Thanks For God's Faithfulness
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
We in a series on Thanksgiving
We need to be thankful for answered prayer
Forgiveness
God’s future help
Today we’ll focus on being thankful for God’s faithfulness.
What is faithfulness?
It is “maintaining faith or allegiance; showing a strong sense of duty or conscientiousness.”
There is no real English equivalent to the Hebrew concept in the OT.
The most relevant carries such meanings as “strengthen,” “support,” or “hold up.” In a physical sense it is used of pillars that provide support for doors.
When used of God in the OT, the word “faithfulness” frequently refers to his unwavering commitment to his promises.
The faithfulness of God can be defined as His “determined loyalty to a gracious covenant.”
The pinnacle of faithfulness in the Bible is seen in the work of Jesus Christ, who showed himself faithful to his Father (Heb 3:2) and in his witness.
God calls of us to be faithful by following Christ, relying on him for all things
Today lets look at Psalm 40 on being thankful for God’s faithfulness.
Psalm 40
Psalm 40
This Psalm is written by King David is a psalm of thanksgiving of God’s faithfulness and deliverance.
It is basically divided into 2 parts
Verses 1-10 Thanksgiving
Verses 11-17 Petition
One of the lessons we learn in psalm is that praise is first and foremost, a testimony to others about what God has done.
It is not God who needs our praise, but it is we who need to praise God.
It builds confidence in God’s faithfulness when we cry out in our times of need.
Praising God For All He Has Done Verses 1-5
Praising God For All He Has Done Verses 1-5
No matter what our trouble or trial, it’s always good to look back and remember the goodness of the Lord in our lives.
David here remembers a time that God delivered him from his enemies or a terrible illness.
David doesn’t go into detail about the nature of his trouble, but it’s clear that it was very serious.
He characterizes it as ‘a horrible pit’ in which there was ‘miry clay’ (v. 2), images that convey a situation of utter hopelessness and helplessness.
We have no difficulty relating to such language.
Sickness often seems to be a pit into which we sink deeper and deeper.
The death of a loved one can give us the same sense, as can financial hardship and the loss of friends.
He waited patiently could better be translated as “I waited and waited for the Lord.”
It means that David had an expectant longing for God to act, rather than a patient endurance.
You can see that he is recalling a desperate time and was, in a sense, waiting impatiently for the Lord to deliver him.
He cried to the Lord out of his distress and the Lord heart the cry and delivered him and now he has come to praise God in grateful response.
He went from a desolate pit and muddy clay to a place that was rock solid.
The image here is of having one’s fee set upon a rock, making his steps secure.
It’s an image of not stumbling or having sure steps.
This means David experienced security, deliverance, and safety.
That is a reason to praise God and thank Him for His works.
In verses 4-5, David moves to a renewed section of praise.
He begins by declaring the benefit of placing one’s trust in the Lord rather than other objects of faith.
The only worthy object of trust is the Lord.
He is declaring the wonderful deeds of a faithful, redeeming God.
The psalmist confesses that the future that God intends for the people is to be so full of wondrous, redemptive actions that they would be too many to number.
And precisely because they cannot all be spoken or numbered, there is even more urgency to the telling of the psalmist’s own particular experience of God’s wondrous love.
The point is not because there are so many that one need not recount them, but rather this one particular experience of God’s redemption needs to be told as an example of the numberless other wondrous deeds of the Lord.
Give God All That He Asks Verses 6-10
Give God All That He Asks Verses 6-10
As David prayers, like most psalms of this type, promises to praise God once God delivers him from the crisis.
He had moved from the pit to the rock, and now he goes to the sanctuary of God.
How could David express his appreciation for God’s mercies?
He could bring sacrifices to the altar, but that wasn’t God’s first desire.
Throughout the OT, the Lord made it clear that He could not accept sacrifice unless the worshiper showed sincere devotion, dedication, and obedience.
In verse 6, sacrifice means any animal whose blood was offered at the altar, followed by a communal meal.
Offering refers to the meal offering that could accompany the sacrifices, and the burnt offering symbolized total dedication to the Lord.
The sin offering was given to cover specific offenses and bring reconciliation between the offender and God.
Basically, there is not sacrifice that can meet the threshold of what God truly desires of us.
In an elegant play on words, the psalmist now says, I delight (ḥāpaṣ) to do that which is acceptable to you or your will.
The term rāṣōn (“acceptable”) normally refers to sacrifices in which the actions of the worshipper meet or exceed God’s minimum threshold, and thus are pleasing to and accepted by God.
But the point is that the Lord does not delight in such actions, and moreover the psalmist delights in doing what God truly does find acceptable.
And what God delights in is a life that conforms itself to God’s teaching—a life so conformed to God’s teaching that the torah is alive deep within a person.
As a result of his position, David was enthusiastic about telling others what the Lord had done for him, and he is a good example for us to follow.
Among the worshipers at the sanctuary, the king gave glory to the Lord.
To withhold praise does not damage God, but it does damage God’s mission, in the sense that to withhold praise is to withhold saving knowledge from the neighbor who needs it.
It to with God’s righteousness, faithfulness, mercy, and love from the neighbor.
Trust God For All That Remains Verses 11-17
Trust God For All That Remains Verses 11-17
Beginning in verse 11, we see another plea that may be characterized as frightened, tentative petition.
Doesn’t that happen after we worship and we go back into the world and see all the new battles to fight and fresh problems to solve?
David turns to the Lord for help once again.
David recognizes that he is a sinner, like us all.
He announces that he has been betrayed by his own character.
His character has failed him in a threefold way—
He has sinned in act (by failing to do that which is acceptable),
Will (by failing to desire that which is acceptable), and
Faith (by failing to trust as is acceptable).
Beside being a sinful man, David also had enemies who wanted to dethrone him and so he prayed for victory.
In the midst of his plea, David suddenly interjects his desire for all God’s people to magnify the Lord.
He was not so occupied with his own problems that he forgot what was truly important.
The salvation he mentions probably covers all kinds of deliverance from trouble, but we must again relate it to salvation from sin and condemnation.
All those who have experienced this salvation have no hesitation about giving praise to God.
In verse 17, David found himself in a terrible state at this particular time, he was comforted by the thoughts of God towards him, and he casts himself totally upon God as his help and deliverer.
The thoughts of God! What a thought!
It is astonishing that God thinks about us at all.
It is astonishing that he would have as many thoughts about us as he does.
It is astonishing that he thinks the thoughts that he thinks, thoughts of peace and hope
Christ in the Psalm
Christ in the Psalm
One other note about this Psalm, many see Messianic implications in it because the writer of Hebrews uses the Psalm to describe Jesus and the permanent nature of His sacrifice..
In one sense, Hebrews goes beyond Psalm 40; the perpetual sacrifices of the past have become obsolete in terms of the permanent sacrifice of Christ.
But in another sense, the writer of the Epistle grasps the fundamental sense of the psalm and neatly reverses it.
The king in the ancient kingdom had been required to offer sacrifices, but that was not all; beyond the formalities of the worship, obedience and profound spirituality were required of him, for sacrifices in and of themselves achieved nothing.
In Christ, says the writer of the Epistle, there is a reversal; first, he affirms his intention to do the divine will (Heb 10:9), and that intention in turn leads back inevitably to sacrifice, but now to the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices.
What can we learn about being thankful for God’s faithfulness?
What can we learn about being thankful for God’s faithfulness?
First like David, we to recommit ourselves to God as a result of His deliverances for us.
From answered prayers
To salvation.
We should publicly thank and praise God for His faithfulness in His rescuing us.
We should look to God for present and future deliverance.
Life is full of trouble, but God is faithful and will get us through and out of them if we turn to Him for help.
Prayer