Give Thanks: Restoring the Art of Giving Thanks

I know.

It's.

You know,

gratitude is one of those things that's easy to do.

When things are going well.

It's a little more difficult to muster when they're not.

But it's vital regardless.

And just by way of pastoring this church,

I need to let you know that some of you are aware that Lisa Davidson,

is celebrating this Sunday in heaven with her Heavenly Father.

It is a praise. There's it.

If you're familiar, if you're blessed enough to know Lisa,

you will know that she has battled cancer for years.

With a steadfastness of faith

that has been unwavering.

And her family has loved her through the whole thing.

With a steadfast faith that has been unwavering.

She was ready to go be with Jesus a while ago,

and God finally granted her that request.

They were all together

with her.

And, as I got to be with her,

and we shared communion a few times together.

Her heart was always walking

closely with her Lord, and now she's walking face to face.

And I told Kurt this secret.

I've known three men

who have walked with their wives through years of what you've done.

I have only known three that have done it well.

He was one of them.

And I told Kurt and Lisa both.

I said, Kurt, you you are a picture for me

of, of God's

faithfulness to his people.

You're a picture of me to Jesus because the Scripture says, husbands,

love your wives as Christ loved the church and give up yourself for her.

And he did for years.

And Lisa, for me, was a picture of the church,

because she loved her Lord

and submitted to his authority, even when it wasn't easy.

And together they're this beautiful picture.

Even in her passing

of Christ in His church.

And so we rejoice with the Davidsons

because they are aware of their wife,

mom, grandmas fullness and freedom.

They were all in church as a family in mass.

Verse six,

giving thanks and gratitude

when it wasn't easy.

Father. Thank you.

You are a good God.

Good. Just.

And you deserve our thanks and gratitude.

Thank you for your faithfulness.

Thank you for your mercies are new every morning.

Thank you for Lisa's faith, for the Davidsons faith.

Thank you for your faithfulness to them.

That was even greater.

I thank you that Lisa was able to hear those words that we all deserve to hear.

Well done, my good and faithful servant.

Come enjoy your master's happiness.

Amen.

Thank you, father, for our hope of salvation

and for the blessed hope of being together with you.

Thank you for the reality and the security that is heaven.

Draw our hearts. There.

We love you.

We thank you.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

I want to jump into a passage of Scripture

in the Book of Psalms, chapter 100.

Psalms 100 · chapter mention

So if you have a Bible and brought one with you, I'd invite you

to turn there.

The art of giving

thanks is truly that an art?

Problem is, it's a lost art, and in its place

is the art of offense and complaint.

Tozer says this

when it comes to life,

the critical thing is this isn't the record.

This is someone else. And I shared it last week.

But the critical thing is, is, is whether in life

is whether we take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

We talked about that last week

in further expression of that.

Tozer said, this gratitude is an offering

that is precious in the sight of God.

He desires his people to be people of gratitude

and to show and express gratitude primarily to him.

William Ward says this to feel gratitude and express

it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it

like it doesn't do anybody any good.

If you don't give it, we can feel it all we want,

but until it's given, it doesn't do anybody any good.

I like to say it like this.

The more you practice gratitude,

the more you will see how much you have to be grateful for.

Does that make sense?

All through Scripture, we're commanded to give thanks

and to express gratitude.

If you've ever wondered about God's will for your life,

the Bible's very clear, and it's pretty simple.

First Thessalonians 518.

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will.

It does say,

give thanks for all circumstances, because we all know

there are some circumstances that aren't good.

But in those circumstances, while you're in them, give thanks

not for the circumstances, but for who God is in the circumstances.

Does that make sense?

So God's will is that we give thanks

every morning.

I've made it a practice.

Before I say anything else.

I've taken a Jewish prayer and kind of adapted it for me.

And every morning this is my my

how I start my day and how I start my list of prayers.

I give you thanks, O Lord,

that in mercy you have restored our souls within us.

In this is your compassion greatest, your faithfulness.

Thank you for the rest. You've given us the night

and for the breath that renews our body and spirit.

May we renew our soul with faith in you, source of all healing.

That's how I start my day.

And that leads me into my prayers.

And it's a simple statement of gratitude

for who God is and what God's done.

Psalms 100.

It's it's known in some some

church circles as the old 100th.

It is

the greatest scripture we have in a statement and a teaching on

on what God desires in worship

and how to do it.

And so Psalm 100

make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth.

Serve the Lord with gladness.

Come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord he is God.

It is he who made us, and we are his.

We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him.

Bless his name. For the Lord is good.

His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

When the people of God in Jerusalem would gather before the temple to go into

to to worship in mass, they would start by chanting this Psalm.

This song.

And it starts

with a command.

And God has said,

I want you to understand who I am

and how I want to be approached.

It's called worship,

and God starts it off with this.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

All the earth.

Serve the Lord with gladness.

Come into his presence with singing.

That's how he starts.

There's a command here, and the command is to worship God.

To worship.

He says there's three things involved in this.

Shout with joy and exuberance.

That's how worship begins.

To shout with joy and exuberance.

It leads to serving God with gladness,

and it puts us in a position to always give thanks.

This is from God's own heart

to the inspiration of the spirit through the writer of the Psalm.

So this is how I am to be approached.

This is what worship means.

God dictates it. God sets it.

God determines it.

It's our job to look at what God has said

and to bring our lives in line with what God has said.

Worship is giving thanks to God.

In other words, it's expressing gratitude for who God is.

That's why the writer is Paul.

In Thessalonians you say, give thanks in all circumstance

because you're giving gratitude for who God is in the circumstance.

That makes sense. That's why the Davidsons

could be at church and worship and give gratitude to God.

In the circumstance of Lisa's homegoing.

Because it's about who God is

and expressing gratitude for who God is.

God desires worship

according to his word to begin with an outburst of joy.

Yeah,

an outburst of joy means, Larry, a loud response

in light of God's greatness and in light of God's works.

God desires this is not an issue of church tradition.

It's not an issue of your comfortability.

It's an issue of obedience to what God has said and how we approach him.

It's an outburst of joy and a love response

in light of his greatness and the light of his activity.

Yeah. It's what God says.

And so worship

begins with, as Psalm 101 says,

shout for joy

to the Lord.

And the other translations

say, make a joyful noise.

Literally an exuberant

whole heart and praise.

You all look completely unimpressed.

Praise the Lord. Ha!

Thank you Jeff.

If that.

And I realize I'm not sitting in God's position.

But if you looked at God like you're looking at me.

Holy.

Nike's.

An exuberant,

wholehearted praise.

That word exuberant.

If I were to put words to that word, it would be a visible

and vocal engagement.

A vocal and visible engagement.

I am fully here.

When the kids were little.

You parents.

Hopefully you understand that you have good kids.

You understand it.

When the kids are little and mom or dad would come home.

If you

got good kids, what do they do when they hear the door open?

You say, man,

I remember Calvin Wyatt being little and I come through the garage door

and they would run down the hallway

and I would get down on my knees

and they would hit me and almost sometimes knock me over.

And I so look forward to going home. Why?

Because there was going to be this visible and vocal engagement

of little ones who loved me.

Yeah.

Amen.

If I came home and my kids were like this.

You say, well, go find another home.

I'm gonna go get me some good kids.

Okay.

Now, my kids are old and grown, and they're out of the house.

I don't have that anymore. But what I do have are my bulldogs.

This is the best thing.

Other than kids are dogs.

Because when I come home,

diesel and Daisy are waiting at the door and leave.

Wiggle like this.

They're so excited.

Before I even say hello to Shelley, I get down on the floor

and we all wiggle together and I love it.

Make a joyful noise.

Exuberant.

It's got to be visible and vocal.

We're coming at the presence of God.

I realize

that for some of you, this is difficult

because you would say, well,

I'm just more reserved in nature.

We gotta realize something.

Worship is not about you,

and it's not about us.

Worship is not about your temperament.

Worship is not about your personality.

Worship is not about your church tradition.

Worship is not about your regular practice.

It's not about what style you like or don't like.

We gotta

realize worship is wholly and solely about God,

and how he has asked his kids to enter into his presence,

and God wants it to be exuberantly expressed.

You think

when you get to heaven

and you're around all the people, that of the multitudes and the angels,

and they're praising God with exuberance,

that you're going to sit there with a scowl on your face.

Kind of putting in your time

until the music and stuff is done, and we get on to the real reason

why we're there.

Now. And I get it, man.

When I was young, I had a drug problem.

I was drug to church every day.

It's just

it's an easy church joke.

You've probably heard that, but you probably told that

in your old Sunday school class. Bob, it.

We were there all the time,

but it was in one of those really old traditional Baptist churches,

and you just you didn't make a noise when you went to church.

You didn't.

You do nothing.

You sat there like a good little person.

And like the only time you would raise your hand in that church

is if you had to scratch your head.

You'd think twice because you didn't want people

to think you were getting too crazy.

You know what I'm saying?

So I get it.

It's just not how God has said.

This is how you approach me.

So I understand when people say, you know what?

I just that's that's just it's just not me.

Well, understand we're worshiping a God who was totally other than you.

And so we can do it in a way that is totally different than you.

Because that's what he's asked. Us?

I loved being it when we were little.

We, me and my brother, my sister.

We were always in church with my parents.

We all sat right next to each other, all five of us.

And I love that

because I learned so much from my parents sitting with them in church.

And my dad sang loud.

The problem is, my dad can't carry a tune in a bucket.

And when I was young, it was a little bit cringing and I was like, oh,

dad, can you just.

My dad told me you said, Carl,

the Bible says make a joyful noise.

And that's what I'm doing.

And it was a noise.

What I loved about my father

is a sergeant in the Marine Corps that served his country in Vietnam.

And when he came back to the world,

he said, every day, daddy, I love you for this.

You taught me this.

He said, every day is gravy. Yes.

And my father was unintimidated by anybody.

He didn't care about the opinion of the sheep around him

when he was worshiping his God, that he'd give him another day as gravy.

My dad was not a great singer,

but he is a great example.

It's second Samuel six.

You know your Bibles.

You know. Second Samuel six.

The Ark of the covenant had been outside of Jerusalem.

What was supposed to be.

And David, the second king of Israel, had defeated the Philistines

and was bringing the ark of the covenant, which is it's a weird

kind of word called the ship, kind of glorious,

like where God's presence rested over the Ark of the covenant,

the cover of mercy, at in the Ark of the covenant.

And it was bringing the covenant, the Ark of the covenant, back

into Jerusalem.

And the Bible says, you would take like seven steps,

and they would stop and they would worship.

And David, in his exuberance,

to be able to be in the presence of God again

and have the ark back in Jerusalem, everyone would stop and they would worship

and have this huge worship setting, exuberant, visible and vocal.

And he he's like, took off most of his culture.

So giving him freedom and worship and worship.

And his wife Michelle was watching him from the window

and she says of him, David, calm down.

You're the king.

You need to have some reverence and some dignity of your life.

And he looked at her and said, woman, I will become even more undignified

in the eyes of man, because God has chosen me.

And from that day on, that woman,

the Bible says, was bitter and barren and.

Don't have a bitter, barren heart

when it comes to worshiping God and being in his presence.

Exuberant,

expressive,

visibly and vocally.

I get it that sometimes

the weight of life is so overwhelming and it's heavy.

I'm. Psalm 100 reminds us not to minimize that weight,

not to minimize.

It's not a minimization of what we're going through.

It's just setting that aside for a moment.

You'll come back to it.

Don't worry. It'll still be there.

But for a moment, set that aside.

And worship

expressing gratitude to God for who he is,

not about your earthly circumstance.

It's this joyful, exuberant worship

that lifts us from earth to heaven.

It's it's the it's the real way of,

of of living out.

Colossians three, verses one and two.

Since then, you have been raised with Christ.

Set your hearts on things above,

where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

This worship is intended to draw our hearts and minds.

They're not here.

And so set it aside for a moment.

It'll be there when you get done.

But for a moment, all attention, all thankfulness, all gratitude.

Is there for it. Yes.

Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers

ever on this planet, says our happy God should be worshiped by a happy people.

A cheerful spirit is in keeping with his nature.

It's not because the things in our life are all happy.

It's because God is God.

Yeah. Yeah.

Who creates joy in the heart of the worshiper,

even in the most difficult of circumstances?

The Bible says in worship.

Shout to the Lord all the earth.

And then it says, serve the Lord with gladness.

Get me on this. Hear me.

Proper worship leads us to service.

Proper worship.

We don't walk out of worshiping God and think, I feel good.

Now if that's the feeling you've got a wrong

because it's not about you.

It's about God.

And when I come into the presence of Almighty God

with exuberant God, I just want to be in your presence.

You are so good, and you're so gracious and you're so merciful,

and every good thing I have comes from you.

My attitude ought to be, God, how do I employ myself

for you and your kingdom?

Amen. Amen. Praise that worship.

The word serve in the Hebrew means an utterly active labor.

Worship brings us into God's presence with an exuberance over

who he is and an engagement with the world around us.

Yeah.

If our worship doesn't lead us

to the desire of serving God,

we're not worshiping as God desires to be worshiped

in verses one and two.

We have one command expressed in two ways.

The command is to worship God.

The two ways are with gladness, exuberance, and expression.

The second way is to serve with gladness.

And if those are the commands of Scripture about what worship is to worship God,

visible and vocal engagement with exuberance, and to serve,

if those are the two commands.

How obedient are you?

If God has said

you worship with exuberance of visible

and vocal engagement.

And you serve my people with gladness,

it's beginning to worship.

How obedient.

She's got to be

more than putting in her time.

And that's just how we feel walking out the door.

True worship is rooted in who God is.

And so verse three of Psalm 100 says, know that the Lord is good.

It is he who made us, and we are his.

We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Worship is rooted in the knowledge of who God is.

To rightly worship means I have to understand God's

heart and God's character.

And when I understand his heart in his character, I will be drawn into this.

What is his heart in his character?

It is he who made me.

That's who God is. God

chose to make me.

I'm not an accident.

Even when pregnancies are unplanned,

they're not illegitimate. Yes.

What I know

is Psalm 139 that says, I have been fearfully

and wonderfully made, knit together in my mother's womb.

It is he who made me.

Yeah, and it is he who made you.

He put you together exactly like.

And to question how he made you is to hold God in contempt.

He made you.

Amen.

What do we know about God?

That I am his.

For me, that means I'm the son of a king. Yes.

You are the son or the daughter of a king.

You have a relationship with the father through the son.

And because I am a son of the king, I have a place and I belong.

And there's been a lot of times in my life when I didn't have a place

and I didn't belong.

But because of who God is and I am his,

I always have a place and I always belong in his family.

Yeah, he's a good God.

Good God. Good. What do we know about God?

He is my shepherd.

We are the sheep of his pasture.

He is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

So I will. He is my protector.

He is my provider.

He is my leader.

So I'm never lost. Yes.

He's a good God.

Good God.

And he deserves to be worshiped greatly. Yes.

I was thinking of praying over this this week.

And this is what I came up with a team.

God will be worshiped, intimidating.

A great God must be worshiped with grandeur and exuberance.

My very well.

And I just wonder

how many times God church

worship him as a team. God.

Which God do you worship? You?

A God of timidity

or a God of greatness and grandeur?

And so God says,

listen, if you're going to worship me, this is how.

And the

writer of Psalm 100 includes this in verse four.

And this is significant here.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving in his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him and praise his name.

Says, when you worship, this is your attitude.

But this is how you approach God in worship.

Says you enter his gates with thanksgiving, in his courts with praise.

When his people gather at the temple and recite verse chapter 100,

the old 100th, they would often

start with what we see in verse four,

and they would call out, enter his gates

with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him, and praise his name.

And then the community would recite Psalm 100,

because they knew that it was important.

The attitude and the energy and the engagement with which they brought to worship.

Psalm 120 21I

rejoiced with those who said to me, let's go to church.

Yeah,

I was glad, another translation said

when they said to me, let's go to the house of the Lord.

Why? Because there's excitement

involved in the approach of worship.

There's an anticipation.

There's an electricity.

There's I I'm so glad it's Sunday.

Yeah. I'm so glad

we get to go to church today.

I can worship God on my own, and I do.

But now we get to do it together.

And there's nothing like the community of God's

doing it to go, hey, and what we're going to do in heaven?

Yeah.

God wants people to be excited when they come to worship to get her early.

Not so they can save their seat.

That's right.

Because there's an anxiousness, a readiness.

And I can't wait.

I wonder sometimes

about our attitude.

As we drive here.

Oh, we park, get out, walk up,

sit down.

I've been realizing what's going on.

So engaged

rather than aware.

Again,

our worship is not based on our circumstances.

Is based on who God is.

And as a result of that, verse five, worship,

worship because of who God is.

Look what the Bible says, for the Lord is good and his love endures forever.

His faithfulness continues through all generations.

This is where the psalmist started in verse one.

Shout to the Lord, for he is good.

Worship him with gladness.

And then he talks about what that looks like and how to approach.

The melody ends where he started.

Why do you worship God with exuberance and expression?

Why do you come with anticipation? Energy?

Why? Because what's the Bible say?

Because why?

Read it with your mouths open.

Like you know how to do this. Why?

Because. Why?

Because the Lord is good.

That's why.

But what if your circumstances are

that God is still good?

But what if this isn't how I'm.

Where you come from?

God is still good.

And he's so good that his love endures forever.

Ever.

You're not going to walk yourself out of God's love,

and you're not going to walk yourself into it.

Not by what you do or don't do.

His love endures

because he's faithful,

faithful to each generation.

We worship God for who he is.

All through the Bible.

The Bible says the same things over and over and over again.

Worship the Lord this way. Why?

Because he is good.

First Chronicles 16.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is.

What is good is love.

What are all through the Bible.

For his love is never ending.

Psalm 156 give thanks to the Lord of heaven. Why?

Because his what?

His love endures forever.

He is always faithful.

Lamentations.

This is one of the saddest books in the entire Bible.

If any of you were here with us through the judges

study judges ended kind of on a low note.

That's a tough book.

Lamentations is even sadder.

Lamentations is a lament over the destruction

of Jerusalem, the destruction of God's people.

It's a

brutal accounting of what's going on.

When I started Flip Side,

I was going through my flip journal on all the daily readings of the day.

I started flip side it publicly open it up for September 11th, 2005.

Lamb I was it took me to Lamentations and I thought, Lord,

I was hoping for a little something more inspirational

the future you would lead me to on the day we opened the church.

Lamentations. That's a terrible book.

Like what?

What are you saying over our church?

Like you lament that we're starting to like.

I was reading all this stuff in a.

And then I came to verses 22 and 23.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They're new every morning.

Greatest is faithfulness

in the middle of the lament over the destruction

of God's land and God's people in it.

The writer of Lamentations says, no, no, no, let's not forget

the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

It's brutal right now,

but his mercies never come to an end.

His mercies are new every morning.

Father, great is your faithfulness.

That verse

means more to me now

than I ever dreamed it could.

As I have seen this time

and time and time again,

I have seen God's mercies

unending and new every morning

for me and for you.

I realize God's faithfulness even when we are not.

Though we are faithless, he remains faithful.

It means more to me now than it ever has,

and I am forever grateful to my God.

You and I will be even more

undignified in the eyes of man

so that I can worship my God

the way he's asked me to.

One of the best ways that we can do this, and actually, really,

the only way Jesus asked us to remember him is through communion.

And so what I want to do, I want to transition us to remembering Jesus

and take communion together.

I'm going to lead you in that, Tim, with you.

I got a communion cup over there.

You get that for me, please?

I didn't bring that up.

Thank you.

Tim, I appreciate it.

As a family,

you all want us to remember Jesus

and to express our

gratitude for the father has done.

Let me just preface with this.

This is simple.

Juice and a wafer.

There's nothing special about the elements.

What's special is the knowledge

and the faith we attach to them.

But to do that, one has to have a relationship with Jesus.

So these are reserved for those who have already

come before the father and admitted their sin.

And that's Jesus accepting what Jesus did on the cross

and accept him as their Savior.

So if you've not done that yet,

I don't want you to worry about this.

I would encourage you in this moment

to come before God and by faith

and in this moment right now, right

to say, God, I am sorry.

I agree with you that I am a sinner.

I've broken your law.

I accept what Jesus did on the cross

so that I can be forgiven.

And I ask your forgiveness.

Come into my life.

Make me a new person.

I accept you, Jesus, as my leader

and my Savior.

If you've done that,

this is for you.

And it's for me.

And I want us to remember with gratitude

the way to salvation that has been made available to us.

It was through the body and the blood of Jesus.

Jesus gave

us these symbols, and on the night that he was betrayed

into the hands of the men who would beat him and crucify him,

he set that aside,

and he stepped into a moment of worship.

He knew what was coming,

but he drew his attention to the will of the father.

I'm asking us.

Set it aside for a moment

and just come into this presence.

Of the will and the way of the father.

And remember Jesus,

it's Jesus.

The Scripture tells us

that took the bread and he lifted it up to heaven,

and he gave thanks.

And then he broke it.

He said, this is my body which I'm giving for you.

Do this and remember me as you do it.

Jesus.

Thank you

that we sit here

as people, as the

as your flock, in gratitude,

we just tell you. Thank you.

We're grateful for what you endured.

We're grateful for your obedience.

We're grateful for your humility.

We're grateful that you endured the pain and the shame of the cross.

We're grateful that you laid your life down,

and we're

grateful that you picked it back up.

And we remember you.

Thank you.

The Bible tells us that during that meal

that they also shared a cup.

And Jesus said, when he held that cup,

he said, this cup.

Is the sign of the new covenant of my blood

that I'm shedding for you, so your sin can be forgiven.

He says, do this

and remember what I've done for you.

Take the cup. For.

Jesus.

Thank you,

thank.

It's in gratitude that we come before you.

Thank you that you laid your life down.

Thank you that you took it back up

so that we can have a relationship

through you with the father,

and the certainty and the promise

that our lives will be laid down one day, only to be picked up again.

And resurrection.

We're grateful for what you've done.

We sit in gratitude for who you are

and what you've secured through your death and your resurrection.

You're a good God,

and we remember your goodness today.

In all the circumstances that surround our lives.

We will choose to give thanks

because that's your will for us.

You're a good God

and we're grateful

that your love endures forever.

We're grateful that your mercies are new every morning.

We're grateful that your faithfulness never ends.

We're grateful that you are our Shepherd,

that you are a provider, our protector, our director, our leader.

We're grateful you didn't have to do any of.

But you did.

And we're grateful.

And so we this morning

will choose to be obedient.

And we will choose to honor you for who you are.

And as you have requested of us,

we will, with our whole heart, visibly

and vocally engage in expressing gratitude to you.

Oh, father,

be pleased in our expressions of gratitude.

Because we say thank you,

we got nothing else to give you

but a heart of thanks and gratitude.

We got nothing else that we can bring to our King,

but an attitude that says thank you.

A heart of gratitude.

And so we bring it

with all that we are.

And your name I pray. Amen.