Joyful Praise: Finding Thanksgiving in God's Presence - Ps 95:1-7

Good morning, and welcome to the Thanksgiving service of Dillingham Moravian Church.

As we look forward this week to celebrating Thanksgiving with family and friends,

let us truly come before God today in worship to Him, who is the only true God

of the universe, as we study His Word together.

Let's pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wonderful truth of you,

that you are God and you are Lord.

And as we come before you in your throne room on the basis of your undeserved

grace given to us in your son Jesus, we thank you for our salvation.

We thank you for our blessings. But most of all, we thank you for you,

for who you are as Yahweh God. So as we learn from your word today,

may we all truly worship you and treasure you together.

Teach us, O God. Show us your word and help us to understand by your power and

to apply it by your power.

In your precious son's name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

This last week, we were returning home from somewhere when my eight-year-old

Jonathan and began to sing.

And as I listened to my boy sing, I realized the song that he was singing was

not any song that I knew of.

Rather, it was his prayer to God that he made up.

Rather than disturb his prayer, I listened as I drove us home.

Jonathan is not yet a trained singer, but I am proud of my boy because that

song, in its simplicity, was a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord his God.

And this concept of worship to the Lord with joyful thanksgiving is how we as

Christians are called to live our lives.

Turn with me this morning to Psalm 95, verses 1-11.

Psalms 95 · chapter mention

Psalm 95, verse 1-11 O come, let us sing for joy to Yahweh.

Psalms 95 · chapter mention

Let us make a loud shout to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a loud shout

to Him with songs of praise.

For Yahweh is a great God and a great King above all gods, and whose hands are

the depths of the earth. The peaks and the mountains are His also.

The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before Yahweh,

our Maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,

as in the day of Massah in the wilderness.

When your fathers tried me, they tested me, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation and said they are people who wander

in their heart, and they do not know my ways.

Therefore I swore in my anger that they shall never enter into my rest.

As we are celebrating Thanksgiving this week, let us study the true reason to be thankful to God.

The first truth in our passage today I would like to bring to your attention

is that as God's people, we are to make a joyful noise with thanksgiving to

the Lord in his presence.

In Psalm 95, verse 1 through 2, the author prayed, O come, let us sing for joy to Yahweh.

Psalms 95:1–2

Let us make a loud shout to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a loud shout

to him with songs of praise.

According to John MacArthur, the phrase, the rock of our salvation,

was a metaphor for God and was especially appropriate in this psalm,

which refers to the water that came from the rock in the wilderness.

Let's look at Exodus chapter 17, verse 1 through 7. Moses chronicled that the

Exodus 17:1–7

Lord had just rescued Israel from the power of the Egyptians by drowning the

entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea.

Then the Lord through Moses led Israel through the desert wilderness of sin,

where God provided water for them and gave them manna and quail to eat.

And here's where we come to verse 1 in Exodus chapter 17.

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of

sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim.

But there was no water for the people to drink.

Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink.

And Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses

and said, Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and

our livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried to the Lord, What shall I do with these people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

And the Lord said to Moses, Pass on before the people, taking with you some

of the elders of Israel, taking your hand the staff which you have struck the Nile, and go.

Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock.

And the water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.

And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name

of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel,

because they tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

I want you to notice that when the people were thirsty, even though they rebelled

against God, they barely nearly killed Moses, God caused water to come out of

the rock and save their lives.

The author of Psalm 95 used the phrase, the rock of our salvation,

to remind the people of God to be joyful as a result of God's salvation.

God caused water to come from a rock and physically delivered his people from death.

I want you to see that the lesson from Exodus chapter 17 passage here is that

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

the Lord is the rock from which our salvation flows.

It is God that we are to praise joyfully for because it is from him we have salvation.

It is before God we are to be thankful.

Back in Psalm 95, I want you to see the very character of worship in this verse.

Worship is joyfulness and thankfulness in God's presence.

Worship is joyfulness and thankfulness for God in His presence.

True thankful and joyful worship is focused not just on salvation and what we

have been delivered from or on our blessings, but on the very character and being of God.

It is God whom we are to really be thankful for. It is for God we should be

shouting joyfully for in His presence. And where is His presence?

Everywhere we are. As believers in Christ, God Almighty, Father,

Son, Holy Spirit dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we are

part of Christ's church.

We are in His presence all the time. In Revelation chapter 4, verse 1 through 11,

Revelation 4 · chapter mention

John recorded, After this I look, and behold,

a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I heard speaking to

me like a trumpet said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.

At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven,

with one seated on the throne.

And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian,

and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.

Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four

elders clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads.

From the throne came flashes of lightning and rumbles and peals of thunder.

Before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God.

And before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass like crystal.

And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures

full of eyes in front and behind.

The first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox,

the third living creature with

the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around, within.

And day and night they never cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God

Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who

is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever,

the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and

worship him who lives forever and ever.

They cast their crowns before the throne and saying, worthy are you,

O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things,

and by your will they existed and were created.

This is the scene which you and I are present in right now.

The Lord God, the Almighty One, who was, who is, and who is to come.

The Lord God of whom these living creatures of such power and majesty sing His

praises day and night for all eternity.

Because of our sin against God, we do not deserve to be in His presence.

Yet due to Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, we, you and I,

who have responded to the grace of God through faith in Jesus alone,

we have been forgiven by God.

And now we have the awesome privilege to be allowed into his presence.

We, you and I, have the honor of being able to enter boldly before the throne

of Almighty God of the universe, where all the angels in all the hierarchy of

heaven cannot look on God's face,

and who bow down before God's majesty day after day and forever sing his praises.

Yet you and I, who are beyond microscopic to this one and only God,

are considered so important to him that God Almighty gives us permission to

enter his throne room and reverently approach his throne at any time.

This awesome truth should cause us, you and I, to fall on our faces in thanksgiving

and sing joyfully before the Lord as we worship Him at every moment of our day,

because every moment of our day, we are in His majestic presence.

True thanksgiving and joy for our almighty and holy and saving God is worship.

The question is, why do we need to worship God with joy and thanksgiving?

This leads us to the second point from Psalm 95 that I want to bring your attention to.

We worship God with joy and thanksgiving because we are designed to worship

the only true Lord and God, our Creator.

One Christmas, my gorgeous wife, Abigail, was shopping on Amazon looking for

some little artificial birds that we could perch in our lighted tree that sits on our kitchen table.

Abigail was researching a particular set of these fake birds for sale,

and we learned that they were made from mushrooms.

Now, you have to understand something. In the heading of the advertisement for

this product is the title, Fake Birds, in big, bold lettering.

However, in the comment section, a potential customer asked this question, Are the birds real?

The reply from the manufacturers was, No, these are fake birds.

Although there may be people out there who have difficulty telling what is real from fake.

And that unfortunately includes gods. People worship fake gods all the time.

And yet the Lord God Yahweh is the only true and real God.

There are no fakes that can compare with him in his presence.

And one day always see the truth of who God really is.

The psalmist in Psalm 95 verse 3 through 6 wrote, The Lord is a great God and

Psalms 95:3–6

a great king above all gods, in whose hands are the whose hand are the depths

of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for it was he who made it, and that his hands formed the dry land.

Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

The psalmist continues on in explaining that God's people come before God's

presence with joyful singing and thanks because the Lord is the great God and

the great King above all gods.

This phrase was a poetic way of denying the existence of other gods,

which existed only as statues and not persons.

The word that the psalmist used for Lord is Yahweh, which meant I am that I

am, who is the life giver.

He's the creator, the one who is the absolute and unchangeable one,

the ever existing, ever living, who is completely self-consistent and who is

the only God of redemption.

And as we combine the understanding of all that Yahweh means with the word God or El,

which refers to the strong and mighty one, who is the God above all gods,

we realize that Yahweh is the only existing God.

There are no other gods. He is the creator.

He is the life giver, was the absolute master of the universe,

and he is always consistent and faithful.

There is no redemption, no salvation anywhere else other than from Him,

and this is why we worship God with thanksgiving and joy. Not only do we worship God,

is Lord God Yahweh, the only true God of the universe from which all redemption comes from.

But as Christians, Christ, the Lord Yahweh, is our shepherd,

and we are the sheep of his flock.

And thus, the next point I want you to see is that the Lord is our God, and we are his flock.

Pedestrians in the German city of Nuremberg made way for hundreds of bleeding

sheep on a Sunday as a flock of animals was herded through downtown on its way to its winter quarters.

Curious bystanders, with cell phones in hand to capture the site,

lined the streets as roughly 600 animals in shepherd Thomas Gackstatter's flock

hurried past on what has become a popular annual spectacle.

The sheep were on their way to winter pastures west of Nuremberg from the city

where Gatstadter sheep and other herds are used in various meadows over the

summer to keep the grass neat.

It's a trip of over 10 kilometers, just over 6 miles, which takes the flock

through the central market square, the Hubdmark, German news agency DPA reported.

Gackstatter says that as far as he knows, Nuremberg is the only place in Germany

where sheep cross the central square.

The city has about 540,000 inhabitants.

Ahead of their passage, city authorities ask people to keep the route clear

and keep dogs away from the sheep, a mixture of various breeds.

Drones weren't allowed.

Nuremberg isn't the only German city where sheep are used as lawnmowers.

They also graze in at least some places in Berlin and Potsdam,

Augsburg and Ulm and others.

The sheep's slow munching makes for insect-friendly grass care,

helping preserve biodiversity and also save city authorities the cost of mowing.

And as for Shepherd, the arrangement provides a place to put their sheep at

a time when open spaces have become increasingly scarce.

I shared this event with you to describe that the sheep didn't just go across

this big city every year by themselves.

They were led there annually by their shepherd and returned back to their own

pastures because they were led by their shepherd.

As God's people, we are the sheep of God. He is our shepherd. He is our God.

The Psalms continue on in Psalm 95, verse 7, for he is our God and we are the

Psalms 95:7

people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

I want you to notice the psalmist started off this verse by using the same names for God as before,

Yahweh and El, the absolute master and faithful only God of the universe who

has no physical reason to care for Israel.

And yet this impossible, huge, and mighty creator of the cosmos is personally

invested in his people and calls them his flock.

The psalmist wrote that we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

The flock belong to Yahweh in a corporate relationship with God,

since the psalmist wrote about the people as a nation and sheep as in whole flock.

Yet there is also a deeply personal relationship between God and his flock as

God personally guides his flock or who belongs to his hand.

The word for hand also referred to strength, might.

Jesus in John chapter 10, verse 27 to 30 taught, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.

John 10:27–30

They follow me, and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish

ever, and no one will snatch them. And this is what I want you to see.

Out of my hand, my Father who has given them to me is greater than all,

and no one is able to snatch them out, here it is again, of the Father's hand.

Why can't anyone snatch God's flock from his hand? Because his hand is strong. It is mighty.

And why is Jesus' hand so strong? Because Jesus is Yahweh God Almighty.

And this is what Jesus said. Verse 30, I and the Father are one.

Jesus is the same God as Yahweh. He is Yahweh.

How do we apply this to us as Christians?

As part of God's flock, we belong to God. We are in his grasp,

and no one, not even Satan, can take us out of God's hand.

We are secure in the love of God.

You know, there are many challenges in this life.

Illnesses, deaths, work problems, financial difficulties, relationship and family

issues that can weigh us down.

And there's even in many parts of the world persecution towards those who believe

in the name of Christ as their God and shepherd.

I want to encourage you today that no matter the challenge or trial that you're

going through, you who are in Christ belong to God Almighty and no one,

and I mean no one, can pry you out of his hand.

You belong to God, Most High, our shepherd.

Trust that truth. Trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord, shepherd, and God.

What has God been teaching us today? The first truth that God has taught us

today is that we as Christians are to give joyful praise with thanksgiving to

the Lord as we are in His presence always.

Secondly, we have learned that God is the only true God, our Creator,

and we are to worship Him alone.

Lastly, God through the psalmist sang that as God's people and flock,

we belong to Him, and no one can take us out of the mighty hand of God.

However, we need to be careful that we're not just to be thankful for our blessings,

because then life revolves around us and around our desires.

There is a warning in the rest of Psalm 95 that the passage we just studied

here is in the context of, we are not to harden our hearts as Israel did in

the desert of Meribah and Massa.

Israel was warned that if they cut off their hearts to God and rebel against

Him, they would not enter the promised land.

In Hebrews, people are warned not to reject God's salvation because if they

reject Him, they will not enter into God's eternal rest.

However, as we, you and I, live truly thankful and joyful towards Yahweh for

creating us, personally guiding and caring and redeeming us in Jesus Christ as his flock.

We are living lives of worship, and we will one day enter into his rest for all eternity.

And that is worth thanking God for, isn't it? Let's pray.

Father God, we thank you for the wondrous salvation that you've given us in Jesus Christ.

Thank you for all the many blessings that you've bestowed upon us.

We are grateful. But most of all, we thank you for you.

You are the Most High. You are the Holy.

You are Jesus Christ, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. You are Lord.

And we bow before you. We ask forgiveness for any of our sins that we know of

and the sins that we don't know of.

Please forgive us for them as well. We repent of them.

Help us to follow you and trust you. May your will be done in us and through us.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless us as we serve him together for His glory.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.