The Mind of David Psalm 145

I appreciate that last song. I appreciate all the songs, especially that one that David wrote, and it should inspire each and every one of us as we read those incredible words. That's what I'd like to go into today in the message, and it is a continuation of last week's message on Psalm 145. Psalm 145. We looked last week at a man after God's own heart. It was David, and we wanted to look at what impressed upon him to write some of those words and how powerful the structure of that chapter 145 really is.

I want to look today at a different part of that, and all this is setting up for our next Bible study that will be here on the book of Psalms, because I really want to have an interactive service so I can hear yours, and hopefully yours can inspire me, and it can inspire other people, inspire each other, because we're all reached and touched by different things and songs. If we did a survey here of your favorite song ever, I doubt any of them would be the same with all the people, because we're all touched, affected by various things in music, and that's the beauty of music.

That's the beauty of the book of Psalms. Here we have 150 in which to relate to, learn from, feel, sing, and really be touched by the words that God lays out for us. So today I'd like to look at Psalm 145 and talk about the mind of David. The mind of David, because I've given sermons on the mind of Christ. I've given sermons on the mind of Stephen, incredible deacon, and Acts. But I want to touch on today the mind of David, and what went into his thought, his mind, his thoughts, when he put Psalm 145 not only to words but to actual composition of music, and how important it was for him to get this message out to each and every one of us.

And I want to go through today just some points that I hope will inspire you to take one of your favorite Psalms and dissect it. Take it apart. Find out why God put it in there the way he did. What inspires you about it? What is about that Psalm you have 150 to choose from that makes you go there more than probably once a year, because that's typically what we do. There are some that we just relate to. David the composer wrote hymns to God, for God, to us, and for us.

I think that's one of the reasons God used this incredible man. It is believed the last five years of his life from age 65 to age 70, he was mostly bedridden when Abishag was brought in. And it was during this time of his last five years that it was believed that most of the Psalms were actually written down. Many of those he had composed or written at different times, but they never were put together because he was always what? From age 15 or 16, he was a warrior, he was a king. And then finally at the end, we may have seen where his greatest work was yet to be done, the book of Psalms.

As he wrote, somewhere between 73, they know he wrote 73 and possibly two more, making a total of 75 of the Psalms, which would have been half of the Psalms. And 14 of those Psalms were about events in his life. I know none so clear as Psalm 18, or was it 2 Samuel 22?

I think one came from the other. I'll let you dive in to look at that as it is a praise and thanksgiving type Psalm that he did. But so today, I'd like to, as we start out so that hopefully you can understand, not everyone here could do what David did. I'm not musically inclined. I guess you could say I'm musically declined because I'm not good at music.

I love to listen to music. I love to sing. There are certain songs I love, and there are certain songs. And so I can't appreciate it, and I sometimes wonder if those of us who are musically declined actually appreciate music more than those who are musically inclined, because we don't have the gift. For those of you who are, God bless, because that's what you should...

it is a gift. It is a talent that so many people have. But the mind of a songwriter is a very different mindset.

I think we'll look at that when we go into David's, but I was blessed or had the opportunity in my previous life before being a pastor of meeting songwriters and getting to know some. I worked for some. One actually grew up with me, and one was a member of the church for a number of years. And so I had the opportunity to meet with them and talk with them, and I found that many of those men, all five men that I knew, they were obsessed with words. They were obsessed with telling a story, using the words and composing certain sounds and tones and everything about the structure of a song. Told a story as it was put inside their minds, as Bill was talking earlier in the sermon net. And I was intrigued with this, even though I did work for them and knew them, but I kind of had to pry into their minds a little bit as I took that opportunity. And I want to show you today pictures of three men. These three men that I have known in my lifetime. The one on the far right is named David Wills. I think Mary might even met him. David Wills was a singer who could make it as a singer, even though he didn't have a bad voice in Nashville, so he began to write songs. And he was just about to quit, not only singing and writing songs, because he never tasted success. And he was 40 years old. And his second wife, he lost his first marriage didn't end well because he was on the road playing, trying to make it. And his second wife told him, you've got six months, then you're going to get a real job and work like the rest of us. But for the next six months, I want you to not feel any pressure. And you love to hunt, you love to fish. So it's spring, go fishing, and spend the summer and fall. You can go hunting, and then it's over. David telling me this. And it was the very first week of his fishing that the word started flowing. And he carried a little pad with him, and he actually, that very day while he was fishing, wrote his first number one hit. That was George Strait's first number one hit. After that, he wrote and composed multiple hits during those six weeks, and then his wife let him keep his day job. But David loved to, and still does, likes, he wanted to talk about, and wrote about life. The ups and the downs, because that's what motivated him the most.

The second, one of the young men in the middle named Tim James. I went to high school with Tim, his older brother was in my class, and he was one year behind us. And one thing I always remembered about Tim is he never worried about anything. Job, money, didn't worry about anything. But he always seemed to land on his feet, and it was through that that he started writing songs. And he wrote Toby Keith, one of his number one hits, called My List. If you've ever listened to it, it's very empowering. The message, that was his first release, and he hit a number one, and then he's never stopped since that time.

And the other man on the your left, my right, my left, your right, is J.D. Lautermilk. He's in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. J.D. Lautermilk wrote for the Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstad, Johnny Cash, James Brown, Glenn Campbell, you name it, is known. I just got a call one day from a Lautermilk, and so I went out to his, I would have to say, his estate rather than a farm, about two years before I moved here. And I had to punch in the code, and he had to let me in the big gate that he had. And I realized this was the J.D. Lautermilk, John D. Lautermilk, which I thought could be, but why would he be in Christiana, Tennessee? But he bought four, five hundred acres and wanted away from everyone. And he asked me, he said, I had a problem with something on my roof, and I've had a terrible leak in my house. And I've called two or three companies out, and they're talking thousands of dollars. And everyone said that you would, you were honest, and that you would give me a honest assessment of it. He said, so I'm just asking you to give me an estimate. I climbed up on the roof, and I realized what it was. Flashing around the chimney, Jeff, and it pulled completely loose. Water just was running straight down in there. Got down, grabbed my stuff, and ten minutes I had it repaired.

The other companies were charging him thousands of dollars. He said, well, that's the damage. I said, I don't have any, I don't have a bill for you. I said, but it is fixed. And he said, well, what can I pay you? And I said, give me 30 minutes of your time. I'd like to go in and sit, and I'd love to talk to you. I love to do that with business people. I love to do that with successful people, artists, and so forth, when I've worked for them. Because you, I had the opportunity to try to pull some gold nuggets from these people who had lived a different life than mine. So J.D. Lautermilk was shocked, but he sat down for over an hour, told me about songwriting, and how it is so important in our minds to feel what other people are feeling. And the only way he could help other people, he said it was therapeutic for him, was to write about things that affected other people. And he said, my job is to make people feel good, to make them realize that everybody goes through these things, and that there needs to be hope. I said, well, I've heard a couple of your songs, and there wasn't a lot of hope in that.

And he said, well, yeah, but I got to make money, too. So I had to write all kinds. And so I had a very good conversation with him, and he really took me into what started these hits that he had, what was going on in his mind at the time. We went down and listened to Jeffrey Steele, one of the leading songwriters in Nashville, and he told us all about what happened in his life that made him write these songs. The man by the name of Everett Corbin was a member of the church for 40, 50 years. Everett was a friend of my father. He died just a few years before my father. He wrote over 500 songs. He had quite a few recorded. Never made the big splash. Never made maybe the top 100s, a time or two. But Everett wrote about passion. He wrote about life. He wrote about God. And he wrote about family. That was what he talked about. Now, I bring that up today, not to say that I've met famous people. I have. They put their pants on just like I do. They just have nicer pants. But I want to go and do this because I understand about David and that gift that God had given him and that mind of David that we can look at through Psalm 145. You can see that in other ones. But I want to bring out today, because we went through Psalm 145 last week, and we looked at it at a different one. I would like to present today, and I'm not going to be redundant and go through what I did last week. I'm also not going to have a part three and a part four and a part five, which would really, if you took this Psalm apart, you could in there. But I'm hoping that this will inspire you to do what I've done to some of my Psalms now because of this and helps me to not only know the Psalm so well, but be able to help other people when they're going through things.

Now, how many of us have or we don't enjoy going, hey, have you heard this song? Or you'll send somebody something and they hear it. It's like, oh, wow, I really like that. I've done that before. So, hey, you should go and listen to this song. And people, I go, I really love that song. And I've had others that said, didn't do much for me.

But you see, we're not stuck with one song. We're given 150. You're bound to find something in there that you can relate to and that God inspired to be written down just for you. Just for someone who has a Holy Spirit, someone who has a heart like David, and also a mind like David that can appreciate compositions. So let's go there. We'll go back to Psalm 145. And at the very first in my book here, it has a title over it said, A Praise of David. A Praise of David. And what's interesting there is the word praise is not the one that we're going to really dig into today. Because you have to understand, we have praise used four or five different, six different times here, but they're all different words. Why would David do that?

Except now we're going to be able to go into the mind of David. Because, as I said last week, yes, this was considered the apex of his Psalms. This is one of his favorite, if not his favorite. We get to see why by reading this and breaking this down. Because there's so many here that really appreciate music. I found this, and I hope it's to be played. I was just looking, trying to find songs that were written with this in mind. And I have a great one I hope to play in the next week or so here as special music because it really hit because it's very upbeat. But how else would it be? I mean, this is what David was all about. You remember him getting in trouble with his wife, Mikael? Because he got dancing and everything else when they brought the Ark of the Covenant in. He could not contain himself. And most of the songwriters that you saw pictures on, once they start, many of those songs, those number one songs, were written in 15 minutes or less. Because they just, they got it. They got this thought. They have to have this. And it's exciting. This is how David, can you imagine him not? Can you imagine saying, I will extort you, O Lord. No! That's not him. That wasn't who he is. Now, he had times, some of those songs are down there when he's very far down. But like this one? No. Like Bill and I say, Peppytoon? Yeah, this would rock your socks off because it's like, we need to get up because this is God. So, let's go there. And the very first one is Song of Praise. And this, it says, a praise of David, but it's got another word. It's not just a song of praise, but it has a special word for this praise, which means this, this song was written to sing. This was written as a song, and it needed to be sung with gusto, sung to be inspiring. And that word is tesili.

Tehillia? Tehillia? Tehillia? Tehillia? How? How are we to know? These are actual words that you will read when you look it up. One of them says it's spelled with an e, like, hello.

Hallelujah. You know, that's where this word comes from. Hallelujah. Right? But it's got an s right there. Why does it have an s there? Nobody could tell. Why does it have an e? The reason we don't know, but we understand what it means, is in the original Hebrew, this was a word. T-H-L-H.

Hebrew doesn't have any vowels. This is how it's written. How would you do it?

They did it the way they wanted to do it. We have today. We don't know.

You can put whatever vowels you want to put in there. And they put an e, that's an s sound. But they put this because it, Hallel, as we get into it, or where the word, or really the word Hallelujah came from, this was to say that it needs to be sung. It was composed with singing in mind. So you sing praises. That's, but I could put you. I could put a. I could put whatever I wanted, because they don't know. That's the same way with the tetragrammaton. Yahweh. They don't know. We don't know. We'll know someday. But it's not important as long as we understand what this was about. And David put this down because he wanted you to know that this psalm, 145, was about singing praise to God. That's why it's at the very first. It's not even verse one. But he wants you to say, well, this isn't one you just sit and read. This is the one you sing. This is to get you up. And he puts these different words in there so that you see to his mind, because he wants us to get excited about praising God. So let's go to verse one. We're just going to read really about eight different verses through this because we already went through it last week. Because this actual word that we had meant to raise up or to exalt, as it says in verse one, I will extol you. I will exalt you. Oh my God! Oh, King! God and King! Remember that. It doesn't show up in many places in the Bible where he puts both of them together. Okay? Just a thought. He was going, he's letting us know, you're my God and my King. He recognizes what? Even the future. Why would he recognize that? Because he was a King.

And that's what goes through here. But we're so I will extol you. Oh, I will extol you. My God! Oh, King! I will bless your name forever and ever. Think it's long enough? But it's interesting there because he uses the word for bless is baroque. Baroque!

Okay? That's used all through here for bless. That's what it means. In Aramaic, it means to have a good word. When you said bless you, oh, well, have a good word. Oh, you want to bless the food? We're going to have a good word over the food. We're going to ask God to bless it. We have a good word. Okay? But this bless is baroque. And it means, and it means this most of the time, to kneel down, to kneel down, to bow down. You see what he's saying? I will, what? Bow down. I will come before you on my knees, and I will do it forever and ever. I mean, think about it. This is what he's saying, that, God, I'm going to come, and I'm not just going to come before you, but I'm coming, and I'm coming to you on my knees. We pray. He's saying, I'm going to be praising you down here, because that's what the word baroque means. To kneel.

Now, we have a word, and we show respect. Japanese do it. If you come before the queen of England, all men are expected to bow. Bow your head. That's, that's, that's, now before we do, when we actually say prayer, right? Okay, it's a way to show respect.

Women come before the queen or whatever you're supposed to curtsy. I don't know my curtsies very well, but it's just like a genuflect that they do in Catholic Church. Before you come up there, you got a genuflect. But this is telling us that we need to come before God. When we come before, when we praise Him, it needs to be with the mindset of on our knees, because He's so great, and we're way down here.

It should remind us. It's why this word baroque.

Now, isn't it interesting that it was King David who would have known this?

I'm sure King David didn't when he wrote this, had in mind that when people came before Him, they came on their knees. It was the custom of the time. Whether you read George Martin's book series on the Game of Thrones, or whether you read Sir... Sir... Sir... Oh, I can't... No, yeah, it's... I can't remember his name now.

Who wrote about Arthur and the Knights. Mallory. Was it Mallory? Something like that. Writing historical time, because he wrote it in the 1400s. But it was about when you came before King, when you entered, you went down to your knees. Now, we know we're not going to meet a King, President, or whatever. We're not going on our knees, because we only go on our knees before God. It's a sign of worship. With them, it's a sign of the ultimate respect. Take Isis. Remember, when Isis was around 10 years ago, all you could see is a new video of them, and they had prisoners and knives through their throats, and they made them get on their knees. They were coming on their knees before Allah. This is what went down with David. He obviously knew that people went and did this to other kings, and they came before him, showing the utmost respect. Just like in England, when Prince Charles will be made the king, he will come before him. He will be on his knees as they put that crown on his head. If you're knighted today in England, don't know anybody here who's been knighted, so don't think I will think. They have a little stool that you kneel on as they then, she then knights you. Yes, but it's all about bowing down. Yes, you're submitting. You're saying, you're great, I'm not. David is saying, you're the greatest, I'm not. So you can imagine this being on his mind because how people treated him, well, he thought, man, how they treat me, God, you're so much greater, that's no comparison. So I need to be able to come on my knees, to bow down, kneel down.

What do they say? Bend the knee. Bend the knee. You'll see it in various books where a king has to a prince has to give up part of his kingdom and they say, well, we'll protect you, you're going to come under this king. Bend the knee. And if you won't bend the knee, it means war. It means you're submitting. Brethren, we need to, even our praise of God, bend the knee to God. So we understand. Why? And it's so important because by the mouth of two or three witnesses as matter established, well, we don't just have the two witnesses, we have three. We have three in the Bible of this very thing that will take place. Romans 14 verse 11 says, what? saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me. We're talking about future time. When he comes back, he's king, every knee shall bow. He says it in Isaiah 45 verse 23, every knee shall bow. He says it in Philippians 2 verse 10 through 11, at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. They're going to bless God. Barack. Barack. David got this and he wants to make sure we get it too. That that's how you want to sing to God. You want to praise God. It starts on the knee.

Let's go to verse 2. Verse 2, every day I will Barack you. Every day I'm going to come before you and show you that respect. Be submitted to you. Be submissive to you. You are my God. You're up here. I'm way down here. He said every day he does that. And I will praise your name forever and ever. Here we have praise. Except this praise isn't the early one. This praise is hallelujah. Hallelujah is where we get hallelujah. For one thing it means to be clear. This is part of praise. Well, I praise you by the time I say it. Be crystal clear. It's you God. I'm there. I'm way down here. Praise God. Okay? It means to boast, to brag, to rave about God. Well, he's been good to me this week. No, he's been great to you. You're breathing. You're alive. This is David's mindset. And we sometimes miss that. Do we need everybody going around shouting and ahhhhhh? No, because it loses its power. But when you feel it, when you know it, that's what David was. Was he wrong when he came before my cow? No! He was, she was wrong. Because she didn't know my cow. No! He was, she was wrong. Because she didn't, she didn't have a relationship with God. He did. Brethren, we do. We should have that. And we're going to feel things at different times. Because words are going to impact us. They're going to affect us in such a way. To praise God. We, it's a personal thing. And that's what we need to do. And he's telling us, hello. Okay, let's look at that again. Because it's verse 2. Every day I will bless you, and I will hallelujah your name forever and ever. That means we should be praising, bragging, talking about God. Till the day we die and then some.

Because then some is a long time for us who understand that. Let's go down to verse 4. Matter of fact, in verse 3, Hillel is used again. Whereas as great as the Lord and greatly to be praised is Hillel. If you look up Hallelujah where this name comes from, it means to boast or to brag just like this one. But it's a show of spontaneousness. It's an outcry. And it's used only four times in the New Testament. On times in the book of Revelation. And there's a reason for that. The king has arrived. The king is coming. We should get excited about that. We do it to be stabernacle some day. Yes! You know, man, you get done with those eight days and you can see what world's going to be like. And we're like, yes! We should come. But then it's just like, okay, go back home.

David's saying we have to have that feeling and we should enjoy. And this is done through music, putting music to this thing. So let's go to verse 4. I'll look at my clock. Verse 4. One generation shall praise, shall praise your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. Praise! Is that hell? No! It's Shabbat. It's Shabbat. Yes! It's like, no, it means to get loud. Amen! You know? That's what He said. One generation shall what? speak loud! Bring, drive the point home to what? The previous generation, the younger ones.

You got it, Clive. You got it, Jonathan Lillie. Kevin's here. He should know. You should tell him in no uncertain terms, and it's crystal clear that God is sovereign. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. He is everything. This is what David wants us to do. Shabbat. One generation shall Shabbat your works to another. What's he done in your life? See, I can't tell, I know some of you, what he's done. She shouldn't be running around like she is now, but he did that. Right, Maria? And she knows that's why she's upping her out. She knew who to give thanks for, too, for what he did. I saw the steps. I'd still be laying in my bed.

This is what we do. Every one of us has a story where God has done these things, has done what he's done for us. We need to not only, well, son, it was, you know, I got a raise. No! You see what it's like? Shabbat means to shout it to that generation, to make sure they knew where their relatives, where their family was blessed by God. And that's the one. Praise. Let's go down to verse 6. Verse 8. Men shall speak of the might of your awesome acts, and I will declare your greatness. Now, I use the word declare because it's sephar. Sephar. Okay? Sure. You'll actually see this in the Strongs, and you'll see this with the sea. And I was talking to Aaron Dominguez, who was here last week, and Aaron knows it's Hebrew, like hardly anybody else, and he says, that's wrong. There is no C. There wasn't a C. No, that's not used at all. It's an S.

But it says that I will declare, sephar, your greatness. And that word actually means to score with a mark as a tally. Okay? To score as a mark or a tally. But you know what? We recognize it, and David recognized it as to record. To record your greatness. This is what he did. You know, if you're playing somebody in checkers, chess, whatever, and you have a score up there, and you put this, and then you put four marks, that's what this word means. You're keeping score. You're keeping a record. And so this is what David is trying to tell us, that so far, this, we should keep a record, not just proclaim it to people that ask, not proclaim it to a generation, but keep a record of it. Whether it's up here or down here, what he's done for you. How many times you think David would have to write down all the times that he was delivered all the mighty acts of God, where he saw the hand of God? He had no problem. Remember? He was 16, 15, 16. He had no problem telling, he saw, oh no, I took out that lion, I took out that bear, okay? And I'll take out this uncircumcised Philistine, because God says it wasn't about him, it was, he gave praise to God.

This is what we need to have a little more of this in our lives. So when we read these things, it's talking to us. Let's go down to verse 10.

All your works shall praise you, oh Lord, and your saints shall, what? Barack you.

All the saints will be down here.

We bow down, we come on our knees before God, because we realize he's the ultimate, and we're not, and we show him. But it says, all your works shall praise. Now this praise is what? Yada. Yada. Have you ever heard that? Yada, yada, yada. Okay. Yada is actually from Seinfeld. They had that one time, they had it, and people use it, they use it as a yiddish, yiddish kind of word, and it means to go on and on to talk, yada, yada, yada. But that's not what this is referencing. It's a type of praise. For you see, yada, and they actually have this wrong in the strongs and some of these things, because yada was not, this wasn't yada, it was yada-ka, yada-ka in this verse. So it's like yada, so they just cut it off and didn't do the ka. But it's yada-ka, and it meant to forcefully and passionately praise God.

Makes me realize how inept I am too many times when it comes to my praising God, when it comes to my singing. Now, I don't have a great voice, so I don't think you want me to be shouting real loud.

It might be to God, but it may not be to some of you. But I wish I had, like, you know, Neal Hanson up there has a beautiful voice in our Fort Lauderdale congregation. I've heard people here sing, you know, and got great voices and so forth. But God is saying, oh well, just you who have good voices praise me, right? It's for all of us.

It's really for all of us. But if you look up yada-ka, it means this, to have that forceful, passionate praise, but it also can mean to worship with extended hands.

And we all see it on television. You all see, you know, people and they're, you know, and like I say, you can do it too much. But maybe sometimes we don't do it enough. You remember Solomon? Go back there and see about extended hands. When he prayed, he extended his hands. I've done that sometimes where I've had to pray with my hands extended to God because I need God. I need it. Now I'm not creating a church-wide movement here. Okay?

But what I am saying is we could do better. We could have more of the mind of Christ in our worship. When you have that mind, what did Christ say? Well, tell those people to shut up. He said, if I can't, the stones are going to cry out. Christ knew that because it's that important. And we should have those moments in our lives. And I've heard many of you tell me stories. And you're excited because you realize God is active in your life. And you know what the only thing God wants? More active. He wants to be more active in our lives.

Let's go down. I just got a few minutes. So let's go down to another one in... let's do verse 14. Verse 14, the Lord upholds all who fall. And you'll read this in New Living Translation. You'll read different translations of this that look at it a different way. I tried to go back to the Hebrew, and I tried to get my assistant to give me his brilliant mind because he understands that way better than I did. And raises up all who are bowed down, bowed down, bowed down. But you know what this... the word is kafaf. Kafaf. That's how you pronounce it. Kafaf. And it means to bow like the other, but it means to bow low. The example, it's not this, it's this. It's this. Where you've got your head so low. You are so such a low dog. Heck, you need to get your head... you ever seen a dog when you have to whip it? You know, when we had our dog, our chastised was to do, it gets its head way down. Why? Because it feels low. You know, we can learn something from dogs because we're their kings, aren't we? And they show respect. We have to make sure we do the same thing with our maker, our owner. Kafaf. It's... he raises you up who are bowed down. You're bowed down. You're down. What does he do? He'll raise you up. I'll pull up my own bootstraps. I'm like, no! David's saying, let God do it because you see, if you do what he will do for you.

I'll just read Psalm 67 tonight. Read Psalm 67 before you go to bed. It's only like eight or nine verses, but boy does it show you. I mean, it's so powerful when you go to bed and you read that and you'll get up and go, wow, God.

Now we'll go down to verse 21. And 21 is going back to verse 1, basically. He begins it with a song and he wants to let you know at the end it's a song. It's a song. He says, my mouth shall speak the what? to halle.