Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1828
“And men shall speak of the might of Your terrible acts: and I will declare Your greatness. They shall abundantly utter the memory of Your great goodness, and shall sing of Your righteousness.” Psalm 145:6, 7.
In this Psalm David has reached the Beulah land of his songs where we hear nothing else but praise. He begins, “I will extol 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.” And he closes with, “My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord: and let all flesh bless His holy name forever and ever.” Happy is our condition when the glory of God fills both heart and tongue! Oh, to swim in a sea of gratitude, to feel waves of praise breaking over one’s joyful head—and then to dive into the ocean of adoration and lose one’s self in the ever-blessed God!
The royal singer strikes a high note as he repeats the stanza, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.” We never reach the height of that great argument until we confess that it is far above us and altogether unsearchable. We have not apprehended God if we imagine that we have comprehended Him.
Next David found comfort in the thought that he was not the only worshipper of the Lord and that the praise of God would not cease when he fell asleep in death. He foresees an endless line of praiseful hearts and utters this sure prophecy, “One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.” But, as if he would not and could not leave the blessed task to others, but must continue his own joyful hallelujahs, he cries, “I will speak of the glorious honor of Your majesty, and of Your wondrous works.” Whatever happens, we must, each one, extol the Lord! Whether the world grows atheistic or devout, our duty and our joy are one and the same—we are still to magnify the Lord our God. We do not wish to avoid this profound pleasure; no, rather we would abound in it more and more!
All this leads up to a consideration of the various ways in which men speak of the Lord and His acts when their minds are moved in that direction. All see not the same points of His greatness, neither do they see with the same eyes, nor speak in the same spirit. It is ours, at this time, to review the various orders of mankind, and to observe how the revelation of God to them affects their minds and moves their tongues. There is an ascending scale in the four sentences of our text, as the poet-Prophet observes and records the ascending forms of human thought and speech.
I. We begin at the lowest step of the ladder. “Men shall speak of the might of Your terrible acts.” We mingle with the multitude during a great occasion of national calamity, or upon the receipt of thrilling news from a foreign land—and we hear THE AWE-STRUCK TALK of the throng. We join a sobered and thoughtful company—they have come together under a common fear and they speak, one to another, of the terrible acts of God because they impress them at the moment. They are of the Athenian kind, desiring continually to say and hear some new thing, and now they have found a novel subject which has the piquant devour of terror. God has been doing terrible things and they cannot help speaking of them—they have overlooked His mercies, but they must notice His judgments, as it is written, “Lord, when Your hand is lifted up, they will not see; but they shall see and be ashamed.” Not only shall they see, but they shall speak, too—“Men shall speak of the might of Your terrible acts.”
There have been times in human history when this text has been fulfilled with tremendous emphasis. The first men who lived after the flood must have been affected with the solemn memory of the universal deluge. They must have often spoken to one another concerning God’s terrible acts, when He drew up the sluices of the great deep and burst open the
reservoirs of Heaven to drown a guilty world. They that dwelt over against the five cities of the plain, once so prosperous and rich, withal so luxurious and vicious—they, I say, that dwelt in the neighboring cities must have said, one to another, “Have you heard what has happened—how God has rained fire out of Heaven upon those wicked cities?” Men, after all these ages, can scarcely go that way and mark how desolation rules over the Dead Sea, without speaking in bated breath to one another, and saying, “Here vengeance triumphed.”
Egypt was full of this talk, once, when the plagues followed each other like terrible claps of thunder. One peal had not ceased before another blast astounded them! The noise thereof went beyond Egypt and, in many a palace, monarchs heard how Jehovah had gotten unto Himself honor upon Pharaoh. It was as Moses sang, “Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of Your arm they shall be as still as a stone; till Your people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, which you have purchased.”