Lately it seems popular in America to imagine how Jesus would act if He were walking among us here in the United States of America today.
We are told that what Jesus would drive would be anything but a gas guzzling SUV…this is in spite of the fact that Jesus walked everywhere even though horses were readily available. So why would Jesus drive a car when He is only once recorded in Scripture as riding an animal? Even more, why would Jesus need to buy gas anyway? He could turn water into wine, why not water into gasoline?
We are told that Jesus would not eat fast food or pizza or anything unhealthy. Really? Then why was Jesus called a drunkard and a glutton? Does the New Testament ever tell us anything about Jesus physical state? We are never told that Jesus was tall or short, skinny or overweight, athletic or not. We are only told that he was not handsome. Is. 53:2
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Some will even go so far to claim that Jesus would be a vegetarian, which means of course that Jesus could not participate in the Passover meal…clearly a contradiction of how Jesus is described in the Bible.
How would Jesus vote? The exact way I voted, of course…except for the fact that Jesus would be ineligible to vote here in America.
What would Jesus buy, what would Jesus sell, who would Jesus deport, what would Jesus blog, what would Jesus tax, what would Jesus do for a Klondike bar? The list is endless, but in the end the results are always the same - People imagine that the values they hold dear, are the same values that Jesus holds dear. What we in America think to ourselves is, “What I think is important, is what God thinks is important”.
What would Jesus drive? The same kind of car I drive, of course.
People place their own value system on God, and they imagine that God values exactly what they value. For example, a person who values a healthy vegetarian diet, may imagine that because they see a vegetarian diet is a good thing, then God does as well…..not necessarily so.
What we see in all this is folks making assumptions about the character of God. The great danger is this: We can create a God of our imagination, which has no relation to the real God and we can fool ourselves. See, if we start with ourselves, if we start with what we hold dear, what we personally value and then create an argument of why God would agree with us, we are in great danger of fooling ourselves. This is known as speculation, and speculation is a nice way of saying, my best guess is…..truth is that with ungrounded speculation we are attempting to create who we think God might be, when in reality God already is.
Why would I want to speculate about who God might be, when I have an accurate source that tells me exactly what God is like? That just makes no sense. This is something we have to be very careful about. We ALL have a worldview that is influenced by a number of things, many of the things that influence us are not Christian – so sometimes we assume that because WE SEE something as good, we then assume it is Christian and biblical, but that may not necessarily be the case. It is much healthier to start with Scripture first and then go to experience, rather than starting with experience and then going to Scripture. That way we have a better chance of seeing what is already there, than trying to find something we already agree with – makes sense, right?
So instead of guessing who God is, let’s look at what Scripture tells us about who God is.
Here in Psalm 145, we have a description of who God is. David is the author of this Psalm and in it he give us two parallel tracks to follow: David tells us a bit about who God is, he tells us about God’s character, and also, David tells us what our response should be to the character of God. What is happening here is that God is revealing Himself to us.
Let me stop right here and address a modern American myth. You may hear some folks argue that since the Bible was written by humans, it is just another opinion in the sea of opinions on the vast subject of God. Well, though the Bible was written by humans, it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t mean that God took control of a person’s hand and wrote the words, what it means is that the Holy Spirit inspired the writer to write and in doing so, the words are from God. 2Tim. 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”
Looking back at psalm 145, we see that it is an acrostic poem. Each line begins with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. David starts with aleph, then, bet, then gimel and so on. Hebrew has the abg’s instead of the abc’s. This was a very popular way of construction a psalm in the day and the ability to pull off writing a good poem in Hebrew in this manner shows a great mastery of the language. In addition to David being the author of this psalm, David also sang this psalm himself on many occasions – see, this is living material; It is not just static information, but a practical guide on how to not only know about God, but on how to interact with God.
David starts off in the first two verses telling us two things, first we are to lift up God in praise. (It would be very helpful for you to have your bibles open to psalm 145 at this point) We are to praise Him as king, which mean that we are to lift him up as the ultimate authority in our lives. When David says we are to praise God, he means we are to show him our approval, admiration, gratitude, thankfulness….I want you to notice, and this is important – there is no time limit given and there are no conditions given.
Do you see that?
We praise God – because He is God. That is very unnatural for us isn’t it? We need a reason for a response. It is natural for us to offer gratitude in response to something, it is not natural for us to offer praise for something that simply is... But remember, we saw last week that we are called to live not in a way that is natural, but in a way that is unnatural, we are to live life by the Spirit, and since it is by the Spirit, it is unnatural. So we are to take that first step and praise God for who He is. Just praise God for who He is. David informs us that we need to praise God in spite good or bad happening in our lives, in spite of how we feel, in spite of anything except for the fact that God is God. You know what is so wonderful about that? You can be completely ignorant about theology, you don’t have to know much about the Bible and you don’t have to know much about God and now he will tell us something about the character of God which will then gives us more and more reason to praise God – give our approval, admiration, gratitude, thankfulness….
David continues, he expands telling us in verses 3-7 that God is great, so great, we cannot comprehend. What makes God great? Look at the attributes that are listed within these verses 3-7. How do we know God is great? Personal experience of others and our own personal experience. The generations before have told us the great things God has done, they do this for two reasons, to show how great God is and to encourage us for the future – Since God has been so great in the past, what could stop Him from being great in the future?
So what is our response to this? Take a look at verses 5 and 6. When hear of God’s glorious splendor, when we hear what He has done – we are to think, ponder, consider we are to deeply consider the implications in or lives – this will help us understand who God is and it will encourage us as well. See, we hear of God’s mighty power and awesome works and see that God is has been good to folks in the past and in turn we are to tell what God has done in our lives, for we are the generation who tells the coming generation of the greatness of God. We are the generation receiving insight about God and at the same time we are the generation delivering insight about God, encouraging the new generation.
David, then builds on this in verses 8-13a. He shows that God is not just a God who is only an authority figure with great power and ability, someone who lives in the distance, in a another time, another place - this is where many people stop with God, this is the idea many people have about who God is, this is, over all, what our culture imagines who God is…but no, David tells us that God is much more than such a simple idea, such a small category, God is very personal too, right here, right now. I love verse 8, “The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.”
Many of the ideas about who God is that we hear in the media are almost two dimensional; But God is ultimately complex, in fact, sometimes His character may on the surface appear to be contradictory. But see, God being God, can never be self contradictory - He is God. This is why we are to ponder, consider, and think upon who He is. What may appear to be a contradiction in the character of God, will in fact become a richer, and more complex understanding of who God is when we consider its full implications. I believe we are asked to do think, ponder and consider who God is, for the Holy Spirit will bring us insight as we ponder the Character of God, and will bring us a deeper understanding than we could attain from only reading or studying about who God is.
Right here, within verses 8-13a lies an apparent contradiction. When we look at verse1 we see that, all will praise God, ALL will praise God. This is a reference to the time when we all stand before God, and it isn’t a voluntary action. At that time we will see that in the presence of God all will praise God, believers, unbelievers, you and I, people of every time, every race and every place, even people such as Adolph Hitler. They will praise God whether they desire to or not. Everyone will acknowledge that God has all power, authority and dominion - whether they want to or not. We see this referenced also in the NT in Rom. 14:11 “It is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’” Though God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love, as we see in verse 8, He also will judge those who do not follow Him, those who do not believe. There is a time set when God will express his complete dominion and ultimate authority, and even those who refuse to accept or even acknowledge His existence, will praise Him. Now this doesn’t mean universal salvation, this means that even those who are not saved will at some point have to bow in recognition of who is God.
Now wait. Verse 9 says that God has compassion on all He has made – Don’t assume that is a statement of universal salvation, in reality it is a statement that God desires all to come to Him; God desires all to follow him and worship him on their own freewill. But the reality also is that God can have people acknowledge his power, authority and dominion under compulsion, but he cannot force people to love Him – that is the nature of love, it cannot be forced it must be voluntary. God’s nature is one where He can self contradictory. God can be compassionate and judgmental at the same time, because of the nature of love.
Yet see, we as saints, (the end of verse 10) are to extol God. We are to speak of His glory in our lives so that all may know of God’s mighty acts, so that they may believe and experience grace of God also. Here, we see God’s graciousness in action through His saints. God’s compassion is extended in various ways, and one of those ways is through you, in your obedience to tell others about God.
David then shows us more about who God is from 13b-16. (In the Hebrew, two Hebrew letters are encompassed in verse 13, [m&n, the mem and the nun] – there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, that is why we have the odd split in English). Here in these verses we see that God is faithful.
Usually we see ourselves, we who believe, as the faithful, yet God is Himself faithful, and He is always the first to be faithful. Here in 13b-16 we see how God is faithful, here we see the evidence of His faithfulness. God keeps His promises. We saw a few weeks ago that Jesus Christ was literally the promise given to Abraham and the people of Israel, a living and active promise.
God lifts up those who fall (14), God will provide forgiveness for the fallen and not ignore those who come to him. God is faithful in the fact that we can always count on him for forgiveness of our sin when we turn to Him in repentance. This makes God faithful. God will also take care of our needs (15)…when we look to Him to fulfill our needs rather than to ourselves.
Now when we read something like verse 16 we may be tempted to think that David is expressing hyperbole. 16, ”You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.” We look around us and we do not see satisfaction all around us. I think we have to be careful and understand that as we saw at the beginning, there is no time limit set upon what is expressed in this psalm. Surely at the end of time God will fulfill His promises, as He is faithful.
Finally, David expresses again that God is engaging on a very personal level. He is near to all who call on Him, He seeks to fulfill our godly desires, and He watches over us. In this way God is righteous and loving. Today, we see this fulfilled by Jesus Christ and the constant presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives as believers.
In this final section, as a practical matter, what happens if we do not do what David expresses? In verse 18, on the positive side, if we call on God in truth, meaning from the depths of our heart, for real…if we call on him from the heart – God will be near us. We see this literally in the person of the Holy Spirit, who comes upon us at conversion.
But if we do not call on God…..he will not be with you.
If we fear God, meaning respect God, He will fulfill our desire – now remember, as we grow in Christ our desires will change, and align with His desires and this is what God will fulfill. This is not referring to empty desires that we seek.
But if we do not fear God…..we will never have fulfillment.
If we cry out to God, He will save us. All we have to do is cry out to God, ask for forgiveness, ask Him to come and take over our life. Simply put we will be saved.
But if we do not cry out to the Lord……
If we love the Lord he will watch over us, remember this is not only now, but in the fullness of time, yet if we do not love the Lord……
When we take all of Psalm 145 as a unit, verse 21, the final verse (the tav verse, t, is the final letter in the Hebrew alphabet) we see it brings us back to the aleph (a) verse. In the aleph verse, verse one, we are to praise God simply because he is God, and here in the tav verse, we have see some of the character of God, and we come our with verbal praise for him.
We start with praise simply because of who God is, and in the end we find that the greatness of God, the compassion of God, the faithfulness of God, and the personal nature of God brings us back to who God is.
Let us worship and serve God who is the revealed God we find in the Scriptures and not a god we image.
