Title: Ways to Extol God the King

Date: October 8, 2025

Scripture: Psalm 145

AI TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad.

God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. Today's topic, ways to extol God the King. In the last podcast, I spoke about the greatness of God, the various attributes or actions of God that the psalmist focused on in his praise of God.

But before he ever got to that, he actually spoke of his intentions and ways in which he was praising God, in which he was extolling God. He uses that word, extoll, to lift God up high, to display him high above others so that they can see and in all worship God with him.

Listen to the psalmist as I read. And I will substitute the King James LORD, which is all caps, which is on the Hebrew, Y-H-W-H, from which we have the word, God's own name, Yahweh. And that's, if you hear the word hallelujah, the yah on the end is God. Praise, yah, is what Hallelujah says.

So, the psalmist speaks and says, I will extol you my God and King and bless your name forever and ever. How often will he do this? Every day I will bless you. Every day I will praise your name forever and ever.

So, he begins immediately in the next verse. Great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't know anything. The idea is that God is so great. He is God. We are creatures. We cannot know anything about God unless he reveals himself to us, except that we can know through the works of creation that he exists. Romans 1, but we can't know who he is or what's he like or what he does without his revelation.

But God has chosen to reveal himself to us. He has done so in mighty acts of revelation that are given in the Old Testament that all point to and are prophetic toward Jesus, the Messiah, who comes in his name. And in Jesus, the Messiah, we know God. We can reference to Romans, I mean, Luke, John chapter one, where John speaks about this, that the Word became flesh, it dwelt among us. And he goes on to say that by means of the Word, we know the Father.

So that's how we know God, about the character of God. But the depths of his being cannot ever be fathomed. God is so great, they cannot be exhaustively plummeted. In other words, God is so much greater than all of his creation that we could spend eternity trying to plumb the depths of the being of our almighty God. He is great, and his greatness, as his humbleness is, is unsearchable.

But we can know him because of his revelation. And because of that, we can extol him, we can lift him up because his works reveal his person and this calls forth from us praise to him.

Here's what the psalmist goes on to say. One generation shall commend your works to another. Now that's important. We must pass our faith on from one generation to the next. Every generation, every person must come to know the Lord for themselves. We can never know God simply by corporate union, by the fact that I was born into this family or this nation or this race. John 1, 12 indicates to us this truth. We must be born of the Spirit. We must be born again. We must encounter God and be saved by God's own action if we are to know Him, commend him, to praise him, to be enabled by his own grace.

One generation shall commend your works to another. So we must tell the next generation of people, be it in our family, which will be children, be it in our nation, our group, our family extension, one generation of people that know you shall commend your works to the next generation or to another generation. The generations after, as long as we are alive and we know the Lord, we shall be commending God's works to people, no matter their age group.

One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. Now, in the Hebrew, you have a way in which you have a statement given and the second statement is given sort of repeats or clarifies or adds a way in which something is done. So, this is called parallelism. One generation should commend. I'm going to commend. How do I commend God? Well, I commend God by talking about what he's done. I commend God by telling how great he is. I commend God by declaring what his actions have been. And I do this to others, and I do it, this Psalm, it says, by declaring. We commend him by declaring your mighty acts.

So, the psalmist is focusing on commending God because of his actions. This is embedded in the Old Testament, in the story of the Passover. God came down, he worked with Moses, in confrontation with Pharaoh. God displayed his greatness in the plagues that fell upon Egypt. And his greatness by protecting his people, beginning at around number four, I believe, he protected his people. So that meant that the plague fell on the Egyptians, but not on the Hebrews.

And this goes all the way to the worst of the plagues was the death of the firstborn, and God protected his people. How did he do that? He did that by the slaughtered lamb, whose blood was then applied to every individual household, and the people had to be in the house under the blood in order to be protected from the death angel as he went through the land, killing all the firstborn of the Egyptians and any that did not have the covering of the blood upon them.

One generation shall commend your works to another and they do so by declaring your mighty acts. And then he goes in the next verse to say, on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. That means that we think, we let the thought dwell, live in our minds, to focus and be turned over and over in our thoughts. We're thinking about it, we're thinking about how it's done, we think about ways in which I can think and understand and enter into the reality of this mighty act that God has done.

It may be one in history. It may be one I'm reading about in the Bible. It may even be an act in our own lives in which we have seen and know the great and mighty act of God. We're thinking about it, seriously thinking about it, meditating on it in our minds. And as we meditate, as we think about it, it fills our thoughts. It encourages our heart. It stimulates our minds.

And then from that meditation, I rise up to speak to God, to praise him, to extol him, to tell him of his wonderful works. I do it to God in prayer, in praise. We rehearse to God what we've understood about what he's done. And in the rehearsing of God, I'm praising him for his greatness and his mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

And then the psalmist seems to shift, at least in the ESV, from I, listen to him, I, great is the Lord, great is his greatness, so unsearchable. One generation will commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. And on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I, I will meditate. And verse 16, I will declare. So, I'm gonna meditate and from the meditation, I will declare.

But in verse six, after he's used I in verse five, verse six says, they shall speak the might of your awesome deeds. And I will declare your greatness. There's the introduction of the I, of the they. I've been doing this, and it says they. So, what could that possibly mean? Well, what comes to my mind is that as I have meditated and declared to them, that is to the next generation or to the next people, the other group of people that I'm speaking to, or it's my own generation or the next generation, whatever it is, the result of it is that they, they will take it up.

I will meditate and I will speak of you. I will commend your mighty acts, your works. I'm gonna tell how wonderful you are, how great you are. I'm gonna be descriptive of what you've done. And as I hear it and believe it, what happens? They believe and they speak. They shall speak. They will do it too. They will take up the refrain.

Now, what will make them take it up? Well, because they understand it and believe it, and they join in commending the works of God, in declaring the works of God. We praise God by declaring his works. We praise God by telling what he has done, by telling the story of redemption, both as it's unfolded in history and in the Bible, but also as it has been enfolded in our own lives. That brings us to the idea of testimony, which is also embedded in this psalm.

Let me go back to reading. I interrupt myself, don't I? Well, follow along with me. You know, God's word is wonderful, and if we enter into it, it stimulates within us what we're talking about. They will speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. Notice this interplay, I and they, I and they.

Now you can sort of get rid of that by just making them the same, but I believe that there is a reason why we are using the interplay. Because I commend him to you. I commend his works to you. I extol him to you. You hear the story, you believe the story, and you begin to experience in your own life the mighty working of God.

Because you see, the mighty working of God is to arouse from the dead sinner, from one who does not know him, to arouse him to life, to arouse him to understanding, to enable him to grasp it for himself. And so that what he's heard, he now believes, and as he believes, he is experienced. And as he's experienced, he now can tell others of the greatness of God and of the grace of God in his own life and experience.

Let me go on. They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness. You see these rich words, the fame of your abundant goodness, God has been good to me. The goodness of God has been displayed in this way, in this way, in that way, in my life, in his providential working.

I rise up to bless him by sharing that truth with others. I testify to you that God has done such and such, that he has done this, he has touched this, he has enabled me to do this. God has worked in me. He has displayed his goodness to me.

I will speak of the might of your awesome deeds and I will declare your greatness. I'm going to proclaim it. I'm going to speak it. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

You hear the ways we can extol God. We can extol God by blessing his name, which is to, how do you bless God? He's the blesser and we're the ones who've been blessed. But we bless God by praising him for who he is and what he's done. And when we recognize it, we speak it back to him.

You know, God is the greatest being in all the universe. He is the greatest of all beings. And I believe there's a catechism question in one of the catechism. Who is the greatest being in all the universe? And the answer is God is the greatest of all beings. And who is that God? Well, that God is Yahweh. God who has revealed himself in the history of Israel, the God who has become incarnate in the person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yahweh is that God whom we know as the triune being, Yahweh, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know that from the New Testament revelation of God. Well, go back, we can speak, we can speak back to God, telling him who he is, extol him for who he is.

I speak to you. Oh, Father, you are great. You are loving. You are wonderful. You have displayed your goodness to me. And then we can say, a way in which he has done so. We're acknowledging before him what he's done on our behalf. It's a way of saying thank you to God for being God.

It's a way of meditating on this goodness that God's displayed. And because you've shown how wonderful you are about doing this in my life and for me or for others, I want to stop. I want to say, thank you, God, you're good, and you're good in this way and in that way, and I understand it because of this.

I will pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness. I'm gonna pour it forth in words that I speak, but also it adds, listen here in verse seven, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. Ah, God is righteous. If you wanna know what the standard is, God is the standard. He's a standard of truth. He's a standard of right and wrong. He's a standard of what's holy and unholy. God is a standard.

We sing aloud of your righteousness. God does that which is righteous. That's embedded in how he saved people. How does a holy God save sinful people without being unrighteous? Well, we can't do so by speaking, saying, you're forgiven. No, there must be a payment. There must be a restitution. There must be something that will clear the guilty. That is, the punishment must be paid, must be met.

So how does God forgive a sinful, polluted being? Well, he can only do so if the payment is met. And since we're incapable of that, his son came as one of us. His son, the word became flesh. The word became a human being. And he lived a full human life in complete righteousness. He was the sinless one.

And because he's both divine and human, in his own person, he could carry out the punishment due us and he could fully do that and then after payment be resurrected from the dead in all of his righteousness and share that with us. We enter into it by faith. We sing aloud of a righteous God.

And that's Romans chapter three that speaks of this, how God has declared the unjust, the sinful, justly. God is righteous. Yahweh is gracious and merciful. I speak to him about this wonderful reality. He is slow in his anger, abounding in his steadfast love. He's good to all, and his mercy is over all that he's made.

Therefore, all your works shall give thanks to you. Giving thanks is a wonderful way of extolling God. And all your saints shall bless you. All your saints. Now, you know, some people have the idea in their head that the saints are the humans that have sort of lived sinlessly or they didn't have much sin at all. And in addition, they sort of could add to their righteousness by other acts. They did super abundantly. And then now that they're dead and gone, we can pray to them and we can ask them to, you know, sort of intercede in our behalf.

Ah, that's so unbiblical. No, and we don't have any need of that. Why? Because we have the perfect mediator in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm gonna be preaching on that this Sunday. The perfect mediator in the book of Hebrews opens that reality open to us.

The Lord's gracious, he's merciful, steadfast in his love and good, and his works shall give thanks to you, O God. For your works, we shall give thanks to you, and all of your saints shall bless you.

How? By speaking of the glory of your kingdom, by telling of your power, by making known to the children of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. And isn't this actually what we do or should be doing in our corporate worship services?

Listen, let me share another Psalm with you. Psalm 34, listen to these words. I, this is David again. Boy, David was a worshiper of God. I will bless the Lord. I will bless Yahweh at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. I will boast in Yahweh and the humble will hear. How are they gonna hear? Well, you're boasting. The humble will hear and be glad.

Proclaim Yahweh's greatness with me and let us exalt his name together. Oh, that is a glorious invitation to worship. And I extend it to you. You're listening to this podcast and right now you're hearing about how great God is and what we should do to extol him. And I say to you, proclaim Yahweh's greatness with me and let us together exalt his name.

So even as you're listening, stop and lift up your praise to God. Lift him up, speak his word. Glorify him for who he is, what he's done. Not only speak it to God, speak it to others. I will speak of the glory of your kingdom. I'll tell of your power. I will make known to the children of man your mighty deeds.

That's what the psalmist says. I'll do this. I will declare, and here how he ends, verse 21. My mouth will speak the praise of Yahweh. Now there are those that they don't speak it, they don't sing. People come to church, and some people will not sing. The others are singing, but they don't sing.

Now, you know, I can make the excuse that I'm not gonna sing because I don't sing always in the tune that needs to be. I can make this excuse because I'm not the best singer, but I can't get by. God didn't say only those that can match the melody, only those that can sing good to sing. He says we should all sing.

So, open your mouth. Join in the singing of God, the singing of hymns and songs. And that's what the New Testament tells us, you know. The New Testament has this commandment. In Ephesians chapter five, verse 19, speak to one another, how? With psalms, with hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord, yes, but what begins in the heart is expressed with the mouth.

We can't just say, well, I do it in my heart. Number one, that's usually an excuse where people is not doing anything. But you think in your mind, yes, but you speak with your mouth. You meditate on the words, you grasp the reality of it, and you speak it back to God, and you speak it to others. This is corporate worship at its best.

I speak, we speak, we share, we are involved in the praises of God. Worship should never be a simple passive experience, corporate worship, where we're watching and listening others on the stage doing the worship, they're doing it for, no, that is not biblical. Worship is never to be a passive, just watching it experience.

Some make that excuse by staying home, they're watching on TV. When they could be dressed and in the fellowship of believers, that's what God's command is, not to just get in a TV watching, but to go to the gathering of believers and join in the praising of God.

Listen to this invitation, my mouth will speak the praise of Yahweh and let all flesh bless His holy name forever and ever. Or Psalm 34 said, proclaim the Lord's greatness with me and let us exalt His name together. By speaking, by prayer, by singing, by testimony, these are the ways in which we can bless the Lord.

This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible Insights