Introduction:
A. I hope that everyone had a special Thanksgiving Day last Thursday.
B. I want to start with a little Thanksgiving humor.
1. Here are a few suggestions you might consider to bring a little fun to next year’s Thanksgiving Day meal and experience.
2. Suggestion #1: During the middle of the meal, turn to your mom and say, “See mom, I told you they wouldn’t notice that the turkey was four months past its expiration date. You were worried for nothing.”
3. Suggestion #2: You might consider bringing a guest to Thanksgiving who only talks about the tragic and abusive conditions known to exist at turkey farms and have photos with them to prove it.
4. Suggestion #3: When no one is looking, switching to a pre-recorded football game from years ago, and see if anyone notices.
5. I should mention that doing any of these pranks might result in fewer future invitations to thanksgiving. Just sayin’.
C. On a more spiritual note, I came across a good quote that I want to share with you: “A grateful heart, will lead to a great, full life.”
D. Today, I want to point our attention to Psalm 100 where we are encouraged to offer the Lord our worship, praise and thanksgiving.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness;
Come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
E. Let’s pause for a word of prayer: Dear Father, as we come now before your holy Word, we bow in reverence and in expectation that the Spirit of God will take the written page of Scripture and come and speak into our lives in such a way as to change us. This is our humble cry and our earnest plea. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
F. As we focus on the 100th Psalm today, I hope you will agree that it is appropriate to set aside, at least for today, our studies in Colossians.
1. In the section we explored last week in Colossians, we saw that Paul ended verses 15, 16, and 17, with the command to be thankful.
2. But the next section of the Colossian letter, focuses on rules for Chrsitian households, including instructions for husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants.
3. I think that study can wait while we focus on expressing thanks.
G. Many of our translations add headings to Bible chapters and the heading for the 100th Psalm is “A psalm of thanksgiving” or “A psalm for giving thanks.”
1. That sounds like a great place for us to focus today, wouldn’t you agree?
2. The 100th psalm is one of the best-known psalms in the Bible, but that familiarity can be both helpful and challenging.
3. Sometimes it is easier to study something that is less familiar and harder to tackle something that we think we already know.
H. Let’s start by considering the basic outline of the psalm.
1. The psalmist starts by calling for the people to praise God - verses 1 and 2 are a call to worship.
a. Then, in verse 3, the psalmist gives the basis or reason for our worship.
2. And then again in verse 4, the psalmist issues another call to worship: “enter his gates with thanksgiving and praise.
a. But then, in verse 5, explains the basis for that thanksgiving and praise.
I. Let’s spend the rest of our time talking about the invitation to thanksgiving and the reason for thanksgiving.
I. The Invitation to Thanksgiving
A. Notice how active this invitation is: shout for joy, worship the Lord, come before him, know who he is, enter his gates, give thanks to him, praise his name.
1. There is no doubt that this is a call to action; a call to activity.
B. We might summarize one part of that action and activity as “joyful worship.”
1. Notice the opening phrase: “Shout triumphantly” or “Shout for joy” – this is a call to exuberant, vocal, joyful worship.
2. In joyful worship, no funereal faces are allowed and no one should be looking like they have tasted a dill pickle or are sucking on a lemon.
3. No, this psalm is a cry for God’s people to shout for joy.
4. When Isaiah was describing the joy that God’s people would have after they returned from captivity, he wrote: And the ransomed of the Lord will return and come to Zion with singing, crowned with unending joy. Joy and gladness will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee. (Isa. 51:11)
C. The opportunity for joyful worship is something which lifts the spirits of the genuine worshipper. 1. And you will notice that no one is left out of the exhortation, no one is sidelined by this invitation: “Let the whole earth shout triumphantly” - the whole earth should praise God joyfully.
2. God is the sovereign ruler over the entire earth, and that is why joyful worship is the only right and proper response to God’s revelation of Himself and God’s presence and activity.
D. So, one part of the invitation is joyful worship and the other part is thankful praise.
1. Verse 4 says to “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.”
2. We must not allow the simplicity of this invitation to prevent us from grasping the wonder of it.
3. We are invited to enter God’s gates.
4. Consider how gates are often in place to prevent entry – consider the gates of a great castle, or the gates of a sports stadium, or the gates of the White House.
a. Not everyone is invited or allowed to freely enter those gates.
5. The story is told of a little boy who was standing at the Buckingham Palace in England and said to the policemen: “Please sir, I want to go in and see the King.”
a. The policeman said, “Not now sonny, just be quiet.”
b. But the boy became insistent and slightly belligerent, “No, but I want to see the King! I want to go in through these gates and see the King.”
c. And overhearing this, somebody stepped forward and said, “What’s going on here?”
d. The policeman said, “This young boy wants to go and see the King.”
e. The man reached out his hand and took the boy’s hand, and he said to the policeman: “Please open the gates.”
f. The gates were opened, and in they walked, because, it just so happened, that the Prince of Wales had overheard the cry of the boy, and he was able to give access to his father the King.
6. But listen to an even more amazing thing: Jesus gives us access to the Heavenly Father and the gates are opened wide; they’re opened wide in welcome, and we have all been given the invitation to come right in.
a. The torn curtain of the temple at the moment Jesus’ death pictures what Christ had accomplished – He opened up a new and living way into the presence of God by His own sacrifice once and for all and by His own blood.
7. We don’t have to trample the gates because they are wide open, but we do need to enter them with thanksgiving and praise.
II. The Reason for Thanksgiving
A. After giving the invitation for thanksgiving, the psalmist gives us the reason for our thanksgiving.
1. What is the basis for our joyful worship and thankful praise?
2. The reason and foundation for our thanksgiving are the things we know.
3. Knowledge is power and knowledge is the basis for our thanksgiving and praise.
4. Notice that the expressions of gratitude that come are tied neither to the psalmist’s circumstances nor to his feelings, rather they come from what he knows.
5. So, what did the psalmist know that led to thanksgiving and praise?
B. First, he knew that “that the Lord is God.”
1. There is only one God and He is the maker and sustainer of all things, and is sovereign.
2. The Lord who is God is the one who made us and we are his, his people, the sheep of his pasture.
3. Is there anyone better to belong to than God? Is there a better shepherd or better pasture? NO!
4. Even though God has made us all, not all of us have allowed God to be our shepherd.
5. Sin separates all of us from our maker, but Jesus our Savior redeemed us and reconciles us to the Father.
6. Peter declared this truth beautifully in 1 Peter 2:9-10: 9 But you are a chosen race (people, generation), a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
7. And the wonder of it is that He has redeemed us, that He has brought us into the fellowship of the Son that He loves, and all that is now ours in the Lord Jesus Christ is not an occasion for pride but is an occasion for praise.
C. Let’s talk for just a minute about the command or notion of praising God.
1. People, especially skeptics, have often wondered about why God wants to be praised.
2. C. S. Lewis, the famous atheist turned believer, wrote a book about the psalms and has a fascinating chapter entitled, “A Word about Praising.”
3. Lewis says that he couldn’t understand why it was that anybody would ask to be praised all the time.
a. After all, he said, if you go to a party and somebody wants to be the center of attention all the time, you instinctively don’t like that person.
b. So, why would I then like a God who wanted to be praised all the time and who wanted everybody to go around talking to each other, saying, “Hey why don’t we praise God?”
4. And Lewis says that it eventually dawned on him that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.
a. He noticed that the world rings with praise: lovers…readers… walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game, praise of weather, praise of wines, dishes, actors, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars.
b. Lewis says that if you think about it, the whole world’s about praise: it’s the spontaneous acknowledgement of what is valuable, and people praise what is valuable to them. They talk about what is valuable. That’s why if you just let somebody talk for five minutes, you will find out what they’re all about. You’ll find out what they like or what they read or if they read or if they don’t read, it will come out.
c. A person with a healthy appreciation of God and an understanding of what God has done should naturally turn to praise.
d. And if a person doesn’t have praise on their lips for God, then you know there is something that isn’t right about their faith or their knowledge of God.
e. Lewis concluded saying: “I [hadn’t] noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.”
5. Ultimately, our praise for God happens the spontaneously and voluntarily from the overflow of what and who we value.
D. Finally, we not only know that “the Lord is God,” but that “the Lord is good.”
1. When Moses met God on Mt. Sinai, listen to the way God described Himself: “The Lord, the Lord … compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” (Ex. 34:6)
2. The psalmist affirms that God’s goodness is the very foundation for thanksgiving.
3. Why give him thanks? “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever.”
4. This is God’s covenant love, His steadfast love and faithfulness continues through all generations.
Conclusion:
A. The thing that I want us to wrestle with is that the Lord is good, and we can shout triumphantly, and serve the Lord with gladness, and be filled with thanksgiving and praise, even when everything isn’t going well for us in physical and earthly terms.
1. For you see, even when our voices are choked with tears, when our hearts fail us, when our circumstances frustrate us, when life seems to let us down or get us down, when others disappoint us or we are a disappointment to those who love us, even then we can still find in God’s covenant love and faithfulness the foundation for joyful worship and thankful praise.
2. King David was in the desert when he wrote Psalm 63.
a. He was being pursued, maybe even by his own son Absalom, and those in pursuit wanted to take his life.
b. And in the course of that experience on the run in the desert he said, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.” (Ps. 63;3)
c. Do you hear that? Because your love is better than life, is better than human existence, is better than that which I value most—that I can breathe and live and move and interact with my loved ones—because your steadfast love is better than life itself, I will praise you. 3. That’s very different from: “Because everything is going tremendously well, because I got the promotion, because the turkey was perfect, because …” (you fill in the blank).
4. But what about the person who was alone on Thanksgiving, who went to a deli and bought enough to eat by herself or himself, who was separated from family and friends because of failure or conflict?
5. Where is the foundation for thanksgiving in their case? There isn’t any, unless God’s love is better than life itself.
B. One of the distinctive marks of Christian experience is a thankful heart, and one of the strongest indications of the fact that a person is not a Christian or not yet the Christian they ought to be is ingratitude.
1. In Romans 1, Paul wrote: although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” (Rom. 1:21)
2. Maybe someone listening to me today has been trying to figure out how spiritual things really work and maybe you have been trying to enjoy the goodness of God’s gifts while ignoring God himself.
3. Many have thought that if they got enough of the goodness and the gifts of earthly life, that that would be enough for them, but they have found that neither the expressions of goodness nor the gifts are able to fill the longings of their lives.
4. Pascal was right when he said: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” (Blaise Pascal, 1670, Pensees)
5. In other words, there is a God-shaped void inside of us. It can’t be filled by His gifts or His goodness, it can only be filled by God Himself.
C. I hope that everyone here today or listening online have come to the point and place in our lives where we are more concerned with the giver of the gifts, than we are with the gifts themselves.
1. We have so much to be thankful for, but the greatest of all things to be thankful for is God Himself.
2. He is our greatest gift and being in relationship with Him is our most important possession.
3. Therefore, we can shout for joy to the Lord and can worship the Lord with gladness,come before him with joyful songs, and enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.
4. For He has made us, we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture, and we know that the Lord is good and His love endures forever.
D. God created all things and has plans and blessings for all eternity for those who choose to accept God’s offer to be their Savior and Lord, and who turn their lives over to God and bow their knee in surrender to Him.
1. The Bible says that someday “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10-11)
2. But if a person waits until judgment day to bow their knee, it will be too late.
3. Jesus is the way and narrow is the gate that leads to Him and to abundant and eternal life.
4. But wide and broad and easy is the way that leads to destruction, and sadly, the majority of people will choose that path and will end up in the place of destruction, known as hell, rather than in heaven. (Mt. 7:13-14)
5. The way to Jesus and to eternal life is by faith and through repentance, confession and baptism.
6. And then once a person is in Christ, then they must continue in Christ to remain in God’s grace.
7. Jesus said: “If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned…Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” (Jn. 15:6, 9-10) – Let’s remain in Christ by keeping His commands.
E. So, on this Sunday after Thanksgiving…
1. Let’s declare that there is a God and that He is good.
2. Let’s shout joyfully to the Lord and enter His gates with thanksgiving.
3. For he made us and we are His.
4. But for those who are not yet His, it is not too late to become one of His.
5. And when you become one of His, then you can be truly thankful.
Resource: A Psalm of Giving Thanks, Sermon by Alistair Begg
