So That All People May Know
Summer in the Psalms • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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10 All your works praise you, Lord; your faithful people extol you. 11 They tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, 12 so that all people may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. 13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. 14 The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. 15 The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. 16 You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. 17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. 18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
Although the word for “thank you” or “give thanks” does not appear in our text for this morning, it’s hard not to see that behind everything that David writes in this psalm is a heart that overflows with gratitude. The psalm begins and ends with a resounding call to praise the Lord, but embedded in every other verse is a posture of thankfulness.
A couple of months ago I finished a recently published book written by one of my Seminary professors, Cornelius Plantinga. And it was book on Gratitude. In fact, that is the title, Gratitude: Why Giving Thanks is the Key to Our Well-Being. A whole book, 165 pages, on the topic of Gratitude.
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In it he reminds us of something important for us to remember. Take my grandchildren, Max and Millie for instance. At this point they are a bit too young but one day their mom or dad will hand them something like a bit of food or a toy and follow that up with a question like this: “Now what do you say?” And I suspect like most kids Max and Millie will be a bit slow on the uptake and mom or dad will have to say, “Say, thank you Mommy, or thank you daddy.”.... and for some time they will simply mimic what mom and dad say…likely they won’t feel grateful at all…but in time, by mimicing or through stories that are read to them, they will learn what gratitude is, and what gratitude feels like.
Like other courtesies, “say thank you”, “say please”, “say sorry”, these courtesies, Plantinga writes, are not spontaneous for young children, not even for us at times, they must be taught.
Saying “thank you” 10, 20, 30 times a day is like a social lubricant that helps people relate well to our world, to each other, and most importantly to God.
And yet its true in our day that many people will acknowledge the need for a posture of thankfulness, but NOT the need for a god to thank. People might be moved by a towering old growth cedar tree, or a majestic mountain waterfall, or the finely tuned flight of a humming bird, but they don’t know where to take their grateful impulse. Rather than thanking a personal God, they simply feel thankful in general. But Plantinga writes, being thankful in general is like being married in general, and something about that doesn’t feel quite right.
Let me share a story that he shares in his book. The high school students at Johnson College Prep on February 24, 2022, knew exactly who to thank. Plantinga tells the story in his book; a story also shared on the CBS news program called 60 Minutes.
Johnson College Prep is a high school on Chicago’s south side. Almost all the students are African American. Many come from low income households and almost all of them have to dodge violence on their way to school. As the name implies, these students are all aiming for college or university but the problem is money. Even with scholarships many students find it impossible to afford. What most of them need is a monetary miracle.
Well on that day in February the whole school was invited to an assembly. No one knew why. During the assembly a special guest came up on the stage and said that today each student would walk out of the assembly with their lives forever changed. His name was Peter Kadens, CEO of Green Thumb Industries. The reason why, he said, was because he was going to pay for their college tuition, their room and board, and all their books and expenses. , and at one point he said the auditorium full of students, “You are going to college for free.”
“Joy erupted,” Plantinga writes. “Students leaped to their feet. They whistled and shouted and hugged and danced. Free! Could it be? Already overwhelmed, the students heard more. Peter Kadens was also providing a full-ride scholarship for a parent or guardian from each student’s family.
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Every person there that day know there was someone to thank. Peter Kadens provided each of them with a great gift. One student, directed their thanks a level higher if you will. Kavarrion Newson said that he had always trusted God to come through for him. Now, he said, you can bet that “God will get some special time from me tonight.”” (p. 5-6)
I think the psalmist’s way of saying something very similar is found in v. 10
10 All your works praise you, Lord; your faithful people extol you.
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In fact, isn’t it true that part of the reason we gather before God each Sunday is so that we can give Him some special time, to thank him for his abundant goodness.
And as we read Psalm 145, at least the portion that we read this morning, we stand amazed with the psalmist at how the Lord watches over and cares for us and our world.
I mean, without a doubt, Peter Kadens gave a remarkable gift to each of those high school students that day, and of course they felt deeply grateful to him for doing that.
But why is it that so often we don’t have the same deep gratitude for all the remarkable gifts that God gives to us every day?
The psalm lists all kinds of gifts, many of them to do with the character of God himself: his grace and compassion, his trustworthiness, his promises, his faithfulness....
But the psalmist wants to make it more concrete than just his character....he wants to praise the Lord for his gifts of his provision and care.
Look at vv.15-16
15 The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. 16 You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
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As I read these verses I hear the psalmist inviting us to think about the countless ways that we experience the care and provision of God.
[List some examples: Waking up, I realize all through the night all kinds of things were going on and because I was asleep I was oblivious to it all, but here I am, its a new day, I’m awake, safe, comfortable, thank you God for satisfying my needs and desires.....fridge....food....electricity..... running water… infrastructure.... a finely tuned planet… where all the laws of physics and thermodynamics are perfectly adjusted....
[Maybe share how I felt me life was significantly affected by my neck surgery. “Cervical disk replacement surgery”…thankful for my neurosurgeon, for the entire medical community, but especially to God for creating a world where people can learn these skills, where materials like titanium and silicone can be sourced and engineered.... when I went through that surgery and when I think about how I feel know, compare to how I was months before it happened.....I can relate to what that high school student, Kavarrion Newson said, “God will get some special time from me tonight.”
You see, when you have some sense of being thankful for your daily life and the myriad ways in which experience care and provision, you need someone to thank! It’s not good enough or even appropriate to be thankful in general..... a gift needs a giver.
And of course the psalmist knows that! If you read the entire psalm you’ll find the name of God, Yahweh, or his title, or some second or third person pronoun reference to him, again and again..... 54 times in the original Hebrew text.......why? the psalmist knows that real gifts come with a person attached to them.
This week, Kim shared something with me that helped me appreciate how significant that truth is....
[ Kim’s story of finding the small plastic figurine that she gave her mother when she was six or seven years old]
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Some years ago Lewis Smedes wrote about gratitude....
I have learned about real gifts is that they always come with a person attached. My gift to someone always comes with an unwritten message: I want to be part of your life; take my gift, take me. And I know that when someone gives me a gift, she too is saying: I want to be in your life. And knowing that she is attached to it makes her gift doubly precious.
I do not understand how people can be thankful for a gift if they have no person to thank for giving it to them. We teach our children to say thank-you to their grandmother for her birthday gift; why should we not teach them to say thank you to God for the gift of their birth? (This thought is a gift from G. K. Chesterton.) Why should we not teach them that every new dawn of every morning, every drop of rain, every budding tulip, every blade of grass, every lovely thought we think, every wonderful feeling we feel, every memory of pleasure past, every tingle of pleasure present, every touch of a loved one’s finger, every hug from a laughing child, every note of a Mozart concerto, every coming home to our own place and people, every new hope that sees beyond a hard present—all of them are gifts with a Person attached.”
…and of course that person is God! The God who has revealed himself through His Word and most clearly through His Living Word, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
One of the confessions of our denomination beautifully captures this aspect of God’s gracious care and provision.
Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. The almighty and ever present power of God by which God upholds, as with his hand, heaven
and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty— all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand.
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God does this for all people....why?.....so that they may know his mighty acts....so they may know the glorious splendor of his Kingdom.....
12 so that all people may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
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God does this so that people can know Him....and not just as a Giver of gifts, but so they can also know his character....his grace, compassion, faithfulness, etc.....
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
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The psalmist knows what Paul knows, God graciously and generously pours out his gifts on all people so that all may know that these gifts are real because they are attached to a PERSON.
And friends I have the joy and privilege each Sunday to proclaim to us again and again, that this Person has come to us..... the One who finely tuned our universe so that rotating turbines can generate electricity, the One who filled the earth with an abundance of resources that make it possible for us to create and insert cervical discs made out of titanium and silicone.... this person has come to us in Jesus Christ and said, “Come, follow me. I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”
Every good and perfect gift comes from a Person… and ultimately that person is God--Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But what about those for whom it’s deeply difficult to express gratitude? Life is hard....... at some point all of us find ourselves in situations where it is difficult to feel gratitude.
Psalmist hasn’t forgotten or overlooked them...
14 The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. 19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them.
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[Invitation to come forward to receive PRAYER]
End by calling church to practice gratitude..... read this psalm every day and let it invite you to think about ways in which you’ve expereinced the care and provision and compassion of God...
Tell story of young person who’s grown up in the church but now as a teenager finds it very difficult to pray..... start with thanksgiving.