11/25/2020 Bible Study
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 6 viewsNotes
Transcript
Introduction
Tomorrow most of us will be celebrating Thanksgiving. This is time for family, friends, & loved ones to come together and metaphorically kill the fatted calf. Bountiful feasts will be prepared, memories shared, & new ones created. This year has been daunting for many on multiple levels. The obvious of course has been the ongoing pandemic that has swept across the world and altered everyone’s daily life in some form or fashion. Another has been the turbulent political landscape combined with civil unrest that has even driven families apart. Within in our church we have seen a lot change over the past 6 months that has tested some of our resilience to trials. Despite the stresses of this year & the seasons of life that seemingly appear to be quite erratic there is still a source of hope.
There are those of us who have been faced with the loss of income, the fear of a virus impacting our health, disagreements with the reactions of our government, & apprehension of what tomorrow might bring. Yet with all of this there is still a reason to be thankful. When we are faced with unwanted circumstances it is critical that we come together as a Body of Believers in Christ to face whatever the world might bring next. We should cling to Jesus no matter what lies behind, in front of, or before us.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down: Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.
God is our source of hope & our supreme origin of thankfulness. If you know Jesus as your savior then there is a reason to praise Him & be grateful. Tonight, we will take a break from the Book of Amos & talk about a very common set of scriptures that is offered up when discussing the topic of faithfulness. My prayer for you is that if it seems as if there is not a reason to be joyous or appreciative for your life, then I pray that God’s Word will leave you with a sense of cheer & gratitude.
1 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. 2 Serve the Lord with gladness: Come before his presence with singing. 3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, And into his courts with praise: Be thankful unto him, and bless his name. 5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; And his truth endureth to all generations.
Taken directly from Frederick Meyer who wrote:
“If we could enter into the spirit of this psalm, every day would be a Thanksgiving Day. The psalmist invites all the earth to enter into the courts of God’s house with joyful songs. In many of the Psalms the minor chords overpower the major ones, and weeping prevails over rejoicing. But this psalm is full of unclouded sunlight. The reason for this gladness is suggested in the words: We are his. His by creation, by providence, and by grace; and his also by the glad consecration of our hearts to his service. We belong to him by right; it is for us to see to it that we are also his by choice. And his ownership involves his shepherd-care. We are his flock; it is for him to lead us into green pastures and beside still waters.”
Praising God & serving him cheerfully were 2 prerequisites for entering the sanctuary. But these conditions do not just stop at entering the temple but also are expected when entering into the very presence of God.
19 Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord: 20 This gate of the Lord, Into which the righteous shall enter.
Worshiping & serving the Lord cannot be limited to just a conceptual practice because it lacks the very thing which is required for true worship. Our emotional response is what makes worship possible. God’s Word tells us that we should enter into worship with exhilaration & enthusiasm. In short, worship is our reaction to recognizing who God is & what He does.
As verse 3 asserts with the phrase “the Lord he is God” or the Hebrew phrase, “Yahweh is Elohim”, we must never forget that the one who created all, the most powerful being in existence is interested in you. Desires a relationship with you. That is a reason to be thankful. This verse paints God as the shepherd & us as His sheep.
7 For he is our God; And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,
Psalm 100 continues by saying enter into His gates with thanksgiving & His courts with praise. Courts here give us the picture that God is our King. We should enter into His presence with praise or speaking positively about or making noise likely with singing of adoration. However, before the praise comes the heart is addressed first. The praise is the audible sign of gratitude but the Thanksgiving is the internal showing of reverence.
Thanksgiving is the response that God anticipates from those who follow Him & profess to be His people. We can see several examples throughout the Old & New Testaments where Thanksgiving was an action demonstrated by those who put their faith in God. We read about David who was thankful in trials, Hezekiah who was thankful for revival, Jonah who was thankful despite the fact He tried to avoid God’s call and found himself engulfed in the belly of a fish, we saw Daniel thankful for God’s revelation, Ezra who was thankful when the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid after the destruction of the temple, the Apostle Paul who frequently gave thanks for his companions-for the Romans faith-for the Thessalonians receiving God’s Word & their faith growing-for the remembrance of the Philippians-Paul was constantly thanking God for His work in peoples’ lives.
5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; And his truth endureth to all generations.
As Hobbs & Pashcall wrote,
“True worship begins with a humble awareness of who God is. It involves recognition of his sovereign greatness, redeeming love, and complete worthiness of our trust.
Joyfulness and gratitude arise spontaneously in genuine recognition of the true God. But they are also necessary ingredients in the worship that he requires.
True worship of the true God is the basis of unity for divided humanity.”
Conclusion
If you have air in your lungs, sound in your ears, a beating hear, a single person who cares for you - you are blessed & have a reason to be thankful. The psalmist in verse 5 proclaims that all must praise God & thank God because he faithfully cares for His people. Are you one of His? If not, there is no better time to dedicate yourself to the Lord. If you do know Jesus as your savior I pray that you are thankful for Him, first & foremost, & anything else is simply icing on he cake. I am thankful for God’s grace, I am thankful for my wife & children, I am thankful for the opportunity to Pastor at Grace & for my Brothers & Sisters in Christ, I am thankful for my family, friends, and countless other blessings. When you watch or listen to this I encourage you list comment at least one thing you are thankful for. And friend, if you struggle to think of just one thing please reach out to me. I would love to discuss the graciousness of God with you and show you through His Word reasons for you to be thankful.
Dilday, R. H., Jr., & Kennedy, J. H. (1972). Psalms. In H. F. Paschall & H. H. Hobbs (Eds.), The teacher’s Bible commentary (p. 335). Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers.
Evans, T. (2019). The Tony Evans Study Bible (p. 670). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible.
Meyer, F. B. (1914–1918). Through the Bible Day by Day: A Devotional Commentary (Vol. 3, pp. 120–121). Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union.