, you are fitting, you are beautiful, just like Jerusalem is, awesome as an army with banners. You see the concept that's being developed here in what is fitting or what is beautiful? It's something that is just right, just like it ought to be. Everything about it fits perfectly with all of its purposes, all of its goals, everything it was made for. It fulfills all of that. And everything about it then becomes lovely and beautiful, just right, or fitting, we would say. Now what is this psalm told us is fitting in that kind of a way. It's a song of praise. That's what's so fitting. What is the perfect response to all that God has revealed about himself throughout all of your life, throughout all of history, throughout all of his dealings with everything. What is the perfect response? A song of praise. That's exactly what's right. And so when you study, well, when you go about your daily life, when you engage in the jobs you are given to do, when you take care of your house, when you have family relationships, when you ponder the pathways of human history or human politics, when you reflect on your own life even and the ways God has directed in it, what is the most fitting, most perfect response that can ever be given to any of that? It's praise. In other words, there's been an intelligent appreciation for all the goodness that God has worked into all of his ways, all of his dealings. There's a submission to all of the ways that God has worked. There's an acknowledgement that it didn't come from me or from you or from any other human source. It ultimately comes from God and it is ultimately good. You see, if we haven't gotten to that point in life where we can acknowledge that and respond with praise, then we actually haven't, we haven't achieved the good life. We don't really understand life. We don't know what's going on yet. But when we have come to a place of praise, then we're beginning to enter into, well, maybe apologies to C.S. Lewis who used the phrase, the deep magic. I'll use the deep beauty of all reality. There is a deep beauty, pardon me, to all of reality. to everything you can ever know, or think, or touch, or taste, and it calls forth beautiful praises. What we have going on here in this psalm, as we're gonna see come out, is pleasure responding to pleasure. We're gonna see right in the center of this psalm, down in verses 10 and 11, that the Lord's delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of the man, The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His steadfast love. There is something the Lord is taking pleasure in, and because His good pleasure, we respond with pleasure. Pardon me. There is delight, God's delight, producing delight in us. There is God's joy in those who fear Him, creating jubilation in those very people. That's what's going on in this psalm, and this is what we need to enter into. That's the first framing thought, the beautiful hallelujahs of this psalm. But I also want to give you another framing thought for this psalm, so you'll understand so much of the context it's operating in, and that is the beloved city, the beloved city, Jerusalem. You'll see how here, after it gives this opening call to praise and how good this is, It focuses in on Jerusalem. The Lord builds up Jerusalem. And this is one of the aspects where this psalm, Psalm 147, takes a different angle, if you will, than 146 and 148 and 149 and 150, all calling us to praise the Lord. But here it says the Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. When it comes to the third main section of the psalm, but the second half of it, In verse 12, it brings that back to the front again. Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Praise your God, O Zion, for he strengthens the bars of your gates. He blesses your children within you. You see what's going on here in this Psalm is that the vantage point from which we view the Lord's greatness is His city, Jerusalem. We're talking about particular providence here. And this is so important. Without a personal connection, the Lord's greatness doesn't mean anything to us. It's too big, too vast, too out there to even begin to get a handle on. But God, in His greatness and His goodness, makes that very particular connection and calls His people into that relationship with Himself. You know how He did that with Jerusalem. He called a man named David from following the sheep, the Bible says. He anointed him to be the king over his people Israel. And as he brought David to the throne then, he made promises to him. He promised him that his seed would rule on this throne forever. That there would be an eternal kingdom that his seed would reign from. And God committed himself to that. God gave Jerusalem to David. Jerusalem was a nothing sort of a city in the Middle East there, just a little rocky outcropping on the top of a hill. Had some remnants of the older peoples of the land that Israel had never driven out, still there. David conquers that, makes that his capital city. God chooses that place. for his dwelling place with his people, Zion. This is where he will dwell with his people. David rejoices to bring the Ark of the Covenant there. Solomon builds the temple there. And life of God with his people in ancient Israel revolves around that place because God was there. God had delighted in Jerusalem. And you don't need me to remind you, we've seen this so many times throughout the Psalms now, how it talks about Jerusalem, how it talks about Zion. throughout all the history that Jerusalem had endured ever since David made her the capital city of Israel. What pains and sorrows Jerusalem had gone through. In fact, Psalm 14.7 says, Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people. Pardon me, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad. And that's repeated verbatim in Psalm 53 verse six. pardon me, over and over again, the people looked to Jerusalem because this is where God would establish His reign. This is where God would bless His people, even when they went into exile for their breaking of the covenant. God did not relinquish His promises to David. God did not forget His promises to Jerusalem. And as you see in the Psalms, even Psalm 74, Psalm 102, The people of Israel, the believing Israelites, looking at Jerusalem, always saw it as more than merely a city there, more than merely an earthly city, because what it meant to them was its spiritual meaning. God is present with us. It was always pointing beyond itself, because God had said he would establish his king in Zion, Psalm 110. God had said that she would abide forever, Psalm 125. Jerusalem will abide forever. Well, no human city can do that. That's exactly right. Because it isn't going to be just a merely human city. God is going to bring about a new Jerusalem. And that's where he's going to dwell with his people forever. God is going to fulfill all of his promises in ways far beyond this earthly horizon could ever encompass. You see, this Psalm is looking for that. It's taking all that history, all that longing of the years, all that looking in faith to what God will accomplish in and through an earthly city, but far transcending any merely earthly city, what is God going to accomplish? He's going to bring about a kingdom. He's going to bring about a place where he's going to dwell with his people. And folks, that is indeed what we enjoy today in a foretaste by the Spirit. Hebrews chapter 12 tells us that we have come to this city as believers. We are there, spiritually speaking. This is the city that Abraham, Hebrews 11, looked forward to by faith. He looked for a city that had foundations, whose designer and builder was God. It went far beyond what man could ever achieve or build. And this is what we come to. This psalm is teaching you to see all of earth's history, all of your own life, even the life of your own nation right now, or the life of the church in particular, in light of God's dealings with Jerusalem. That should be a lodestar for us in thinking about our lives. You see, what this psalm is doing, the praise this psalm is bringing forth flows from the Lord bringing about a good ending to the story of Jerusalem. God is actually going to redeem, God is going to fulfill, God is going to bring to pass everything He has promised. Can He do that? Yes, He can. And the psalm is going to teach us to look at how He does that. But let me just ask you to enter into that by letting this framing frame your own conception of you singing this psalm today. Can and does the Lord bring about a good ending to your story? Are you a citizen of the new Jerusalem? Can God take everything about your life, just like he's taken everything that's happened in Jerusalem's history, and bring about eternal redemption? And it will be good. In fact, it will be a cause for nothing but praise. Can God really do that with your life? He can and he does if you're a citizen of his city. That's what he does with his church. That's what he does with all of his people. Does the Lord bring about a good ending for the Jerusalem above, which is our mother? Absolutely. And so with that perspective, I think we're ready to take up this psalm of praise in our minds and hearts. Having these beautiful hallelujahs set before us in light of the beloved city, we can now sing in verses one through seven, of a hallelujah for the Lord restores his people. Let me read this part of the text. It says, praise the Lord for it is good to sing praises to our God. It is pleasant and a song of praise is fitting. The Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars. He gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble, the low. He casts the wicked to the ground. Here's a hallelujah for the Lord restores his people. And folks, this is such good news. Good news. The Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He will truly bring his people to fulfillment. all that it means to truly have life in him. I've been reflecting on this, these words in verse three, he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds a lot this week, because I came across the story of a young man, 23 years old, by the name of Kiano Vefayan. Keanu lives in Canada. What's significant about Keanu is that on September 22nd, he was scheduled to die. Not by execution or for any crime that he had committed, but because he had scheduled his own death with a doctor who would give him the tools to commit suicide. Keanu, in this particular case, his story, instead of just going through with it and dying and becoming another statistic of the tens of thousands of people in Canada who are now committing legal suicide each year, his story became known because his mother discovered this plan and although she could not do anything legally to stop it, mounted a public campaign to try to get this stopped and eventually the doctor who was scheduled to do the euthanasia backed out and didn't want to have anything to do with it anymore. The reason a story like this can happen is because, according to Canada's current laws, applicants for what they call medical assistance in dying, or MAID, simply have to show they have a condition that is intolerable to them, and could not be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable. Those are the only conditions that they have to meet. If they consider it intolerable and there's no acceptable resolution to them, then they are legally allowed to kill themselves in Canada. Pardon me. And this has predictably led to a growing trend now of people doing this in Canada. Last year, for the year 2021, There were 10,064 known cases of these, what we have to biblically label as murders, but legally sanctioned murders in Canada. What would arrest your attention is not simply the injustice of the government in allowing this kind of a thing in this kind of a scenario, but the tacit admission that this is on a society-wide basis that we are broken and we don't have any way to fix it. Relationships are broken. In fact, I would describe it this way. I think the language of this psalm gets at this much better than any way we have tried to describe these kinds of situations in our society. That is, broken of heart. When people are broken of heart, that means a lot more than what we typically ascribe to that. We use that term broken hearted. In fact, there's one commentator who said he didn't want to translate it as broken hearted because that didn't quite communicate for us what it meant in the original. I think he was on to something important. We think of brokenhearted, and we think of primarily an emotional response to something, a deep sadness, a loss of some kind of a love, and that's created a condition we call being brokenhearted, and grieving, or something like that. Well, that certainly would encompass this, but we need to remember that in scripture, in the Old Testament here, your heart is not just an emotional organ, it's your control center. Your mind, your will, your spirit, this is all interconnected with your heart. And so when your heart is broken, it means your control center is broken, right? Your mind does not work like it should. Your person does not work like it should. You're broken. You're not a whole person anymore. And folks, that really is the effect of sin and the curse and all that's come about in this world since Adam's fall. We are suffering because we are broken. We're not whole people. We're not normal. The only oddity of people like Keanu here is that they think they're unusual. They don't have any more human helps to hang on to. In fact, in his, some recent texting with his mother, she wrote to him that she loved him. He wrote back, you're adding to my pain and suffering and for that I curse you. His last reply to her was, you know what I need. In other words, I need to die. That's the only thing that's gonna fix this. We call instances, our society has labeled instances of this kind of a thing mental illness. But folks, that's far too clinical and sanitary of a word to even get close to grasping what's going on here. This is not mental illness. This is broken people, right? We shouldn't medicalize what is, a broken heart, actually. That's what's really going wrong with us. We are broken people. And when a society gets to a point where it says, the best thing we know how to do is kill people if they don't have what we think constitutes wholeness. If they aren't going to have what we think makes a good life, whether they're in the We kill them. If they're old, and they're not gonna live very long, kill them too. If they're gonna cost everybody a bunch, and we don't know how they're gonna make it anymore, well, we kill them. If they're broken, and we can't fix their problem, and folks, ultimately, humans can never fix all of our problems, well, we kill them. You know what to me that is? That's the ultimate admission of defeat. It's to say our mental health professionals can't fix us. They can't save us. Our counselors can't save us. And that's exactly right. That's starting to drive us to our real condition. Who is the only one who can save mankind in his current condition? The Lord. Folks, that's why this calls for such kind of praise. Do you, pardon me, do you realize when you have had every human hope possible cut out from under you, there is no solution for you. And then you say, there actually is salvation. Does that say there's a good reason to praise here? There actually is hope here. There is a reason to live here. The Lord heals the brokenhearted. He binds up their wounds. Pardon me. We need someone who is abundant in power and infinite in understanding, far beyond what we know in order to deal with our problems. Well, guess what? It says in the very next verse, he determines the number of the stars. He gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. He determines the number of the stars. So who are we dealing with here? The very one who is bending down with the lowly, who is entering into their condition to give them true healing, is the same one who determines the number of the stars. that we can't even discover the number of, who names them all, who does all this for his people. In fact, I don't think there's an accident here that the psalmist picks this aspect of creation in light of God's promises to Jerusalem. Because what did God promise Abraham? That his descendants would be like the stars, right? And can God take care of all of Abraham's descendants? Yes, right? He knows them all. He names them all. He calls them all to himself. There is nothing outside of his power. Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is literally beyond counting. You can't put number to it. It's not quantifiable. Again, in our arrogance today, we think the universe, in order to really know something, you have to be able to quantify it. What's real is quantifiable. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. That's the way we tend to think. But folks, the most important things in all the whole, I was gonna say in the whole world, but God isn't in the whole world, right? The most important things can't be quantified. God's understanding for one here, it simply goes beyond mere quantification. But that's exactly why he can deal with our spiritual needs, which are beyond quantification and medicalization. This is the God who is a savior. He lifts up the lowly, and he casts the wicked to the ground. You see, this is a reason for hallelujah, for the Lord restores his people. All of those who take refuge in him, all of those who are in covenant with him, all of those who are citizens of his city, he does restore. Now, does he do it in the way that you think he should? No. But that's part of the point. His understanding is infinite, not yours. He knows what he's doing, and he's going to accomplish his good purposes no matter what happens. And if man can't fix it, that's just the nature of it. God can. God restores. And so we praise. Here is why we should praise him. Now let's move on to the next hallelujah here. In verses seven through 11, hallelujah for the Lord delights in those who hope in him. Sing to the Lord at Thanksgiving, make melody to our God on the lyre. Here we have another imperative, which is how I've broken out this psalm into three sections because of these three times where it compels us to praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord at Thanksgiving, make melody to our God on the lyre. Well, what is it here that's going to bring out then that should cause us to sing? He covers the heavens with the clouds. We're back to creation here. We're back to seeing God's work. He covers the heavens with clouds. He prepares rain for the earth. He makes grass grow on the hills. He gives to the beast his food and to the young ravens that cry. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving because in the first instance, what we're seeing is it's God's very nature to give, to provide for his creatures. This is what God does. Why did God create? Did God create so as to make a world that was just sort of a play thing for him to sport with? You know, make some people suffer, make some people rich. Okay, I think I'll change it up tomorrow and I'll send a drought on those people and I'll feed the donkeys over here in this area. Oh, this is interesting. I think I'll do something different tomorrow. You know, he's just this big infinite being who gets to call the shots down here. And so he made a world so he could just do what he feels like with it. No. If you think that way, you actually don't understand our God. And I can see why you wouldn't want to praise him. But if you understand his true nature and why he created, it's to share his goodness. That's what he's doing. He didn't have to create this world. He didn't have to make the beasts of the field. And yet even things like ravens, the sons of the raven that cry, the text says, he's feeding them. He's providing for them all in his good purposes. He's the one bringing forth the grass. He's delighting, actually, in his world. Now, is it he's delighting in his world, though, because he's impressed with it? Well, verse 10 goes on to say, his delight is not in the strength of the horse nor his pleasure in the legs of the man. Does God, is God really impressed by all the powers of this world, this creation? Like how fast horses can run? It's like, wow, I didn't think that could happen. That's pretty amazing. No, that's what we do. We're the creature, right? And what do you find us creatures doing all the time? We get pretty impressed with the powers of this world. We get pretty impressed with the horses and the man, so to speak. Again, the legs of a man. We get impressed with a man who can run fast or lift a lot of weight. That's pretty impressive to us. That delights us. But does God take delight in that? No, we shouldn't say that that's wrong somehow. God created that capacity, but it's not as if it impresses God at all or somehow compels his admiration. And you should think of that a lot, by the way. There's nothing you can do to impress God or compel His admiration for you. That's not why He takes care of you. It's not because He thinks you're so great, actually. It's because He knows you are weak, actually, and He loves to give. He loves to give. The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His steadfast love. Folks, this is such a hard lesson for us humans to learn. I don't know why, but it is. We like to place our hope in anything but God. Things we can touch, things we can see, things we feel like, this will fix my problem, this will be the answer to this issue I have. And we get impressed with them, our latest technologies, our latest inventions, and our latest schemes for making money, or our latest governmental policies. And we get impressed with these things as if these are really, really going to help us. Now, God delights in those who actually say there is no hope but Him, ultimately. If He doesn't give help, there will be no hope. So run to Him. And here's another reason for praise. When you realize that your relationship with God and His saving work of you doesn't arise from anything He's impressed with you about. He just doesn't have to respond to you in that way. But you realize it's totally because He's giving. And you place your hope entirely in Him. This is why you praise. Let me just draw back in the illustration I used a moment ago. When people are broken of heart, but they won't become poor in spirit and truly fear the Lord, that's the reason why they don't know His healing. When they are truly broken, and we are, but we don't come to a place of being poor in spirit, of recognizing that brokenness, casting ourselves entirely upon His mercy to do with as He pleases, knowing only that He is good, then we know His saving work. Then we know that true hope of His steadfast love. So fear Him, and it will lead you to a life of praise. Hope in Him, and it will lead you to a life of praise. Those who are not poor in spirit don't praise. Those who are recognize their entire dependence upon the Lord. Hallelujah for the Lord delights in those who hope in him. And then last, hallelujah for the Lord sends out his word in verses 10, 12, excuse me, through 20. Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Praise your God, O Zion. For he strengthens the bars of your gates. He blesses your children within you. He makes peace in your borders. He fills you with the finest of the wheat. Pardon me. Here once again, now the Lord is doing good for his city, Jerusalem. He is protecting and providing, blessing their children, giving them life, giving them shalom or peace, wholeness and wellness within their kingdom. Giving them the best, the fat of the wheat. But then the psalm shifts again to an image from creation. You can see it doing this constantly throughout the psalm. And we might wonder initially, again, what the connection is here. But the Lord is working on behalf of Jerusalem, and then it says in verse 15, he sends out his word, what he says, his command to the earth. His word runs swiftly. It's effective. He gives snow like wool. He scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs. Who can stand before his cold? He sends out his word and melts them. He makes his wind blow and the waters flow. He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation. They do not know his rules. Praise the Lord. God providing for Jerusalem. That leads into a contemplation of God sending out his word. But it's clearly his word in terms of his dealing with creation. But that leads into a contemplation of him sending out his word in terms of his instructions to his people, to his covenant community. And there's an important connection for us here, which I think the Lord is teaching us, which we should be seeing all the way through the Psalms, but he's bringing out here more. There's no separation, if you will, between the way God rules his world and the way he rules his people. The way he gives life to his world is of a peace with him giving life to his people. We're not collapsing general revelation into special revelation or vice versa. We're not saying there's no distinction, but we are saying these things all work together. And just as surely as one works, the other does too. They're inseparable. They're equally important. So when I look at what we today euphemistically call the laws of nature and say, this is the way things work, And there's a regularity and a strength to it. This is the way the world works. It's true. It's real. It actually operates this way. So it is with God's word dealing with his people. It's true. It's real. It actually operates this way. It accomplishes its purposes. When this last week God said, if you will, let it snow here, it snowed. And when God stopped the snow, the snow stopped. That was real. When God gives his instructions for his people, he is accomplishing the same thing. Remember, by God's word, he created this world. He preserves and he continues to operate in his creation by his word. He enters into covenant relationship with his people, Israel, through his word. So the God we are praising here communicates to his people by his word. And that tells us something very important. And I think these are the people who truly respond to this kind of a call to praise. People who recognize the authoritative nature of God's word. God has spoken. God has given us his word. We need to obey that word. The same word that God sends out to direct the earth is the word that his people possess to direct their lives. Let me urge you today, have confidence in God's word. Have absolute confidence in God's word. When you do, you'll begin to see more and more deeply into this life of praise. And I'll just stick with an illustration I just used a moment ago. How do you describe what's going on in your life? What's the deepest, best, most real description of your experiences in this world? Is it, say, medical terminology? Or is it the scripture? Which one provides you a real description of what's really going on in the deepest corners of your heart? I would submit to you, God's word describes you perfectly. Any medical description about you is man's best guess about what we see happening to us right now. And that's as good as it can be. Again, not saying that's wrong. But I'm telling you, where is your confidence? What really defines my life? I need to piggyback up here a little bit on what Pastor Justin was talking about in our seminar hour today. It's so interesting to listen to how we describe ourselves in our society today, even when it comes to things like mental health diagnoses. We've taken even our medical diagnoses and taken them a step further sometimes. We don't usually say things like, I am cancer, if we've been diagnosed with cancer. But we will say things like, I am ADHD. Did you hear what you just said? I am ADHD. Like that's my identity, that's who I am. Why did you say that? Do you really believe that? That that defines who you are? Did God say that about you? Where did you get that idea? Folks, have confidence in God's word. Let him define your life. He tells you who you are in relationship to him. because he's a good and giving God, and he restores those who are broken, right? He declares his word to his people, and that is a gift like no other. You see how the Psalm rejoices in that at the end? He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation. They don't know his rules. That's a terrible condition to be in, to not know what God has said. But folks, he has spoken to us. We can know what he has said. That's a gift. Take the gift. Have confidence in what God says. And when you do that, you will begin to see your life unfold as a life of praise, even through suffering. Let's say you have been diagnosed as ADHD or whatever else. Okay, does that define you? Is there something you can praise God for in that? Yes, actually, because there's a lot more going on here than just that, right? And what's going to bring you to fulfillment in a full participation in all the goodness that God has created and is bringing to consummation in Jesus Christ is your embracing of God's revelation of who you are. That's going to open your eyes to how you praise him in this. Have confidence in God's word. And let me close with this. The reason you have to have such confidence in God's word is because that message, that word, is ultimately Jesus Christ himself. It is your salvation. I'm going to pick up here from the words of the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter 10. As he brought the gospel to the Gentiles, those who didn't have God's word, but in Christ it came to them through Peter, as God sent him to one Cornelius. When he preached the gospel to them and they responded, Peter says this in Acts 10, 34. So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. And as for the word that he sent to Israel, don't miss that phrase, the word that he sent to Israel. Now what is that? That's exactly what Psalm 147 is talking about, the word that he sent to Israel. Now listen to what Peter says, as for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. Wait, that's the word that he sent to Israel? Yes, that's the word that he sent to Israel. That's what it all means. That's where it's all going. Don't you see this? This is Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went out doing good and, pardon me, healing all who were oppressed. This is Jesus enacting the word of God to his people. Do you believe that message today? If you do, praise the Lord. All of life becomes praise. Jesus is redeeming, right? All who are oppressed by the devil, for God was with him, and we are witnesses of all that he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who have been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. To him, all the prophets bear witness, and everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." Hallelujah. For the Lord sends out his word, and your life is found in that. I would simply ask you in conclusion today to give yourself over to beauty, Give yourself to beauty. It is good. It is pleasant. It is fitting to praise the Lord. Give your life as a life of praising God in everything because Jesus Christ is the key that makes that all real. Do you believe that today? If so, would you confess your faith? all together as a congregation with the words from the psalm. Let's do this again together today. Hallelujah, Jesus is Lord. Let's say it together before the Lord. Hallelujah, Jesus is Lord.