And now you'll need to have your Bibles open to Psalm 145. Psalm 145. We're going to read verses 14 through verse 20. And before we do, let's bow in a word of prayer. Our great God, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you for your word. And we pray that in your word that you would show us your greatness, your goodness, and your glory. That you would open our eyes and our hearts that we may behold in your word wonderful things. And that our hearts will be filled with joy and affection through the preaching of your word, hearing of your word, and our meditation on it. When it is attended by the work of your spirit, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Psalm 145, beginning at verse 14. Yahweh sustains all who fall down and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all wait on you and you give them their food in due time. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. Yahweh is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works. Yahweh is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. He will work out the desire of those who fear him. He will hear their cry for help and he will save them. Yahweh keeps all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. Living in a fallen world can make us long for the kingdom that is described in verses 11 through 13 that we looked at last week. We are surrounded by death and disease and disaster and the ravages of sin in this cursed world. And we long for the day when death is no more, when death is finally conquered. And when we live in a kingdom without sin, without corruption, without perversion, without evil, iniquity, immorality, or even we as believers, we won't even have the propensity to sin or the desire to sin. For this world will one day have a perfect ruler, and he will rule the nations, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. In fact, in answer to the wickedness of men and their persistent rebellion against God, Psalm 2, Yahweh gives his answer and says, As for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh. He said to me, You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession. And then when our Savior rules this world and all the nations in a kingdom in perfect righteousness, then we will know his perfect benevolence, his perfect goodness, perfect justice, perfect grace. We will know all of that. For the king who will rule us is both great and he is good. And those two things go together. Those two things are the two aspects of David's praise in Psalm 145 that we have been looking at in these last few weeks. He is described as unsearchably good in verse 3 of Psalm 145. Yahweh is great. Sorry, unsearchably great. Yahweh is great and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. And then he is described as being abundantly good in verse 7. They shall pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness and shout joyfully for your righteousness. That's in the first half of the psalm. And we looked at God's greatness, expressions of that, what it means for him to be unsearchably great. We looked at his goodness and the individual and personal expressions of that in the first half of the psalm. And now in the second half of the psalm, David returns again to those two reasons for praising God, his greatness and his goodness. And this time, those two things are expressed in terms of his dominion, his rule, his kingdom. He is the eternal and unchanging king who rules all things by the word of his power. He upholds all things that exist. He rules over all nations. He rules over all creatures. He rules over all peoples. Everything is under his sovereign control. Everything is under his sovereign direction. He is unchanging in his sovereignty and unquestioned in his sovereignty. And because of that, we can understand why he is so great, this expression of his greatness. But then this king who rules over all of these things is described in terms of his goodness and how he rules all things and how he treats everything that is under his dominion and in that kingdom. And that is verses 14 through 20. We see his goodness. His greatness and his goodness are expressed in terms of his reign and his rule over all things. And we've seen that the central idea of Psalm 145 is that Yahweh is a great king who is worthy of great praise. And here today in verses 14 through 16, we are going to see that Yahweh is a good and benevolent ruler of his kingdom. And David gives three evidences in verses 14 through 16.

three expressions of God's goodness, three ways that he is good to us, his people, and three ways that he is good to all who are under his sovereign care. In verse 14, 15, and 16, there is one expression in each of those verses, and I want you to notice them. We'll read through those verses again. In verse 14, David says that Yahweh sustains the weak. Yahweh sustains all who fall down and raises up all who are bowed down. Then in verse 15, his goodness is expressed in that he supplies all of our needs. The eyes of all wait on you and you give them their food in due time. And then in verse 16, his goodness is seen in that he satisfies our desires. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. He sustains the weak, he supplies our needs, and he satisfies our desires. Those are the three evidences of God's goodness. This is what he does for all things that are under his care and his concern. We'll look in verses 17 through 20 at those expressions of God's goodness because even verse 20, his destruction of the wicked is an expression of God's goodness. But we'll say that for next week. And as we are coming into, well, we're well into the month of November, our thoughts turn to all of the reasons why we can be thankful to God for all that he has given to us. This is kind of the Thanksgiving season. Now, if you're in my house or one of my kids, then it's already Christmas season since today is the day that everybody starts listening to Christmas music. Three weeks too early for my tastes, so everybody wants to skip Thanksgiving and go to Christmas. I want to camp on Thanksgiving for a couple of weeks, the reasons why we can be thankful to God and all of the expressions of his goodness toward us. So let's look first at his sustaining of the weak in verse 14. Yahweh sustains all who fall down and raises up all who are bowed down. Now that kind of compassion and grace and condescension is not something that we associate with one who is great and preeminent and exalted and majestic. In fact, we often associate greatness and majesty and exaltation to, we also often associate that with a certain apathy or distance or a lack of concern for those who are merely the commoners. In fact, it is not uncommon in our world to see kings and those who are in exalted positions to think nothing of the common interests or the common concerns of the common man. And even those who have been plucked from the common man sphere of things and been given great positions of power and influence and comfort and ease, they will often, over the course of time, grow very apathetic and distant and sort of unconcerned with the people that they once came out of. We're familiar with that. It's not uncommon to see that. But how much more than one whose exaltation has been from eternity, who has never taken the throne and has never known what it is to be a commoner? Yahweh, our king. There's never a time when he was not king. And yet herein lies his glory, that he who reigns in the majesty of his kingdom is described in verses 11 through 13, condescends and stoops down to be concerned for the weak and the lowly and the bowed down, the afflicted and the suffering. In fact, he uses his power to keep and to guard, to sustain, to defend the orphan, the widow, the weak, the afflicted, the oppressed, the burdened. And that phrase bowed down in verse 14 describes those who are under a burden, oppressed and afflicted, dowdden and underfoot, beaten down, the weakened, the depressed, the despairing, and the downtrodden. O God condescends to help the weak and to sustain the weak, and therein is his glory and his greatness revealed. One commentator, Perrone, said this, where is the cosmic excellence of his kingdom seen? Not in the symbols of earthly pride and power, but in the gracious condescension to the fallen and the crushed, in a gracious care which provides for the wants of every living thing. Our God's greatness is seen and displayed through his compassion and his care. Now David could recognize that. He doesn't see any break, any distance between the idea of God's greatness, unsearchable greatness, and his condescension to be concerned with the lowly and the downtrodden and the weak. And you can see even in David's description here that he's describing a God whose heart is kind toward the afflicted, who knows our needs and himself condescends to help the weak and the lowly. Now if David could recognize this, this great condescension, how much more you and I who live on this side of the cross? Because we understand that he who existed in the form of God,

God did not consider his equality with God something to be held on to at all cost. But instead he took the form of a slave and being made in the likeness of men, he was found in appearance as a man and humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross that he who ruled the angels and all of creation, the divine son, the second person of the Trinity, condescended to live among us on our planet, veiled his glory with human flesh without laying aside any of the aspects or elements or attributes of his deity, but veiled the attributes of his deity in human flesh so that he could know our weaknesses and that he could taste our frailties, so that he could be tempted and tried, afflicted, reproached, persecuted, hated, spit upon. He bowed himself down and he did all of this in order to set the captives free and to rescue the downtrodden. Those who were held captive to their sin, those who were fallen in Adam, those who were ruined and undone, he condescended to set us free. And therein is his glory. And therein is what we ought to give him thanks and praise for, that God uses his power for the good of others. This, by the way, is what authority and leadership and strength and power are delegated to us for. Just yesterday, I did a wedding for a young man in our church. And as I always try to do at every wedding service, I reminded him that his job as the man in the home is to seek the highest good and benefit of his bride. That is what God has called him to do. And the authority that God has given to him, the role of leadership that God has entrusted to him is given to him not so he can satisfy his own needs, gratify his own desires, and keep himself preeminent in everything that goes on in his home, that that authority, that that leadership, that that role is entrusted to him by God to be used and spent for the good of those whom he leads through serving them in a servant-loving way. That is what all authority is given to do. And the ultimate example of that is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who dedicated himself to humble service in order to set the captives free. Truly, if you want evidence of God's compassion towards those who are downtrodden and beaten down, the oppressed, you need look no further than what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us, his people, as the ultimate example of that. I want you to notice in the passage all of the uses of the word all in these verses. In fact, it goes back to verse 9. Look at verse 9. Yahweh is good to all and his compassion is over all his works. All your works, O Yahweh, shall give thanks to you and your holy ones shall bless you. That's verse 10. Then in verse 14, all who fall, all who are bowed down. Verse 15, all wait for you. Verse 16, every living thing. Verse 17, all his ways and all his works. Verse 18, all who call upon him, all who call upon him in truth. And verse 20, all who love him. And then a reference to all the wicked. It's a repeated word throughout the passage. And the point, the purpose of that, is not to suggest that God always does this for all people under all circumstances at all times without any exceptions. That's not the point of it. In fact, the seeming contradiction of verse 14 should indicate that if Yahweh sustains all who fall and keeps them from falling, then how is it that he can lift up those who have fallen? Do you see that? If he keeps everybody from falling, then how can he lift up any who have fallen? Nobody should fall then. So the point, David's point is not that God does this all the time in every situation for every person, but David's point is that God does this regularly and he does this indiscriminately, indiscriminately. He does this for the weak. He does this for the strong. He does this for the mighty. He does this for the unknown. He does this for men and women, slaves and masters. God does this indiscriminately and regularly, and he does not show partiality. God does sustain those who fall and he allows some to fall and to be brought low in order that he may then lift them up. So those who are sustained are sustained only because God sustains them. And all who are sustained and kept from falling are kept from falling only because God himself alone sustains them. And all who are bowed down and raised up, all of those who are raised up are raised up because God himself raises them up. And he does this regularly and he does this indiscriminately. God's compassion moves him to raise up people who have fallen. And God's compassion moves him to keep some from falling from that place. He is indiscriminate in his

Compassion. And we can say this is true of all whom the Lord has raised up and all to whom he has showed compassion. But this is no promise to the wicked, which verse 20 is very clear about. The enemies of God will not prosper forever. And ultimately, though it looks like they have been raised up, ultimately they will be brought very low. Verse 20, Yahweh keeps all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. All God's people will ultimately be lifted up. That is the promise of scripture. All of God's people, even though you may be suffering defeat and subjection in this life, oppressed and burdened and downtrodden in this life, this life is not the end. Ultimately, God will raise up all who are in that condition because the next life is vindication. But for the wicked, that is not so. In fact, the next Psalm, verse 6 and Psalm 146, verses 8 and 9 use similar language. Look at verse 8 and 9 of the very next Psalm. Yahweh opens the eyes of the blind. Yahweh raises up those who are bowed down. Notice the similar language. Yahweh loves the righteous. Yahweh keeps the sojourners. He helps up the orphan and the widow, but he bends the way of the wicked. God makes a distinction between his people and the wicked. He knows that distinction now, and he will know that distinction everlastingly. And God will raise up all who are bowed down, ultimately, those who are his people, and all the wicked he has promised to destroy. So the promise of Psalm 37, verse 24 still holds true when he falls, that is the righteous. He will not be hurled headlong, but Yahweh is the one who sustains his hand. Psalm 1, verse 6, Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. So our God is a God who shows his goodness in his reign over all his creatures by ensuring that all who are raised up now, who are the wicked, they will be destroyed. And all those who are lowly and oppressed now, all of them will be raised up and he will give us the kingdom. That is the ultimate exaltation. That is the ultimate vindication. Our God shows his goodness by sustaining the weak. Second, verse 15, God supplies our needs. He shows his goodness by supplying our needs. The eyes of all wait on you and you give them their food in due time. That verse describes not only God's provision, but all of creation's need for him, as all of creation owes its subsistence, its existence first, and then its subsistence in that existence, ultimately to God upholding them by the word of his power. And he provides for all of his creatures as he should will, and he provides in a multitude of ways. And that phrase, wait on you, the eyes of all wait on you. The word wait there communicates the idea of expectancy and hope and expectation. It's anticipation. It is an eager hoping or waiting upon God. All creatures in creation who are fed by God ultimately are waiting upon him and the eyes of all look to him. That is a poetic way of describing the need that creation has for its creator. Let me give you a couple other examples of this poetic language. Psalm 104 verse 21. The young lions roar to go after their prey and seek their food from God. Have you ever watched the National Geographic Channel or something like that? And you see a hungry lion chasing a wounded gazelle across the field, taking it down? How many of you like that? Some of you don't like that? That's the act of God. He is providing for one by taking out the life of another. And God does this all over the world. That is his hand. He uses the curse. He uses the fall. He uses all of those providential means to provide for all of his creatures. Psalm 104, verse 27, 28, they all wait for you to give them their food in due season. You give to them. They gather it up. You open your hand and they're satisfied with good. Psalm 136, verse 25, who gives food to all flesh, for his loving kindness endures forever. Now, David is not here describing a conscious awareness, a conscious dependence of all of creation upon its creator, but he is describing a real dependence nonetheless. It's not conscious, but it is real. In other words, the lion doesn't wake up every morning and give thanks to its creator for the gazelle that it is about to devour that day. The lion doesn't do that. The bear is not worshiping and thanking God as it's plucking fish out of the moving water that are swimming upstream to spawn. The bear is not conscious of its awareness, but that bear and that lion both receive their food from a God who providentially provides for their needs according to his will. They are both utterly dependent upon God. Job, in God's questioning of Job, the Lord.

reminded Job of this, Job 38 verse 39 and 41. Can you hunt the prey for the lion or fulfill the appetite of the young lions when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait in their lair? Who prepares for the raven its provision when it's young cry for help to God and wander about without food? You are probably the same, but before I ever bowed the knee to Christ, God fed me. I never asked him for it. I never thanked him for it. I never even thought for one moment that my food came from anything other than either my hard work, my diligence, or that of somebody who cared for me. I never for one moment thought that my food was the result and my sustenance was the result of anything prior to those groceries coming into my house and my mom preparing that food for me. I never once asked God for food, and yet my needs were consistently met and supplied for. I never once thanked him for a meal, except for the two where we sat down as a family every year and actually enjoyed a meal together, and that was Thanksgiving and Christmas. But other than that, my thoughts, my mind never turned to a God in heaven who was providing for my needs. But the reality is that I was utterly dependent upon him and upon his will, and it is only because of his good pleasure that any of my needs were met prior to me coming to faith in Christ. And the same is true with you. Have you ever considered what a monumental feat it is for God to provide for all of the needs of all his creation each and every day? You know how much food is required to feed this group of people? Saw it a couple weeks ago, the tables laid out in the other room when we had the potluck. It's a lot of food. Have you considered how much food is required to feed Sandpoint, Bonner County, state of Idaho, this whole nation, all the nations, and all the creatures, in all the nations, and all the creatures, in all the seas? That is a monumental undertaking. And God does it each and every day. The amount of food that by God's providence, through rain, through seeds, through the processes that he has established and ordained, the amount of food that is produced on this planet in one day would boggle our minds. And he does this day after day after day to a creation that is in rebellion against him, that is under the curse and that is under his wrath and that is waiting for judgment. He does it every day. How good is our king? He's that good. He does good to those who hate him. He does good to those ultimately whom he will cast into hell for their sin and their rebellion. He does them good in this life. He does good to all of his creatures and all of that through providence. Paul mentioned this when he was preaching in Pisity and Antioch in Acts chapter 14, verse 17. He said to those pagans who were idol worshipers, he said, he did not leave himself without witness and that he did good to you and gave you rain from heaven in fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness. The rain, the seasons, the food, the gladness, the joys, the delights, the satisfaction, the provision, every meal, cup of coffee. I can't even tell you how many times I've had a cup of coffee first thing in the morning while I'm reading my Bible and I've not thanked God for the cup of coffee. Now I did this morning because I was thinking about this as I was going over my message and drinking coffee. I thought I should probably thank him for this cup of coffee. But I have devoured thousands of cups of coffee and never thanked God for that. The satisfaction and delight that comes from that. Yahweh's providence is a good providence and it is a providence that does good to all of his creation. Now our temptation is to look at the entire world and say, but I see all kinds of expressions, all kinds of things that I would not call good. There are people who starve. There are people who do not have what we enjoy. That is true. But that is not because of any lack in God's goodness. In the mystery of divine providence, there is goodness and there is justice that is woven into that. We live in a cursed and fallen world that is under the effects of Adam's fall. And so there are situations, there are people, there are things starving and there are things dying. But our king provides for all of our needs. Listen carefully, right up to the point where he stops providing for your needs. Someday he will do that. You need your blood to pump. You need your brain to work. You need oxygen and you need food. And at some point, your number will come up and God will stop supplying what you need. And he does this not because he is not good, but if you're in Christ, he does this because he is about to give you the ultimate good. And so every need that has been met and every desire that has been satisfied and every weakness that has been sustained prior to that moment in time when he stops.

Meeting those needs, all of it is by his good hand, an expression of his goodness to you. And even that goodness is expressed even to people who do not enjoy the fullness of the goodness that we enjoy. They still enjoy undeserved goodness from his hand in multitudes of ways. He sustains the weak, he supplies our needs. And then look third at verse 16. He satisfies our desires. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. That describes the abundance with which God satisfies us. He is lavish, he is generous, he is gracious. The imagery here of opening the hand is kind of an agricultural idea of spreading the seed, you open up and you scatter the abundance of what you possess and what you have. That's the picture. It describes the readiness to satisfy. He has it in store because of his compassion and his goodness. He has these good things in store and he simply opens up his hand and provides for all that enjoy the delights of his creation. It describes the ease with which he satisfies our desires, that he has the ability to satisfy them and that it is easy for him. It's just a matter of opening his hand. That is more difficult than closing the hand. To open the hand just requires relaxing. This is the ease with which God provides for all of his creation. So as you and I thought about all the multitude of ways that God provides by his providence for all the creatures in all of his creation, all over this world, each and every day, every meal, every delight enjoyed, every satisfaction, all of that, it is just a matter for him with ease, with abundance, with graciousness, to simply relax his hand, and he provides for all of his creation day after day after day. Psalm 104, verse 28, you give to them, they gather it up, you open your hand, and they are satisfied with good. God doesn't give grudgingly. He doesn't give tight-fistedly. He doesn't have to be the good things for his people. He doesn't have to be pried out of his hand. He is the one who initiates it. He is gracious and good and condescends to do good to us, his creatures. And he delights to give good things to his creatures and especially his children. 1 Timothy 1, verse 6 says that God gives us all things to enjoy. Life is full of delights and pleasures, satisfaction and riches, as he abundantly satisfies for all of our desires. And if you think this life is good and it is, just wait for the life to come. It's going to surpass everything we have ever enjoyed in this planet, in this world. Psalm 16, verse 11, David says, You make known to me the path of life, and in your presence is fullness of joy, and in your right hand there are pleasures forever. Now notice that the Psalm, David, does not say that you satisfy every desire. I mean, he's used the word all all the way through the psalm to describe comprehensiveness, but he doesn't say you satisfy all our desires or every desires, and why would that be? Because many, perhaps most of our desires are downright wicked and evil. And God in his goodness does not indulge those desires. In fact, he prohibits those things that would harm us or to destroy us. But he gives to us not only all kinds of good and profitable and enjoyable desires, but then he delights to meet those desires. Food and drink, friendship, family, fellowship, relaxation, rest, laughter, joy, worship, service, comfort and ease. He gives those desires to us so that he can satisfy them. There's nothing more satisfying than getting to the end of a hard day's work when you are exhausted and sitting down and enjoying the simple delight of rest and a good meal and a cold drink of water or iced tea. There's nothing more satisfying than that. Well, God gives you the ability to work so that he can create in you that desire and then he delights to satisfy that desire. That is how good our creator is. That he gives us the desires and then satisfies them. But you and I get frustrated when we have desires that do not get satisfied. Sometimes even good desires that we have, then we take those good desires and we make them idols. And we get irritated, frustrated, and respond sinfully when those idols are not polished, when those idols are not bowed down to by ourselves or by other people in our lives. And this can happen even with desires that God has given to us that are good. And in doing so, we meet, we ignore the multitude of desires that God meets before we even ask. In fact, most of the desires that we have, we fail to notice when they are met. We fail to recognize when they are met. And we certainly never even have an opportunity to ask God to fulfill those desires. I did not ask for a cup of coffee this morning. I got up, I went to the coffee maker, I pushed the button, and I had a cup of coffee. I didn't ask God to fulfill that desire. I love coffee.

Enjoyed the cup of coffee, and I was two cups in before I realized that I should thank him for that. And so it is with most of our desires. Desires for comfort, ease, warmth, security, provision, food, drink, family. Most of the desires that are met by our God for us each and every day, most of those satisfied desires, we are never even aware that we have them, nor are we even aware that they are being graciously satisfied by a benevolent God. This is how good our king is. This is how he displays his goodness to his creation. He sustains the weak, he supplies our needs, and he satisfies our desires. And as we wrap up these three verses, I want you to consider a few things. First, I want you to consider how often you have enjoyed these kindnesses. The sustaining, the supplying, and the satisfaction that has been yours. As God has provided for needs and desires and your existence, even multiple times this morning before you even got here, he has done this. And behind all of that, he is showing to you his goodness and his kindness as you are being allowed to enjoy that goodness. You didn't ask for him to do this, he just did it. You weren't aware that he was doing it, but he was. And we enjoy that goodness and we seldom thank him for it. And second, I want you to consider how unworthy we are that God should be this good to us. How unworthy we are. We've done nothing to merit such goodness. We have done nothing to merit such kindness. At best, we return to God praise and thanks for a small minuscule fraction of the goodness that we enjoy from his hand. At best, we are able to do that. But what a good God who gives to us out of his goodness when we can return nothing to him or his kingdom. We cannot benefit him at all. We can do nothing to make him greater. We can do nothing to make him better. We can do nothing to add to his store, his glory, his abundance, his provision, what he possesses. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. There's nothing we can give back to him. And yet, everything we have received, we have received from his hand. So consider how unworthy we were to enjoy such abundant goodness. In fact, we enjoyed this abundant goodness when we were yet rebels to him and in rebellion against him, while we were enemies of God in our minds through wicked works. And while we were avowed, staunch enemies of God in our sin and in our rebellion, he still lavished us with goodness. He gave us rain, food, air, sunshine, pleasures, joys, delights, satisfaction, provision, protection. And we are the undeserving recipients of all of that goodness as God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and the rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. And then, Christian, I want you to consider not just how unworthy you were, but how God made you to desire the ultimate good, the ultimate expression of his goodness. For Christian, there was a time in your life before you were a believer that you had no desire for righteousness. You had no desire for holiness. You had no desire for God's word to be obedient, to be with him, to know him. You had no desire to be rid of your sin. But by God's kind providence and the work of the Spirit of God in His regenerating grace, he made you to feel those desires. He made you to know your need so that he could delight in meeting those desires and in meeting those needs. And he did all of that without you ever asking him for it. He did all of that through the work of Christ on the cross. Those desires for holiness and righteousness, to be rid of your sin, to be forgiven, to be righteous, to be with God, to know Christ, those desires, those didn't come from you. Those were desires that were granted to you by the regenerating and drawing work of the Spirit of God in the providence and the sovereignty of God. And then he delighted to grant those desires and made provision for the fulfillment of those desires in your life before you were ever born. That is through the death, burial, and the resurrection of Christ. Lots of goodness we have enjoyed, right? The best is yet to come. We have only become acquainted with the fringes of his ways, Job says. We've only seen the light before the sun has ever risen. The best of delights, the best of joys, the best of God's goodness is going to be lavished upon us in the new creation forever and ever. Yahweh is a great king who is worthy of great praise. Yahweh is a good king, a good king. And his benevolences and his compassions and his goodness are over all his works.

And we are the beneficiaries of that. And we have enjoyed such goodness from His hand. Let us thank Him for it.