Psalm 146: Trust God, Not Humans

Have you ever been disappointed by someone you trusted? It could have been a family member, a co-worker, or a close friend. Even a politician who promised they would do something then did the opposite. That’s what happens when we fully trust in humans rather than God. In Psalm 146, the writer expresses this sentiment as excellent advice to the reader. Pay attention. Let’s dig in…

Psalm 146

Praise the Lord!

Let all that I am praise the Lord.
²    I will praise the Lord as long as I live.
    I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.

³Don’t put your confidence in powerful people;
    there is no help for you there.
⁴When they breathe their last, they return to the earth,
    and all their plans die with them.
⁵But joyful are those who have the God of Israel [Jacob] as their helper,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God.
⁶He made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them.
    He keeps every promise forever.
⁷He gives justice to the oppressed
    and food to the hungry.
The Lord frees the prisoners.
⁸    The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down.
    The Lord loves the godly.
⁹The Lord protects the foreigners among us.
    He cares for the orphans and widows,
    but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.

¹⁰The Lord will reign forever.
    He will be your God, O Jerusalem [Zion], throughout the generations.

Praise the Lord!
Psalm 146 NLT

The Fallibility of Man

Every human being will die. We read in the Book of Hebrews:

And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, ²⁸so also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.
Hebrews 9:27-28 NLT

Pastor Sandy Adams comments…

Here’s what happens when a man dies. His spirit lives to reside in heaven or hell. His body returns to the dust. But he’s out-of-commission on earth. Trust in him is vain. If these psalms were written by the founders of the second Temple they might’ve been thinking of the mistake made by King Zedekiah. He was the last Jewish ruler over Jerusalem before the city fell to the Babylonians.

In the days prior to its fall, Zedekiah had hoped the Egyptians would come to Jerusalem’s defense. He’d sent
envoys and courted their help. But the Egyptians never showed… In Lamentations Jeremiah said that even as the Babylonians breached the walls and poured into the city some of the Jews still had faith Egypt would come riding in the like the cavalry.

Jeremiah said in Lamentations 4:17, “Still our eyes failed us, watching vainly for our help; in our watching we watched for a nation that could not save us.” It was a hard lesson to learn. Why we should never trust in man.
Pastor Sandy Adams

Powerful People Die, God Doesn’t, Didn’t, and Won’t!

They die, and their plans go with them. However, our joy comes with knowing that the God who created the earth and sky is our helper. God keeps His Promises forever! He…

Promises justice to the oppressed. (Revelation)
Provides food for the hungry. (Bread of Life)
Frees the prisoners.
Opens the eyes of the blind.
Lifts those who are weighed down.
Protects, loves, cares, yet…
Frustrates the plans of the wicked.
Is the God of Jerusalem (Zion) from generation to generation.

Jesus proclaimed this when He read the Isaiah scroll in Luke 4:18-21…

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
    that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
¹⁹    and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

²⁰He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. ²¹Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”
Luke 4:18-21 NLT

Jesus didn’t read the whole Isaiah passage! He stopped just before an end-times prophecy:

He has sent me to tell those who mourn
that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,
and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies.
Isaiah 61:2 NLT

Jesus promised that He would come back.

⁶So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”

⁷He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

⁹After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. ¹⁰As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. ¹¹“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”
Acts 1:6-11 NLT

As the Apostles said in Acts…

⁴²And he ordered us to preach everywhere and to testify that Jesus is the one appointed by God to be the judge of all—the living and the dead. ⁴³He is the one all the prophets testified about, saying that everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name.
Acts 10:42-43 NLT