In this sermon, Pastor Chuck Smith teaches from Psalm 145, emphasizing the goodness and mercy of the Lord. He encourages believers to bless God by speaking of the glory of His kingdom and His power. Pastor Chuck highlights how God takes care of all His creation, providing food and satisfying the desires of every living thing. He also emphasizes that God is righteous in all His ways and is near to those who call upon Him in truth. Overall, the sermon emphasizes the greatness of God and the importance of acknowledging His presence and goodness in our lives.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit like a dove Will descend upon your life And make you whole For the Lord is good to all And His tender mercies are over all of His works And thus all of Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord And Thy saints shall bless Thee How do we bless God? Verse 11, they shall speak of the glory of Thy kingdom And they will talk of Thy power Whenever you get together with others and you start talking about the glory of the kingdom of God How glorious it is to walk with Jesus Christ How glorious it is to just be in fellowship with God And be able to call upon Him and know that He is there And just to experience His help and His strength and His goodness And all of these things that God does for us as His children To get with others and just talk about the glory of having submitted your life to being ruled over by Him That blesses God God is blessed As you talk about Him And as you share The things of God And you talk about His glorious power Our God is an awesome God Who is a pardoning God like Thee? There is no God among all the gods like unto Thee, O Lord Above the gods of the earth The greatest The most And for us to express that Blesses Him Also it blesses God when we witness and share The works of God with others To make known to the sons of men His mighty works And the glorious majesty of His kingdom As we talk to others about God The glorious kingdom of God and the glories of His majesty God is blessed They that love the Lord spake often one to another and God hearkened or listened And He kept a record And God said they shall be accounted as My jewels in that day So we talk about the kingdom of God and David went on to do that He said for Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom Now David knew that he had a short time to reign on the throne But he knew the time was limited He knew that one day he was going to pass on and his son was going to ascend to the throne But not so with God God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom And your dominion endures throughout all generations I will reign during my generation But in the next generation a new king and so it will pass on But God's reign is eternal For the Lord upholds all that falls And He raises up all of those that are bowed down The Lord is gracious, He is full of compassion You fall, He'll lift you up You're bent over, the Lord will raise you up How glorious it is that the Lord will uphold those who fall If you have a tendency towards falling, you better just lean upon Him He'll hold you up The eyes of all, Lord, wait upon Thee And You give them their meat in due season Again, we're looking at all of creation God takes care and sees that all of His creation is fed You open Your hand and You satisfy the desire of every living thing Man, beast, birds, fish For the Lord is righteous in all of His ways Now this is more, the Lord is gracious He's full of compassion Tender mercies over all of His works Now the Lord is righteous in all of His ways He is holy in all of His works And the Lord is near to all of those who call upon Him Where do you think God dwells? Where does He live? You know, we are discovering more and more what a vast universe we live in They are able, now through the new technology, to peer even more completely in the universe in which we live And through this new technology, they're discovering a lot of interesting things And in one section of the sky, where there is a source of light that has been identified up till now as a star In this new telescope, they have now taken new photographs of this one section of the sky They now see as a swirling galaxy of billions of stars that they didn't even know existed The vastness of the universe Now, we so often, unconsciously or subconsciously in our minds, think that God sort of lives out on the edge of space However far that is, and sort of way far off from us And sometimes we feel that God is so very far removed because of being the infinite God And here I am, the finite man And how can I, as a finite man, ever touch the infinite God? And those in the Bible have seen the problem Job said, how can a man justify himself before God? He is so great, and I'm really nothing Who am I that I can plead my case before God? I need someone to stand between us, one who can lay his hand upon his boat David said, when I consider the heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained What is man that thou art mindful of him? And you look at this vast universe that was created by God And you wonder, just what is man that God would even be mindful of him? And God so often seems so far away, but he's really very close Extremely close to those that call upon him Paul said, don't think that salvation is way off somewhere in the universe Where we have to get a volunteer to go up and somehow bring it down But the word of the Lord is very close to you, in fact it's in your mouth For if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and just believe in your heart that God is raised from the dead You'll be saved, that's how close you are The Lord is near to those that call upon him To all that call upon him in truth That is, in sincerity The Lord said, and you shall seek me and you shall find me in the day that you seek me with all of your heart The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much I think many of our prayers are just hopes that we toss up And there isn't really much behind them You know, it's just sort of a Well, if you want, Lord, catch this one, you know It isn't really fervent And then we say, well, I prayed, you know, and God didn't do anything I sought the Lord and he, you know, didn't come through But I think that when we really get desperate before the Lord and seek him with all of our heart We find he's very close And we find him when we seek him with all of our heart Sometimes we have to get pretty desperate before we really seek the Lord In a desperate way It isn't just, oh, well, why don't you try God But it's really seeking him And he will fulfill the desire of those that reverence him He also will hear their cry and he will save them So those that call upon God in truth God will fulfill their desire And he will hear their cry And he will save them, for the Lord preserves all of those that love him God's gracious compassion And he preserves those that love him But all of the wicked, now here's the other side of the coin And there's got to be two sides to the coin Those that love him, God preserves The wicked, he will destroy But my mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord And that all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever Psalm 46 begins with that Hallelujah Praise Jehovah Praise the Lord, O my soul Now, David practiced talking to himself And commanding himself And sometimes I think that's It's not a sign of mental incompetence It's a sign of wisdom sometimes I talk to myself at times Sometimes I say, why in the world did you do that? What's wrong with you? And you sort of just speak to yourself David said, why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? Don't you hope in God? He shall bring it to pass Now, next time you get really worried about a situation You start panicking And you feel the panic attack coming Just talk to yourself, say, hey Why are you disquieted? What's wrong with you? What's got you so upset? Don't you hope in God? You think God's dead or something? He's going to come through You know, and the Bible says Speaking to yourself in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs Making melody in your heart to the Lord And it helps you many times to put things in perspective As you're all worried and concerned And you're just ready to just panic, you know Wait a minute, wait a minute Is God dead? Is God no longer on the throne? Is God forsaken His creation? Has God forsaken His child? No And when you begin to look at it that way Well, it says David encouraged himself in the Lord And that's a way of just encouraging yourself in the Lord Just talking to yourself about it Analyzing, why am I so upset? Why is my soul disquieted? Why do I feel this unrest? It's because I've lost sight of God I've lost that consciousness of God's control over the issues of my life Somehow I've forgotten that God is there Hope thou in God, David said For He shall yet bring it to pass He's going to work So just put your trust in Him So here David is commanding his soul to praise the Lord Praise the Lord, O my soul While I live, David declares, I will praise the Lord I will sing praises unto my God While I have any being As long as I am living As long as there is any breath in me I will be praising the Lord I will use it to praise the Lord To sing praises unto Him Now he said, don't put your trust in princes Nor in the Son of Man In whom there is no help Some hope in princes Some hope in men David said, but we will put our trust in the Lord Now if you hope in man, you have to realize that man is fragile His breath goes forth And he returns to the earth Interesting that man's life is associated with his breath Don't put your trust in man, he can perish When he stops breathing, he's dead And of course we do know that The cells of the body depend upon oxygen In order to keep going, keep functioning And it is the breath that brings the oxygen to the blood That keeps your body functioning And the minute the cells become deprived of the oxygen, they begin to die So that oxygen, that breath is necessary So you put your trust in man, but man can fail His breath goes forth, it quits And he returns to his earth His body goes back to the dust In that very day, it's over for him The day he quits breathing, he's gone So happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help Whose hope is in Jehovah, his God Put your trust in man, he can die He's fragile, he's frail Put your trust in the Lord, happy is that man For the Lord is the one who made heaven and earth and the sea And everything that is in them And he keeps truth forever He doesn't perish, he goes on, eternal He executes judgment for the oppressed Which gives food, the Lord gives food to the hungry He looses the prisoners The Lord opens the eyes of the blind He raises those who are bowed down The Lord loveth righteousness So happy is the man who has learned to put his hope in Jehovah The creator, the one who executes judgment for the oppressed Gives food to the hungry Opens the eyes of the blind The Lord preserves the stranger He relieves the fatherless and the widow But the way of the wicked, he turns upside down The contrast again, two sides to the coin, always The Lord shall reign forever Even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations Hallelujah, or praise the Lord Psalm 147 again begins with that Hallelujah, for it is good To sing praises unto our God It is pleasant and praise is suitable Or it is fit, or it is beautiful Comely can mean all of those things Praising the Lord, it's just good, it's beautiful To spend your time in praising the Lord Now, this is, and the rest of these psalms Are thought by many scholars To be psalms that were written after the period of exile in Babylon When the Jews had returned to the land And had, under Nehemiah, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem So if you will, in your mind, sort of set these in that setting Praising God because the walls have been rebuilt The nation has been reestablished after the 70 years of Babylonian captivity And so the Lord has built up Jerusalem again The walls have been built up, the city is fortified He has gathered together the outcast of Israel Under the decree of Cyrus All throughout the Persian Empire, which at that time Ruled over the world, the Jews that were within the Persian Empire Had the permission of Cyrus to return To Jerusalem So he's gathered together the outcast of Israel He has healed the broken in heart That period of captivity was hard on many of them It's said that we sat by the river in Babylon And we cried, they who had taken us captive Demanded a party, songs of happiness We'd heard of the Israeli songs They have a new gala and so forth Sing us some of your songs They said, but how can we sing those kind of songs When we're in captivity But he heals the broken in heart, he binds their wounds He tells the number of the stars Now this one really, I love this He tells the number of the stars And he calls them all by their names Now God has a name for every star out there And as we have discovered, there are Billions of galaxies and Millions upon billions of stars In each galaxy and God Knows the number, now we don't know the number of stars I mean we just say, well it's astronomical But God knows the number of the stars It is estimated there are 10 to the 25th power But that was before they found this new galaxy God knows the numbers of the stars And he calls them all by name And I don't think it's Joe and Tom and Harry You know God talked to Job about Arcturus And he knows the fancy, you know Latin names or whatever, I mean Imagine, imagine The awesomeness, our God is an awesome God He tells the number of the stars He calls them all by their names I've always just loved this Richard We'll return with more of our verse by verse study Through the book of Psalms in our next lesson As Pastor Chuck Smith continues with God's Glorious Works And we do hope you'll make plans to join us Now for those of you who would like to secure a copy of today's message Simply order Psalm 145 verse 9 When visiting thewordfortoday.org And while there we encourage you to browse the many additional Biblical resources by Pastor Chuck You can also subscribe to the Word for Today podcast Or sign up for our email subscription Once again all this can be found at thewordfortoday.org And if you wish to call Our toll free number is 1-800-272-WORD And our office hours are Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time Once again that's 1-800-272-9673 And if you prefer to write Our mailing address is The Word for Today, P.O. Box 8000 Costa Mesa, California 92628 And now on behalf of the Word for Today We'd like to thank all of you who share in supporting this ministry With your prayers and financial support And be sure to join us again next time As Pastor Chuck continues his verse-by-verse study Through the Bible That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today Now once again, here's Pastor Chuck In today's closing comments May the Lord be with you and strengthen you By His Spirit in your inner man And may He give to you a spiritual revelation That you might know The exceeding riches of His love and grace Toward you in Christ Jesus That you might comprehend What is the length, the breadth, the depth, the height To know the love of Christ Which passes human understanding May you experience that love As He works in your life this week And may you share that love with others As you go forth as His witness To the world God make you a shining light And a powerful witness for Jesus Christ The Word for Today The Word for Today has put together a booklet series By Pastor Chuck called The Answers for Today It addresses questions pertaining to hot topics Such as, what does God say about alternative lifestyles? If God is love, then why are people so against Him in the first place? And of course, the always asked questions Why does God allow suffering? Or what is the rapture? And when is Jesus coming again? It's time these questions are put to rest And we help our loved ones come to a simple understanding of the Bible And how to have a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ To order The Answers for Today booklets individually Or collectively as a set You can call The Word for Today at 1-800-272-9673 Or you can order them online at thewordfortoday.org I want to encourage you, order these to keep on hand Because you never know when you're going to get asked that question This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today In Costa Mesa, California