Joy and Thanksgiving Go Together! Psalm 100. Lifepath Church. September 18, 2016

Transcription

1 1 Joy and Thanksgiving Go Together! Psalm 100 Lifepath Church September 18, 2016 There s an old saying that if you want to learn how to pray, read the Psalms. This collection of ancient songs and prayers will surprise you with what is ok to pray for and how God wants to connect with us. This morning I m going to read you one of my favorites: Psalm 100. Listen now to the Word of God.(Read Psalm 100 NLT). When we are raising our children and still trying to turn them into human beings we have to show them the basics: chew with your mouth closed; don t punch your sister; shouting at the table is unnecessary; use a kleenex not your finger; don t use the dog as toilet paper (you know who you are); and, perhaps the most basic of all, say please and say thank you. Yes, it is pretty common to have to remind the children in your life that when someone gives them something or does something nice for them, that they need to say thank you. Now the Bible says that God goes through the same trouble with us that we do for our children. In this passage he instructs us to enter his gates with thanksgiving (Psalm 100: 4 NLT). But just as we have to remind our children more than once, so God tells us this over and over. Psalm 106 says, Praise the LORD! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever (Psalm 106: 1 NLT). And in the New Testament, Give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5: 20 NLT). He s constantly reminding us that, in

2 2 the words of James: Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow (James 1: 17 NLT). All good things have their ultimate source in the God who loves us and so for any good thing it is just good manners to say thank you. But we are often as excited about being thankful as our kids are. We say to little Billy, Billy what do you say when someone gives you something? And the kid gives you a look as if you had just told him to do the most unpleasant thing in the world. And you sometimes get a very unenthusiastic thank you out of him. You might want to strangle ungrateful little Billy at that point, but sometimes we re not that different. We know we should be more thankful to God but we treat it like a duty. Or as if it was like taking medicine: you know it s good for you but you re not really all that excited about it. Well, Psalm 100 has an idea that can change the way you think about being thankful. And changing you the way you think can change your life. Here is Psalm 100 s big idea being thankful leads to joy. Being thankful leads to a spirit of joy. Look at Psalm 100 again. It wasn t long. Shout with joy to the LORD, all the earth! Worship the LORD with gladness. Come before him, singing with joy. Acknowledge that the LORD is God! He made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name (Psalm 100: 1-4 NLT). What if we didn t think this call to thankfulness was like being invited to take medicine (I know it tastes terrible but it s good for you, so do your duty!) What if we thought of this invitation to being thankful more like an invitation to a wonderful feast where all your favorite foods were being served magically without calories. Joy and thankfulness go together!

3 3 How so? I read the testimony of a man who was converted and began his relationship with God in the strangest way. His name is Adrew Klavan and he was raised a secular Jew. His family practiced a few rituals but no one really believed in them. God was not a part of his life and he remained an unbeliever into his late 40 s. And unlike many conversion stories, he didn t hit rock bottom. He wasn t miserable. His life was not a wreck. Instead he had a nice career as a writer and was pretty content with his life. But God found him anyway. And God did it in a way that might surprise you. He did it through literature not religious literature that talked explicitly about God no, secular literature. I believe God appeals to us and makes himself present to us in different ways depending on who we are. If you re an outdoor type person, God might use nature to reach out to you. If you re a people person, God might use a relationship to make himself known to you. I have a biker buddy, (some of you know Padre,) and can you guess where God makes himself present to Padre? Right, while riding on his bike. God reaches out to us in all kinds of ways. Andrew Klavan is a writer and a reader and so God made himself known through Klavan s reading. He says that one day he realized that the books that meant the most to him kept echoing the themes of Jesus teachings. As I said, Klavan had a good life and the source of that goodness was pulling on him. And one day he was reading a Patrick O Brian novel and one of the characters he admired prayed. And Klavan thought to himself, If he can pray, then so can I. And he put the book down and prayed a three word prayer: Thank you, God. A simple prayer of thankfulness for the goodness he had experienced in life. Klavan writes that the next morning when he woke up he had this profound sense of joy. He had discovered something the Bible is trying to teach all of us. Thankfulness and joy go together. All of a sudden all the good things in his life had a source. And that sense of joy and

4 4 thankfulness continued and deepened with time each time he prayed Thank you. Until one day he prayed, How can I thank you for all that you have done for me? And he heard as clearly as if God had spoken out loud, Now, you should be baptized. Quite a step for a secular Jewish man who had been a very content unbeliever! You can read the rest of Klavan s testimony on the Christianity Today website. But his story backs up what the Bible says: Being thankful leads to joy. Why do you think that is? I think this is so because being thankful brings us into an awareness of God s presence. Sometimes people will ask, How do you know there is a God? There are lots of answers to that question, but I know that for me, one of the most profound ways is that I just know he is with me. I am aware of his presence just as I m aware of your presence with me now. I know he is with me. I sense his presence. And if that s something that is missing in your life, I suggest that the way to discover it is to try saying, Thank you for the good things in your life. What did Psalm 100 say? Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into this courts with praise (Psalm 100: 4 NLT). Some people have interpreted that to mean things like, Be thankful when you enter God s church but I think its deeper meaning is when you are thankful you realize you are already in his presence. Which makes sense. Think back to our illustration of teaching a little child to say thank you. If you give the child a piece of candy, the child naturally focuses where? On the candy! Nom nom nom! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! But when you say, What do you say, Isabella, when someone gives you some candy? There is a chance (maybe a small chance) that the child says thank you, she will for a moment stop focusing on the candy and lift up her eyes and see you, the one who is giving it to you. And she will become aware of your presence. You were always

5 5 present but when she was focused on the candy she didn t see you at all. Now if she s thankful, she sees you. And as good as the candy might be, she might realize that you are the source of that goodness. Being thankful helps us to lift our eyes up and see that we are always in the presence of God. As the Scriptures say, In him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17: 28 NIV). We swim in the presence of God like a fish swims through water always whether we are aware or not. But being thankful will help us to be aware of his presence. And when we become aware of his presence, we become aware of his goodness. Acknowledge that the LORD is God!.. (Psalm 100: 3 NLT). When we say thank you, we re lifting up our eyes off the candy and acknowledging the giver. And what do we discover? How does verse 3 continue? Acknowledge that the LORD is God! He made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture (Psalm 100: 3 NLT). Now we don t necessarily want to be thought of as sheep. We d rather be lions or dire wolves or something. But that s not really the point of the image. The point is that God is like the shepherd who loves his sheep. He stays with them and makes sure they are protected, and cared for, and fed. The point is that we belong to him and He belongs to us. We take our eyes off the gifts and we look at the giver and we see that God is more than powerful. He s good. Our Psalm ends this way: For the LORD is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation (Psalm 100: 5 NLT). And when we realize that, we can count on his goodness to be present with us forever that leads to hope, that leads to peace, and it leads to joy. The next time life seems to hand you a piece of candy, take your eyes off the candy, look up and say thank you. And you will be aware that the Father of Lights is with you. Thankfulness and joy go together.

6 Amen 6