Good morning. My name is Tim Stoker. This morning's scripture is Psalm 145. For those of you using the Bibles into the chairs in front of you, it can be found on page 621. This is a psalm of praise, a psalm of David. Psalm 145. I will exalt you my God the King. I will praise your name forever and ever. Every day, I will praise you and extol your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. His greatness, no one can fathom. One generation will commend your works to another. They will tell of your mighty acts. They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty. And I will meditate on your wonderful works. They will tell of the power of your awesome works and I will proclaim your great deeds. They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all he has made. All you have made will praise you, O Lord. Your saints will extol you. They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might. So that all men may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made. The Lord is near to all who call on him to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He hears their cry and saves them. The Lord watches over all who love him. But all the wicked he will destroy my mouth will speak in praise of the Lord. Let every creature praise his holy name forever and ever. This is the word of the Lord. Today we bring to an end our series of studies on the attributes of God. I've called this series behold his glory and we started it about seven weeks ago. We've looked at a number of the character qualities or attributes of God. We've looked at his glory, his holiness, his grace, his justice, his beauty and his power. And today we want to end the series by talking and thinking together about God's goodness. I began the series by saying that I hope this series will lead us as a church family into a new and fresh encounter with the glory of God. I feel that that is the number one need of my heart. It's the number one need of every single human heart is to know God better to see him. And as who he is to desire for him as he is a relationship with him. And so I hope that as we've looked at these seven different attributes that you can say that you have seen a little bit more of the glory of God. Obviously we've only scratched the surface and perhaps we should return again and again to another set of these attributes. But today I trust that as we look together at God's goodness, you will see his glory. And you will leave this place today, desiring to know him better and to reflect his goodness to a world that's desperately in need of it. So what we're going to do today is look at Psalm 145. There's no way in 25 to 30 minutes I can exhaust this amazing Psalm. It is so full of so many wonderful things. But let me just boil it down to two simple points. What I want to show you today and we're going to get really fast through the first point and dwell mostly on the second. The first thing you want to see is that the Lord or God is great and he's worthy of our praise. And the second thing is that God is good and he's worthy of our trust. So like I said, let's briefly touch upon the first one because we really want to dwell for the longer part of our time on the goodness of God. First thing then from Psalm 145 is that God is great and he's worthy of our praise. Let's look at verses one and three. Verse one says, I will exalt you, my God, the king. I will praise your name forever and ever. And verse three says, great is the Lord and worthy of praise his greatness. No one can fathom. Now, you don't need a definition of the word great. Everybody talks about people who are great all the time right now. Who is the greatest person in the NBA? Jeremy Lynn, of course, he's making the news. His number 17 jerseys and t-shirts are selling like hotcakes. He's kind of the current definition of greatness. Or maybe you would think of Tim Teebo or perhaps the late Whitney Houston who's been on everybody's mind in the last few days. But look, when it comes to greatness, God has no competition. Those human celebrities, those human stars and athletes will come and go. But God remains forever. In fact, it says in verse 13 that God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. His dominion endures through all generations. So those people that we call great, they won't even be remembered a few generations from now. But God is great in all caps. He is the great and awesome God. Our God we sing many times is an awesome God. He reigns in heaven above through wisdom, power and love. Our God is an awesome God. And according to Psalm 145, our response to the greatness of God ought to be unceasing heartfelt praise and worship. Once we see how great God is, we will instinctively give God the praise of our lips. It says in the very last verse of the Psalm, verse 21 says my mouth will speak in praise of the Lord. Let every creature praise his holy name for. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? There we go. God is giving us a message. I am great. We hear you Lord. Earlier today, what did we sing? Come thou fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy praise. The streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise. See when you see and you know and you feel God's greatness, you want to give him your unceasing praise. Did you sing that song from your heart? You know, you can tell what you love by who you praise. Say it again, you can tell what you love by who you praise. If God is sort of just marginal in your life, now look, let's kind of have a true honest heart to heart, okay? Don't forget, don't worry about the screens. Just listen to me. If God is just sort of out there on the periphery of your life, you know, he's one of many things. Maybe he maybe he's somewhere down the list of your priorities. You can tell because you don't talk about him very much. You don't tell others about him very much because he's not the being that you most prize. He's not on your mind at work or school. If God is just sort of peripheral in your life, he's not on your mind. You don't think about him when you wake up in the morning. Do you? He's not that instinctive, that automatic thought that comes into your heart when you wake up because you know how badly you need him that day. He's not the fount of every blessing in your life. So it's no wonder that you do not praise him. It's no wonder that your life is not a life of instinctive worship. So see, that's supposed to be a clue, that's supposed to clue you into the fact that God is still out there somewhere and he's not in here where he deserves to be. If God is great to you, you will order your life around him. If God is great to you, you will sing and shout and speak his praise. Out of the abundance of the heart, what the mouth speaks. And so your lips, your words, the things you praise, the things you think about, the things that you value are clue as to where God fits in your life or maybe he doesn't fit. So the first thing we see in Psalm 145 is that God is great and he is worthy. He deserves unceasing praise. But now for the rest of my time, I want to dwell on our main point for the day, the goodness of God. Not only do we see in Psalm 145 that God is great, we see that he's good. He's good and he's worthy of your trust. The word good, let's talk about that for a moment. It's the Hebrew word Tove. It's in this Psalm two times. It's in verses seven and verses nine, verse nine. Look at verses as they, they, that is one generation after another, will celebrate your abundant goodness. There it is, Tove. They will celebrate your goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. And in verse nine, the Lord is Tove, good to all. He has compassion on all he has made. Now you and I use the word good all the time. I dare say in an average day, we'd probably say the word good. Oh, I don't know, dozens of times perhaps. We say that was a good meal. That was a good song. You're a good friend. I just saw a good movie or a good book. We say to somebody, have a good day. We tell our kids, now go be good. What are we meaning when we talk about that? What are we saying when we say that God is good? Well, it means that God is delightful. Put that in your margin. It means God's delightful. It means he is pleasurable. He is sweet to the soul. Taste and see says the psalmist in Psalm 348. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed or happy or complete is the person who takes refuge in him. God is good in and of himself. He is THE good with a capital G. From him all other goods, and there are goods in the world, but all other goods in this world derive their goodness from God and they bow before him. You want to know why it's so important that you and I understand that God is good. Let me just speak to that a moment. Why is it even important that we go through this and talk about how good God is? Well, if you were to ask the average Christian, what is it that makes for a quality walk with God? I bet you'd get answers like this. In order to have a quality walk with God, what I've got to do is pray, study my Bible, go to church, give, walk old ladies across the street, recycle, floss my teeth, I mean the list could go on and on and on about what people think it takes to have a quality walk with God. Now look, those are good things. Done with a right heart, done to the glory of God, they do in fact glorify him. But if that's the sum and substance of your Christian life, doing this and doing that, checking off a number of boxes, it's no wonder that some of you who talk about being exhausted, it's no wonder that you are, because if your Christian life consists of doing duties and stepping through the steps and going through the motions of doing these various things, you're missing the delight of the character of God and the relationship that we're supposed to have with him. The main thing God wants you to do is to enjoy him. Do you hear that? The main thing God wants you to do is to enjoy him. The Westminster shorter catechism from which we read earlier today, the very first question, many of you have memorized it, asks this question, what's man's chief end, or what is our main purpose in life? And the answer is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And I love how John Piper, he's kind of become known for this, but he says the way to read that is our chief end, our main purpose is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. Think about it for a moment. How in the world could the Psalmist, the author of Psalm 42, say this, as the dear pants for streams of water, sow my soul pants for you, oh God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God, when can I go and meet with God? When did you last pant for God? How can he say that? How can he really say that and mean that? He can say it because he had discovered that God is good. He had tasted and seen the goodness of God. And another example, how could David, King David, write in Psalm 63, these words, oh God, you are my God, earnestly, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you and a dry and weary land where there's no water. How could David say that and really mean it from his heart? It's because he had found that God is enjoyable. He's pleasurable, he's delightful. And David had found out that God is good. See, prayer and Bible study and giving and doing duties and sharing your faith, they all begin when you enjoy God. See, you want to be spending time with the person that you enjoy. You want to tell other people about someone whom you enjoy. And so when you enjoy God, you're thirsting for him. When you know that he's good, you can't wait to open his word and read it. And you can't wait to tell somebody else about him because you have found him to be so good yourself. Listen, folks, if you try to do the Christian life without enjoying God, without delighting in him, you are not only going to insult him, but you're going to exhaust yourself. The Christian life is meant to be something you live out of, the goodness, the well of the goodness of God. Psalm 145 is our invitation. It's our invitation today to a different kind of Christian life, maybe one that you've not yet discovered. Maybe there are people here who have professed faith in Jesus Christ, and yet your Christian life is not a joy. It's a burden. You do not understand what Jesus meant when he said, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest. Because for you, the Christian life is not restful. It's beautiful. Psalm 145 is an invitation to see God a different way. He is good and His love endures forever. So, what I want you to do is look with me in Psalm 145 at two ways that God reveals His goodness to us. And perhaps this will help you to see that He is enjoyable and you'll begin to take new delight in your relationship with God. Two ways. First, here's the first way. Psalm 145 speaks of God's goodness as a combination of grace and mercy. Now look, you're going to have to put on your thinking caps here. This is not a light sermon. You're going to follow me here and keep your Bible open and I'll show you some verses and I'll back this up. Let me say it again. God's goodness is revealed to us in this Psalm as a combination of grace and mercy. You remember I said a little while ago that the word good appears in the Psalm two times in verse seven and verse nine. Well, in between seven and nine is eight. Verse eight is right in between. If you, if seven and nine are the bread of the sandwich, verse eight is the meat. Look at verse eight says the Lord is gracious and compassionate. And a better word for that word is merciful. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and rich in love. The word grace is the Hebrew word Hanan. The word mercy is the Hebrew word Raham. You don't really need to know that, but I'm going to point it out to you later as we go through some other verses. Now, I've told you before the difference between grace and mercy, right? Do you remember anybody? I've used a silly little illustration about grace and mercy. Grace means you get something that you don't deserve. Mercy means you don't get what you should have deserved. If I get pulled over by cop for running a red light, don't worry, I don't think I've ever done that. But if I get pulled over for running a red light and the officer just gives me a warning instead of a ticket, that's mercy. I don't get what I deserve. If he invites me out to dinner at an expensive restaurant, that's grace. I'm getting what I don't deserve. Well, the Bible tells us that we've received both from God. We don't get what we deserve. He spares us of judgment. And at the same time, he loads us up with his benefits of grace, mercy, forgiveness, justification, sanctification, all those other things. So we get what we don't deserve. We don't get what we do deserve. And it's amazing how often this twofold description of God's goodness pops up again and again in the Bible. Grace, mercy, grace, mercy. Let me go through some of these verses with you. For example, let's start in Exodus chapter 33. In Exodus 33, Moses is desperate. He is a desperate leader of God's people. And he says, God, I can't do it. I can't lead these people out of the wilderness into the promised land. God, you've got to show me your glory. And so in Exodus 33, 19, here's what God says. He says, look up here. I will make all my Tove goodness pass before you. And I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. I will be gracious, Chanan, to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy, Rachham, on whom I will show mercy. Grace, mercy. In the next chapter, Exodus 34, you remember the story where God takes Moses and puts him behind a rock. And then Moses is able to peer around and see God's back parts. One of the most mysterious visions of God in the Bible. Well, in Exodus 34, 6, it says this, God passed in front of Moses proclaiming the Lord. The Lord, the merciful and gracious God, there it is again, slow to anger and a bounding in love. Almost verbatim the words out of Psalm 145. Let's skip ahead. Nehemiah 917 says, you are a forgiving God, gracious and merciful. Chanan, Rachham, slow to anger and a bounding in love. Psalm 86, 15. You, O Lord, are a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, a bounding in love and faithfulness. Psalm 103, verse 8, the Lord is, Rachham, Chanan, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, a bounding in love, he will not always accuse or harbor his anger forever. Skip forward to Joel. Joel was an Old Testament prophet who called his people to repentance and he said, Ringe your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and he is merciful, slow to anger and a bounding in love. One more, Jonah. You remember Jonah was sent to Nineveh to preach the good news and hopefully the Ninevites would repent? Well, that's exactly what they did. And Jonah was mad about it. Jonah was upset that God had mercy on the Ninevites and this is what he said to God. That's why I ran away to Tarshish, Lord. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and a bounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. What are we learning here? We're learning that God is gracious. He gives you what you don't deserve in Christ. He is merciful. He spares you from what you do deserve because Jesus took your punishment. Those are twin blessings bound up in the goodness of God. Now, I said that there are two ways in Psalm 145 that God shows how good he is. One is in this combination of grace and mercy. The other is in a combination of common grace and saving grace. Now, I know it's a little warm in here, right? Just be thankful that it's not a lot hotter, okay? So, did you hear what I said? The second way in which we see God's goodness in Psalm 145 is through this combination of common grace and saving grace. So, let's talk about that. First of all, there's a sense in which God gives grace to all people and all creatures. That's called common grace. Look at verse 9. It says in verse 9, that the Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all he has made. Everybody gets God's compassion, you see? Verse 15, the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time. Verse 16, you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. See, what these verses mean is that every living creature in this whole world has been blessed and loved by God in a general sense. The sun shines upon the evil as well as the good. The rain falls upon the just as well as the unjust. All of the good things that we enjoy in this life. Whatever health we have, whatever technology we enjoy, whatever friends and family we have are all a part of God's common grace. Those things wouldn't exist where it not for God's goodness. God and His goodness showers blessings upon this whole world, even upon those who reject Jesus. That's common grace. But there's another sense in which God is particularly good to His people. And that's called saving or special grace. Look at verse 18 and you'll see that there says in verse 18, that the Lord is near to all who call on Him. Now not everyone calls on God, right? Just His people, just His people call on God. So God is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. And verse 19 says that He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him. He hears their cry and saves them. So you see that is special or saving grace. And it comes to those who follow Christ whom God has chosen before the foundation of the earth. God I want you to see is good to all He gives to all people His offer of salvation. He gives all people His blessings, blessings that don't deserve. But to His own He gives forgiveness, answers to prayer and a special sense of His presence. Some 145 teaches us then that God is great. He's worthy of praise. God is good. He's worthy of trust. So have you seen the movie The Vow? Some of you have seen the movie The Vow. Okay, it was a few days before Valentine's Day and my wife said, I want to go see this guy Channing Tatum. Now ladies, why can't we get away? We guys with saying, I want to go see Rachel McAdams. Oh no, don't you dare. That's not right. They tell us. But my wife says, I want to go see Channing Tatum. So I said, okay, let's go see The Vow. So we go see the movie on Valentine's Day. And it's really not a bad movie at all. I enjoyed it. But what you may not know about that movie is that it was based on a true story. The date was November 24th, 1993. Here's a picture of this couple that the movie was based on their names are Kim and cricket carpenter. Kim is the man's name. Cricket is obviously the woman's name. They've been married for just 10 weeks. That's all when they had an awful car accident on I 40 in state of Arizona. They're Ford escort that they were driving in flipped over and skidded when Kim was driving. He was trying to avoid a slow moving truck. Kim suffered a punctured lung, a bruise on his heart, a concussion and a broken hand. But the accident was far worse for his wife, cricket. The roof of the car caved in around her head. Her skull was fractured. She hung upside down in the car for over an hour while rescuers arrived and tried to cut her out of the car. And by the time she was flown to an Albuquerque hospital, Kim, I mean, cricket was in a coma. It lasted 10 days. And when she came out of this coma, she'd forgotten everything that had happened for the previous 18 months, including meeting cricket. Meeting cricket, I mean, Kim, meeting Kim, falling in love with Kim, dating Kim and marrying Kim. A nurse asked cricket after she woke up from her coma, what year is it? She said 1969. She said, do you remember your parents? And she did. She remembered them by name. And then the nurse said to cricket, what's your husband's name? And she said, I'm not married. I know who he was. Kim and cricket are Christians. Kim wasn't about to let cricket go. He determined to be faithful to his marriage vow and to pursue her and to rebuild their relationship on a brand new foundation. And that's exactly what happened. They hung in there. They remembered that their marriage vow was for life, and that it was for sickness and health, richer or poorer, better or worse as long as they both shall live. And so they worked on their relationship together, even though to cricket, Kim was a virtual stranger. On Valentine's Day of 1996, Kim proposed to cricket again. And a few months after that, they exchanged rings and vows in another church wedding. That is what God did for you in Christ. 49.15 says, though you may forget him, he will not forget you. God sent his son Jesus to down the cross and to bear your sins upon his own body and to trade places with you, to give you his righteousness and take your sins away and put him upon himself. When you were dead in your trespasses and sins, God made you alive with Christ and seated you above in heavenly places. He took you as his bride. He took off those dirty, ugly, smelly clothes of your sin and filth and exchanged it with a beautiful robe of his own righteousness. He brought you into his family, his body, the church. He adopted you and gave you a new name. He promised that as long as you live, he is yours and you are his. He made a vow to you, a covenant that he'll never break. And though you may forget him, he'll never, ever forget you. He's preparing a place for you in heaven which he invites you to and he can't wait to spend eternity with you upon the new earth. All because the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love. He is good all the time. All the time. God is good. So how do you respond to that? I mean, what's what are you thinking right now? What's your response to the goodness of God? Do you play poker? I know I'm not supposed to ask that in church. If you're playing poker and you've got this pile of money over here and you wager it all, what do you say? All in. I'm all in. In light of the goodness of God this morning, the only proper response is God. I'm all in. Oh, to grace. How great a debtor. Daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a feather, shackle my heart to thee. I've known to wander, Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart. All in. Taken, seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. Will you? Will I today? In light of the goodness of God? All in. All in God. Let's pray. Father, we praise you this morning for your greatness. You are a great king worthy of all praise. But Lord, we know a lot of great beings down through the annals of time who were not good. And you are both great and good. We're all in, Lord. We're all in. Thank you that you were all in. You came. You gave it all to us on the cross. So, Lord, we give you our all to the best of our knowledge and ability. We say here we are, Lord, take our hearts and seal them. Seal them for your courts above. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.