What do you think should be the subject matter of this very last psalm by David? It should not take long to answer that question. If you know anything at all about David, you will expect this great Old Testament figure to be praising God. That is exactly what we find. Psalm 145 is a great praise psalm, a fit summary of all David had learned about God during a long lifetime of following hard after the Almighty. It is also an appropriate transition to the final “Hallelujah” psalms that close the Psalter.

As we concluded yesterday's study, we observed that the God of Moses, Joshua and David is our God too, and he is the same today as he ever was. He is also our Rock and our deliverer. What should be our response to this, to the fact that this is our God and that he has delivered us also, particularly from sin's penalty and power?

What strikes David as he reflects on the majesty and power of God is the smallness and frailty of man and the astonishing fact that this majestic God actually stoops to help as insignificant a person as himself. “O LORD, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow” (vv. 3, 4).

In the final verses of the psalm, David returns to the problem of his enemies, asking God to silence or destroy them so that he might continue to live and serve God. This sounds like another of those imprecatory passages that bother contemporary people so much, but it is not quite that, for there is an order here. The important matters (in order of importance) are: 1) preserve my life; 2) bring me out of trouble; and 3) silence my enemies. Then, if this is what is required in order that David might live and continue to be God's servant, “destroy all my foes” (v. 12). 

It is no small matter to acknowledge that no human being, however moral or upright by our fallible human standards, will be justified by God on the basis of his or her own righteousness. We think we are righteous. But in God's sight, “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6). So if we are to be saved by God, it must be on the basis of a righteousness that is not our own, an "alien righteousness,” which is what Luther called it. It is made available to us by the life and death of Jesus Christ.