The Reply of a Thankful Heart

One of my greatest teachers and mentors was the now late John

MacArthur, and I grew up listening to his sermons.

My dad would put them on, like probably a lot of your parents

did put them on. As he went to drop me off at

school, we would listen. And I kept up with this

preaching schedule for years through the Masters Seminary,

through his ministry website. And the one thing that I could

count on was that there are always new sermons on grace to

you until there weren't, until one day they weren't.

And the last message, the sermons stop on grace to you on

November 24th, 2024 with the message that's entitled The

Unfailing Promises of God. And I want to share the the

words that begin this sermon. He says God has purposes that we

would never have been able to fulfill if we weren't put into

some kind of stress. And he speaks candidly of his

own troubles. He says, like, I can tell you,

I've had three heart surgeries and a surgery on my lung in the

last few months and I'm still here and I'm thankful to the

Lord for that. And I have so much to be

thankful for. In fact, when people ask me how

I feel, I say I'm thankful. I'm just thankful.

I see the good and the gracious and kind and providential hand

of God and every vicissitude in my life.

So I want to make sure that I allow my own heart to rejoice

and the fact that God will perfect me and will bring glory

to himself through my trials, probably more than any other

way. And one thing I've found is that

my Thanksgiving has increased because it's in the trials.

When you're face to face with things that could easily

overpower you and you have no particular control over them at

all, you find that your faith is tested.

And out of that testing comes an immense amount of gratitude to

the Lord. As you're saying, God brings

trials, and with every trial is the opportunity to see the good,

the kind, the sovereign, the gracious, the providential hand

of God in your life. And ultimately those things

bring Thanksgiving. That's the point.

They bring Thanksgiving. And you begin over a lifetime to

collect these memories of deliverance and of these little

salvations that he brings through hardship and trial and

all the things he delivered you from and that your your

Thanksgiving grows over time so that you confess like this at

the end of your life. I'm abounding in Thanksgiving.

I'm just so thankful. I have an immense amount of

gratitude to the Lord. And one place that you could go

in Scripture, one testimony of this, it's not our Psalm today

is is Psalm 107. You can follow along if you'd

like. The psalmist rehearses just a a

couple of the ways that he delivers you and a couple of the

ways that he's delivered me that would bring this gratitude and

Thanksgiving in response. He says in in Psalm one, O 7 O

give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

His steadfast love endures forever.

And then those famous words we've already rehearsed

together. Let the redeemed of the Lord say

so whom he's redeemed from trouble.

And we say, what kind of trouble?

Verse 4 wandered in desert wastes, hungry and thirsty in

crisis, And they cried out to the Lord and their trouble, and

he delivered them from their distress.

The response, Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love.

Verse 10 Others sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,

prisoners and afflictions and an irons, But they cried out to the

Lord and their trouble, and he delivered them from their

distress. He brought them out of the

darkness in the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart.

Let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love for His wondrous

works to the children of man. Go to verse 17.

This is all of us. Some were fools through their

sinful ways, and because of their iniquities they suffered

affliction. Then they cried out to the Lord

and their trouble, and He delivered them from their

distress. He sent out His word and healed

them, and delivered them from their destruction.

Let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love, for His wondrous

works to the children of man, and let them offer sacrifices of

Thanksgiving, and tell of His deeds and songs of joy.

And even more. Verse 23 There's another.

Some went down to the sea in ships, and he commanded and

raised the stormy wind which lifted up the ways of the sea,

and their courage melted away. Then they cried to the Lord in

their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.

Then they were glad. Let them thank the Lord for His

steadfast love, for His wondrous works to the children of man.

Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and

praise Him in the assembly of the elders.

And he sums up all of this deliverance that we've all

experienced. He says, and this is the

command. Whoever is wise, let him attend

to these things and let him consider the steadfast love of

the Lord. And so we as a church body want

to be wise. And so this is what we'll

consider this morning. Go to Psalm 116.

It will be our guide as we consider deliverance, as we

consider the steadfast love of the Lord and our own

thankfulness. And the psalmist is going to

begin this song by saying, I love you, Lord, I love the Lord.

And then he recounts why in verse 8 as we rehearse the words

that we've just sang, the words of the song called Psalm 116, he

says, I love you, Lord, because you've delivered me, my soul

from death, my feet from stumbling, my eyes from tears,

and I will walk in the land of the living.

And God has delivered you repeatedly.

I pray that these specific events will be on your heart and

on your mind as as we go through the Psalm.

He has delivered you. And I know that because you tell

me and you come to church, you have to talk about it.

And you tell me. And I know because you told me,

God has delivered your marriage. And if this is any of you and

you feel like saying Amen, you can say it.

If he's delivered your marriage, you could say Amen.

Some of you, he spared your life.

Some of you were military men and women, and he spared your

life in active combat. Some of you, many of you were in

prison. And he has taken you out of

prison and you're here worshipping this morning some.

He's healed your sickness and he's restored your health.

And for all of us, He's taken away your addictions and he's

taken away that the horrible, sinful lifestyles that you were

living. And every believer, he has saved

your soul from sin and from death and from hell.

And to this we confess God is not just a deliverer.

He is your deliverer. He's our deliverer.

He's my deliverer. And so we we read these words in

Psalm 116. He's dealt bountifully with us.

He saved us. We're simple people.

And so he says for that reason we have to be saved again and

again and again. And he's faithful to do it.

You say in verse 7, the Lord has dealt bountifully with me.

This is what Paul had in mind in Colossians 3.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly teaching and

admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns

and spiritual songs. This is what we're doing.

And he says we do it with thankfulness in your hearts to

God. And even as we leave this place,

whatever you do in Word and indeed do everything in the name

of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through

him. So we thank God through Jesus

Christ for all of this deliverance.

And come to 116 with me now. Let's read it together.

And you're going to see how he transforms death, the threat of

death and distress into deliverance and salvation.

It starts this way. I love the Lord because He has

heard my voice and my pleas for mercy, because He's inclined his

ear to me. Therefore I will call on Him as

long as I live. The snares of death encompass

me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold on

me. I suffered distress and anguish.

Then I called on the name of the Lord.

O Lord, I pray deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord, and

righteous. Our God is merciful.

The Lord preserves the simple When I was brought low, He saved

me. Return, O my soul, to your rest,

for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

For you've delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears,

my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in

the land of the living. I believed even as I spoke.

I am greatly afflicted, I said in my alarm.

All mankind are liars, or all mankind are delusive.

What shall I render to the Lord for all of His benefits to me?

I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name

of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord

in the presence of all His people.

Precious in the side of the Lord, or costly in the side of

the Lord, is the death of His Saints.

Oh Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of

your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds.

I will offer to you the sacrifice of Thanksgiving and

call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord

in the presence of all his people in the courts of the

House of the Lord in your midst, O Jerusalem, Hallelujah, praise

the Lord. And the the structure of the

Psalm could be divided into two words.

We'll we'll paint it with two words.

The first one is the word distress, because if you're

going to be delivered, you have to be delivered from something.

Verses 1 to 11 or the distress that the psalmist experienced

and then 12 to 19 is the deliverance.

It's Thanksgiving distress and the Thanksgiving from being

delivered from it. And that we know this is the

structure of it because the psalmist tells us even in the

1st 2 verses you can read it. Verse one says I prayed in

distress and God answered me, distress being anxiety or sorrow

or pain, and I called out to God in that pain He delivered me.

Verse 2, here's the Thanksgiving.

Therefore, in response, I will call on the Lord as long as I

live. And we have to remember that

the, the increase in faith that comes through trials and the,

the Thanksgiving and, and all of these things that we experience

in our heart. This thankfulness would be

nothing if it weren't for the distress, which is why he

doesn't just record the response in the Psalm.

He goes back and he records the first half, all of the things

that God delivered him from. It's, it's as MacArthur

described for us. He will bring glory to himself

through your trials more than any other way, because only out

of our testing comes an immense amount of gratitude to the Lord.

So we look to verses 1 to 11 to the testing, to the distress.

And we'll begin here in verse one by by looking and

recognizing that there is a definitive movement or order to

these first 11 verses. And this movement is typical of

the Psalms, which means it's typical for your life.

You can see this, the series of responses.

It moves like this. You experience distress, anxiety

and pain and sorrow. And then there's there's real

reasons for this distress. The the world is sinful there.

There's generational cycles and your families that remain yet to

be broken. There's oppression, there's

injustice, there's sinful people.

Your distress is legitimate. And so you respond to this

distress through prayer. That's your outlet.

Distress comes. You respond to it through

prayer. God responds to your prayer with

deliverance, and then you respond to his deliverance with

Thanksgiving. Do you see how it works?

And we'll move through it. But it begins with what's common

to all of us, all of our natures, all of our experiences,

is that distress comes. And again, they're not

unfounded. They're they're, they're real.

It's not just a figment of our imagination.

Look at verse 3. This was the experience of the

psalmist. He says the snares of death

encompassed me, the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me.

That's saying the same thing. I suffered distress and anguish.

Verse 6, he says he was brought low.

Verse 7 his soul was restless. Verse 8 his life is at risk.

It's the sorrow surrounded him and he even says that the

temptation to remain faithful and righteous and to stay on the

way that God had LED before me. I I was tempted to step off of

that path. The the the temptation was real

and present. Verse 10 he was greatly

afflicted in verse 11 he says and his alarm all mankind are

liars and an alternative translation.

Another way you could read that is to say I said in my

trepidation all mankind are delusive, which is saying that

in my distress, you know, if I had listened to the world, they

would have told me that I could be delivered out of my own

strength. I, out of my own strength, could

bring myself out of my own circumstances, forgetting what

we learned last week in Psalm 42, that it's the Breakers of

the Lord that are crashing over us.

He's brought us into the trial and the temptation, and we say

we lift our eyes to the hills. Where does our help come from?

It comes from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth.

If we could deliver ourselves, we would.

We can't, which is why we have this Psalm.

And so our help and our strength comes from the Lord.

It's divine. We can't pull ourselves out of

our distress. If you look back to verse 6, the

psalmist also ties his distress back to the confession that he

is a simple man and you have to make this confession yourself

saying I am a simple man or I am a simple woman.

Simple as a a complicated word in Scripture.

If you go back to the Proverbs, it means you're essentially a

fool. It means you're dependent and

you don't have any sense and you're immature and you're

irresponsible, which a lot of times is us.

We're still simple in that sense.

But Calvin says in this way, as it's used here, it takes on a

new meaning in the Psalms. Simple in the Psalms means that

Christians are those exposed to the abuse of the wicked who are

not sufficiently subtle to elude all of the traps that have been

set for us. He says that's what it means

here. One of the problems of the

psalmist is that the wicked and the devil are so cunning that he

can't escape all of the traps, and it leads him to distress.

And as an illustration of this, I think of my own recent

experience of dealing with my insurance company on something

as simple as making a claim on my roof.

I'm simple to the trappings and the tricks of insurance

companies. Is it just me or the lawyers of

my insurance companies? I am simple with respect to

their ways, the tactics of insurance lawyers.

And that's why we have the 6th Amendment to our Constitution,

which is we have a right to counsel.

We need advocates. We need people to help us

navigate that which we are not complicated enough to navigate

wise enough to navigate. And so that's why if you can't

afford an attorney, one has given you in the United States,

and we say in the same way the psalmist says you are too simple

to navigate all the myriad schemes that the world is

bringing against you, all the myriad schemes of the devil.

Psalm 4 or Ephesians 4. Stealing time from our next

sermon series. Paul says that there's human

craftiness, human cunning and deceitful schemes of men and we

need help navigating that. We are not wise enough to

navigate that on our own. And much more than the human

schemes, they're supernatural schemes and traps being laid for

us. Ephesians 6 says the schemes of

the devil, and it's in that context saying that the devil

has schemes. The devil has plans for you even

as the Lord has plans for you. And he says in that context, we,

we survived by the strength of the strength of his strength

three times. It confesses 3 different words.

The Lord is strong and nowhere in there do you have any

strength. He is the one who navigates.

He's your advocate first. John 22, Jesus is our advocate,

the righteous. 1 And so we need him to deliver us.

We have to say we are simple, praise God.

Verse 6, the Lord preserves the simple.

When we are brought low, he saves us.

And when you're brought low, you cry out to God and this is his

response He delivers you. So the second part of the

sequence of of responses is your response to your distress.

We all know the distress. Our response is prayer.

And so we saw last week that when distress comes, lament is

involuntary. Our sole longing for God is as

the deer pants for the water is involuntary.

Prayer is voluntary. Prayer takes initiative and

action. It requires something of you.

It's it's natural to us, but it it takes effort, conscious

effort. And he says in verse 4, I called

on the name of the Lord verse 4I prayed and you hear his simple

yet effective prayer reminding us that we don't need ornate

words. We don't need rhetoric, we don't

need sophisticated language to come to God.

This was the prayer that he prayed.

Oh Lord, I pray, deliver my soul.

Lord help me was the prayer. And it was enough for God to

intervene and and to do exactly as he asked for.

And you can see that he, even as he cries out to God, he

confesses as you move through God's nature and his perfections

and his distress, he says, Lord, you are gracious, Lord, you are

righteous, Lord, you are merciful.

And he appeals to him. Lord, you are the preserver of

the simple, and I'm a simple man.

And God responds. Now you see, in prayer, the next

response is God's response to your prayer.

He listens to you. He inclines his ear to you.

Remember, He leans forward when you're speaking and he, he takes

action. It says even here in verse 7, He

inclines his ear to you. He returns you to rest even as

Jesus promised. Come to me, all you who are

weary and heavy laden, and I will give you what rest.

He restores rest. Verse 7, He deals bountifully

with you. Verse 8, He protects and

delivers you. This is beautiful.

It says. He delivers you physically from

death. He delivers you emotionally, it

says from tears and he says and he delivers you spiritually by

keeping you on the path so that even when times are hard, you

will not stumble, which leads to the the main point of the Psalm,

which brings us to the the second portion, your response to

God's deliverance. And this is where we move into

the section on Thanksgiving. This passage is about

Thanksgiving and and the response of God and to God in

our hearts. You move down into verses 12 to

19. Again, we said it could be

summed up in one word, Thanksgiving.

And you hear him overflowing with it, even stealing back to

verse 9. He says I will walk by the Lord

in the land of the living. I will offer the sacrifice of

Thanksgiving coming into 12 and following.

I will call on His name. I will pay my vows.

I will lift up my cup and the climax of all of it in verse 19,

your translation probably says praise the Lord.

That's reflecting the original Hebrew word Hallelujah.

It ends with this praise, gratitude, Thanksgiving, praise.

And he begins this whole section in verse 12 by asking a very,

very important question. And the question is this asking

rhetorically, what shall I render to the Lord for all of

His benefits to me? That's a question you have to

ask and you have to be able to answer correctly.

What can I do is literally asking, what can I do for God,

for all that He's done for me? And the answer is nothing,

absolutely nothing can you do to give a gift back to God for what

he has done to you or back to Christ for what He's done for

you. And yet you can't believe that.

And I can't believe that. We can't believe what is the

gospel. We think that in our own

subconscious, maybe not. It's not at the forefront of our

mind, but in the back of our mind we have to do something

more to be accepted by God the Father.

I need to do something more. I need to be something more.

I need to prove my worth. I need to offer my works and my

obedience to be truly accepted. And we have to go back and ask

another question of Psalm 9. What does it mean that we will

walk in the land of the living? Does that mean that I need to

spend the rest of my life trying to work for God to make it worth

it, to make His sacrifice worth it?

Does it mean I spend my life trying to repay Him?

Does it mean that because He's done this for me that I need to

deny myself every good thing as a way to say thank you or

becoming like Origin said in the early church, we need to become

an ascetic and say to show my thankfulness, Lord, I give up

all my money to show all my thankfulness.

I won't take a spouse and I'll never have sex again.

And every monk that followed after him followed that path.

Or do we follow the the 20th century fundamentalists and

follow the preaching of Billy Sunday where he said good

Christians, whatever that is, they don't drink and they don't

dance or some of you used to call it, they don't function

together. They don't listen to secular

music, they don't go to pool halls, they don't play cards,

they don't smoke, they don't support theaters, they don't

attend movies. You have to understand this,

hear this. There is nothing that you can do

for God to repay him for what He's done for you if you try to

pay him back. Grace is no longer grace.

The Holy Spirit's name is gift. And if you were to give

something back to God, you've taken away the the gift that is

the Holy Spirit. He would never take a spirit

from you. But it's a gift.

Gifts by definition, you cannot repay it.

Paul says it this way. If you give something back to

God or you try to, grace is no longer grace because grace is

his unmerited favor. He asked in Romans 1135, who has

given a gift to God that he might be repaid.

He doesn't bother answering. It's rhetorical.

No one has given him a gift. It's a free gift.

Salvation is free and I have a dear friend who was trapped his

entire life into a legalistic version of Christianity.

His whole life he was trapped in it until last year, Psalm 116

and this very verse, verse 12 delivered him from that trap,

the trap of legalism. Legalism is the the conviction

that you have to add something to your salvation.

You have to keep up certain rules to be truly accepted by

God the Father. You have to be a good Christian,

whatever that means to you. And so Nick Batzig defines it as

an attempt to add anything to the finished work of Christ.

And he says, and when you do that, you trample the

justification, the doctrine of the justification by faith

alone. You say I'm justified by faith,

but there's something required of me to truly be accepted by

God the Father, Paul. Paul speaks to this in Romans 10

for being ignorant of the righteousness of God, for

misunderstanding the righteousness of God.

They established their own righteousness.

They did not submit to God's righteousness.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone

who believes. You have to hear this again.

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.

You don't want to try and do it your way, your roles, your

righteousness. It's his grace that's salvation.

And we have to be subtle and wise as Christians.

We have to understand the difference between being

legalistic and the godly obedience that that flows out of

a thankful heart. And I think that this, this

passage speaks to that. He says in verse 16 twice, he

doesn't shy away from the fact that he's a servant of God.

I, I am your slave, Lord. My life is yours.

He says I am a servant, O Lord. And he says again, I'm, I'm your

servant. He's dedicating his life to God

the Father. And so we we make this nuance

here. We say the difference between

legalism and godly dedication to the Lord of glory comes out in

their motivations. Legalism is motivated by this

desire to earn approval by God, consciously or subconsciously,

or this fear that we're not doing enough.

And godly obedience is driven by love.

Verse one I love you Lord, for you've delivered me.

Godly obedience is driven by trust and gratitude and

thankfulness. Even going down, legalism has

the wrong focus. Legalism would shine a spotlight

on what you do, whereas godly obedience is going to shine the

spotlight on grace and what God has done in your heart, what he

will continue to do through you. One is obedience focused. 1 is

grace focused. We emphasize grace in this

church. Legalism gets the nature of God

wrong, where he's this, he's got his citation book out and he's

he's ready to write you a ticket for everything you've done

wrong. Where godly obedience flows from

God as our Father, where we are his children and he wants what's

best for his children. Legalism brings the wrong

results. When you're legalistic, it leads

to anxiety and the feeling that you have to do more or the

feeling that other people aren't doing enough.

But godly obedience produces humility in your own heart and

compassion for others. And so the key take away here,

if you're a Christian, you are already highly favored.

That's the definition of being a Christian.

It comes to Mary. Greetings.

Oh, favored one. Before she ever did the work of

bringing Christ into the world, she was the favored 1 You as a

Christian are favored. You're a son.

You're delivered continually. He's dealt bountifully for you

and you don't have to work because of what Jesus has done

on the cross for you. It's godly obedience, not

legalism. Listen to the psalmist again.

Verse 12, What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to

me? Answer nothing, there's nothing.

Verse 7, He's returned your soul to rest, not to activities that

you have to do to keep up your right standing with him.

Jesus says come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden by the

laws of the Pharisees, and my yoke is easy, I will give you

rest. He says in verse 16 of this

passage, He's loosed your bonds. He didn't come to put you in new

bonds, a new form of bondage. He came to set you free from

this bondage and you're given one appropriate response to

God's deliverance and it's recorded in verse 17.

This is the only response I will offer to you the sacrifice of

Thanksgiving. He says be grateful, be

thankful, rejoice in your salvation, rejoice in your

deliverance. Think back to Psalm 107.

We've already talked about it. It rehearses your response for

you over and over. Thank the Lord, it says, for his

steadfast love. Thank Him and then let

Christians tell of his deeds and songs of joy.

That's the response. Have we done that this morning?

Absolutely. Thank Him and let them offer

formal Thanksgiving in the temple.

Thank him and then extol him. Extol means praise him

enthusiastically. Even as Baptists, it's what we

do praise him, it says in the congregation of the people,

which means don't keep it to yourself.

This is something we do together.

We want to do it with the people we love.

We want to do it in the company of the redeemed.

Let them say, so we come here and we thank God together.

It says thank him and let them praise them, him in the assembly

of the elders. And you see, thankfulness and

gratefulness are the response, which makes sense when you come

to the New Testament. There's the the story of Jesus

when he heals the 10 lepers. Now understanding this, with

this thought, now all of a sudden it makes sense why Jesus

cared so much about the one that came back and said thank you.

I want to read the story to you. Luke 1711 and 19.

It says on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between

Samaria and Galilee. And as Jesus entered a village,

he was met by 1010 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted

up their voices saying, Jesus Master, have mercy on us,

deliver us. When he saw them he said to

them, go and show yourselves to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed.

Then one of them when he saw that he was healed turned back

praising God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus's

feet giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.

And Jesus said, we're not ten cleansed.

Where are the 9? Was no one found to return and

give praise to God the Father except this foreigner and he

said to him, rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you well. He says I healed 10/9 went their

way, went to do their own thing. One came back and was grateful.

One expressed praise and Thanksgiving.

And so we need to remember that like this the same word in in

the in the New Testament Greek for salvation and deliverance.

He was he was saved. He was delivered from his

leprosy and you have been saved from death and hell.

And so it reminds us the posture of our heart that we're supposed

to bring before God through Christ.

We're supposed to be thankful or even as we're giving thanks to

remember that this is the response that Jesus is looking

for. He doesn't want you to give up

every good thing, to make yourself poor, to make yourself

ascetic, to give up, to give up wives and families.

He just wants gratefulness and praise and Thanksgiving.

That is the demand. That is the response.

And you see here there's a really a three fold response

that comes from the psalmist. He says in verse 13 to 14, and

he's going to repeat it in 17 to 19.

And so we say he gives a response and we admit it's a

formal response. It was the most formal response

available to the psalmist. He says in verse 13, I will lift

up the cup of salvation. I will call on the name of the

Lord. Verse 14, I will pay my vows to

the Lord. Verse 17, I will offer a

sacrifice at Thanksgiving. Again, I will call on his name.

I will pay my vows in his courts.

And This is why we read Leviticus 7 this morning,

because if you were to go back to the Old Testament, you were

to read the the laws of peace, the peace offering.

And we have you'll see that there are there are several

subcategories of the peace offering.

There are several ways that were given to give Thanksgiving to

God. And the psalmist kind of throws

the kitchen sink at it and he says, God, every Ave. that

you've given me to give thanks to you.

I'm taking them all. I'm so grateful.

I love you so much. It's all yours, Lord, take it.

And the one that he brings to focus in Psalm 116 is really the

one that's focused in Leviticus 7.

It's the Toda offering, Toda being the literal word here for

Thanksgiving. You can bring Thanksgiving to

the Lord formally. And it was one of the the

subcategories of the peace offering.

And it was what God gave them as a formal way to say thank you

when they've been delivered from something very traumatic.

And if you want examples of what that was, go back to Psalm one O

7. When you have horrible travel

experiences, when you're sick, when you're he saves your soul

For these reasons, you would follow this, you would you would

immediately invite your community to a worship service

that that you're sponsoring. This is what the Thanksgiving

offering is. You invite everybody you love.

You invite your community. You would offer a lamb or a goat

or a bowl without blemish and it would be consumed that day

within your community. And So what they would call Toda

or a Thanksgiving offering in Oklahoma, we would call it a

community BBQ because that's what it is.

You eat it. You're not offering it to the

Lord. It's not being burned up.

It's for eating and enjoying and the presence of the people you

love. And so the psalmist is saying

simply, I've been delivered and now I cannot wait to say thank

you. And it's not enough.

I want to celebrate life and grace, and I want to do it with

all the people that I love the most.

That's what he's offering. And the offering is a shared

celebration of answered prayer. It's a shared celebration that

God is alive, that God is powerful, that God is not just a

deliverer, He is our deliverer. He's not just a deliverer, He's

your deliverer. And he delivers you over and

over again. He multiplies it.

He says he gives a, a Thanksgiving offing, but he, he

also gives a vow offering, which was a, a voluntary offering that

you could give, but you didn't have to give one.

But if you gave it under the Old Testament law, you had to keep

it. And so whatever it is that you

said in your distress, whatever promises that you made to God

while you were in distress, he says, now I'm going to fulfill

all of those in the midst of the temple and in the midst of my

community. Everything I swore to you, I'm

going to see it through. And so in Scripture, one, one

other thing I want to highlight is these vow offerings and

Thanksgiving offerings and free will offerings.

They all go together. So when you're giving thanks to

God the Father, you, you, you kind of mix and match.

You throw the kitchen sink at it.

You see in Psalm 5014, he says offer to God a sacrifice of

Thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High.

Psalm 56 I must perform my vows to you, O God, I will, I will

render thank offerings to you and you come here into our

Psalm. He says twice you can look at

verse 17. I will offer to you the

sacrifice of Thanksgiving. Verse 18, I will pay my vows to

the Lord in the presence of all his people.

And you go to Hebrews in the New Testament.

He says under this new dispensation, this new covenant,

we don't offer vow offerings anymore.

So what do we do? He says, this is what you do

through Christ. Then let us continually OfferUp

a sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of lips that

acknowledge his name. What do you do?

You offer praise the fruit of your lips.

It acknowledges the Lord. This is what the psalmist said.

He said, I, I will call on the name of the Lord.

I will call on the name of the Lord.

And all this Calvin wrote, God's bounty toward us merits the more

praise that he expects no recompense from us, nor can

receive any. For God stands in need of

nothing. We are poor and destitute of all

things. And so we confess together, I am

a man or I am a woman who is simple.

I'm a simple man. And we need deliverance

continually. And, and we praise God because

though we continually need him, he continually offers himself to

us and continually delivers us. And we pray even in the Lord's

Prayer, think through, think through Scripture with me.

What do we pray deliver us from evil Lord, knowing that he can

and he will do it? George Mueller There's I don't

know why we're all reading George Mueller right now.

I'm on Goodreads and Becky's reading it and the Hammonds are

reading it and I'm reading it. We're reading about George

Mueller. He used to pray with such

anticipation that he would pray as if the deliverance already

happened in the middle of his crisis and his trials.

He would say, thank you, Lord, for delivering me out of this

because he's done it so many times.

He knows it's coming. We need to pray like that, with

that kind of expectation, that kind of anticipation.

Romans 724 to 25 Who will deliver me from this body of

death? Answer Thanks be to God through

Christ Jesus our Lord. Highlight this lest we overlook

it. Thank you Lord, thanks be to God

through Christ our Lord. Colossians 113 He has delivered

us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the

Kingdom of His beloved Son, unlocking the words of

confidence from Second Timothy 418.

The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed.

He will bring me safely into His heavenly Kingdom.

To Him be the glory forever and ever.

Amen. If you want to sum up all of

Psalm 116 in one verse, write down 2nd Corinthians 110.

He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will

deliver us on Him. We have said our hope that He

will deliver us again. You must also help us by prayer

so that many people will give thanks.

That's what Psalm 116 is about. And So what are we doing in

response to his deliverance and His rescue?

The Psalm gives you your response.

This is your response. See striving and know that He's

God. Don't work to prove your worth,

but instead confess the words of verse one.

I love you, Lord, call on His name, express your gratefulness,

exude thankfulness, express it to the church, express it to

your families, sing about it in your communities and speak the

final words of verse 19 translated by your English

phrase, Praise the Lord or the original word again, Hallelujah,

Hallelujah. Praise God, let's confess to

him. Let's pray, and then we'll sing

our Thanksgiving, our thank yous back to him.

Lord, we are so grateful and we confess at the same time.

We're so sorry that we're like the 9 lepers who, who go away

and we forget to say thank you. We pray and you deliver us.

And then we, we repudiate it, Lord, we, we forsake it.

We forget we're so forgetful or, or we, we give our Thanksgiving

with it, with our salvation, but we bring with it other things we

say, Lord, and now I'm so thankful that I'm going to, I'm

going to pay you back some for what you've done.

And Lord, we sit here and we remember in this moment, teach

our souls to rest in your love and in your grace, knowing that

we can't do our own sinfulness and, and stupidity and and

foolishness at times. Lord, we, we can't separate

ourselves from your mercy and grace or in your love.

And you want what's best for us. And so we submit ourselves.

We say I am your servant, Lord, I am your servant, not because

we have to do things, but because we love you and your

commandments are not burdensome for those who love you.

So we offer in this moment our our sacrifice of our lives.

We bow the knee to you, speaking metaphorically and spiritually,

ordered and physically. Lord, we thank you in this

moment for all of the deliverance you've given us.

We sing that back to you now. And praise in the name of your

Son Jesus Christ, Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee.org.