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Psalm 145 | King James Audio Bible
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Psalm 145, attributed to David, is acclamation of God’s sovereign rule, a declaration of God’s goodness, and a commitment to perpetual praise. The psalm is tapestry of worship, characterizing God with honorific titles and extolling God’s attributes and deeds. The psalm begins with a personal vow from the psalmist to extol God, ‘I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever.’
The psalmist’s promise to bless God every day establishes a rhythm of ceaseless praise, ‘Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever and ever.’ This refrain not only sets a personal precedent but also an eternal principle for worship. Ensuing verses magnify God’s greatness, ‘Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.’ This unsearchable nature of God’s greatness ackowledges infinite depth to God’s character, beyond understanding and which warrants continuous exploration through praise.
In communal aspect, the psalmist speaks of generational praise, ‘One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.’ Mention of generations indicates a legacy of worship that transcends time, each generation having a role in declaring God’s works and mighty acts to the next.
The psalm recounts God’s attributes and deeds. The psalmist commits to speaking of the glory of God’s majesty and works, ‘I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works.’ The declaration of God’s mighty and terrible acts, ‘And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and I will declare thy greatness,’ invokes awe and reverence for God’s powerful deeds.
The psalm describes God’s character as gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and of great mercy, ‘The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.’ This characterization provides contrast to the earlier depiction of might and terror, presenting a balanced image of God as
The psalm speaks to universal scope of God’s goodness, ‘The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.’ This universal goodness extends to all creation, not limited by boundaries or distinctions. The psalm continues to depict a God who is intimately involved in the care of His creation, ‘The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.’
The psalmist reflects on God’s provision, affirming that all living creatures look to Him for sustenance, ‘The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season.’ This provision is described as an open-handed generosity that satisfies the desire of every living thing, ‘Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.’
Righteousness and holiness are ascribed to all of God’s ways and works, ‘The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works,’ highlighting the perfection and purity of divine action. The nearness of God to those who call upon Him in truth underscores the relational nature of God, ‘The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.’
The psalm assures that God fulfills the desires of those who fear God, listens to their cries, and saves them, ‘He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.’ God’s preservation of those who love Him is juxtaposed with the destruction of the wicked, ‘The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.’
The psalm concludes with a personal and universal call to praise, ‘My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.’ This final verse binds individual commitment to collective responsibility to bless God’s name continually.
Psalm 145 | King James Audio Bible
I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever.
Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever and ever.
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.
I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works.
And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and I will declare thy greatness.
They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness.
The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.
The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
All thy works shall praise thee, O LORD; and thy saints shall bless thee.
They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power;
To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom.
Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.
The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.
The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season.
Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.
The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.
He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.
The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.
My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.
Psalm 145 | King James Audio Bible
- Ceaseless Praise: Commitment to perpetual adoration of God’s name.
- God’s Greatness: Acknowledgment of the Lord’s immeasurable and unfathomable greatness.
- Intergenerational Worship: The passing of praise and recounting of God’s deeds from one generation to another.
- Majesty And Works: Reflection on the glorious honor of God’s majesty and His wondrous works.
- Balance Of Power And Mercy: Depiction of God as both mighty in acts and full of compassion and mercy.
- Universal Goodness: Recognition of the Lord’s goodness extending to all His creations.
- Providence And Care: God’s role as sustainer and provider for all living things.
- Righteousness In Deeds: God’s actions characterized by righteousness and holiness.
- Divine Proximity: The nearness of God to those who call upon Him in truth.
- Responsive Deliverance: God’s fulfillment of the desires and cries for help from those who fear Him.
- Protection And Justice: Contrast between God’s preservation of the faithful and the destruction of the wicked.
- Call To Universal Praise: An invitation for all to bless God’s holy name eternally.
Saint Bernard begins with the claim that ‘there was only one mode of birth that was worthy of God, and that was to be born of a virgin’. With this statement he places the Incarnation within a framework of fittingness (convenientia), a theological mode of reasoning that asks what befits the majesty and holiness of God. The divine birth, he argues, required a vessel untouched by stain, a mother who would embody in her body and soul the purity and humility of the Son whom she would bear [ … ]
Today’s Gospel reading continues to centre upon the debates about the Sabbath, in which Jesus and the Pharisees are involved. While the Pharisees watch Jesus, to see how he might violate the Law, Jesus does not shy away from the healing and redemptive opportunity. Indeed, to challenge the Pharisees in this way is in itself a restorative, a salvific, act. Jesus asks us to consider God’s commandments in the knowledge that God is love. Here is an inmost truth of our relationship with God [ … ]
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
