Sunday, November 20, 2016

Thanksgiving 2016: Give Thanks! Psalm 100:1-5

[I chose this week to deviate from our series in First Peter to talk about Thanksgiving, and Psalm 100, A Psalm for Giving Thanks, seemed like an appropriate text. Next week we'll start our Advent series and we'll come back to First Peter in January, God willing.]
Thanksgiving 2016: Give Thanks!
Psalm 100
Introduction: This Thursday many of us, along with millions across our nation, will gather with family or friends for Thanksgiving.  Fewer people will acknowledge and celebrate God as the source of our many blessings. Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation is a powerful call that we need to hear afresh…
"It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." 
 It sounds like he understood “Who” we are to be grateful toward… It seems odd to hear people talking about being “thankful” in some sense, but thinking of it as a vague “feeling” rather than an attitude toward a Person. What does that even mean? For the believer, we are grateful to God, our Maker and Redeemer, the One from whom all blessings flow. Psalm 100 is a call to praise the God who is, to come before Him with a thankful heart, even though we live in a world in Chaos.
The Maine* Idea: We can come before the Lord with a thankful heart knowing that He loves us, He will care for us, and He will keep His promises.
I. Give thanks that we know God!  We should be thankful that we can joyfully approach the God of the Universe (1,2).
A PSALM FOR GIVING THANKS. Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!  2 Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!
         First of all we see this Psalm is titled, A PSALM FOR GIVING THANKS… There are a number of psalms that focus on thanksgiving, but this is the only one that is specifically called a “Psalm for Thanksgiving” in its ancient heading. It was written to guide God’s people into celebrating Yahweh and His goodness and His blessings toward them. Though they definitely overlap, “praise” is usually focused on God’s character and attributes (and we will see that also in these verses), while “thanksgiving” focuses on praise toward God for what He has done. He is involved in history, He is present in our lives. He saves and He sustains His people. His faithfulness and His loyal love are demonstrated in history and in our lives.
       Psalm 100 begins with a call to celebrate God’s work: “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!”   The cry of celebration is to go out to the LORD. The name “Yahweh” is used repeatedly in this psalm. It is the name that was revealed to Moses from the burning bush, the name that is associated especially with God’s covenant faithfulness. Look for a moment at Exodus 3...
13 Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?"  14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"  15 God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'The LORD [Yahweh], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations... (Exodus 3:13-15).
This psalm of thanksgiving is all about Yahweh. In this psalm, the name is mentioned four times in five verses. Another ten times the pronouns “He,” “His,” or “Him” are used in referring to the Lord. This psalm is not talking about a vague good feeling or an “attitude of gratitude.” We are called to praise the God who is, the God who is active in human history, the One from whom all blessings flow.
       The people are called upon to “...make a joyful noise...” to the LORD (100:1). With my poor “singing” I sometimes quote this verse as justification, but that is not the idea!  It’s the same word that was used to describe the shout of the people when they circled Jericho for the seventh time on the seventh day as the conquest began...
And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, "Shout, for the LORD has given you the city...” (Joshua 6:16).
It was a shout of faith, a battle cry anticipating the victory God was about to give. It also was the term that described the celebration when the foundation of the second temple was laid...
And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, "For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel." And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid... (Ezra 3:11).
 It was a joyful shout, a cry of celebration for what God had done. The point is God is faithful, He is trustworthy and good, and powerful to do all that He has promised.  Listen, no matter what else is going on in your life, if you know God, you have reason to celebrate, you have reason to be thankful!
       The call to praise goes out to “all the earth.” God is the One to whom all humanity owes allegiance. This song was part of the worship of Israel, but the invitation is to go out to all the earth. Humans have nowhere else to turn, “...there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That is why we need to take seriously the mission that has been entrusted to us. God has commissioned us to be His witnesses, starting right where we are. He has placed you where you are, in this church, in this community, in your workplace or school, in your family.  God plans for us to be a “world changer” right where He has placed us. You can’t change the whole world, but you can impact yours!  Have you listed the 8 to 15 people in your oikos? Pray, live a life of faith, and be ready to give a reason for the hope He has given you!
        “Serve the LORD with gladness!” The word “serve” is used of slaves and servants, and also of religious service. Mary used the Greek parallel term when she said at the angel’s announcement, “Behold the Lord’s servant…” She had a heart of obedience because of what God had done.  When Paul tells the Romans to “Present their bodies to God as living sacrifices…” he says it is their reasonable “service of worship” (Rom 12:1,2). So we should serve him, not reluctantly, but with gladness. We have reason to be filled with joy, and we should serve Him not reluctantly, but joyfully!
       “Come into his presence with singing!” The idea of approaching God, would not have been taken lightly. The OT emphasized the transcendence of God, He is wholly “other,” holy and majestic. His presence in the Holy of Holies, the most inner part of the Tabernacle and of the Temple, was so sacred only the High Priest could approach Him, and that only once a year, on the Day of Atonement.  But that all changed at Calvary, as the Lamb was slain, once for all. We remember the scene described in Matthew 27:50-51 at the hour of the crucifixion,
“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.  51 And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom...
His death provided the atonement, once and for all, that opened access to the presence of God for all who would believe. But the psalmist is writing a thousand years before the cross.  The veil of separation had not yet been abolished. Yet the call here is to come… to enter His presence with singing! The very idea that God, who is perfect, who is holy, would invite humans to worship Him is astounding. Truly amazing grace! We can come before the Lord with a thankful heart knowing that He loves us, He will care for us, and that He will keep His promises.
II. Give thanks that we know that we are His! We should be thankful that the God who made us is our Good Shepherd (3).
3 Know 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.
        3 Know that the LORD, he is God! Yahweh, and He alone, is God. The pronoun makes the point emphatically. The writer doesn’t just say “The Lord is God.” He adds emphasis, he underscores the sense emphatically by saying “The LORD, HE is God!” Idolatry is worshipping someone or something other than the one true God. If we redefine “god” as we imagine Him, rather than as He has revealed himself, we are guilty of idolatry. If we decide that we are the masters of our own fate, that we alone are on the throne of our life, we are idolaters. If we recognize the truth about God, about who He is and what He has done, we realize that we don’t deserve anything. Someone has said, “You can't be grateful for something you feel entitled to.” That sense of entitlement is pervasive in our culture, and it is the reason that many people find no reason to be thankful. I’ve found a good source of practical theology in my favorite comic strip. A Peanuts cartoon pictured Charlie Brown bringing out Snoopy’s dinner on Thanksgiving Day. But it was just his usual dog food in a bowl. Snoopy took one look at the dog food and thought,
"This isn’t fair. The rest of the world today is eating turkey with all the trimmings and all I get is dog food! Because I’m a dog, all I get is dog food." He stood there and stared at his dog food for a moment. Then he said, "I guess it could be worse. I could be a turkey!”
Are you thankful, or do you feel entitled to the blessings you have? Thankfulness is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish person says, "I deserve what comes to me! Other people ought to make me happy." But the mature Christian realizes that he deserves nothing, and that life itself is a gift from God, and that the blessings of life come only from His bountiful hand. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the God who made us. 
        It is he who made us, and we are his...  One of the things kids always do is ask questions. It never really stops, they might get more sophisticated as time goes on. “Daddy, why...” The Bible offers answers. Some manuscripts add the phrase “...and not we ourselves...” The idea is implicit in what the psalmist is saying. We are not autonomous, we did not create ourselves neither did we come in existence through a series of chance, random processes. Why should we worship Him? We are His—He is our creator.  The first verse of the Bible is exactly where many people stumble: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” If we can acknowledge the truth of that verse, that God is eternal and that He is the Creator, that means that all the universe belongs to Him. Thomas à Kempis said “If you remember the dignity of the Giver, no gift will seem small or mean, for nothing can be valueless that is given by the most high God.”  If God is the Creator, it means that humans are his creatures and so we owe Him our allegiance.  The next phrase goes further, it gets even more personal...
       …we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.  The parallel statements here are interesting. First, “we are His people.” And then, as if to avoid the pride that could so easily well up at that idea, “...the sheep of His pasture...” We are not independent. He made us, and He bought us, we were bought with a price. We are His. The psalmist uses this metaphor, which must be as humbling as it is encouraging: the sheep of his pasture. He is the Good Shepherd. We are His sheep. For Jews in Palestine that would have been immediately understood. We depend upon Him for everything. He protects us, He leads us to still water and to green pastures. He protects us from the enemy. Jesus later would say that the shepherd would lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:11). Think of what that means! Because of Him, because of his willing self-sacrifice, we who believe are reconciled to God!  So we can come before the Lord with a thankful heart knowing that He loves us, He will care for us, and He will keep His promises.
III. Give thanks that we can trust Him! We should be thankful that God is good and that He is faithful to keep His promises (4, 5). 
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!  5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.        
       So, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!”  The content of the joyful noise we are to make to the Lord is spelled out in more detail: thanksgiving and praise. Kids can teach us something about being thankful...
A Sunday School teacher asked her class what they were thankful for. A little girl said "I’m thankful for my bedroom. My younger brothers have to share a room. But I get to have a room all for myself! I thank God for my bedroom!" Next, a little boy said, "I’m thankful for my puppy. I got him as a present for my birthday, and I play with him every day. I thank God for my puppy." Another boy thought for a moment and said “I’m thankful for my glasses." My glasses. The teacher was surprised. She said "Why are you thankful for your glasses?" He said, “Because they keep the boys from hitting me and they keep the girls from kissing me!”
       We have reason to be thankful. Notice that verse 5 begins with the word, “For…” David proceeds to give three reasons that we should sing our Thanksgiving to the Lord…
       First, “…the LORD is good…” We use that phrase freely when we have answers to prayer that we want, but He is Good, all the time. The word tob was first used at each stage of the creation story, God created, and He said it was “good.” Later in the Old Testament the word reflects the blessings of the covenant, as we see God’s commitment to His design in creation. He acts in the way that is best, he promises to work everything together for our good and for His glory. That is easy to say when we get what we want, when we feel blessed. But it’s still true when we can’t see what God might be doing in the hard times. C.S. Lewis said, “We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good; if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.” In other words, we are reminded that we are pilgrims in this fallen world. We are here, sharing in the sufferings of Christ, so that we can carry out the mission that has been entrusted to us. The Lord is always good.
        Then a pair of parallel statements: “…his steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations...” His love and his faithfulness are often mentioned together. His chesed, covenantal love, His steadfast love never changes… One translation translates, “his loyal love.” I like that. Our love can be temperamental, circumstantial, and selfish. God’s love never changes. He is faithful, loyal, unchanging. He showed us His love in sparing not the Son, but delivering Him up for us all. That kind of love never changes. Even when we doubt or when we fail, He is faithful. Give thanks!
What is God saying to me in this passage? We can come before the Lord with a thankful heart knowing that He loves us, He will care for us, and that He will keep His promises.
What would God have me to do in response to this passage?  William Law said,
 "Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world: It is not he who prays most or fasts most, it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it."

Is your heart filled with a genuine attitude of gratitude to God for all that He is, for all that He has done?  Someone said, “The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.” Will you take time to express your praise and thanksgiving to Him this week?  This week, share with someone your grateful heart, and acknowledge the One to whom you are thankful.                AMEN.

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