Here is the outline for the week.  

See you sunday unles you guys are available to put up the church signs on Saturday Morning. If so, I would say the small signs should be our main goal.   

How Should We Worship God?

Read Verses:

Read Verses:

Intro: This Thursday is thanksgiving. It is a time when we remember the things, we are thankful for. For Americans it has roots in the harvest shared by the Puritans on Plymouth Rock and the native Americans that helped them survive the year. Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens," to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

I. Our Worship Should be Genuine (1-2)

It is usually a time of family and friends gathering together, sharing a meal and remembering what they had gone through that year. All of us and our families have our own traditions. Some are regional with food and others may be time to go around the table to say what you are thankful for.

For Christians, it is a time to remember as President Lincoln said to give praise to our beneficent Father.

Let the whole earth shout triumphantly to the Lord! 2 Serve the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

II. Our Worship Should Focus on God (3)

When we give thanks in our daily lives, when we say thank you to people what are we really saying? Are we truly thanking them for doing something for us or are we just merely acknowledging their presence as they bring us our lunch or dinner?

3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us, and we are his[a]— his people, the sheep of his pasture.

It is the same thing with when we than God. Are we going through the motions to say “thanks God” or are we truly thankful throughout our lives for everything that God has done?

The Psalmist understood where he was in the world and where God was in the World. It is our understanding of this relationship that makes us either thankful or ungrateful. Our giving thanks is really a form of worship.

III. Our Worship Should Draw Us Closer to God (4)

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name.

Read Verses

MP: When we worship God, it can be a genuine experience that focuses on Him, not everything else that is going on

IV. Our Worship Should be a Reflection (5)

5 For the Lord is good, and his faithful love endures forever; his faithfulness, through all generations.

I. Our Worship Can be Genuine (1-2)

Let the whole earth shout triumphantly to the Lord! 2 Serve the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

When you smile and if it is genuine, your eyes crinkle up but when you fake a smile it is all in your mouth. May times you can tell if people are being genuine or real by their tone and body language. So how does this measure up when we are serving God.

Nehemiah had just found out that His people, the Jews, were experiencing great shame and trouble so he was distraught about the news and he tells us in the opening of chapter 2 During the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was set before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had never been sad in his presence, 2 so the king said to me, “Why are you[a] sad, when you aren’t sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart.”

In many cases, it was a crime to be unhappy around the king so being openly sad was not something you wanted to do.

I’m not sure of the mood of the King, but our God is a happy God and we can be happy and joyful knowing that he provides for us.

Charles Spurgeon said “Our happy God should be worshipped by a happy people; a cheerful spirit is in keeping with his nature, his acts, and the gratitude which we should cherish for his mercies. In every land Jehovah’s goodness is seen, therefore in every land should he be praised.[1]”

We can display our joy and gladness and the ability to shout genuinely and serve happily.

Application Point 1 Being Genuinely thankful allows us to demonstrate our Joy to others.

For Israel, God was their God. but the psalmist calls for all the nations of the earth to praise Him. This is a recurring theme in the "royal psalms" (97:1, 6; 98:2-4, 7; 99:1-2), for it was Israel's responsibility to introduce the Gentiles to the true and living God. The Great Commission is extended through the Christians now to tell people about God.

If we look miserable while we are proclaiming to serve and love God, then we look like nothing more than beat down slaves who are forced into servitude. But if we are truly thankful and joyful when we talk about God, then that will at least in part, make people want to know more about God and the freedom that we operate under and the Joy we have in our new lives.

When the apostle Paul was converted and jailed, He sang in prison. He was joyful in his circumstances and he gave thanks to God for putting him there and being in apposition to preach the Gospel to whomever would listen. Paul mentored churches from jail or on the road. He was Serving Joyfully.

David was a music maker, most of the psalms are meant to be sung.

But how can we be genuine?

Be honest with each other and most importantly God. He already knows what you are going through. Part of the reason we say thank you is because someone has done something for us that we cannot do otherwise. IF you are at a restaurant, you can’t go in the back and make your own dinner. People do that for you and you thank them for it.

You can’t get yourself out of many situations by yourself. You need help. Either in the form of supernatural help where God does it all or maybe supernaturally guided help where God puts someone in your path to help you, counsel you, point you in the right direction etc.

ESV the aim of our charge is loving that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

ESV Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Let love be genuine. How do we do that around family when it is stressful? We have to think of the good things we love about them.

The Babylon Bee, which is a Christian Satire news page, produced a book called how to be a perfect Christian and in it one of the first things to do if you want to be perfect is to tell everyone you are fine, no matter the question in church. “You are fine.” This does nobody any good because eventually you will crack like an egg under pressure. Because internally you will be focused on how to hold everything together and you cannot focus on anything, let alone joy for God but yourself and the lie you are building.

When we are honest with Christ about or needs and our wants and our hurts, he will take them and carry them for us. His burden is light. In the Pilgrims Progress Christian carries a huge sack around with him for most of the book that just as CHRISTIAN came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so, continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

Imagine the joy you can experience when the burden of your sins or your stressors are thrown into the pit and never seen again?

TS: When we are genuine and honest, we can be joyful about what we have and we can also focus on God all the more.

II. Our Worship Can Focus on God (3)

3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us, and we are his— his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Last week David acknowledged in that the lord Is my shepherd. Here he is saying something similar but here David says we are His sheep. His people.

says

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.

28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.

David reiterates these verses with a simple phrase. He made us and we are His.

God has given us dominion over the world to be caretakers, but we are just stewards. We are taking care of the place until Ge returns. We are renters.

There Is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. Their parents made them, they did not appear out of nowhere. We are all created. We have a creator, and we have been selected to be a part of His flock.

Application Point 2 If we focus on God, we can be thankful for what he provides.

Focus

The sheep don’t look at other sheep or flocks and wish they had nicer grass or didn’t have to walk as far to get there.

But We do. Adam and Eve lost focus from God and Focused on literally the one thing they could not have. And this caused sin to enter the world because the sin really is having other gods before the one true God.

David Sinned because he took his eyes off of God and placed them on Bathsheba. He put the kingdom that God had given him at potential risk. David paid a heavy price.

When God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses focuses on what He could not do instead of What God would do. Both men were self-centered.

What happens when we are God centered? Paul started at least 20 churches in his ministry and helped convert countless people, many of whom, are recorded in the New Testament. Why? because he had a singular focus. Advance the Gospel. Preach Christ Crucified. Tell people about God and his work in his son Jesus Christ and the atoning death on the cross and his resurrection.

Paul relied on God to make it all happen and he was just thankful to be a part of it.

What does focus look like? “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Have you ever lost something like your keys and you need to find them? You are laser focused until you do so. Or sometimes if you are watching a movie or reading a book that you don’t hear what is being said, even if you are being talked to.

Moses’ heart wasn’t in his call completely at first and so he made excuses to get out of it. he was focused on His sheep and his life and his wife and children.

Paul missed Jesus at Stephen’s Trial because he was focused on the Law. But he could not miss Jesus on the Road to Damascus and so he was forced to Focus on Him.

How much are you missing God and what he has done for you because you are focused on what you think he hasn’t done for you?

The focus makes us dependent on Him.

“You will keep the mind that is dependent on You in perfect peace, for it is trusting in You.”

Our Creator made us and so we should be dependent as children. Because he will provide for us.

“Be still, and know that I am God! I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world.”

The focus keeps us from being distracted by everything else

“They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the LORD.”

This does not mean we are blind or oblivious to what is going on. To the contrary, our worldview helps us understand why things happen and know that even though bad news it there, we know God will give us a way out.

I just read a story this week from the Baptist press about a church near paradise in Magalia

With the Camp Fire speeding toward Magalia in the early hours of the morning Nov. 9, Crowder, pastor of Magalia Pines Baptist Church, was loading into vehicles about 30 people who had been unable to evacuate the town. They had taken shelter at the church building with him and four other church members. "We were in the driveway planning to leave," Crowder told Baptist Press through tears, "and the entire world erupted."

There had been no fire in the adjacent businesses or woods, he said. But suddenly "the woods exploded. The Subway restaurant across the street exploded, and on all sides of us was fire."

So, the church members hurried people back inside the building and prayed -- watching flames shoot horizontally between buildings and listening to thousands of gallons of propane detonate at a hardware store next door.

When they emerged the next day, everything around the church had been incinerated, but "we were totally unscathed -- totally," Crowder said. "The fall leaves were still on the trees" on the church's property.

The Focus can give you confidence.

“My heart is confident in you, O God; my heart is confident. No wonder I can sing your praises!”

The more we trust and have faith in God, the more our focus can be on him to provide and we are not looking around for our next meal or thing to save us or distract us. focus on God goes back to the first two verses about serving God. Serving and focus on others is somewhat counter cultural in our selfie driven society.

Conclusion

Our thanksgiving is really a form of our worship. The person we are thanking deserves our genuine thanks or worship and our focus as we do so. Serving people is difficult because it is sometimes like those people are just doing their jobs. That may be the case but the still deserve our thanks when they do their jobs.

God is still running His universe and everything in it. He is just doing His job as well. He provides our needs and our wants, even though we, many times, want something more or something different.

If we are to be thankful, then we are to be happy with what we have and realize that it is a gift from the Father. His grace is enough to sustain us. and He still gives us more than that.

Next week after we are stuffed full of turkey, we will look at how our worship can draw us closer and how our worship can be a reflection of our thankfulness.

III. Our Worship Can Draw Us Closer to God (4)

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name.

IV. Our Worship Can be a Reflection (5)

5 For the Lord is good, and his faithful love endures forever; his faithfulness, through all generations.

[1] C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: , vol. 4 (London; Edinburgh; New York: Marshall Brothers, n.d.), 233.