Celebration Sunday - God is Good and We Thank Him. (Kirk Giles)

Well, good morning, Forward. Happy 91st birthday Forward

Church. You're looking pretty good for

91 years old. I got to say, if you're new here

today, I want to welcome you. We're thrilled that you've

joined us here today. This is a little family party

that we're having and we hope that you feel welcome and

joining the party with us. A couple things I want to just

say before we get into the message today.

First of all, the other day my wife said, Kirk, I know

Celebration Sunday is a big day, so I bought you a brand new

shirt and I want you to wear it on Celebration Sunday.

Don't get excited yet, Andrew. It gets better.

It gets better. So I get here, I put on the

shirt like a good husband should do when his wife tells him to.

And then I'm up here at before the service starts helping to

get things ready for the baptisms that are happening a

little bit later on. And I look over and I see

another guy who has the exact same shirt on.

And then I see another guy who has the exact same shirt on.

Then I discovered that the women in my discipleship group lobby

together. Guys, stand up all the guys in

my discipleship group. So you can thank Katie Gibbons

for that. 2nd, we have a new member to welcome to the Forward

Church family. Would you just join me in

welcoming Sandra Gouda as member of our church?

And last, we have a ministry here in the church called the

Forward Leadership School. And this year we have several

people who have completed a three-year journey of walking

through our leadership school program, our second group to

graduate. Now not all of them are able to

be here today, but those of you who are here, if you would just

come on up. We have a few of them who are

here, and I just want to give them a gift and recognize them

for their three years here. So we have Jared and Lisa, and

there's Nick back there. No, you can go back down.

Jared. I know you don't want to.

Thank God, Lisa. Hey, Nick.

Thanks, man. All right.

Yeah, take your Bibles open up to Psalm 138.

That's page 547. If you're using one of the

Bibles in the seat around you, Psalm 138.

And just as you're opening there, I want to ask you this

question. What are the best celebrations

that you've ever been part of? Maybe you think about a cultural

celebration. I, I live in Paris, and in Paris

we have different cultural celebrations that happened.

The Paris Fair is the biggest waste of money that you will

ever have. We also have the Maple Syrup

Festival and I know some of our people I ran into at the Maple

Syrup Festival in Paris. It is like such a bizarre small

town thing. The Maple Syrup festival in

Paris had all these display booths out and all these food

trucks and two tables that actually had Maple syrup.

And so, yeah, we've got these cultural celebrations that that

we have. Maybe it's an individual

achievement in your life, maybe a graduation after finishing

school. I think that the best

celebrations are the celebrations where you share a

common passion with the other people who are in the room,

whether it's your family, when you celebrate Christmas or

birthdays together, whether it's some type of a group

achievement. There's just something about

winning together as a group that feels really special.

Well, over the last number of years here at Forward, we have

marked the end of June as Celebration Sunday, a time for

us to celebrate together as a church family.

But I I want to make something really clear right up front.

We are not here today to celebrate our achievements.

This is not a day for us to pat ourselves on the back and say

look how great Forward churches because everything that we are

seeking to celebrate today is simply because of the goodness

of God. The Bible tells us in James

chapter one that every good and perfect gift is from above,

coming down from the Father of lights who's who does not change

like shifting shadows. Everything that is good about

this church family is because of the goodness of God.

Every good gift we have received is because of Him.

Now when you have a name like Forward Church, it's really easy

to keep looking to the future and to say what's the next

thing? What's the next mountain to

climb? What's the next vision to

accomplish? What's the next ministry?

How can we meet the needs of more people and reach more

people with the good news of the gospel?

But one of the most critical things that we can do as a

church is to have a habit of pausing and looking back and

enjoying what God has done amongst us.

Now, when someone's been good to you, there's a lot of different

responses that you can have. You can sit there and go, well,

I did a lot of the work already. They just kind of helped out a

bit. That would not be the right

response. With God, you, you can take it

for granted and you can just go, well, of course, God's supposed

to be good. Of course he's going to be good

and show his goodness to us. And so you just learn to take it

for granted. It's a little bit like when you

were a kid at Christmas and, and, and in the first early

years of Christmas, you get super excited at all the things

that you got at Christmas time. But then as time went on, you

started to go, it's Christmas and there's more presents at

Christmas and you just assume you're going to get more

presents at Christmas time and you start taking it for granted

that it's always going to be there.

Or maybe your response to someone's goodness to you is

just a polite thank you. It's like sitting at the dinner

table and, and saying thank you for supper because your mom or

your dad told you you need to say thank you for supper, right?

You just, it's the polite thing to do.

Well, Psalm 138 gives us a really specific way to respond

to God's goodness. And it's this.

The goodness of God should compel us to thank Him with our

whole heart. Look at verse one of Psalm 138.

He says, I will give you thanks with all my heart.

I will sing your praise before the heavenly beings.

There is no polite nice thank you going on.

There's just this deep sense of gratitude and being thankful it

comes from the depths of his being to express his gratitude

to God. And I love this description

because it doesn't leave room for half hearted thank yous.

Like, I wonder how many of us have gotten so used to good

gifts from God, we've just started to take them for

granted. But I wonder how many of us

settle for a polite thank you instead of a wholehearted God.

I can't believe you've been so, so good to us.

When you understand that what makes a gift a gift is you don't

deserve it. You can't help but be thankful

from the bottom of your heart. You know, I, I got to tell you,

I've grown up in church my entire life.

I've had the privilege of traveling across Canada and I've

seen other churches up close. I've been in ministry for 30

years, over 30 years. Let me tell you, we should never

take for granted the good gifts that God has given to this

church. We, we are a church family who

lives every single day in the goodness of God.

What? What God has blessed us with is

not always the story of other churches.

Now, are we a perfect church? Absolutely not.

No, we're not a perfect church. But our perfection isn't what

determines the goodness of God. The goodness of God just comes

from the character in the heart of who God is.

It's not about how well we've performed for God.

Have we made mistakes? Sure, we've made mistakes.

It's not about that. It's about His goodness, His

kindness towards us and for David, he just needs to he's

compelled to express in praise how thankful he is.

And it's not just his words. His actions also say it.

He he's so thankful. He says, I can't just stop

praising God. Verse one, I will sing your

praise before the heavenly beings.

So I have to sing about your goodness.

I got to tell you, like sitting up here at the front listening

to you worship and sing praises to God this morning was amazing

to listen to you. Some of us, we live in a state

of, hey, it's enough for me just to be thankful on the inside.

I don't need to kind of say it too loudly and proudly.

That's not where David lands. He's like he lands in the space

of if you're wholeheartedly thankful, you cannot contain it

on the inside. You have to praise God.

But last Sunday I was in Brant, and man, it was just so cool

listening to the group of people in that little room lifting up

their praises and worship to God.

And when we come together, we praise the one who's been so

good to us. But it's not limited to praising

God when we're together as a church.

Notice the words. I will sing your praise before

the heavenly beings. Some Bible translations use the

word God's there. David praises the goodness of

God in the face of false gods. What David is saying is I don't

just praise God on Sunday when we're together as a church

family. I praise God all the time when

I'm out in the community, when I'm at work, when I'm with my

family, wherever I'm interacting because there are false gods

everywhere and I'm just going to go everywhere I can go and

proclaim how good God is in the face of the false gods.

To tell them you guys are useless compared to the one true

almighty God. That's the kind of affection

that is stirred up inside of David.

He has to proclaim his praise of God.

And it's not just how loud he sings and how loud he proclaims

it. He also says he has to bow down

and quietly give thanks to God. Verse 2 says I will bow down

toward your holy temple. Neither of these expressions of

praise are very Baptist. Now, for those of you who don't

know, forward is a Baptist Church.

That might shock some of you. We're a Baptist Church.

But neither of these expressions of praise kind of land naturally

for us as Baptists. A lot of us are like, I don't

know about that whole praising God out loud thing.

And a whole bunch of us are like, you want me to bow down,

get on my knees and worship before God.

That that feels like an expression that I don't feel

real comfortable with. They're not very Baptist, but

they are very biblical. See, I, I want to not only give

you permission to praise and worship God in this way, but I

want you to consider this. We're nothing without God.

We don't exist as a church community apart from Jesus.

Our salvation is in him alone. He's the one that has brought us

together. He's the one that has rescued us

from sins. He's the one that has saved us.

He's the one who says you're a church.

None of this exists apart from Jesus.

So gaze on the goodness of God and allow the depth of your

thankfulness to come out in your actions.

Praise Him, be vocal about your praise, but also bow down before

Him in humility because you don't deserve any of the

goodness that we've received. Now, I know we live in a fairly

individualistic society. We, we more easily see things

that are good for me before we see the things that are good for

we. We, in other words, we more

easily celebrate when something good happens to ourselves or

within our immediate circle of friends.

But because we get caught up in our own world so often,

sometimes we miss the goodness of God in the collective group.

And so from this Psalm, I want to give you 4 reasons that we as

a church family have to celebrate and to be thankful

with all of our hearts. First reason is we celebrate

God's faithful and constant love in verse 2 that that's what

David says. I'll bow down towards your holy

temple and give thanks to your name for your constant love and

truth. You've exalted your name and

your promise above everything else.

David recognizes that God has shown his faithful love over and

over again. And and I know that we talk a

lot about God's love hereforward, but I think

sometimes we talk and even as church family we talk.

Yeah, God loves us. God loves us, but we talk at

high at such a high level we don't know how to pay attention

to where's God showing up and showing his love for us in the

everyday of life. I got I'll be honest with you

and tell you that not everything about this past year has felt

good or simple. There's been a lot of tough

things, a lot of tough things in our church, a lot of tough

things and many of your own personal lives over this past

year. I'll say that for me personally,

this was probably one of the most challenging years that I've

had in ministry for all kinds of reasons.

And I won't go into all the details, but I can tell you this

over and over again, the goodness and faithfulness of God

has shown up to protect this church and carry us through.

God's faithful love has shown up time and time again.

I see the compassion of the Lord so often in the course of a year

in this church. We had 10 people who passed away

part as part of our church family this year.

And as I went to each funeral, you know what I saw and I heard

over and over again from family members?

They kept talking about how God was their comfort, how they were

at peace and at rest because they were experiencing the

closeness of God in their grief and their sorrow.

I've heard so many stories of people who have told me about

encountering God's love in our worship services or as they

study the Bible in discipleship groups or in sermons on Sunday.

A lot of times, God's faithful love is expressed through you as

you serve. You are the hands and feet of

Jesus. Every person who's ever served

at a funeral in our church or brought help to a family in

crisis, as you've experienced the goodness of God in your own

life and you've served other people, you're helping them to

experience the goodness of God. I see it in our seniors care

team who visit and care so well for so many people, some of whom

may never be able to come to church again because of their

health. It shows up as you invest in

families in need through organizations like say Families.

It's shown up in our ESL program that we have here in Cambridge.

You know, when ESL first launched, it had really large

numbers. And over the last year, the

numbers have really kind of slowly dwindled and gotten

smaller. But there's been a more

consistent group of people that have been coming to ESL.

And as that group of people came, relationships, deeper

relationships were being formed with the people who are serving

and leading in ESL, and we began to see God working in ways that

we could have never expected. Most of the attendees in ESL

came to Canada with a faith already, but basically nothing

else. They had nowhere to turn for

practical needs to get settled in Canada.

But this team stepped up and served these families in need in

the most practical ways and showed the goodness and kindness

of God to them. This team has used their

knowledge and their circles of influence to provide practical

assistance and to see lives change for the better.

They've lived out the command in the book of Deuteronomy to love

the resident alien amongst us. It's beautiful you as you serve.

You are expressing the goodness and the constant and faithful

love of God to others. We experience God's faithful

love in our church as He consistently kept His promises

towards us this year. God has provided for all of our

needs as a church family. You know there is a sense of God

math that doesn't always make sense.

As you know this year we started 2 brand new church sites.

We sent out about 100 people from Cambridge to help start the

Branton Arabic sites. And you would think that would

result in a drop in giving in Cambridge, but actually the

opposite happened. Somehow God gave an increase in

giving in Cambridge. See, God keeps providing for our

needs as a church family, showing his faithful love over

and over again. God has been so good to us, but

it doesn't end there. We also celebrate what he's done

in answering our prayers. Look at verse 3.

David says, on the day I called, you answered me.

You increased strength within me.

He's recognizing that God is the God who answers prayer.

God has done the same for many of you over this year.

I I know so many of you have experienced God's answer to

prayers in your own personal life.

And it's so important when you experience God answering prayers

that you don't just move on. It's important you stop and say

thank you to God. If you're going to ask Him to

show His goodness and His power in a situation, it's essential

that you stop and say thank you God, for showing up and for

answering this prayer. Andrew Murray described answered

prayers this way. He said answered prayer is the

interchange of love between the Father and his child.

You know, I think about all the ways that we pray together as a

church family. I think about our prayer and

worship nights that we have together, this powerful moment

when we come together to pray for each other and for the needs

of our church community. I I think about the prayers that

happen in discipleship groups or when your ministry teams that

you're serving and come together and you pray within friendships,

watching people after church services, just standing around

in circles and praying for each other as you've experienced

different things. Every Sunday morning our elders

meet at 8:00 AM to pray for you as a church family.

Over 400 people receive our weekly prayer e-mail and pray

for different requests in our family.

And every year there are hundreds and hundreds of prayer

requests that get brought to us as a church.

And over and over again we see God answering those prayers.

Just this week, a family who had asked us to pray that God would

sustain their business through the spring reported back how God

has answered that prayer and then some.

So many of you, I look out in this room and as a pastor, I

know so many of your stories of things that you were desperately

asking God to show up in situations.

I know so many of your stories where there were health

concerns, financial concerns, and relationship concerns.

I know that some of you, if we would have had this conversation

three months and six months ago, you might have said, I don't

even know if I'm going to make it to be alive on Celebration

Sunday. And here you are.

I look out and I just see the goodness of God in answering

prayers over and over and over again.

When you prayed for our Brant and Arabic congregations to

start, God has answered those prayers and we're seeing people

coming together and forming congregations and it's beautiful

and it's powerful to see what God's doing.

You know, one of the things that we pray for as pastors all the

time is that we would be a church who keeps growing to be

more and more like Jesus. And we can see the ways that

God's answering those prayers. Over 1800 people are connected

somewhere in our discipleship ministries in the life of this

church. There's a hunger and a desire

for people who want to become more like Jesus.

We have almost 500 people who serve on a team somewhere in the

life of our church. Like the fact that you are

willing to give of your time to serve Jesus and to serve others

and love others in that way is a beautiful picture.

One of the things that our elders pray for all the time is

unity. And I am so deeply grateful to

be part of a church family where we can agree to disagree on some

things, but we can still be in unity with each other.

Like there is a difference between unity and uniformity.

We'll never be in uniformity because we're all different.

We all different ideas and thoughts and backgrounds and

expertise and everything else. We'll never be in uniformity,

but we can always be in unity because we have one thing in

common and it's Jesus. It's his love for us and it's

His mission that He's called us to.

When I think about all the ways that God has answered prayers

for our church family over this past year, I cannot help but

look to the Lord and just say thank you, God, Thank you for

your faithfulness to us. Thank you for showing your power

over and over and over again. Thank you for hearing our

prayers and answering when we've called out to you.

But His goodness doesn't end there.

We also celebrate His grace. The verse 4.

All the kings on earth will give you thanks, Lord.

When they hear what you've promised, they will sing the

Lord's ways, for the Lord's glory is great.

Though the Lord is exalted, He takes note of the humble, but he

knows the haughty from a distance.

In these verses, David talks about how even the mighty are

going to recognize their limits when they encounter the glory of

God. The the eternal God, the all

powerful, all knowing Creator of everything.

The one who put the oceans and the mountains in place.

The one who is capable of just simply saying a word and

speaking something into existence.

The one who judges anything that falls short of his standard.

Who is wholly imperfect in every way.

The one who is greater than your mind can possibly fathom, whose

ways and thoughts are so far beyond what you can imagine.

And frankly, his ways and thoughts are so far beyond what

AI will ever be able to come up with that God loves you that

that God sees the brokenness of the world, the brokenness in

your life, in my life, the sin and the shame that we carry.

And instead of running away, that God comes to rescue you.

And not only does he come to rescue you, he comes to keep

walking with you and to be with you every moment of every day

for the rest of your life. He's a God who does not need you

in any way. But the evidence says he does

want you to know him and to know his love for you.

That's grace. That's the unmerited favor of

God. And Psalm 138 tells us in the

verses we just read that the Lord is exalted.

He takes note of the humble. Over this past year, we've seen

people encounter God's grace over and over and over again.

We have seen people of all ages, kids and youth and adults in all

of our sites who've come to know and believe in the goodness of

God and have come to faith in Jesus.

That's God's grace showing up over and over again.

We've seen 49 people baptized in the past year between all of our

sites, and today that number is going higher.

We have a bunch of people who are going to get baptized today

in the service. We've got at least 8 and there

are some of you who are going to get baptized today and you

didn't even know you were going to get baptized today.

Because what we're going to do is we're going to open up the

baptism to anyone who is a believer and follower of Jesus

to be able to say today is the day where I'm going to go public

and I'm going to say Jesus is my Lord.

I'm going to live in obedience to him.

Today is your opportunity for you to be baptized, even if you

weren't planning to be baptized. We do this because we've

encountered God's grace in our lives.

You see, baptism is just an act of obedience.

It's what Jesus has commanded us to do as an outward sign to show

what is already true in our hearts, that we have experienced

His grace and put our faith in Him for the forgiveness of our

sins and the salvation of our lives.

And if you're a believer and follower of Jesus today and

you've never been baptized, I want to say today is your day.

And you're thinking, well, but do I just wear the clothes I

got? We got you.

We got clothes for you. We got towels for you.

We are taking away all your reasons to get back to not get

baptized today. All right.

But grace is not something that just ends when we come to faith.

Aren't you so glad that grace doesn't just end when we come to

faith? We need the grace of God every

single day in our lives. You know, a few months ago, I

had two different people come up to me and say this about forward

within like a week of each other.

It was really crazy. They said, I cannot believe how

open and transparent people are in this church about the

challenges that they're facing in life and about the sins that

they have. And they said this, it's like

this church lives like we know we all have problems.

Indeed, a savior, man, if you're going to be known for one thing,

isn't that a good thing to be known for?

Like we live like we know we all have problems and need a Savior.

That's our story. And can I just tell you that

when I heard that, that's an answer to prayer too?

If you were to walk down the hallway where our staff offices

are, you would actually see a prayer request on the wall that

says this. Pray that.

Shame and secrecy would lose their power in Christians, and

we are seeing the Holy Spirit do that work in our church family,

and I praise God for that. In the video you saw earlier

this morning, you saw stories of people who walked through

Freedom Session, and every story of freedom is a story of God's

grace amongst us. But I'm so glad that we're not a

church that just keeps this good news of grace to ourselves, that

that we're a church that is committed to seeing the people

in our community and all around the world discover the same kind

of grace in every Alpha program, every Youth Alpha in Kitchener,

community outreach events that we've done, community programs

that we run camp forward through our global engagement partners.

And as you interact with people in your everyday life, God is

using this church to help so many other people know that he's

a God of grace. And that's our story we have to

keep telling over and over and over again.

The goodness of God over this past year is everywhere.

But there's still one more thing for us to celebrate, and it's

this. We celebrate the future

victories that He's already won. Look at verse seven and eight.

If I walk into the thick of danger, you will preserve my

life from the anger of my enemies.

You will extend your hand. Your right hand will save me.

The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me.

Lord, your faithful love endures forever.

Do not abandon the work of your hands.

David has this absolute confidence that because God has

been good, he's going to keep being good in the future, no

matter what might come. He says if I walk into the thick

of danger, you will preserve my life.

He says the Lord has a purpose for me, even when it feels like

life is uncertain. And if there's one thing that I

know to be true over the next 12 months, it's this.

I have no idea what's going to happen in the next 12 months,

but here's what I do know. The God who has been good for

the past 12 months is not going to stop being good for the next

12 months. No matter what comes, God is

still good. There are so many more victories

and moments of experiencing His goodness that are waiting for

us. We just need to pay attention

for them. And if you haven't heard one

thing I said today, I want you to hear this.

No matter which site you are a part of.

The best days of Forward Church can still be ahead of us.

Not because we're great, but because His faithful love

endures forever. That's why and that promise and

that hope should never lead us to any sense of arrogance or

entitlement. It actually should move us in

the opposite direction to complete dependence.

It should move us to a place of how David ends this Psalm.

He says he praises the God who is faithful and good, but then

he says, God, please don't abandoned the work.

You've already started a complete dependence on God.

I am confident in the goodness of God, but I also know we are

nothing unless He continues to show His goodness to us as a

church. And So what do we do with that?

Well, for David, there's only one thing you do with the

goodness of God. You praise him and you worship

him. That's what you do.

We fix our eyes on the one who has rescued us from our sins,

who has saved us, and we celebrate his goodness amongst

us. We're going to sing a couple of

songs, one to praise God, one to really reflect and worship God.

And as we're singing these songs today, if you are here today and

you've never been baptized before, but you are a believer

in Jesus, then I want to challenge you as we're singing

these songs, here's what you need to do.

You need to just get up and go out the doors on this side.

If you're up in the balcony, go out the door on this side as

well. And we have some people from our

team who are going to meet with you and help you get ready for

your baptism. Today is your day.

Don't let fear get in the way of you saying yes to Jesus.

If you're here today and you've never put your faith in Jesus

before, man, I can't think of the better moment for you than

right now. He's a God who loves you, who

sent his Son Jesus to die on a cross for your sins in your

place so that you could have the gift of eternal life, that you

could have the gift of calling this godfather.

And what you just need to do is turn to him in faith and say,

Jesus, would you come and forgive me of my sins?

And I place my faith on you. And when you place your faith in

Jesus, God says he gives you the gift of eternal life, not

because of anything you've done, but because of how good he is.

And guess what? If you pray that prayer right

now and say, I want to come to faith in Jesus, you can get

baptized right now too. We'd love to be able to do that.

So as we sing these songs, just get up and lead to the back

doors over on this side and our team will meet with you if you

want to get baptized today. Church, let's stand together.

We have so much to praise the Lord for.

We have so much to worship our God for.

Let's do that over these next couple of songs.

All right, church, let's praise God together and the spirit of

spontaneity. If you want to dance like David

or cry out before the Lord, come up here.