One of the things I love about the Summer of Psalms series, and this was just something
I wanted to try out now five summers ago with the first book of Psalms, because the book
of Psalms is written in five kind of chapters or five books to follow the eminimic the Torah,
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
And it also gives 150 if you're counting Psalm 119, which Mike and I think planned out will
take us a whole summer to get through.
It gives you many, many, many, many years of sermon material for the summers.
And it's also a great way to have guest preachers come in, resident preachers like we had James
Kostlik over the years, to give them a Psalm and say, go with it, follow the Spirit and
lead and preach.
But what's been transforming for me, hopefully it's been for you, is every summer the Psalms
literally meet me where I need it to be.
I remember three years ago when my sister was dying of cancer in the summer of Psalms
journey, we had that everything.
I mean, I don't think I cried that much in sermons ever up to that point, because these
Psalms meet us exactly where we need to be met.
And that's the beautiful thing about Psalms.
These songs, this poetry, these words are written from a heart, written from the heart
of an artist or a group of artists.
And if you guys are at all musical, you understand that music evokes emotion, right?
That we have emotional responses to songs, right?
And whether we know it or not, we kind of digest these songs and some songs get us super
excited about life, right?
Some songs that when you hear it, you think, oh, I remember when I heard that song, or
that song represents for you a time of life.
How many of you remember the first song that you danced to at your wedding reception?
If it's appropriate, yell out what they were.
Unforgettable.
Guy gave me, oh, that's so cute.
You and I.
The Macarena?
What?
Yeah, you and Lisa had the Macarena as your first one.
That tracks.
Good job.
Yep, that's on brand.
No, what was yours?
Lisa, I'm going to ask you.
I crossed my heart, right?
Carrie, we were I'll Be by Edmund McCain, one of his only hit.
But yeah, any others?
May I have this dance?
And she's going to do whatever you say anyway, so that's great.
So that we can go back and think about all of those things and it evokes emotions.
I could give you a laundry list of songs that when I hear those, some I will instantly
start crying, right?
It is well with my soul or a piece like a river for a lot of us, right?
That song brings up emotion.
Hero by Mariah Carey, right?
For me will always remind me of my mom.
I cannot believe I'm going to start crying just bringing it up.
That's a special song for me and my mom.
But these songs should do similar things.
They should evoke emotion and the emotion for the closing of this sermon series is one
that we should all really dive into this week is thankfulness.
It's a church word, right?
It's giving thanks for things, having gratitude for things.
But when I, this is a Psalm of Thanksgiving.
When I say Thanksgiving, what comes to mind?
If you're new, I ask questions and we interact a bit.
I like to have fun with that.
But when I say the word Thanksgiving, what comes to mind?
Turkey, thank you, got that out of the way?
Family, okay?
Others, singing.
That baby has a good one too, crying out to God.
Absolutely.
I heard one over here.
Stuffing, thank you, okay?
Let's just insert all Thanksgiving holiday foods now.
Football, okay?
Now we're devolving.
All right.
The understanding of Thanksgiving biblically is a recognition of to who we give thanks.
And I thought about that this week that one of the things that when your parents, you
remind your kids over and over is to say please and thank you.
Because inevitably sin gets into our kids and they just start to demand things, right?
Jim's shaking his head, yes, right?
They just start to demand things.
And in some ways we sometimes give into that because we do the same things.
I don't know how many times I've actually said please go to your room.
No, because if it's a punishment, I'm going to say get your butt in that room.
But this understanding of teaching our kids to be thankful is something that they learn
by teaching, but they also learn by example.
And that's really the heart of the sermon.
I could be done in the next two minutes by saying our lives should be an example to the
world of thankfulness.
But I'm not going to preach for four weeks so you're not that lucky.
That is your life.
If someone were to see your life, and this isn't the first time I've asked this question,
but if someone were to see your life, do they see a life of, I'm going to use a different
word, but it's a synonym, gratitude.
And for many different things in your life.
And what the psalm that starts off with today is gratitude for interceding when life got
really hard.
So let's go to Psalm 116 starting with verse one.
I love the Lord because He has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy because He inclined
His ear to me.
Therefore I call on Him as long as I live.
The snares of death encompass me, the pangs of shale laid hold on me.
I suffer, I suffer distress and anguish that I called on the name of the Lord.
Oh Lord, I pray deliver my soul.
Let's keep going.
Gracious is the Lord and righteous our God is merciful.
The Lord preserves the simple.
When I was brought low, He saved me.
Turn, oh soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
Let's stop there Hannah, go back.
So it's very personal.
And you can tell when someone is earnest about their thanks, right?
There's just something about saying thank you in different ways or with a different
spirit or with different tonality that means something different.
To me as a parent and I've heard a lot of you, a non-asked thanks from your kids is
wonderful, right?
When you have to remind your kids, you know, what do you say?
Thank you.
It means a little different than unprovoked, your kid comes up and says, you know what?
Thanks for that or thank you because of this.
But one of the things that we have to recognize in the beginning of this Psalm is that this
is almost sounds like a transactional relationship that if God does this, I will thank Him.
But that's not how we should look at it, ever.
That's how the world wants you to think of it because the world wants you to believe
that God is a genie in the bottle.
Aladdin had to ask genie for his wishes.
He wasn't assumed.
That's not how God is.
The Creator, Sustainer, Sovereign God does not move just because you ask him to.
He promises things.
He foretells of things that we will go through in life that before you were born, Jesus said,
I will be with you always to the very end of the age, and He says it to you, and it's
not, I'll be with you always to the very end of the age.
If you go to church every Sunday, if you jump into senior high youth of your female, if
you fill out the lighthouse position, then I will be with you.
God's not transactional in the way we believe.
God is faithful and our life should be just that, faithful and thankful, living lives of
gratitude.
But it cuts, and it's hard, especially when things get hard, when life gets rough, when
life gets tragic, when life feels impossible.
Friend God is still faithful.
He is still planning to deliver you.
He is still planning to heal your wounds.
He's still planning to pick you up when you stumble.
He's still planning to dry your eyes that have been mournful and tearful for however
long.
He's still planning to do that, yet our thankfulness gets somewhat cut up or nonexistent when
it's not done when we want it done.
But our demands on God's time has nothing to do with His faithfulness.
His faithfulness will stay forever and ever.
So when you get up there, when we get to heaven and we're face to face, I think I can guarantee
the fact that you're not going to ask God, where were you when I was having marriage
issues?
Where were you when I was preparing to go into surgery?
Where were you when I was in the lowest of my low?
Where were you when I was in the pit?
Because if I was God, now that's never going to happen, and this is just a sermon illustration,
I'd probably just step back and just let you see heaven.
Because friend, that's God's end game for you.
God plays the long game to us all the time.
How do I know?
Because we're sinners and we need it.
We need someone that's going to be patient with us.
Think about the patience that Carrie's going to need for the next rest of her life after
this week, that I have to learn to use different voices.
And not like Muppets, don't make it weird, but I have to use different tonalities so
we don't run into this again.
But I won't be able to talk for seven days.
Now some of you are like, that's an answer to prayer.
My wife doesn't feel that way 100%, but understand that there's going to be patience that needs
to be extended on both ends.
I was creating, I bought an app that's text to talk so my phone can talk for you.
And I said some of this to you last week, I had to stop and check my heart because the
first 15 things I recorded was grounding my boys.
Joey, go to your room.
Teddy, go to your room.
Empty the...
I had to stop and go, no, I do love my kids.
And so I made sure we had our nighttime prayer in there.
I told them, I have them, I love you, I'll do it with some funny voice.
But there's going to be patience.
So one of the things that I think we have to tie into a life of gratefulness and a life
of gratitude and thanksgiving is patience.
That when we are impatient, our recognition of God's faithfulness goes way down, hits
rock bottom really.
That when we aren't patient with each other, when we're not patient with God, and we do
that.
We kind of look at God and go, hey, I'm here.
Why aren't you doing anything?
Much like when our kids do it to us, there's a bigger plan at play, a plan that our kids
don't always understand.
It's the same for us and God.
There are times we don't get the perspective right away.
We don't get the answer as to why I have this ailment or why did I go through this season
or why I'm still in the pit, I have yet to be lifted out.
All of that attacks our life of being thankful, of saying thank you, of showing a life of
gratitude.
But the theme of deliverance now comes in because this is one of the ways this Psalm
shows us why we should be thankful, how we should be thankful.
So let's continue.
I believed even when I spoke, I am greatly afflicted, and I said in my alarm, all mankind
are liars.
First shall I render to the Lord for all of His benefits to me.
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of His people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.
Oh Lord, I am Your servant.
I am Your servant, the Son of Your maidservant.
You have loosed my bonds.
I will offer to you a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of His people, in the courts of the
house of the Lord, in your midst.
Oh Jerusalem, praise the Lord.
Stop there.
This is huge.
I am Your servant, the Son of Your maidservant.
You have loosened my bonds.
So that means I no longer change to whatever sin or situation I find myself as I'm calling
out.
And what I love is you've loosened it now what?
Because that's one of the biggest frustrations I have pastorally that you probably have spiritually
is that when we are delivered and we say thank you, for some of us we just fall right back
into it the next week.
That we don't learn from Him.
We don't learn from these experiences.
When we give thanks to God for delivering us, our life should be different.
The Holy Spirit brought faith into your life.
And if you are here this morning and you have made your profession of faith or maybe you
prayed a salvation prayer or however salvation came to you, you are no longer the same.
If you find that you are the same, let's make an appointment for the end of August and talk
that out.
Because salvation in the one true God should not leave you the same as before you were saved.
But salvation is the difference.
A life made right and whole in Christ.
There is a difference.
There is a different level of thankfulness.
There is a different level of gratitude before.
Before I was a Christian, my gratitude was of earthly things, of following the rules,
of not going to jail.
Those are the things that bind us culturally.
But when we become a Christian, our gratitude is every day.
Every hour we need these, we are just saying for communion.
So are we living lives of gratitude for the everyday things?
Are we saying thanks to God for giving us the opportunity to witness at work?
Are we giving God thanks and gratitude for the opportunity to sit with someone who is
struggling, not always having the answers, but sitting in the pit with them, do we give
thanks to God for that?
For that opportunity.
Because he's loosed your bonds, he will loose other people's bonds.
And then I love what the Psalmist says.
I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
What does that mean?
I will offer to you a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
What do you think that means?
This isn't a sacrifice of praise.
This isn't the sacrifice of a bull or a lamb or a goat.
This isn't a sacrifice of the sacrificial system.
This is something different.
A sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Anyone want to take a stab at it?
That's part of it.
To walk the talk, combine those together.
A sacrifice of thanksgiving is showing the world that I am accountable.
It's showing the world that there's a standard that I live in.
It's founded God's word and in an active relationship with Christ and hear me and his church.
Now, I know as a pastor that's kind of a sales job on my end that you should be in church,
so I have a job.
That's not it at all.
But our life and our sacrifice of thanksgiving is that accountability piece giving thanks
to God that we have commandments to follow.
Joey is about to turn 11.
Teddy's about to turn 9.
Jack's about to turn 7.
And I have yet to hear from them.
Take notes, Joey.
God's...
Don't ever call me that.
Dad, thank you for punishing me.
Thank you for setting me straight.
Now I know I wasn't like that as a kid.
I bet you weren't like that as a kid.
And if you were like that as a kid, you were weird.
Because we don't fully understand.
When people come to make profession of faith with me and then with the elders and in front
of the church, it's not just acknowledging the good news of the gospel, but it's recognizing
the bad news of your sin.
Your sin, not my sin.
Right?
I've never had someone go, I want to make profession of faith because Jesus saved you,
pastor.
It's a recognition of my sin.
And what are you thankful for in life?
First and foremost, it's salvation.
It's deliverance from the pit.
In order to thank God, this may be awkward and uncomfortable, but in order to thank God
for delivering yourself from the pit is a recognition that you were in a pit.
It's just like AA and NA.
It's recognizing there is a problem.
And in there lies a problem with the church and the problem with Christians.
We don't want to look at our sin first.
This song, this is not talking about anybody else.
Grace is a mono a mano conversation of Thanksgiving with his creator, her creator.
This isn't a group.
This is an individual.
You didn't come and take communion today as a group, though you did.
Right?
I'm not receiving grace for Jesse.
I'm receiving grace because I need grace.
Jesse, you need grace too though, right?
Absolutely.
And Jesse got grace.
You get grace.
His mercies are new every morning.
His grace is available to us always, and we should live lives of thankfulness because
of it.
Precious in the sight of Lord is the death of his... Oh, we already read that.
Go to the next one.
That's it.
Okay.
So understand, go back to that last line.
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people.
In the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst, O Jerusalem, praise the Lord.
Here we go.
It's a bit weird.
Part of living a life of thankfulness is coming to church.
Now, I understand church virtual, and that is a thing, and it's something, especially
during kind of the COVID season, that's something we relied on, and that's great, is being with
God's people is in some way showing that church trumps things.
I can't stand... I got to find a new word for that because unfortunately that word means
something different today, but church is one of our ways to show and acknowledge the thankfulness
we have in our life.
If people know that you're a believer because you go to church, fantastic, but watch out.
That's a double-edged sword because when you go to church and people know you go to church,
people know that you go to a monster church, it's not just your name that you're living
out.
It's the person sitting to your right, sitting to your left, so as much as it's individualized,
it's also corporate.
That we are the church because it's our way of saying thank you to God for the sacrifice
of Jesus Christ and the salvation made available to me, to my wife, to my kids, to the covenant
family, because friends, there are people out in the world that are not a part of that,
and we don't dangle it like a carrot, we don't judge it, we don't say, ooh, we don't need
those kind of people here.
The minute you do that, you're not thankful because you're putting conditions on God's
faithfulness.
It's not our place.
It will never be our place.
It's our place to live a life of thankfulness before the presence of all His people and
the precious is at the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.
Oh Lord, I am Your servant.
I am Your servant, the Son of Your made servant.
You have loosened my bonds.
I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on Your name.
When's the last time You've called on the name of the Lord and You walked out being
in God's presence, and I will pay my vow to the Lord in the presence of all His people,
in the courts of the house of praise of the Lord, in Your midst, O Jerusalem, praise the
Lord.
I live a life of thankfulness in my quiet time, in that intimate time with me and God.
I live out a life of thankfulness for my wife and for my children.
I live a life of thankfulness for my inner circle, my people that I trust.
I live a life of thankfulness for my elders and my deacons and my council, and I live
a life of thankfulness for Munster Church.
And we love to stop there, but we can't.
If we keep it all in here, we've missed it.
We also need to live a life of thankfulness outside of this place.
So as I close, and we don't talk again for another month, let me ask a couple questions.
What are you thankful for in your relationship with Jesus?
What are you thankful for about the family God has placed you in, whether that's a married
family, a single and extended family, whatever that looks like?
What are you thankful for about the family of God that God has brought you to?
And what and when are you thankful to God for when you get to bring the message out
to the world that desperately needs it?
If I were to line up 10 of your closest friends and ask to so and so, I'll just use me, does
Jim Holland owner live a life of thankfulness?
My hope is they'd all say yes, but I don't know.
It's an everyday check of my heart, of my spirit, of my relationship with God.
By the Psalm, this also says in another Psalm of Thanksgiving, creating me a clean heart,
oh God, a life of thankfulness.
We're gonna do a right spirit within me, cast me not away from my enemies, but uplift me
by your spirit.
When we ask for him to come do that, thankfulness is gonna be part of it, because it's a recognition
of his faithfulness.
So I close with this.
How are you being faithful to God?
How are you being faithful to the gifts he has given you?
And how are you being faithful to your church and the world that needs to...