INTRODUCTION
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• SLIDE #1
• It is good not to have feathers.
• Thanksgiving is almost upon us. IT is a great time. There is food, family and FOOTBALL!
• But most important is the fact that thanksgiving is a time where we should reflect on the great blessings we have from God.
• There are times when life can get difficult and when those times come it is easy to forget what God has done for us.
• Being thankful for what God has blessed us with is an important because thankfulness leads to contentment.
• Paul speaks in Philippians 4:11-12 about being content no matter what was happening around him.
• He had a lot of reasons to grumble if he chose to, but he did not.
• A person who is thankful will be able to cut though all of the bad in life and find the good. Paul was thankful to God even though his relationship with God caused him great physical pain in his life.
• Even Jesus thanked the Father for things when He was living on the earth.
• Each and every day we get to enter into God’s presence, the question is how are we going to enter into His presence each day?
• In every tragedy you can look at what you’ve lost and be hateful, or you can look at what you have left and be grateful. Joseph (Old Testament) was a grand example of choosing to be grateful instead of hateful in the face of betrayal. Gerald Mann, When the Bad Times Are Over For Good, p. 150-152
• Grateful or grumbling? Our attitude is our choice.
• Today I would like for us to look at how we can enter with thanksgiving every day. We will also see a blessing from having a thankful heart.
• Let’s open Psalm 100 together, we are going to look at the WHOLE Psalm today, but the good news is the Psalm is only five verses!
• Let’s examine verses 1and 2 together.
• SLIDE #2
• Psalms 100:1-2(ESV) 1Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! 2Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!
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SERMON
I. Entering with thanksgiving is a source of joy.
• One of the things I really like about Psalm 100 is the joy that is contained in the Psalm.
• Have you noticed in your life that when you are thankful, joy is a byproduct of that thankfulness?
• Think about the things you are thankful for, don’t you feel joy in your heart when you think of those things?
• One of the things we need to realize is that..
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1. Being in God’s presence leads to joy!
• We have instances in the Bible where being in God’s presence is a awe-filled sometimes fearful experience.
• This Psalm expresses the theme of joy as we enter into the presence of God.
• We are told to make a joyful noise, for some of us that is how we sing, it is a noise and it is with joy!
• Joy means that we know that God is in control and even when things do not look good. This assurance gives us joy.
• When we walk with Him each day we can enter with thanksgiving knowing He is for us.
• I remember my life before being in God’s presence; it was not a joyful experience.
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2. Our joy will lead us to serve with gladness.
• When we have joy in the presence of the Lord, that joy will lead to serving Him.
• Isaiah in Isaiah 6 demonstrates this. When he was in the presence of God, God needed someone to do a job and without even knowing that the job entailed, Isaiah eagerly jumped at the chance to serve the Lord.
• Serving with gladness makes serving a joy!
• In your worship, and in all your acts of obedience. Let there be joy in this service.
• As commentator Albert Barnes states:
• Let it not be with the fear of slaves; not as a matter of compulsion and force; not with reluctance, or gloom. Let it be a cheerful, happy service; let it be freely rendered, let it be an occasion of joy to the soul. The service of God is a source of the highest joy that man knows.
• Look at verse 3 with me.
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• Psalms 100:3(ESV) 3Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
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II. Entering with thanksgiving comes from understanding who is who.
• When we do know understand who is who in life we will have a hard time beng able to express thanksgiving.
• First…
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1. We need to understand who the Lord is.
• We are told in verse 3 that the LORD is GOD!
• When we live our lives not knowing that it puts a lot of pressure on us because we think we have to do it all, we think the world rests on us.
• It is the LORD who is GOD!
• The Hebrew employs an emphatic pronoun in order to separate God from false gods.
• Anyone else who tries to take God’s spot is a false god.
• Probably as important as it is to know who God is…
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2. We need to understand who we are.
• Verse three makes sure that we understand that we are NOT God.
• He made us; we are HIS people, the sheep of HIS pasture.
• Too many of us go through life thinking that WE are god, and that He is OUR creation and that HE is the sheep of OUR pasture.
• When we think WE are god, we will not direct our thanksgiving where it belongs; we will think that we are the masters of our own domain.
• The Founding Fathers of our great nation KNEW they were not god unlike many politicians today.
• Once we figure out who is God and who is not, it brings a sense of security to us. It also helps us to properly align the priorities of our life.
• We will never be thankful if we think we have done it all, we need to understand who is God and who is not!
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• Psalms 100:4(ESV) 4Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!
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III. Entering with thanksgiving is expressed in our attitude toward God.
• The gates, if taken in the literal sense refer to the main gates to the temple whereas the courts are the open spaces which surround the temple or tabernacle.
• This speaks of worship.
• This goes to the issue of who is God and who is not.
• SLIDE #12
1. We are to exhibit thankfulness to God.
• This thought goes back to attitude, if we have an attitude of pride, then we will fail to recognize to whom the glory or thankfulness goes to.
• If we do not know to whom we are to be thankful toward, then we will not be thankful, we will think that all we have comes from our own efforts.
• There was a story about a little fourth-grader who stood up to give a report concerning the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s how he began:
• The pilgrims came here seeking freedom of you know what. When they landed, they gave thanks to you know who. Because of them, we can worship each Sunday, you know where.
• WE should not be in a position where we are thanking you know who and prayer for you know what.
• If we are thankful for what we have, then we need to know that God is our provider.
• SLIDE #13
• 2 Corinthians 2:14(ESV) 14But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.
• Throughout the New Testament we are called to be thankful to God.
• Let’s examine some final thoughts from verse 5
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• Psalms 100:5(ESV) 5For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
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IV. Entering with thanksgiving centers on the attributes of God.
• We can enter with thanksgiving because of what our God is all about.
• Verse five shares three of God’s awesome attributes.
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1. The Lord is good.
• God is not a being of mere “power;” he is not merely the Creator; but he is benevolent, and is, therefore, worthy of universal praise.
• He is the epitome of goodness.
• In the earlier verses, God’s claim to admiration is founded on the fact that He is the “Creator,” and has, as such, a right to our service; in this verse, the claim is asserted on account of his moral character:
• Another attribute of God is…
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2. The Lord’s love endures.
• No matter what happens God will always love us. He may not like what we do but He will still love us.
• We can enter with thanksgiving knowing that. We have all made mistakes in life, some of them are pretty big, but none of them are too big to make God not love us. He has loved us from before He created us.
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3. The Lord is faithful.
• God will always do what He says, no matter what.
• It is nice to know that what is right today will be right tomorrow, conversely what is wrong today will be wrong tomorrow.
• SLIDE #19
• 1 Corinthians 1:9(ESV) 9God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
• God will ALWAYS be faith, what a blessings and what a great reason to be thankful.
• Wouldn’t you like to have people in your life who were that way?
CONCLUSION
• Are you thankful for what God has given you? No matter what our circumstances are, we can find something to be thankful for. We can be thankful for the salvation that we can have through Jesus.
• When the Pilgrims celebrated their first thanksgiving, they could have just complained about how rough things had been for them, but instead they took time to give thanks. Paul could have complained about his circumstances, but he thanked God.
• One way that you can show God that you are thankful is to give Jesus your life and devotion. If Jesus is not you Lord and Savior, today is the day to change that!
