Give Thanks!
Notes
Transcript
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice,
Intro:
In an ad campaign for Gila River Hotels and Casinos, a sharp dressed man meanders throughout a casino, speaking directly into the camera with a masculine, confident voice:
“We’re all looking for a place where we can be ourselves and not apologize for it. That’s free of fake, where you can let your hair and guard down, and have your kind of fun. You won’t find it at the office. You won’t find it on your phone. You gotta look where the real is, where the people are certified, authentic. A place where you drink to genuine, and pretense is past tense. Forget keeping up with the Joneses. The only person you need to impress is you. So let it all hang out because here we’re queens of confidence; kings of the uncommon. At a place like this, you can do things your way. So, you do you.”
1. Give Thanks! (95:1-7c)
1. Give Thanks! (95:1-7c)
Give thanks - there must be an object, a person, to whom we give thanks.
When we say, “Thank you,” who are we saying it to?
To Whom?
To Whom?
LORD, Rock of Salvation (v.1)
LORD, Rock of Salvation (v.1)
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
The Great “I AM”
Rock - Matthew 7:24-27
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Rock is symbol of strength, protection, assurance
We have a God who has the strength to protect us and assure us of our salvation: 1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Great God, King of All Gods (v.3)
Great God, King of All Gods (v.3)
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
Does not mean there are actually other gods. It means that God’s reign is better than false gods.
Other gods do not have knowledge; they change and are capricious; they demand sacrifice of children and works to appease them; they do not love; they have no life in them;
Isa 46:5-9
“Who will you compare Me or make Me equal to?
Who will you measure Me with,
so that we should be like each other?
6 Those who pour out their bags of gold
and weigh out silver on scales—
they hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god.
Then they kneel and bow down to it.
7 They lift it to their shoulder and bear it along;
they set it in its place, and there it stands;
it does not budge from its place.
They cry out to it but it doesn’t answer;
it saves no one from his trouble.
8 “Remember this and be brave;[a]
take it to heart, you transgressors!
9 Remember what happened long ago,
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and no one is like Me (HCSB)
New Cyclopaedia of Prose Illustrations 3152. Idols, Weakness Of
A little boy, who lived in the house of a heathen, one day took a stick, and broke all his images except the largest, into the hands of which he put the stick. When the man discovered it, he was furious, and exclaimed, “Who has done this?”—“Perhaps,” said the boy, “the big idol has been beating his little brothers.”—“Nonsense!” said the man. “Don’t talk such stuff as that! Do you think I’m a fool? You know as well as I do that the thing cannot even raise its hand. It was you, you little rascal! It was you! And, to pay you for your labor of wickedness, I’ll beat you to death with the same stick.” And, seizing the stick, he approached him. “But,” said the boy gently, “how can you trust to a god so weak that a child’s hand can destroy him? Do you suppose, that, if he can’t take care of himself or his companions, he can of you and the world, let alone making you?”
Money:
1830s, the French historian and political writer Alexis de Tocqueville observed the United States’ preoccupation with consuming goods. He commented in his famous work Democracy in America:
“The inhabitant of the United States is attached to the goods of this world, as if he was assured of not dying, and he hastens so much to seize those goods that pass within his reach, that you would say that at every instant he is afraid of ceasing to live before enjoying them. He seizes all of them, but without gripping them, and he soon lets them escape from his hands in order to run after new enjoyments.”
Idols in the mind:
The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.
John Calvin
Idols of the mind: science, sex, porn, self-identity, yourself, human reason, American Dream—these things do nothing—it is God whom we give thanks to.
Creator and Shepherd (v.4-7c)
Creator and Shepherd (v.4-7c)
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice,
God as Creator - His power and work demand a response of worship and thanksgiving.
God as Shepherd - God is our care-taker. He is our protector.
How?
How?
Sing and Make a Joyful Noise (v.1)
Sing and Make a Joyful Noise (v.1)
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
It has been said that music is the language of the soul.
Come into His Presence (v.2)
Come into His Presence (v.2)
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
The Psalmist prob. has in mind the Temple.
But we do come into God’s presence in a special way when we worship the Lord in thanksgiving.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1.8: Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms (Psalm 95)
Can a man be locally distant from Him who is everywhere?… It is not by place, but by being unlike Him, that a man is afar from God. ~Augustine
Worship, Bow Down, and Kneel (v.6)
Worship, Bow Down, and Kneel (v.6)
Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
Worshiping, bowing down, and kneeling are all postures of humility.
5258 Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grows. A proud man is seldom a grateful man; he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
Henry Ward Beecher
Today's Best Illustrations, Volumes 1-4 Seeing God’s Worth
Worship is seeing what God is worth and giving him what he’s worth.
—Tim Keller, Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 2.
A thankful heart is a believing heart, a heart that believes in God’s power, protection, promises, and salvation.
And a thankful heart sings and shouts praises to the Lord.
But a thankful, believing heart does not complain.
2. Get Rid of Complaints! (95:7d-11)
2. Get Rid of Complaints! (95:7d-11)
How?
How?
Listen and Do not Harden Your Heart (7d-8)
Listen and Do not Harden Your Heart (7d-8)
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
What happened at Meribah? Exod. 17:1-7
All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.
Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”
But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”
So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.
Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.
And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
The grumbling and complaining indicated that the Israelites did not trust God to provide for them. They were indicators of an unthankful and unbelieving heart, a hardened heart against God.
Isn’t the same with us at times? We complain about all sorts of things.
give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
3638 A Christian who walks by faith accepts all circumstances from God. He thanks God when everything goes good, when everything goes bad, and for the “blues” somewhere in-between. He thanks God whether he feels like it or not.
Erwin W. Lutzer
Do not Test God (v.9)
Do not Test God (v.9)
when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
(See also: Thanksgiving)
Don’t grumble because you don’t get what you want; be grateful that you don’t get what you deserve.
Anonymous
Why?
Why?
To Know God (v.10)
To Know God (v.10)
For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.”
God’s ways = Who God is and his works
Do all things without grumbling or disputing,
that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,
To Enter God’s Rest (v.11)
To Enter God’s Rest (v.11)
Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”
Because the Israelites complained and grumbled, God did not allow them to enter the Promised Land.
It’s interesting how the book of Hebrews refers to this incident. Hebrews 3 quotes the Exodus event and uses it to exhort us to make sure we do not have an unbelieving heart that will cause us not to be saved and enter the true Promised Land: heaven.
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?
And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?
So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
=> Those of unbelief will not enter into God’s rest of salvation today.
=> Complaining and grumbling are signs of an unthankful, unbelieving heart.
Evangelical Commentary on the Bible (Psalm 95)
To share God’s Sabbath rest, it is not enough to crowd God’s house; we must today hear his voice and not harden our hearts. ~REO White
11144 For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to—a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.
Helen Keller