Magnify Him with Thanksgiving

Give Thanks to God  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  25:18
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Psalm 69:30–32 ESV
30 I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31 This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs. 32 When the humble see it they will be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
Psalm 40:16 ESV
16 But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the Lord!”
Psalm 34:3 ESV
3 Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
Psalm 48:1 ESV
1 Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain,
This was the heart cry of every Old Testament saint. And now it is the longing of every true Christian. “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Do everything so that God might be magnified.
I say it is the mark of all God’s true children that they long to magnify the God of their salvation and his Son Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Gracious and all-knowing God and Father of our Lord Jesus, discerner of every heart, before whom we are all laid bare, we confess the weakness of our longing to magnify you. And we acknowledge that not everyone here has this longing. There may be yet some here that are still outside the eternal family, more eager that they themselves or other things be magnified more than you.
O God, I pray that in these next moments you would so speak as to awaken a longing in all of us to magnify you. Give to us a saving faith that loves to do all things to your glory. Lord, the heart of stone is impregnable by me or any man. But you have promised to take out the heart of stone and put in the heart of flesh, to turn hardness into tender joy.
Almighty God, may nothing in anyone’s mind stop you this morning from performing this radical surgery to make us new—that we might all leave this place magnifying you with thanksgiving. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen
Psalm 69:30–32 ESV
30 I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31 This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs. 32 When the humble see it they will be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
David said, “I will magnify God with thanksgiving.” The word “magnify” can be used in two different senses. It can mean: make something appear greater than it is, as with a microscope or a magnifying glass. Or it can mean: make something that may seem small or insignificant appear to be as great as it really is.
The one makes a small thing look bigger than it is. The other makes a big thing begin to look as big as it really is.
When David says, “I will magnify God with thanksgiving,” he does not mean: “I will make a small God look bigger than he is. He means: “I will make a big God begin to look as big as he really is.” We are not called to be microscopes, but telescopes.
There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is. The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God.
David preaches to himself
Psalm 103:1 ESV
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
Psalm 103:2 ESV
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
Psalm 77:11–13 ESV
11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. 12 I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds. 13 Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God?
We are called to be telescopes: people who make the greatness of God seem as great as it really is. This is what it means for a Christian to magnify God. But you can’t magnify what you haven’t seen or what you quickly forget. Therefore, our first task is to see and to remember the greatness and goodness of God. So we pray to God, “Open the eyes of my heart,” and we preach to our souls, “Soul, forget not all his benefits!”

The Response That Magnifies God: Thanksgiving

What sort of response will magnify him best? What must the human telescope do in order to cause God to appear as great as he really is?
Our text in Psalm 69:30 answers: “I will magnify God with thanksgiving.” When we give thanks to him from our hearts, God is magnified. Gratitude glorifies God.
Why does it? The answer is simple: Givers are more glorious than receivers. When we thank God, we acknowledge and display that he is the giver. We pay Him a compliment.
When gratitude springs up in the human heart toward God, he is magnified as the wealthy source of our blessing. He is acknowledged as giver and therefore as glorious. But when gratitude does not spring up in our hearts at God’s great goodness to us, it probably means that we don’t want to pay him a compliment; we don’t want to magnify him as the great giver of all good.
And there is a very good reason that human beings by nature do not want to magnify God with thanksgiving or glorify him. The reason is that it detracts from their own glory, and all people by nature love their own glory more than the glory of God.
In Psalm 35:27 David says, “Let those who desire my vindication shout for joy and be glad and say forevermore, ‘The Lord be magnified!” ’
And he contrasts this group of people who love to magnify the Lord with another group in verse 26, “Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves against me.”
There are only two groups of people in the world whose differences from each other are of any eternal significance:
those who love to magnify God and
those who love to magnify themselves.
At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one’s own greatness.
The Bible tells us that in the last days this kind of love of self will increase.
2 Timothy 3:1–5 ESV
1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
Therefore, while a man loves his own glory, and prizes his self-sufficiency, and hates to think of himself as sin-sick and helpless, he will never feel any genuine gratitude to the true God and so will never magnify God, but only himself.
There is an interesting connection between our text (Psalm 69:30–32) and Psalm 50 and 51 which bears this out. The text goes on, “I will magnify God with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.” Why is that? Why does the offering of some expensive animal please God less than offering genuine thanks? Psalm 50:9–14 suggests an answer:
Psalm 50:9–14 ESV
9 I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. 10 For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High,
One of the reasons God was not pleased with the offering of an ox or bull or goat was that the giver often thought that his gift was enriching God, was supplying some deficiency in God. But what seems like an act of love among men—meeting someone’s needs—is an insult to God. “Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.” You can’t give me a bull or an ox! They are already mine.
Here is man’s self-exaltation again. Even in the practice of religion, he finds a way to preserve his status as giver. In the very act of worship, he belittles God by refusing to assume the part of a receiver.
As an antidote to this arrogance in worship, God prescribes the opposite:
“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanks!”
Acknowledge God as the giver and accept the lowly status of receiver. This is what magnifies God.
That’s why the last verse of Psalm 50 (23) says, “He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me.”
So when David says in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise,”
He is simply describing the only sort of heart from which the sacrifice of genuine thanksgiving can flow.
Until the stiffness of man’s arrogant neck is broken and the hardness of his self-sufficient heart is softened, he will never be able to offer genuine thanks to the true God, and therefore will not magnify God but only himself.
The last verse of our text (v. 32) says, “Let the oppressed see it and be glad; you who seek God let your hearts revive.”
Let us conclude by asking this question: What are God’s demands? What does an all-sufficient God, who owns and controls all things, demand from the creature he has made?
His demand is great, but it is not that we be great, but that we cease to be great in our own eyes and become small that he might appear great.
John 3:30 ESV
30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”
“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
“It is not the well who need a physician but those who are sick.”
Jesus has nothing to do for those who insist they are well.
He demands something great: that we admit we are not great. This is bad news to the arrogant, but words of honey to the oppressed who have given up their charade of self-sufficiency and are seeking God.
For by such he will be found; and he will pour into their empty hearts such a love as they have never known. And there will arise freely and joyfully a sense of gratitude so genuine and so visible that God will be greatly magnified as the merciful giver of everything we have and are.
I beseech you all by the mercies of God, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility … for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you” (1 Peter 5:5–6).
O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. (Psalm 34:3)
I will praise the name of God with a song. I will magnify him with thanksgiving. (69:30)
Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is in me, bless his holy name!
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