Psalm 145 Part 3 

‘The LORD is near to all who call upon Him:’ God’s responsiveness to His praying people demonstrates the graciousness mentioned in the previous lines. ‘He will fulfill the desire and hear the cry’ of His people. Since the Lord is so good to his creation, how much more does he care for his covenant people! This is essentially what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 6:25-34). 

There is a contrast in v20 that is common throughout the Bible. God protects(NLT) or ‘watches over’(NEB) those who love Him, but the wicked are destroyed. Since the covenant promise of ‘blessing and cursing,’ God has set before all mankind the choice of life or death, (Deut.30:19) through to the final gospel proclamation “that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”(John 3:16) If the wicked (i.e. the unsaved & rebellious) are destroyed, there is no room for an eternal punishing. Countless verses in the Old and New Testaments have this choice laid out. There is eternal punishment (noun) but nowhere is there an eternal punishing (verb) mentioned in scripture. In John.3:16 ‘perish’ means destruction. “The wages of sin is death” not eternal life in some other place. “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom.6:23.) The ‘eternal punishment’ is a sentence from which there is no return, it is final, it is eternal, gone forever! As Jesus said, ”And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.” (Matt 25:26 NLT). This Psalm declares God to be just and righteous. In the end, we are the masters of our own destiny by the choices we make. 

So ends David’s contribution to the Psalter, on a note of praise which is wholly his own (21a), yet as wide as mankind and as unfading as eternity. Ps.145:21 is the last word we have from David in the Bible. If he had said nothing else in his long life, these words would be a fine legacy for future generations. In it, he praises God and invites others to praise God also.