Transformational Growth Psalm 145

Introduction

Well, good morning. It is a blessing to be able to be here in the house of the Lord to worship in spirit and truth and to think along the lines of King David when he said in Psalm 122, verse 1, I was glad. I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. We gather here together this morning, and I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the passage of Scripture known as Psalm 145. If you’ll be turning to Psalm 145, we’d appreciate you go ahead and turning to that scripture this morning that we’ll be looking at. If you’re visiting with us, we want you to know you are our guests of honor. We are so delighted and glad that you have chosen to be worshiping with us here at the South Bumby Church of Christ.

If there are any questions that you have about what we do, how we worship our Heavenly Father, feel free to ask me or any of the other members after services, and we’d just love for you to linger a little bit, stick around a little while so that you might visit with us and get to know us better. When we look at Psalm 145, he begins Psalm 145 with a word. And the word is not a word that I used very much growing up. In fact, as I read the Psalm and I got older, I still didn’t use the word. I had to look to find out in history when did this word begin being used, and it wasn’t until many years that this word was even popular many, many years ago when people used it.

It’s the word extol, not stole, like you’re stealing something, but extoll, e X T O L. It begins in Psalm forty one hundred and forty five with this word in many versions, where it says, I will extol you, my God, O King, and I will bless thy name forever and ever. Great is thy name and great to be praised, and I will praise you and bless you for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, it says, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise your works to another, and shall declare your mighty deeds or your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of thy majesty and on your wondrous works. Men shall speak of the might of your awesome acts and declare your greatness.

Oh, how beautiful it is, he says here in verse 7, where he says, They shall utter the memory of your great goodness and shall sing of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious to all. This one was our scripture reading, a familiar verse that is quoted maybe a hundred times in the Psalms. The Lord is gracious to all, full of mercy, good to all, and his tender mercies are over all works. He says, All your works shall praise you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and talk of your power, to make known to the sons of men his mighty deeds and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Your kingdom, O Lord, is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endureth to all generations.

The Lord upholdeth all those that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down. The eyes of all look expectantly to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways, gracious in all his works. The Lord is near to all, to all them that call upon him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He also will hear their cry and will save them. The Lord preserves all who love him, and all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth shall speak of the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. Amen. Let all flesh bless his holy name.

When we look at this passage of scripture, I think of three things that is found within the text. That transformational growth recognizes God as one to daily lavishly praise. Two, that transformational growth recognizes our families’ generational need for God’s transformational resources to be blessed. And I think of another point from the Psalm that transformational growth recognizes God has an example of triumphant compassion, where once we may have not had that. And fourth is a fourth point to just tack on to the end of this sermon. Transformational growth recognizes that the foremost task in the times in between must do events is meditation.

1. Recognizes God as One to Daily Lavishly Praise

No, really, I’m a slow driver. When I’m on I 4, I love that right hand lane. When I’m in Atlanta, I get to the middle lane, but I’m not going as fast as everybody else. And from time to time I’ll get a rental car. And in a rental car, you’ve got to kind of figure it out before you use the accelerator pedal. One time I was in a rental car, and the rental car that I had was uh having a flat tire issue, so I’d have to keep pumping it back up with air and putting more air in. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, so I went a little extra slow. I’m driving around in the Tampa area for a lecture series that I was visiting, and uh there was a police officer behind me driving behind me.

Puts on his little loudspeaker and says, Move on. Oh, picked up a little bit, moved along a little bit. Wasn’t good enough for him. He got on his loudspeaker and says, Come on, man, drive it like you stole it.

So I gave it a little acceleration. Rachel can attest to the fact that I’ve even been pulled over another time for driving too slow, and the officer said, Come on, you’re impeding the flow of traffic. It only happened twice, but those are the two hints. Didn’t get a ticket, did not get a ticket for driving too slow. But in other words, drive it like you stole. So, what’s the point there? When we talk about God and the praise that we give to God, when God recognizes we can give him praise, the reality is we should put our praise into overdrive. We should put our praise. If we’re not, if we look at God and how much should we praise him? Do we praise him a little bit?

Do we praise him a lot? Or do we put our praise into overdrive? Bing.com states that Psalms 145 is a powerful hymn that intertwines the themes of God’s greatness, mercy, and eternal kingship, encouraging believers to engage in consistent worship and share their experience of God’s goodness with others. The psalm serves as a reminder of God’s compassionate nature and his unwavering commitment to providing for his creation, fostering a deep sense of gratitude and hope in the transformative power of praise and worship.

To exalt, to worship. The JR definition of extol is to put our admiration or our commendation of God into overdrive. That’s what we need to do. We wake up in the morning, we say, it’s a great day. We say, no, we don’t stop there. We wake up in the morning, we say, every single breath I have from the Lord is a day to praise the Lord. We need to look at this Psalm very carefully and look at these first three verses where he says, I will put that praise into super high overdrive, O Lord. That’s what extol means. I will bless you, bless you, bless you, my God, O King, and I will bless your name forever and ever. Every day will I bless you, and I will praise your name forever and ever.

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. There is an incomprehensible nature to God. The greatness of God and some of the recognition that we see in God is understanding that we cannot fully figure him out. And that’s what makes him so great in the first place. He’s worthy of praise. We recognize that our understanding of Him is only minute or small. The act of daily praise is something that David talks about over and over in the Psalms. In Psalms 142, in Psalms 145, 1 through 2, rather, he talks about this lifestyle of worship. The commitment that we have to God needs to be a lifestyle of worship.

I love the Lord because he first loved me. When we look at the life that we have in Christ Jesus, we need to recognize that if we are baptized for the forgiveness of sins, we have the ability to know we’re one of his children. I loved how Rufus said that in his Lord’s Supper talk this morning. Abba Father. That’s like calling God dad or having that in intimate relationship where you would be that familiar with him. Some people in times people say, well, God’s a scary God, He’s way up in heaven, I don’t know what He’ll do. God is a tender God, He’s adopted you, and He wants you to be part of a heavenly kingdom, and we need to praise our God and lift up our life in praise.

And this is why I say transformational growth recognizes God as one to daily praise. It’s not normal for most people to walk around saying things like, um, uh, you know, I’ve got this suffering in my life, praise God. I’ve got this happy moment in life, praise God. Uh, I I lost my job, praise God. I got a new job, praise God. That in whatever it is, whether it ebbs or whether it flows, that we’re praising God in all things. But the reality is through our life, we need to recognize God is showing us to others in the world, and people see and see you so much in the faith that builds their own faith. And if they see you as lavishly praising God, remember my illustration?

Lavishly praising God to put your praise into overdrive. You follow the law, keep the law, but in your keeping of the law, realize gratitude is something that is important. Next point.

2. Our Families’ Generational Need for God’s Transformational Resources

Recognizes our families’ generational need for God’s transformational resources. You ride along in the car with your kids, school, the middle school, the elementary school. What do y’all talk about? Don’t answer that right now.

Those types of things. Those are golden moments, parents. Those are golden moments to realize, yeah, there’s a test, but um generally in life, I’m not going to be uh putting all my things into four quadrants. Uh generally in life, I’m not going to be multiplying matrices, some of you might, or knowing the periodic table of elements. I know potassium’s K, but I mean, really, what is the significance of that eternally? I mean, it might help in a job I might have one day. English sentences I need to know how I can present a lesson even today to know what a subject and a predicate happens to be. It’s all important. It’s life lessons, but look at the greater point. What was it said of to the parents at the time of Joshua and the time at Deuteronomy where he says, teach them.

Teach them. When they go to bed at night, when they rise up. And one of the phrases he uses is when you walk by the way. You’re in the car ride, that is a classic time to be able to talk about and pray about their faith. The beginning of school, as you send them off to school, say a prayer with them. He did this in elementary school with our kids. Say a prayer to them for them, that is. On the way back from school, do you realize your family’s generational needs? Look at verse 4 and 13. I want to go to the text. I don’t want to just be saying stuff to say stuff. I want to use scriptures. And look at verse 4. One generation shall praise your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.

Now look at verse 13. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The only way that can happen is if one generation takes the time to tell the other generation.

Well, that rests on the shoulders of the 25 to 54 year olds. I’ll leave it at that. The older people, they can tell you and have been telling on and on and on of the marvelous works of the Lord. The younger people, they have great faith, but they need to have their faith increased. It’s people like me in my generation that if I don’t do my role, I have endangered my children and that next generation of being brought up in the most holy faith. We need to teach the next generation the marvelous principles of the Lord. And sometimes they will say things to us that we’re impressed by, things that they say that we hadn’t thought of. They’ll ask questions. I’m not here to pick on any of my kids or anything like that, but I remember a conversation I had with uh one of my children when they’re uh coming back from school, and I was asking them, what was their day?

What’d they do in this class? How about this class? How about this class? And we were talking about faith. And this student had shared uh their faith with someone in class. And I said, Well, what were you explaining again? And I listened to what my what my teenager was saying about what they were explaining, and they said, Do you have any other advice for what you might say additionally? I went, Yes. But they had a pretty good got the ball rolling kind of mindset. And so that’s what we need to be doing. Our family has a generational need uh to talk about the gospel, and transformational growth is so important. We look at the idea of growing. Growing is something that is um is important to recognize from the perspective of the the parable of the sower.

We plant the seed, but God gives the increase. We sow, we plant, God waters, we God gives the increase. Uh when a plant is really little, it’s really susceptible to um scorching heat, uh excessively giving it too much water, if you follow the logic. Um, you you just got to be really careful with it. And so as it gets older, its roots get stronger, its developmental phase gets bigger underneath the soil, it gets more intense and it’s it’s got a better base. As it grows, it’s able to flourish and produce its own fruit. But when it’s a little sprout, you’ve got to be really careful with it. You don’t want to stomp on it or kick it or put too much water around the edges, or uh even give it too much soil or sunlight.

You gotta be really careful with it. And so we have to recognize what Jesus said. Uh for if we are ones that cause any of the little ones to stumble, it would be better for us if a millstone were hung around our neck and we were drowned at the bottom of the sea. That’s a pretty that’s a that’s a that’s a word picture that we don’t use too often. But we’ve got to recognize what he’s saying is that we’ve got to be tender and careful and kind and compassionate to those that are younger, because as we do that, they will help develop their own roots and strengthen the faith, but we have to be the ones that recognize transformation is just that. It’s growth. There’s phases.

And most people don’t go out and look at their plants and say, oh, look, I’m watching it grow, right? You can’t just the only time I’ve ever seen a plant that I could just go outside and watch it grow is when I’ve got National Geographic on and they speed it up. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen that, right? Who’s the only one that’s got that all-seeing eye that sees past, present, and future? God. He’s got that way of seeing it speed up. He knows where it will be and whether it will fail or whether it will succeed, what it will do, whether it will wax, whether it will wane. He will see that. But what we’ve got to do is recognize that growth comes in increments, incremental development.

And every one of those phases is important. I’m studying with Elijah. Where’s Elijah? There he is. Studying in the office with Elijah, our uh training with us here at South Bumby, and he’s got a lot of good ideas. He’s uh preached for uh uh has a number of sermons that he’s already started to develop. And uh, and uh we’re having classes together, and some of the things he says are on a level that is maturing, if you follow. Maturing. It’s getting more development. I don’t say things to Elijah sometimes that I might say to an elementary school student. I wouldn’t say the same things as they’re growing in the faith. But some that are elders and deacons, I would say other pieces of information. But I would say encourage him, lead him, instruct him, and let him know he’s trying to do what he can do for the Lord.

He’s all dressed up today in suit and tie and a big smile. And I love his smile. That’s something that we need to encourage one another to do so much more. When we say, Well, what’s so what’s the big deal about a smile? I mean, J.R., you scowl a lot, and people still say you smile. What’s the big deal about a smile? Because it’s like God. You say, God, there’s no passage in the Bible where it says God smiles. That’s not right. Every single time that the Jews left to go from one place to another, they would hear the blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you. May He lift his countenance upon you and give you peace. His countenance, that’s his smile.

3. God Has an Example of Triumphant Compassion

May He may lift his countenance on you. May you have the smile of God. We need to recognize that there are some things in life that cause persecution and challenges and debilitations in life. We need to recognize if we’re going to grow, if we’re going to build up our life in the most holy faith, that what we need to do is transform our life to grow in the way in which we need it to grow. Generational transmission of faith. Our family’s generational need is there. Let me make a third point. Verse 8 and 9, and then verse 16. The Lord is gracious to all, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. His tender mercies are grand, and they’re over all his works. Gracious.

Being willing to impart that attribute. Compassion. Being willing to impart that attribute. Slow to anger and great in mercy. The pattern of the Lord is not so much the pattern of men. The pattern of the Lord is something that is beyond what mankind typifies. When you look at that which God is, we see a great and benevolent God. When you see what God does, you see a God that cares for us. When you see the nature or the considerations of God’s choices, God chooses what he’s going to do. Every single person in this room who’s of an accountable age uses the phrase accountable age because you know in your accounting of your age, something against you is there. There is something to your account to your negative.

You are of an accountable age because you know something that you’ve done is something that is brought down your account. Someone asks, well, then what does God do? God sends Jesus, and he shows compassion. He shows mercy, he shows love and benevolence. Jesus was our ransom on the cross. Someone says, What exactly is a ransom on the cross? You know what a ransom is is someone takes somebody captive and wants ransom for that. The devil had us captive before the cross. And Jesus paid our ransom to free us from sin. We were held captive by the sways of evil. And Jesus is the one that shows compassion and mercy, saying things on the cross like, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Saying things on the cross like today you shall be with me in paradise, using phrases to people talking on the cross, even quoting uh Psalm, what was it, 22, where he said, My God, my God, why hath thou forsaken me?

Or Eloy, Eloy Lamasabactani. And he goes to this psalm that that is basically him singing the hymn of prophecy about him on the cross. You can turn there in your scriptures and look at that one later. But the whole idea I’m trying to say here is God has an example of triumphant compassion. His compassion is grand, his compassion is great, and it spans so long and so wide. It says here in the 16th verse, it says, Psalm 145 and verse 16, that God opens his hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing. We see in the scriptures the birds of the air, for they spin.

We see where God says, if today God clothes the grass of the field and feeds the birds of the air, should you not know that you are of more value than little sparrows? And he makes that indication there that God’s triumphant compassion is one to take care of the cattle. Or he says in the psalmist writings in another places, for the cattle on a thousand hills are mine, declareth the Lord. He says in so many places of the scripture that God will take care of you and that he has triumphant compassion. He may not give you excessive things, but he will take care of your needs. And his triumphant compassion goes one step further beyond the physical needs of the day. It goes beyond that to the spiritual needs where God shows his triumphant compassion there.

When we interact with the lost, the lost carry a lot of baggage. It is the case that when we look at our explanation of transformational growth, and by the way, our theme for this year is transformation. And we want uh the elders have uh expressed to us their desire to teach us uh the idea of transforming our life. And of course, the hub passage of that uh would be in Romans. Um be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. And that of that context, of course, is important, but when we look at people that we meet in the world, we’re gonna meet a lot of people that carry a lot of baggage. And God is someone who is not uh a tyrant, he wants people to be saved, he wants people to be uh uh in in the faith, and he doesn’t want people to feel, well, I don’t know that I could get in the faith because all those people are uppity or or are better than me, or they think they’re better than me, or I just feel I don’t fit in there, or maybe I I they don’t have a place for me there.

That’s not how God speaks of his kingdom, and in fact, when you look at 1 Timothy 1 verses 9 through 11, talking about the law of God, he says the law is not made for a righteous person. Now he’s not saying that righteous people don’t need the law. He’s saying when you look at what the gospel came to do, it came to convert people or transform people. All people have broken the law, but he’s going to give some illustrations of some people that were not the scribes and were not the Pharisees, and we’re not the ones that were basically in uh in God’s good graces before Christ came. He says it was made for the lawless and the insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust, O Timothy, the gospel is for all.

And we have to remember that. When we’re teaching people in the community in the world in which we live, we will meet people from all walks of life. We will meet people who stole. They were a thief. We’ll say, Well, return what you stole and serve the Lord. We’ll meet people that were sodomites. We’ll say, You cannot do that. You have to serve the Lord in the right way. We’ll meet people that uh right here were murderers. Uh, and that exists sometimes. People that maybe committed abortion, and now they know, well, that’s not good, and they won’t do that anymore. Or various things. We can mention this on and on and on, but he’s basically saying, well, the gospel’s not just for you, O Timothy. The gospel is not just for you who grew up in the in in the household of uh Lois and Eunice, a great grandma and excellent mother who taught you of the faith.

It’s not just for you, O Timothy, as a preacher, like a preacher’s only kind of gospel. The gospel is for all. For the Jew first and also to the Greek, to those that are highly religious and those who are also highly lost and without religion in the world. And he says in verse 16, God provides, will find a way to provide, but we also recognize with Psalm 145, verse 8 through 9, the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. Does God say that he excuses sin and just says, well, we’ll just cover that up and say it’s it it doesn’t really matter. God loves everybody, we’ll just cover the sin. No. He told the woman at the well in John chapter 4, I believe it was, he says, uh uh uh he was in sin, right?

He made that point to her. Uh to the lady found in adultery where the guys were getting ready to throw rocks at her. He says, Go and sin no more. There’s another one. He doesn’t say, well, you just, you know. And so we look at these concepts in the scriptures and we recognize that, but we see also today that God is being long suffering. If you just took history and drew a timeline from the first century till now, all of us would probably wonder, well, why didn’t God come back right away? In the book of Thessalonians and the Thessalonian letters, the people were so eager for the Lord, they just stopped working and started looking up. He says, Well, get to work. You’ve got work to do.

There are things you have to do. The Lord will return. Be ready as if he’ll come as a thief of the night with the sound of a trumpet at any given moment. But God is slow in the sense of he’s patient with us. He doesn’t really want anybody to go to hell. Will people go to hell? Well, sure they will, but he doesn’t want them to. There’s an interesting passage of scripture that is found in the Thessalonian letter. I want to turn there for just a moment. He says in verse 9 of chapter 5, God didn’t appoint us to wrath. So not only do we say God is not focused on wrath, he didn’t appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Cross-reference that in your Bibles with Matthew 25 14, which is excuse me, Matthew 25, 41, which is the familiar verse where he basically says that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. He’s not saying that many, he’s not limiting the scope of the number of people that’ll be in hell, but he’s saying it’s intention of why it’s there. People often ask in the community in the world in which we live in, why is that there? Why is there a hell? Well, God found a place for the devil to be, and he prepared that place eternally for him there. And so that’s what he’s saying in Matthew 25, 41, followed by 2 Thessalonians 5 and 9. He didn’t appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation to our Lord Jesus Christ.

4. The Foremost Task in the Times In Between: Meditation

Transformational growth recognizes the foremost task in the times in between must do events is meditation. Meditation.

Of the Hebrew words and the Greek words for meditation in the Bible, there’s about five or six, Hoguth, Sogbi. There’s a bunch of them. I won’t go through all the them right now. But what I want to say is sometimes meditation is used in the sense of prayer. It’s just talking about prayer. Other times meditation is talking about thinking about a certain scripture. Other times meditation in the Bible is simply thinking about something and ruminating the idea or carrying forth the idea on and on in your mind. But what he’s basically saying in this particular verse in verse 5 and 6 of Psalm 145 is that we’re meditating on the wondrous works of the Lord. And so if you look at verse 5 and 6, it says, I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your miracles or your wondrous works.

Men shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. The Proverb writer wrote in Proverbs, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out. Isn’t that the way of the world? We try to figure out stuff, and it’s so amazing when we figure out something that God has concealed, and it’s like, okay, I’ve known that forever. I mean, really, isn’t that what the glory of kings? Look what planet we just discovered. I saw this sign the other day. It said, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. And then the last one said, sorry, guy, rest in peace. It was joking around about Pluto, the planet. Sometimes it’s a planet, sometimes it’s not a planet.

The idea of that type of thing. Is it a moon? Is it a planet? Is it not? God’s got all that covered. And it’s not a big deal to him. But it’s so important to us when we figure out some little piece of information. And then the information is something that we’ve learned that others don’t know. The glory of kings is to search out a matter. The glory of God is to conceal a matter. And so we look at that and we’re hidden in the love and the power and the majesty of God. The marvelous works of the Lord are so incalculable that we could not tell him all the ways we praise him were they to be counted in order, in number. So what we need to do is think about seriously the works of the Lord.

And why do I say in the in-between moments? Once again, Rufus had a great, great Lord’s Supper talk. He said in the Lord’s Supper talk, he was talking about the idea of sometimes you have these moments in life where you’re just kind of sitting there. Maybe you’re doing something active, and then something comes up and you have to wait somewhere. These are great times to meditate. Some of us have a lot of those times. Some of us don’t have as many. But whenever you have those, those are excellent moments to meditate on the marvelous works of the Lord. You can take the time to recognize some of the things he says in Scripture. Our scripture reading, the third scripture reading from Philippians, uh, that Steve read.

Uh, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any praise, if there be any virtue, if there be anything good in that, meditate on these things. That’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to meditate on the wondrous works of the Lord. And transformational growth doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen when we’re sprouting. It happens as we’re developing and as we’re growing. The growth occurs, and like I said, like that National Geographic video where it fast forwards and you see the plant grow. That’s our life in a nutshell. Have you ever seen how fast that thing goes? It’s like a one-second thing on the program and then it’s done.

That’s our life. What is your life? For it is but a vapor which appeareth here for a little while and then vanishes away. Or as the English Standard Version says, it’s a mist. A mist. It’s here for a little bit and then it’s gone. That’s our life. And what do we do in the quiet moments of the life that we live? Grow. Grow transformationally. Add to your faith virtue and knowledge and moral excellence in those things. But you look at those quiet times and you ask, what’s so important about meditating? Why can’t I just pray? Why can’t I just read the Bible? Why should I read and and uh why can’t I just read the Bible and pray? They gotta add meditation to that. Someone says, why?

Why is it so important to think about the things I read? Because if you just read and pray, you’re doing the same thing the devil does. The devil talks to God all the time. He did with Job. He talked to God. He says, Well, you built a hedge around him. Okay, that’s him talking to God. Uh, he quoted scripture. He knows the Bible. He knows what the Bible says. He says to Jesus. It says in Matthew chapter 4, he says, Why don’t you turn these stones into bread? And then he quotes another scripture from Psalms. Why don’t you cast yourself down from the temple? And we’ll go ahead and quote that verse, lest thy dash thy foot against the stone, for the God loves you and he’ll have his angels keep charge over thee.

So he twists scripture. The difference is he doesn’t meditate on God’s marvelous works in the right way. Where a Christian can, they can pray, they can read the scriptures, and then they can apply the scriptures right. That’s the difference between the Christian and even the devil who doesn’t apply the scripture right versus one that should. Should he? We should, but he won’t and he doesn’t, and he wants us to be pulled aside into focusing on small things where God says, be strong in the faith and put on the holy power of the Lord. Meditating is sometimes not our dominant thing that we do. And sometimes we have drifting thoughts and theorizing and what ifs and all that kind of thing. When we live in such a way that has drifting thoughts, remember, focus, focus on the Lord, and uh and he will be with you.

Conclusion

So I will extol and highly praise God. I will manifest my praise to God, I will transform generationally, I’ll do what I can to teach the next generation. I’ll strive to be compassionate to those that I meet in the community, and I, as an individual, will try to transform my meditation. You may not have looked at Psalm 145 before in such a way to look for transformation attributes. But I think if you look at it now, the next time you look at it and study it through the week, I want you to recognize that you can highly praise the Lord, and you can highly be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Meditate, be transformed, be compassionate and teaching. Well, if you’re here this morning and you’re thinking that’s an interesting lesson.

What must I do to be saved? I just think about it. I just meditate about it. No. At some point, you have to be called to action to do something. Not that meditation is not important. I’m just saying you have to be called to do something. In Romans 10 17, it says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the will of the Lord. John 3 16 says, believe in Jesus. For God so sinned his only begotten. God sent his only begotten Son into the world that whosoever might believe with him shall not perish but have eternal life. You need to repent of your sins, as Acts 238 says, and confess your sins. Confess Jesus, rather, which he says in Acts 8.37, where the Ethiopian treasure says, I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God.

A lot of people say, uh, confess sins. I was got a little jumbled here because I’m rushing through at the end. But we need to confess Christ. We need to be able to say, I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God. We need to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, Acts 2.38, and then be transformed. Well, if you would like to become a Christian to repentance and baptism and come forward this morning, please sit on one of the front rows as we stand and sing.