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 lobbied

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. Congratulations, 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.

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 towards 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 here

forward, 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 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 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 so you 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 and need 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 this 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 leave to the back

doors over on the 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.