Thanksgiving

Sang that song so fun before.

It's a great song, no matter how you sing it, but I do appreciate our band's efforts to uh make these ancient songs that are so full of rich theology and truth uh to a relevant uh kind of music style and so forth for culture.

And so I I loved it.

I thought it was great.

I like to dance a little bit.

We could all work on our clap in the smidge, but that's okay.

We'll get there.

We'll get there.

Nonetheless, I'm so thankful for you guys this morning.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here at Missio, and it's my pleasure to be able to bring God's word to you this morning.

We're gonna be in the book of Psalms, and so if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it to Psalm chapter 50.

Psalms 50 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, that's okay.

We've got a few ways that you can follow along.

First and foremost, we have free Bibles back at the Welcome Desk there.

We'd love to give you one if you don't have one so that you can have God's word at home with you to study and read for yourself.

Uh, so that would be our gift to you.

Also, you can download a Bible on your app, or for uh everyone here, we'll have the information on the screens, the verses and so forth uh here that you can follow along with too.

Also, I want to mention that on our app, if you download it and you follow today's sermon notes, there's actually going to be some fill-in sermon notes that you can have and use for your own study.

So we're in the Cry of the Heart sermon series, Emotions in the Psalms.

Through the app, you can follow along with the sermon this morning and then use it later for your own study.

But before we get into the text this morning, I want to talk about um something that's happening next Sunday.

And next Sunday, we are going to be celebrating Missio Global Sunday.

So for one day every year, we take a break from what we're doing and we celebrate our global partners and reflect and look at what God is doing in our efforts to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

I'm really excited about this upcoming one.

First and foremost, we have um that uh uh three global partners officially here at Mystio that we're going to be uh telling you about things that are going on in their ministry, things that uh that we can celebrate.

They they've made videos saying hi to us and welcoming us and thanking us for our partnership with them.

We're also gonna be celebrating what Axe 29 is doing.

Axe 29 is a uh uh international global church planning network that we are part of.

So we're gonna be looking a little bit about what they're doing as well, and then we're gonna be introducing a new global partner that we're taking on this year.

Some of you have maybe heard murmurings or rumors about this new partner.

We're really excited about them.

I'll give you a couple clues.

Number one is that John Calvin pastored in this city for about three years, and then number two, they have really good croissants.

So uh uh nonetheless, but we're gonna be introducing them.

They're actually gonna be at Central Campus uh talking and introducing themselves.

We'll be able to celebrate that here as well, but uh we're gonna be uh uh talking about that.

So, one thing that's very important about next week is not just that it's something different than our normal rhythm, but we're gonna be taking up a special offering that is unique and different from our normal Tyson offerings.

We do this once a year to try and bless our global partners.

Now, our new global partners getting ready to launch a brand new location in their city, and it's gonna be really cool.

Their focus is on immigrant Muslims who are coming into their city, and they're building a uh this like kind of three-phase uh uh building.

One of it's gonna part of it's gonna be where they gather as a church, part of it's gonna be a life community center so that they can help assist uh immigrants on things like paperwork and assimilation into culture uh so that they can get their feet on the ground and get their families healthy.

And then thirdly, it's going to be a missional coffee shop.

And so it's gonna be a really cool space.

Everything that we collect in that special offering next week during Global Sunday is going directly to them to help them get started and bless them.

I'll be going to visit them in uh uh October uh time frame, and so we're gonna try and plan a 2020 trip to open up to the church to go and be with them and do some mission work there.

So I'm excited about it.

I hope you guys are too.

What I'm asking you is that this week you would be praying and asking the Lord about what you should give above and beyond your normal tithe and offering next week to be able to bless this new work and gospel mission that's happening uh globally.

And so be praying about that, seek the Lord about that, and we hope that you come uh with generosity to give toward the gospel.

So that's all that I have.

We're gonna dive in.

Uh beautifully enough, my iPad just decided to restart and upload its firmware.

So this is what I'm looking at.

And uh that's alright.

I've labored over this text and I can preach it from memory, but uh not really.

So thankfully it's gonna take me a while to read this whole Psalm 50, uh, because it's a lengthy one.

Nonetheless, we're in the book of Psalms, Psalm 50.

Let's read it together.

The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

Our God comes, he does not keep silence.

Before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest.

He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people.

Gather to me, my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge.

Selah.

Hear, O my people, and I will speak.

O Israel, I will testify against you.

I am God your God.

Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you, your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds, for every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the hills, and all the moves in the field is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world in its fullness are mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble.

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

But to the wicked God says, What right have you to uh recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips?

For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.

If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers.

You give your mouth free reign of evil, and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your brother, and slander your own mother's son.

These things you have done, and I have been silent.

You thought that I was one like yourself, but now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver.

The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me.

To one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

So, Psalm 50 here is actually the first psalm that's introduced in this uh book that is attributed to this author named Asaph.

Asaph was one of King David's chief musicians.

And you'll see that he plays a part pretty regularly throughout the rest of the Psalms.

He also was one who might have received psalms and then orchestrated them to music or applied them to different liturgical movements for the people of Israel.

Now, this psalm might itself have been uh used liturgically as a hymn or as a psalm of thanksgiving.

There's a lot of thought about what the psalms were actually used for.

Some theologians think that they were actually used as reenactments or skits to be able to help tell the story of how God had delivered his people out of the hand of bondage.

Some people think that they were psalms or songs that they just sung amidst the congregation, or they were prayers that they recited.

There's a little bit of misunderstanding at parts of what the psalms were actually used for.

But we do know that Asaf was one of David's chief musicians, and that this psalm particularly was more than likely accompanied with music.

Now, when we look at this psalm, the central theme of it is this that God's judgment is on a people for their vain worship.

When we look at verses one through six, this is what we see that God establishes his holy court and seats himself as sovereign judge.

Here we see a majestic and awe-filled image of God's righteous court, where he is the sovereign and omnipotent judge.

Taking the imagery that the psalmist is communicating to us.

He's setting the scene of with such wonder-filled description.

Listen to some of these phrases he uses.

He talks about that there is no time of day, not one moment in the midst of existence that God is not commanding and orchestrating our affairs.

All beauty compares pales in comparison to himself.

All efforts of beauty fall short.

There is nothing that has been created by our hand, nor by his that competes with his very own being.

He does not arrive on scene unnoticed.

His presence strikes fear in the hearts of all.

An all-consuming fire makes his path, and a perilous storm establishes his place.

His authoritative commands demand obedience from his creation.

He desires to have his covenant people brought before him so that he might judge them.

He alone is judged, and all of his judgments are fully righteous and just.

Now rest.

Rest in the total awe of his holiness.

This is what the psalmist is doing.

He's establishing for us a scene, an image of the holiness of God, that he comes forth to call his people to himself, so that he might establish and enact judgment upon them, and the sight of his glory and majesty is all filled.

This is God, and he is making his presence known.

In verses 7 through 15, we see that God testifies against his people.

So not only is he establishing his glory-filled courtroom, not only is he seated himself as the judge of all creation, but he also is the one who chiefly testifies against his people.

He is the one who brings the charge and account before them.

And he brings into judgment the very motives behind their worship.

You see, that's what this first section and really the whole psalm is dealing with.

It's not dealing with the actual worship that God's people is bringing before him, it's dealing with in judging the motives behind the worship.

God sets the tone in this very beginning as he begins to speak and declare judgment of his relationship with his people.

You see, Israel was bringing before God these uh sacrifices of obedience, these offerings of worship, and they had flipped the script in some sense.

They had changed positions with God where they had begun to think that God actually needed what they were bringing to him.

And so he begins by establishing that I am God.

You are not.

God's charge against them is not rooted in their obedience, but in their motive of obedience.

You see, he brings to account not simply their obedience, but their abundance of obedience.

He says, Your burnt offerings are always before me.

I'm not judging what you're bringing to me, your sacrifices and so forth.

They are continually before me.

This is not what I'm bringing to account.

I'm bringing to account the motive behind it.

And he says, I'll reject your offerings, I'll reject your worship because ultimately he says, I have no need for them.

Look at the extent of which he communicates that he has no need of anything that we could ever give to him.

All that is his belongs to him.

There's nothing that is ours, and therefore absent of his possession.

Not only does he own all things, but he knows all things.

He intimately knows his creation.

God does not hunger or thirst, he is fully sufficient within himself.

Yet even if he did need sustenance for survival, he would not request our provision.

God is making it abundantly clear to his people.

If you think I need your worship, you are fooling yourself.

I don't need this.

You need this.

I am not a God who hungers or thirsts.

I am not a God who grows weary or tired.

I am not a God who lacks.

So the people of Israel have brought to God their offerings and sacrifices as if God had need of them.

And what it has produced in them, can I get the handheld?

What it has produced in them is that they are absent of thanksgiving.

You see, they've had this posture cultivated within themselves that their actual offerings, that their actual sacrifices of worship were needed by God.

And that created an absent posture of thanksgiving in their lives.

They were no longer giving thanks to God for who he is and what he had done.

Instead, what they were doing was creating this kind of need-based relationship where they were bringing to God their offerings in an assumption that he was in need of them.

God doesn't request our obedience out of his need, he requests obedience from us out of our need.

You see, God doesn't establish these commands and rules.

God doesn't establish his word.

God does not establish how he will be worshipped.

God does not establish the things that we can bring forth before him because he needs things.

We have to understand God is what we need, and ultimately he establishes things for us because we have need.

We need his law.

We need his sacrifices.

We need his provision.

You see, God doesn't request our obedience because he needs.

Now, how does this relate to us today?

Because obviously we're not bringing burnt animal sacrifices and so forth before God, but but we do bring offerings, we do bring sacrifices of worship before God, and we create the exact same posture that He is calling into judgment from the Israelite people.

You see, anytime we bring an offering of obedience before God as if he needs it for his pleasure, we reject the ultimate pleasing sacrifice of obedience brought before him in Christ.

This leads us to reject a posture of thanksgiving and leads to empty, heartless worship.

Here's my example.

When we do things for God in an effort to please him rather than do things in thanksgiving because he has lavished his pleasure on us in Christ, we null and void our worship.

You see, we do this all the time.

In our relationship with God, we will constantly do things in ever to gain his pleasure.

We will read our Bible, we will pray, we will come and serve on Sunday, we will go take something to our neighbor, we will go make sure that we give that dollar to the beggar on the side of the street.

We will do these things because subconsciously we begin to think as if our worship is gaining the pleasure of God.

But instead, what we have to understand is that we have already gained the pleasure of God because it was fully attained in the sufficient sacrifice of Christ, and we no longer work for that pleasure.

We work from it because it has been lavishly given to us in Christ Jesus.

We don't have to strive in an effort to gain God's favor.

We don't have to labor and scrape and toil so that God will notice us or that he will bless us or put his favor upon us.

No, it is because he has ultimately, cosmically, and eternally put his favor on us in Christ Jesus, that in joy we work in obedience, because we know that in him we have obtained all things already.

You see, we have to remember, church, we're the ones in great need.

And Christ is the one who has freely and greatly given to us.

And so anytime we try to bring an offering of worship, of obedience before God, as if to persuade him to give us his pleasure, ultimately we reject the sufficient, fully pleasing sacrifice and offering of Christ Jesus.

And we say that wasn't enough.

We say it was insufficient.

Instead, we should pursue growing deep in our intimacy and knowledge of all that the sufficient, fully pleasing sacrifice of Christ has obtained from us, and then enjoy respond with thanksgiving and praise.

Because that's the right heart posture of our worship.

Not working for God's love, but working from his love.

And everything we do is a response of that.

That he has given us everything in his son Christ Jesus, and in joy, I'm gonna be obedient to you.

In joy, I'm gonna praise your name.

In joy, I'm gonna serve your church.

In joy, I'm gonna take the gospel to the world around me.

In joy, I'm going to submit to your holiness.

Now, how does God instruct us to contend against empty worship in this passage of scripture?

He gives us three things that we can do.

He says, number one, praise him for what he has done.

Let all of our offerings be brought in response to what he has done rather than in begging for him to do.

How many times do we do that, right?

How many times in our life with God, in our relationship with him, do we do things so that we might persuade him to do instead of doing things as a response of joy for what he has already done?

We try to manipulate, we try to persuade God to do by our heartless worship, instead of simply responding in thanksgiving for what he has already done, and then submit ourselves to a sovereign power and control.

Because this is what we have to understand, church.

Every promise of God is yes and amen in Christ Jesus.

And in Romans 8, where he declares that I will work all things for good for those who love him, what that means is it's it's calling us to submit our own control, our own desire to take authority, our own desire for to grasp for straws in the ocean that we're drowning in.

And it says, I will release all control to your sovereign, omnipotent hand, because I trust that no matter what you bring my way, it's for my good.

And I can respond in thanksgiving and joy because your promises are true.

Praise him for what he has done.

Number two, walk in integrity.

He talks about making sure that we fulfill or commit the vows that we have set before him.

You see, we should work to fulfill our service faithfully to him.

This talks about some of us who have made commitments to God.

I think of uh Martin Luther, who this famous reformer in the 1500s who kick-started the Reformation.

One of the ways of which he even entered into the monastery is that he was caught in this huge thunderstorm, and he said, God, if you save me from this thunderstorm, if you deliver me out of this, I make it out alive, I will become a monk.

And what did God do?

God said, All right, Luther, I'll save you.

And what did Luther do?

He faithfully committed his vow before God.

He faithfully committed his service to him.

And there's a lot of times where we try to actually persuade God by empty promises.

God, if you do this, I won't do this again.

God, if you don't let my sin be exposed, I promise that I won't go back after it.

God, if you deliver me from this moment, I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise.

And our vows are so empty.

Because what we do is we wake up the next day and we go back to taste the fruit off the tree that so easily deceived us that it was better than what God had for us.

Walk in integrity.

Number three, live in dependence of Him.

God shows His deep love for us in this command.

He promises that He is not too far removed from us, that He cannot hear our cry for help, nor that He is too weak to be able to deliver us, to be unable to deliver us from death.

God says, if you Call upon me in that day, I will deliver you, and you will glorify my name.

He is faithful and just.

You see, we often reproach God and we have approach our relationship with God in the way that we approach one another.

And we don't take God at His word because so many of us have seen or been infected by or even been given to empty promises.

I will do this, and then it doesn't come to pass.

And even in our marriage relationships, in the relationship with our children, in the relationship with our parents or one another, we'd say all these things.

I don't know how many times I've said I'm gonna do some projects around the house, and weeks will go by and weeks will go by and it doesn't happen.

Or I don't know how many times I've said, I'm going to take my kids out on date nights, and I'm gonna re-establish that as a normal rhythm in my home.

And it's months have passed, and I haven't taken the time to do it.

My promises, my vows are empty, and in that I'm feeding for my wife and my family to believe the same thing about God.

That his promises can't truly be true.

The way that we live our lives with one another will affirm or tear down the character of God in the eyes of the people we have relationship with.

Verses 16 through 21, God is now among his covenant people, or God is still among his covenant people, but he directs his attention to these wicked ones.

Among God's covenant people are those who do not live in obedience to the very things that they confess.

These people who God is speaking to now know and declare the teachings and commands of God.

Perhaps are those who teach others about God's word.

Maybe even they're the ones who instill on others commands that they themselves are unable or unwilling to fulfill.

They fail to live according to their own teaching and their own word.

You see, righteous obedience to God's word is expected from those who profess his name.

We often live this life of hypocrisy, though.

We often are people who are double-tongued or our words and lives don't match up.

The people who God is referring to here are those.

We're quick to live a double life, or we're quick to impose on others commands we ourselves do not obey.

Our obedience to the commands of God do not produce right standing for us, but they do declare evidence that we have been brought into right standing with Him.

And so for us, a lot of times what we do is we actually say things and then we impose commands or we impose teachings on others that we ourselves are even failing to commit.

We speak one thing and we live another, and we build these lives of hypocrisy, and this is vain worship before God.

We think that we have a right standing because we have the right rhetoric, but we don't understand that evidence of right standing with God is actually holiness and obedience to his word.

We can talk the Christian talk, but we fail to walk it faithfully before God's people and before the culture around us.

And this room is probably filled with people who have been hurt by hypocrisy.

Or it's filled with people who have at one point in time potentially gave up on church because it was so full of hypocrisy.

Is the church filled with hypocrites?

To some measure, sure.

We're filled with people who need grace because we are filled, uh we are a place filled with people who do continue in sin.

We fail to live up to God's righteous word and holy standards.

But our str our our identity is not discovered or known or established in our failing.

You see, Christ said that the identity of the righteous was not in the fact of whether they fell or stood standing, but it was in the fact that when they did fall, through the strength of Christ and the promises of God, they got back up and kept walking.

That's how we are known.

That's how we are recognized and identified.

We are going to fall.

I tell people all the time, if you're coming to this church, guess what?

I'm going to tick you off.

I'm going to hurt you, I'm going to make you angry.

My personality is going to bulldoze you at some point.

There's going to be something that happens where I upset you.

Could have got some amens a little earlier in the sermon, but that's okay.

But it is.

It is.

And that's the thing.

I'm not pointing you to myself.

I'm trying to point you to Christ.

I say the same thing to my children as I tuck them in.

I've I've said this to you before, but I'll say, you know, Daddy loves you.

And they'll say, Yes, I know, Dad.

As I say, you know he loves you more than Daddy?

And they'll say, God does.

I said, that's right, because God won't fail you like I'll fail you.

God will never be absent when you need him like I will be.

God will not disappoint you.

I will.

And we have to understand, church, that our obedience to the law and command of God do not produce for us right standing, but they do declare evidence that we have been brought into right standing with Him.

We have to see evident the fruit of the Spirit.

There's been so many times where I've been asking people lately in different uh times of conversation and counsel of how, and this is a question I've been bringing before, how do you know that you're saved?

And they can give me that little Christian church backlash, or they can give me the little words that they learned throughout their life in the church, but that where's the fruit?

Where's the evidence?

Where is the hatred of sin?

Where is the production of righteousness?

Where's obedience to his commands?

Where is it that you're laying your life down as a sacrifice for his glory, for his honor, and for the praise of his name?

Where's the evidence?

Because you say it and you confess it, but yet you love wickedness and you love unrighteousness and you don't obey his commands does not give you hope or affirmation that your salvation is true.

Your evidence is seen in your actions.

Do you hate sin?

Do you love righteousness?

My working and striving will never earn me right standing with God.

But my joyful obedience from my right standing with God will declare that I am truly his.

We can fool ourselves into believing it's not really that bad.

Or maybe God's more okay with it than I thought.

Simple because we don't experience immediate consequence for it.

That happens to everyone.

We can be living in sin, we can be perpetuating sin in our lives, and because we don't experience the immediate consequence of it, or because we don't feel the wrath or the smiting of God's holy hand, as soon as it happens, we kind of look up to the heavens and we say, Okay, oh, okay, all right.

You were silent, you weren't there, you didn't punish me for the sin that I had committed.

Maybe, maybe it's not that bad.

Maybe, God, you're more okay with it than it is.

And God looks at such self-righteousness, God looks at such pride and says, You thought I was silent.

You thought that I was one like you.

No, I'm not.

And God suspends that that misconception here and now as he presents himself holy and full of judgment before his people.

If we look at how he uh his people had thought God was, that he was silent, that he was one like them, that he was one who would affirm the sin in their lives, he now stands in in stark contradiction to that assumption as he is as he is before his people.

When his people assumed God was silent or that his calls for judgment were vain, he shows up in full power, ready to deal with his covenant people.

God's judgment and rebuke are assured to us, and they will come in full response to disobedience to his word.

And that's what we see here in the last section of scripture of this passage in 22 through 23.

God is patient with us in the midst of our empty worship.

Praise God.

He is patient with us.

God's kindness and patience with us is not to be an agent for our neglect to his warnings.

But he is patient and kind to us that we might repent and come back to him.

And we see this communicated in Romans 2, 4.

It says this that do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

You see, God does not judge his people with empty threats, but he patiently delays his wrath for our benefit.

That's what God does for us.

His kindness is and his patience for us is a delay of his wrath for our benefit, that we might repent and turn to him.

But we get it confused.

We're just like the people in Israel.

We think that we can continue getting away with it.

We think that he is silent.

We think that his punishment and judgments are in vain.

We think that he is full of empty threats, and we keep persisting in sin in our lives, neglecting, forsaking, and taking advantage of the kindness and patience of God rather than seeing his kindness as a motivating factor to repent and become joyfully obedient to his laws and commands.

You see, God's warning to us, God's judgment to us, they're not empty threats.

But instead, he delays his wrath for our good.

The main idea of this passage is this that our worship to God should be done in thanksgiving, in joy-filled obedience in response to who he is and what he's done.

Our worship to God should be done in thanksgiving and joy-filled obedience in response to who he is and what he's done.

Worship becomes laborious and burdensome when we use it to earn God's pleasure.

Our relationship with God will be absent of thanksgiving when it isn't rooted in what he has done for us in Christ Jesus.

And obedience will be a weight that we cannot carry when we're using it to gain his affection and approval.

All of the Christian life is a response to work and worship from not for.

All of the Christian life is a response to work and worship from not for.

That means that we already have been given a right standing with God.

And everything that He commands us to do is now for our good, for our pleasure, that for His glory.

And so because we have already earned and obtained all things freely in the finished work of Christ, now in joy we can obey.

Now in joy we can bring worship.

Now in joy we can praise his name and give him thanks.

But do you see how we lose our ability to give thanks to God when our offerings of worship and our obedience is being used and manipulated to earn his favor and good pleasure?

How can you give thanks when you're trying to earn something that's already been given to you and you feel like you're being so burdened in labor and that your toil is amounting to nothing?

And you're sitting there and God is saying, I've already given you everything in Christ.

And now respond in thanksgiving.

We don't believe this.

Constantly we fight this battle of not believing that we have been given all things in Christ, and so our worship becomes vain.

And I see it in two different ways in this passage of scripture.

Number one is that some of us worship in vanity through self-righteous obedience.

Some of us worship in vanity through self-righteous obedience.

From the outside, we carry a perception of a worshipful relationship with God.

However, when exposed, it's discovered to be vain and empty.

We offer our obedience to God in exchange for his favor.

He has no need for our vain offerings because he has been fully satisfied in the obedient offering of Christ.

Our relationship with God should not be an effort to obtain what He's freely given to us in Jesus' fully obtaining work.

We should be a people who give thanks in response to all that he has done for us.

But some of us we worship in vanity through rebellious disobedience.

From the outside, it's clear we don't have a worshipful relationship with God.

While obedience is not the root or some total of our worship, it is a necessary implication of a life of worship.

Without the fruit of righteousness, which is cultivated through obedience to God's word, we can be confident that our worship is in vain and absent of real relationship.

But the beauty of the gospel for us that we can place our hope and trust in is this that Jesus' obedience has obtained for us God's good pleasure, enables us to worship Him rightly.

Jesus' obedience, Jesus' offering of sacrifice has already attained for us God's good pleasure, and it enables us to worship him rightly.

Isn't that freeing?

Isn't that liberating?

That we don't have to do this Christian life to try and persuade or manipulate God to love us or pour out his affection on us or to lavish us with his pleasure.

No, he's already given that to us in Christ Jesus because anything that we could bring before God is vanity.

Anything that we could bring before God, he has no need of.

Anything that we could try to do to try to earn his affection and his good pleasure is worthless.

He says, Everything that you bring to me, I have no need of.

You are the one in need, Christian.

You are the one who needs Jesus as this as the substitutionary offering of God that we could never give.

And it has obtained for us the fullness of God's good pleasure, which enables us to worship him in thanksgiving and in praise and adoration.

Thank you, God, that you have given me what I could never obtain.

Thank you, God, that you have poured out on me that of which my work could never buy.

Thank you, God, that I get to rest in right standing with you as a righteous son of the king, where I could never have done so.

I came to your courts a beggar who could never have been given the right things that was desired of me, but yet in Christ you freely gave me everything.

You see, that's what Jesus' obedience attained for us.

And Christian, there's nothing you can do to earn it.

The only thing we can do is respond rightfully in thanksgiving and worship.

And so reading God's word becomes joyful.

Praying to God becomes intimate.

Obeying God's commands becomes life.

Serving his church becomes fruitful, filled with joy, filled with peace.

All because of what Christ has done for us.

And so, how do we live this out?

I have three ways in which I see in this passage that we can live this out.

Number one is this revere his holiness.

Church, revere God's holiness.

He is not like us.

He is not on our level.

He is fully transcendent, holy other than we are.

And we should be a people who revere that about him.

When we continue in sin or when we fall to temptation, we should not be one who thinks that God is okay with it in a way that he will pass over or that he will dismiss or he will affirm.

No, we should look to the cross and see how God deals with sin.

God is a confrontational God.

The gospel is not absent of confrontation.

It's just that it looks different than the confrontation that we have.

I heard someone this weekend at a 4th of July uh stay uh event from the stage say, uh, you are loved exactly the way you are.

Nothing has to change about you.

You are fully loved and perfect.

And let me tell you something.

The way you are is why Jesus had to die.

That's what had to happen so that God could love you.

Because he sees Christ's righteousness and obedience in you.

Revere his holiness.

Number two, give thanks to God.

Give thanks to God.

I was talking this morning before we started church about there's so many things that I should be giving thanks for that I groan and murmur and complain about.

Like the like the dumbest of stuff, like mowing my lawn.

I have like almost an acre of land.

Praise God.

Praise God.

Thank you, Lord, for blessing me and giving me land and something to raise my family on.

And I just murmur and complain about having to go out and take care of it.

I mean, God gives us so much good stuff.

If you look around your life and you count your blessings, I'm telling you, they are abundant and full.

But ultimately, we have the greatest blessing in Christ Jesus that God has given to us.

And we failed to give thanks to God.

When I couldn't earn my way in right standing with you, when I could bring no offering of worship that you would accept, when there was nothing that I could bring to the table to cause you to love me, there was nothing of my own doing that could gain your affection for me.

You poured out all of heaven to obtain me.

Give thanks to God.

If you're a Christian, you are a Christian because God in his sovereignty has chosen you.

He has caused his son to purchase you through his blood.

He has brought you into his family through adoption.

He has seated you on high at his right hand in Christ Jesus.

He has made you a priest of all nations.

He has given you everything you could ever ask or imagine in his riches and blessing.

Give thanks, Christian.

There is nothing that could happen to you in this world that is not eternally overcome by the guarantee and promises of God for us.

Nothing.

Number three is live in obedience to Him.

My hope for you and my hope for myself is that this isn't something that is laborious.

This isn't something that is begrudging.

This isn't something where we feel like it's just interesting because this is what we do, right?

We we can do this in our own home.

And I see this like us as parents, we'll do all these things for our kids.

We'll buy them all kinds of junk.

Like they just they just have rooms full of junk.

And then we we give them everything that they want.

We we drive them to sport, I have to fill my gas tank up 16 times in one week because they're going from sports thing to sports things, sports thing.

I do all these things for my kids and they grunt and they grumble and they complain and they murmur, and we just think, you know what I've done for you?

Right?

Don't we do that?

You know what I've done for you?

I've I've done, and what we're doing is we're doing for our children in some measure, we have to be honest with ourselves, in order that they might love us.

And when that love and affection is not returned to us, we're heartbroken.

And so what do we do?

We get frustrated in our doing.

And some of us we are frustrated in our doing for God because we're trying to do it so that we can earn his affection and love.

I'm tired of doing that.

I want to rest in the truth of the gospel that we have already been given all of his love, all of his good pleasure, all of his affection, and I get to joyfully come in and just be obedient to him.

Because his law is life to me.

I don't want to work for it anymore.

I don't want to put to shame the sacrifice of Christ on my behalf so that I might have all things in him.

I want to give thanks to God and live in joyful obedience to his word.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much for Jesus.

The offering of worship and sacrifice of praise that he gave on our behalf that we might be brought into right standing with you.

Father, I thank you that your word and command is life to us.

And I pray that you, that Holy Spirit, you come and cultivate within us joy for obedience, joy for worship, joy to respond to God and all that He has given to us in Christ Jesus with thanksgiving.

Don't allow my flesh to overcome my desire to give thanks.

Don't allow me to produce fruit of complaining and murmuring and grumbling.

But Spirit, produce in me your fruit.

For your glory and for my good.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

I want to lead us.