About this sermon
Psalm 146 opens the final five Hallelujah Psalms and warns against trusting in princes, mortal men whose plans perish with them. Blessed is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, the Maker of heaven and earth, who keeps faith forever. The Lord executes justice for the oppressed, feeds the hungry, frees the prisoners, and opens the eyes of the blind, and he thwarts the way of the wicked. The Lord reigns forever, so his people put their hope in him and praise him.
Sermon transcript
the reading of God’s Word. This evening as we begin the end of our series through various select Psalms in the biblical Psalter, the biblical book of Psalms this evening, we consider a brief Psalm, Psalm 146. So I’d invite you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 146. Dear friends, let us hear with reverence and awe the word of our God. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord while I live. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit departs, he returns to the earth. In that very day his thoughts perish. How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord raises up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord protects the strangers. He supports the fatherless and the widow. But he thwarts the way of the wicked. The Lord will reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, How grateful we are that you are a faithful, covenant-making, covenant-keeping God, and that in union with Christ you have bound yourself to us in love and mercy. You are a holy God, a just God, terrible and righteous in your wrath and indignation, and yet slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and covenant faithfulness. We ask, Heavenly Father, that we might learn more of you as we consider this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.
Your word is indeed a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, food for our souls, a guide to our way. And so, Lord, feed our souls this evening. Again, we ask that you would give us open minds, open hearts to receive truth from your word. for your word is truth. And we ask that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word. We ask these things through Jesus Christ, your Son, our glorious Lord and Savior, and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Dear friends, the title of my sermon this evening is Trusting in Princes or Hoping in the Lord. And once again, there are a number of key words that I’d encourage the children to listen for in my sermon this evening.
If you’re following along in your sermon outline, the words praise, commitment, trust, power, man, hope, and reign. Well, dear ones, we have been on a journey. We have been on a journey through the book of Psalms. Our journey through this Holy Spirit inspired collection of poems known to us today as the book of Psalms is nearing its completion. I’ll be preaching on Psalm 150. on the next Lord’s Day as we wrap up our study in these various Psalms. And as we saw at the beginning of this journey that would take us through these various selections from this inspired collection, the gateway to the Psalter begins with the first two Psalms. As we saw back at the very beginning of my series in the book of Psalms, Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm that declares the blessedness and the security of the righteous man, the man who is in the right with God, the man whose inner delight and outward life are rooted in the law, the Torah, or covenant instruction of Yahweh, Israel’s faithful covenant Lord.
And this is in contrast to the instability and the ultimate destruction of the wicked who are cursed. And Psalm 2 declares the universal sovereignty of Yahweh and His Anointed One, the Messiah, over all nations of humanity, and which summons the kings as representatives of these nations to submit to the rule of the Messianic Son. These so-called gateway psalms oriented us in our journey through the biblical Psalter. Along this journey we have encountered the ups and downs of God’s covenant people and the ebbs and flows of redemptive history as that history gradually builds suspense as it journeys closer and closer to the coming of great David’s greater son, the promised Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the true messianic son, the anointed one, our Lord and Savior. Now, along our journey through the Psalms, we’ve encountered, of course, a full range of human emotions and full-orbed expressions of biblical piety.
For example, we have encountered joy. We’ve encountered praise. We’ve also encountered lamentation and imprecation. We’ve encountered thanksgiving and near despair. We have encountered repentance, fear, hope, and so forth. All of this expressed masterfully with great literary eloquence wedded to a profoundly earthy, down-to-earth texture. Beloved, with Psalm 146, we find ourselves at the beginning of the end of the book of Psalms. For our psalm for this Lord’s Day evening begins the first of the final five Hallelujah Psalms, which complete this divinely inspired collection. Psalms 146 through 150 are called Hallelujah Psalms because each of these psalms both begins and ends with the Hebrew Hallelujah, which is a summons to praise Yahweh, to praise the Lord. Yahweh being the covenantal name for God, the name of God that has in view His special, covenantal, redemptive relationship with His people, Israel.
And so, friends, as we will see, the tone of these final Hallelujah Psalms is indeed a tone of joy. These Psalms are pulsating with joy. A joy that anticipates the final eschatological victory of Yahweh and His anointed Messianic Son. A victory, of course, that is ultimately accomplished by the true Messianic Son, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, great David’s greater Son, our incarnate Lord and Savior. Now you may have noticed many psalms have titles or superscriptions that ascribe their composition to various human authors. We know who the divine author is. The Holy Spirit ultimately is the divine author of all of the psalms, but some of the psalms are ascribed to various human authors. But These hallelujah psalms are not, and Psalm 146 is not ascribed to any particular human author. And so this psalm is anonymous, and it lacks any specific historical references.
So we really cannot be too dogmatic about who wrote it or when it was written, although some scholars are pretty convinced that this is a post-exilic psalm. And certainly that could be debated. But whoever the human author was, whatever the historical circumstances that may have been used by God to move this author, to compose this wonderful composition, it really doesn’t matter because this is a psalm that speaks to God’s people in a wide variety of circumstances and a wide variety of challenges that they might face. With all of this in mind, let us dive in to this first of the final five Hallelujah Psalms. And we notice, first of all, brothers and sisters, in the opening two verses of our psalm, we notice a call and commitment to praise Yahweh. A call and commitment to praise Yahweh.
If you’re following along, children, in the sermon outline, this is the first main point. Again, let me read these verses. Praise the Lord. In other words, hallelujah. Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord when? While I live. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. This psalm opens, as all of these hallelujah psalms do, with praise the Lord, with an imperative call and invitation for the entire covenant community together to praise the Lord. So it begins with this communal call to praise. This psalm was very likely used in worship, perhaps in the temple or what have you. So there is a corporate call to praise, but it doesn’t stay at the corporate communal level. The psalmist hears this corporate call to praise the Lord, and he individualizes it.
He speaks this call to himself. He says, praise the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Again, this imperative call and invitation for the entire covenant community to praise Yahweh the Lord, their faithful covenant-keeping God, is answered by the psalmist’s individualizing of this call, and as the psalmist here personally commits himself to devote his life to praise Yahweh, to praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. And then notice verse two. He goes on to express his commitment to live a life of service and song, of praise and gratitude to the Lord. He says, I will praise the Lord while I live. This is a serious, life-impacting commitment that he’s making in faith to Yahweh, his God. He says, I will sing praises to my God while I have life. My being, again notice here the psalmist response of individual commitment to this call for corporate praise.
Beloved, because our God is a faithful, covenant-making, covenant-keeping God, a God who has redeemed and rescued us from sin through Jesus Christ our Lord, our only proper response to that amazing grace and love given to us believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is to commit ourselves in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ with the intention of living a life of praise, a life of glorifying God in word and deed, in song and service. Let me ask you, dear listener, are you devoted to living your life to glorify God? We all know that answer to our first catechism question, what is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is what? To glorify God, it doesn’t stop there though, and to enjoy Him forever. And by the way, as an aside, I would suggest to you that God is most glorified when we find our delight, our chief delight and enjoyment in Him above all.
And so we see this call and commitment to praise Yahweh, to praise the Lord. But next, as this psalm progresses, the next thing we see is a warning against trusting man, a warning against putting our ultimate hope and trust in man, even princely man. Look at verses three and four. Do not trust in princes. in mortal man in whom there is no salvation. Why should we not trust in princes, these powerful men, powerful influential men? Why should we not trust in princes? Because they are mortal men. and in whom there is no ultimate deliverance, no ultimate salvation. And then the psalmist fleshes this out a little bit in verse four. He says of such men, his spirit departs and he returns to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In that very day, his thoughts or his plans perish.
This is not a comment, by the way. Verse four is not a comment on life after death. It’s not that the psalmist does not believe in life after death or that there’s this idea out there that in Old Testament times and among the Jews, they didn’t really have a conception of life after death. This verse doesn’t speak to that issue at all. The point is that when we die, our plans, the thoughts that we have about our life, a parish. We’re not able to carry out those plans anymore. So verse 3, do not trust in princes. Now this is not a cynical exhortation that, you know, you shouldn’t trust anyone at all, even those closest to you. This is not what the psalmist is saying. He is suggesting we should not place our ultimate hope or faith or trust in mere man.
Do not trust in princes, for example, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation. Not even princely men, men of great power, position, and prestige are to be given our ultimate trust or loyalty. Why? Because even the most powerful, even the most exalted among men, even those who seem beyond that you cannot even touch them or even bring them to account, even such men are mortal, temporary, time-bound, and therefore they are incapable of providing ultimate deliverance, ultimate salvation. Now as a later section of this psalm will show by way of contrast, we have sharp contrast in this psalm as there is in numerous psalms and wisdom, literature, and so forth. Later on in this song, we’ll show the contrast of mortal man with the ultimate, you know, the contrast of the ultimate powerlessness of mortal man, standing in contrast to the ultimate power of the Lord, Yahweh, the Almighty God, the maker of heaven and earth.
In contrast to the weakness and mortality of fallen man, the creature, even princely man, stands the almighty, sovereign, powerful God, the maker, the creator of heaven and earth. And then in verse four, his spirit departs. He returns to the earth. In that very day, his thoughts perish. I like what the Bible commentator, Professor Elmer Leslie, it’s an old commentary, But he writes the following in commenting on this verse. He says, That being the case, beloved, God and God alone has the power to save and to deliver ultimately we must put our ultimate faith and trust in Him because He is always faithful. He always keeps His promises. When He makes promises to us, He does not do so with His fingers crossed behind His back. He’s not deceptive. He says what He means. He means what He says.
We can trust in Him. By way of application, I just want to make a few points. As Dr. Willem van Gammeren states in his commentary, he says, the negative exhortation, do not put your trust in princes, is a positive way of renouncing humanism and of abandonment to a God-centered way of life. Dear ones, God in his word calls us to renounce our sinful tendency to put our ultimate trust and hope in human beings, no matter how powerful, how admirable, how popular they may be. And instead, the word of God calls us to abandon ourselves in faith to living the God-centered life. Again, man’s chief end is to glorify God. Our chief, so many today, their chief end, their ultimate goal and purpose in life is their own personal happiness. Looking out for number one, pursuing their own personal happiness.
If you pursue your own personal happiness, I can almost guarantee you that that goal will elude you. You won’t be able to find it or grasp onto it. It’s like you just keep running after it and it just keeps getting ahead of you. But if you commit yourself in faith to live the God-centered life, to seek to glorify God and enjoy Him forever out of gratitude for His gift of salvation to you in Jesus. You will find in that path true joy, and you will find in trusting and hoping in the Lord a sure and steadfast footing for your life. You will indeed find eternal salvation. All of this, of course, is only possible by a true and living trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as He has offered to us sinners in the gospel message.
Dear listener, have you put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your very own Lord and Savior? The Bible says that we have all sinned. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death. We deserve God’s wrath and condemnation for sin. But the good news of the gospel is that the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. Turn to Christ from your sin. Believe and repent. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. And then, by the grace of God, you will be able to commit yourself to living the God-centered life. Another take away or application of this passage is that it stands against every manifestation of what has been called statism.
Statism being trust, ultimate trust in collective man as collective man is manifested in the state. Now I bring this up because it talks about do not trust in princes. Do not trust, and princes are officers of the state, do not trust in princes. I think this is going to be especially important for us as unfortunately we have an election year soon coming upon us. So that being the case, let us seek to avoid the temptation, and it will be a temptation for many of us, to put our ultimate hope and trust in presidents, politicians, political parties, social activism, or cultural movements. Now don’t misunderstand, I’m not at all suggesting that we be politically indifferent or inactive. I have counseled, I would counsel all Christians to be faithful Christian citizens, to seek to, I’d encourage you to vote your Christian conscience, to inform yourself on the issues and all of that.
But nevertheless, let us not put our hope, our trust in the political process or political parties or social activism. I’m urging us to avoid getting swept away by the media and politician-fueled panic and hysteria that will very likely soon descend upon our nation. Let us avoid it. Let us be a people who are characterized by calmness and level-headedness as as we have to face the next year, year and a half. And friends, as one commentator has put it, Governments and armies have their proper place. They do indeed, they are an ordinance of God. Government is an ordinance of God, a servant of God for the common good. Governments and armies have their proper place, but their merely human power is not ultimately decisive in the world that God rules. Remember, God is sovereign. Jesus is still on the throne, and so whatever happens, Let us look to Him and trust in Him, not in man.
But finally, as the latter section of this psalm, which is a large section, we see the blessedness of those who trust in Yahweh, the God whose power is displayed in His mighty works the God who will reign forever. This is the final point in your sermon outline. Let us consider the blessedness of those who trust in Yahweh, the God whose power is displayed in his mighty works and who will reign forever. We’re told this in verse five. How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in Yahweh, God. These verses highlight God as the all-powerful Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth, and the faithful covenant Redeemer Lord who delivers His people in their need. Verse 5, how blessed is the man who does what? How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob.
The God of Jacob, God is often described in the Old Testament as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs, because God made faithful covenant to them. He bound himself to his people in covenant love. And so this has in view those who look to the God of Jacob, this faithful redeemer God, this covenant-keeping God, as their hope. How blessed is such a one,” the psalmist says. By implication, in contrast, this is in contrast to those who trust in mortal man. We’ve been exhorted not to trust in princes, but instead to trust in the God of Jacob. By the way, this implies that those who trust in man are not blessed, but are the opposite of blessed. They are of the cursed. And then verse 6, this God made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever.” God is presented here as the creator of heaven and earth, unlike mortal man who perishes, who inherits six feet of sod, again to quote from Professor Leslie.
God is from everlasting unto everlasting. He is beyond time, space, and matter. He is the infinite, eternal, transcendent creator, sustainer, and sovereign Lord over heaven and earth. And He is the one who is, notice also that the psalmist mentioned that He made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them. Remember, friends, that in the ancient Near East, among the pagan religions. The sea was viewed as an unruly thing. The sea often represented the forces of chaos that even the gods struggled to subdue. But Yahweh, the God of Israel, the true and living God, is sovereign over the chaos waters. He is sovereign over the sea. This, again, would communicate powerfully to the ancient reader that Yahweh, this God, is stable. We can trust Him. We can hope in Him. He is able to deliver.
He is able to save. And not only that, He is faithful to keep His promises. We are told that He keeps faith forever. you can rely on his promises. And then we see examples of the Lord’s mighty works that show him to be a trustworthy God, one in whom we can confide and put our ultimate hope and trust. And so look at verse eight, it says that, I’m sorry, verse 7. It says, Let’s pause and consider some of the examples in Scripture of the Lord doing just these things. We are told that He executes justice for the oppressed. What are some examples in the Bible of God doing that? Think of his redemption of his people Israel from their Egyptian slavery. Think of the mighty plagues that God poured out upon the Egyptians as he rescued his people, bringing his people through the Red Sea on dry land, bringing them and closing the Red Sea over the Egyptians.
We think of how God executed justice for his oppressed enslaved people. God stands in opposition to the oppressor. He redeems his people, and the Exodus event is a perfect example of that. He is also the God who gives food to the hungry. He does that in many ways, and examples in the scripture would include God providing manna for his people in the wilderness, God providing water from the rock, and so forth. And not only that, he provides spiritual food for hungry souls. He gives us Jesus Christ, the living bread, the bread of life. We think of, we are told that he sets the prisoners free. Again, I don’t know about you folks, but I think of a biblical example being the freeing and the elevation of the patriarch Joseph. Remember, Joseph was in prison, but God, in his timing, brought Joseph out of prison.
And then in verse eight, the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. We saw an example of that in the scripture reading earlier in the service as the Lord Jesus gave sight to blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. And we think of how our Lord Jesus has opened our spiritually blinded eyes to see the light and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as we have, God has opened our minds and our eyes and our hearts to see Jesus as the true Savior, the true Messiah. We are told that the Lord Yahweh raises up those who are bowed down. Think of the restoration of Job after his sufferings at the end of the book of Job. Again, think of the exodus deliverance. And ultimately, of course, this points to our salvation in Christ as we are raised up with him unto newness of life.
As sinners under the wrath of God, we are bowed down under the weight of that wrath. But Jesus, in mercy, removes that weight and he gives us his grace. He indeed, he indeed, raises up those who are bowed down. And then it goes on to say the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord loves the righteous not because they deserve to be loved by him, not because they are righteous in themselves. The righteous are those who by grace through faith are rightly related to God and by the grace of God manifest that right relationship in the way that they seek to order their lives. And so, The Lord loves the righteous, not because the righteous deserve God’s saving covenantal love, but because they are right with God by his grace alone through their faith in the Messiah alone.
And then verse nine, the Lord protects the strangers. He supports the fatherless and the widow. These are three categories of individuals in the ancient world, resident aliens, for example, strangers, as well as widows and the fatherless. These were individuals who were most vulnerable and subject to abuse and exploitation in ancient society. And we are told that the Lord takes notice of them, that he protects them. The Lord, Yahweh, protects the strangers and supports the fatherless and the widow, for our God is a kind and compassionate God to those who are exploited and abused. But on the other hand, we are told that he thwarts the way of the wicked, the unrepentant wicked. God is a God of distinctions here. We see, again, this as evidence of what is revealed in scripture, that our God is a God who makes distinctions.
He makes distinctions between the righteous and the wicked, between the saved and the unsaved, between the lost and the found, the elect and the non-elect, and so forth. And God is a just God who will bring, who thwarts the way of the wicked, who will bring justice to bear upon the unrepentant wicked. God is a God of justice who will not overlook the wickedness of the unrepentant wicked, especially the wicked who persecute and oppress his people. And then the psalm wraps up. in verse 10. It says, the Lord will reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord. Yahweh will reign forever. Unlike princes Mortal men who reign only temporarily over their particular spheres. Yahweh will reign forever unto all generations. And notice how God describes His people in this verse. Your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Zion, the Mount of the Lord, where the Lord’s special covenantal saving presence dwelt in the midst of His people. Yahweh will reign forever unto all generations. Therefore, the implication of that is this. Let us put our ultimate hope and trust in Him and His redeeming grace and mercy given to us in Christ. In view of our Lord’s power and mercy, our only appropriate response is to heed the closing call to praise the Lord. The closing hallelujah. Amen. Let us heed this call and live it out in our lives. Let us pray.
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