Speaker 1: 0:03

Connie and I have a good friend who is involved in a very intense occupation. She's a neonatal intensive care unit and when nurse and when the pressures of her job get to be too much of her for her. One of her releases is that she likes to watch those Schmaltzi Hallmark movies and it's just a way for her to be around some situations that work outright and end well and give her a little bit of release. That doesn't keep us from making fun of her for them, but she's particularly enjoying them. As it is Christmas in July for Hallmark and like many other commercial purveyors trying to make some money, and so, as many people are celebrating Christmas in July, it brings to mind for me anyway that we should be involved in Thanksgiving, but not just in July. Every day of our lives should be a reflection of our thankfulness to the Lord, but there often are ways that we can get tripped up in being thankful. There are a lot of circumstances that don't necessarily pan out the way that they should and things go wrong and so on and so forth. That can make being thankful a little bit of a challenge, and it's interesting when you go back and look at the Thanksgiving proclamations that were issued early on in our country's history. They actually didn't start off in November. But as you compare the different Thanksgiving proclamations, some of them just call upon the people to be thankful and they mentioned some specific things for which they can be thankful. Other types of presidential proclamations for the day of Thanksgiving are very good at directing people not just to be thankful in general or to mention specific things for which to be thankful, but to thank God for those blessings. One of the things that I really enjoy about the West Town Christian Academy is when they have chapel on Friday mornings, and often those chapels begin with one of the students giving thanks, and it's so encouraging not just to hear them list some things that they're thankful for, but to express that thanks to God from whom those blessings come, and that is something that has to be learned by us, regardless of our age. But there is another component to thankfulness. It's not just to be thankful, it's not just to be thankful for particular blessings, it's not just to express thanks to God for those things, but it also involves reflecting on the nature of our God, who gives us blessings. That leads us and draws us closer to Him and worship Now, as we've been going through the songs of summer, looking at different types of Psalms, we've been listing different categories of Psalms.

Speaker 1: 3:17

There are our kingship Psalms, there are Psalms of praise, for instance, and this week we're in a Psalm of Thanksgiving. Next week we'll be in a Psalm of remembrance, and I mentioned that sometimes you rarely get a Psalm that is just strictly one category of Psalm, and that's definitely true. In this Psalm and often Thanksgiving Psalms are an expression of thanks after some sort of lament has been expressed, there's some kind of need in the writer's life, there's a complaint that they are giving to God, and when God answers that prayer it results in Thanksgiving. And we'll see that as we read Psalm 30 from God's Word this morning. This is the Word of God, a Psalm of David, a song at the dedication of the temple. I will extol you, o Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought me up, excuse me. You have brought up my soul from sheol, that is the abode of the dead. You restored me to life. From among those who go down to the pit Sing praises to the Lord, o you as saints, and give thanks to His holy name, for His anger is but for a moment and His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with a morning. As for me, I said in my prosperity I shall never be moved by your favor, o Lord. You made my mountain stand strong. You hid your face. I was dismayed. To you, o Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy. What profit is there in my death? If I go down to the pit, will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, o Lord, and be merciful to me. O Lord, be my helper. You have turned for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and have clothed me with gladness. That my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Now this morning, I wanna look at some of the reasons that this writer offers for why we should give thanks to God. I think many of us will find those things pretty common in our experience of reading scripture and in life. I'm gonna move through those a little bit quickly and then spend a little more time reflecting on what Thanksgiving teaches us. So what are some reasons that this Psalm lists as to why we should thank the Lord? Well, the first thing is is that you are to thank the Lord because he heals and delivers from need. 11 years ago this coming week, in fact, is an anniversary for me of a very serious surgery that I had, the outcome of which impacted greatly the quality and the duration of my life, and, thank God, everything worked out great. There are no questions remaining about the quality or the duration of my life, but at the time it was a very significant need for me and my family and we prayed earnestly. And when the Lord brought me up out of that time through his gift of modern medicine to us and wonderful medical people that took care of me, it was a cause of great thanksgiving and great rejoicing for God's blessing and my and my family's life.

Speaker 1: 7:13

I realize it doesn't always work out that way, but in this Psalm the writer is enduring some kind of what? Physical need. Now it appears it's given in language, of course of sickness and how God brings healing. Sometimes in the Bible that's used figuratively for some other type of need. So whether it was an actual physical illness, which I think it is, or some other kind of physical need.

Speaker 1: 7:41

The point is the same right. The person was in fear for their life and God heard their prayer and healed them and delivered them from that need. As verse two mentions. You have healed me. Verse three oh Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol and the Old Testament Sheol was a reference to the abode of the dead or the grave. You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit, instead of feeling abandoned by God. In his time of need, this writer witnessed the Lord's goodness to him and healing and delivering him from whatever his physical need was. God heard and God answered that prayer. The phrase in verse one you have drawn me up is language that is used of drawing water out of a well. In other words, you go to a well with a bucket, with a rope on it, you drop it into the well and you pull up the water, and this writer is using that language to reflect what God did for him. He was in the pits and God raised him up and delivered him.

Speaker 1: 8:57

We realize that in people's lives that God is pleased to answer some of those prayers of deliverance, maybe immediately after a period of waiting, and sometimes he's not Pleased to answer those requests in the ways that we want and that can create some struggles for us and we'll come back to that in a little bit. But when I was in seminary I had two really good friends. In fact the rest of the seminary referred to us as the three musketeers. There was me and a guy named Dale and a guy named Elden and all of us had entered seminary after being in the work world for a little bit. All the other students were freshly from Bible college or their undergraduate schools. So we were kind of gravitated together because we were the older guys that were there and we became very, very good friends. Well, about the same time that I was going through my physical problems and struggles, dale and Elden were also going through some difficulties.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Dale's wife got mono around Thanksgiving. She went into the hospital where she contracted a terrible infection and the Lord took her by New Year. He did not hear people's prayers to deliver her from her physical calamity and be restored to her family. Right after that happened, dale received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and he was gone within a year. My friend Elden had been complaining about a problem in his leg. He had gone to his family doctor a couple of times but was essentially brushed off, and when the pain in his leg and the swelling in his leg got so bad, he went to the hospital where they had to promptly amputate his leg due to a blood clot. Now the Lord restored Elden and me from our illnesses.

Speaker 1: 10:51

God did not restore Dale from his illness in the way that we had desired that he would, and Elden and I would be the first to admit to you that Dale was the most godly out of the three of us. It didn't seem to make sense to us why God would answer our prayers for deliverance and the way that he did, but answered Dale's differently. Well, that's as we're gonna see in a little bit. That's one of the lessons that Thanksgiving teaches us when we go through life and we are unsure of why God is working in our circumstances the way in which he does.

Speaker 1: 11:32

But just a little caveat here to remember as we before we move on, is that for the believer in Christ, death is not the end of the story. In fact, death brings the ultimate healing that we will ever experience. Our souls will be made perfect in holiness when we will die and they will enter the presence of Christ where they will await Jesus' return in the resurrection of our bodies that were so perishable will be raised imperishable Paul tells us, and 1 Corinthians 15, and they will be united with our souls where, perfectly embody in soul, we will be in the presence of the Lord and worship him for eternity. So, yes, healing will come ultimately to those that rest in Christ, but it's difficult when those answers are delayed in this life and we are expecting people to be restored to us. We'll come back to that theme in just a minute. So we not only thank the Lord that he heals us and delivers us, we thank the Lord because he hears and answers us. As verse two, I cried to you for help. You have healed me, you have brought up my soul, you have restored me to life.

Speaker 1: 12:53

And when we encounter these expressions of people crying out to God and God hearing their prayer, we're reminded that the basis by which we are able to enter God's holy presence and prayer is through the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, who not only paid the penalty for our sin upon the cross so that God's wrath toward our sin may be removed, but when he left the glory of heaven by setting aside his external glory and taking upon our nature. Jesus obeyed in our place and his righteousness is credited to us, and scripture says that the Lord hears and answers the prayer of a righteous person and for everybody who is in Christ. They are righteous and God hears our prayer. Through the merit of Christ, it is never that God is ignoring us. It is never that God doesn't hear us, because we are assured. Jesus said you ask anything in my name and it will be given to you. Now again, it may not be in our timeline, god may be silent for a period of time before that need is answered. We may not see that answer in this life, like Abraham for instance, but we are assured through the merit of Christ that it is heard. It is answered Understandably, perhaps not in the way that we desire, and also this Psalm mentions that one of the reasons that we are to thank God is because he forgives and restores.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Verse five is a very popular, beautiful verse. His anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. The psalmist confesses to the assembly of God's people that he has sinned against God by being haughty, by having an independent spirit Verse six we'll see in just a minute where he came under the notion that he was blessed with so much and he began to think that it was as a result of his efforts that he had received those blessings, and because he was so silent and because he was so smart, strong and so on and so forth that he therefore was secure. And then God brought him to a realization that no, in fact those things did not come by his hand but by God's blessing, and he repented of that sin and God restored him. And last week Pastor Morgan did a great job from Psalm 32 talking about the blessing of forgiveness.

Speaker 1: 15:43

So I'm not going to go into all of the wonderful language of forgiveness. The word of forgiveness isn't mentioned in this Psalm, but the concept certainly is. If he had sinned and God's anger had been put away, certainly he has been forgiven. And that should encourage us for those times when we see the wickedness of our own heart, when we realize that we have come to think that everything that is going good in our life has been a result of our efforts and our achievements, where we have become self-sufficient and self-reliant. We remember that the Lord hears, he forgives and he restores by the power of his grace. So if those are some of the reasons by which we can thank God and of course we can multiply many, many more what are some of the things that Thanksgiving reveals or shows us? What are some of the lessons that we can learn from Thanksgiving about the way in which we are to live? One of the things that we see is that Thanksgiving, or its absence, reveals what's in our hearts.

Speaker 1: 16:59

Some time ago I very embarrassingly sent a text to our four children that inadvertently contained a cuss word, and so the text messages start flying in response Dad, question mark, question mark, question mark whoa. And one of my kids accused me at the time of being like the hip pastors that were swearing from the pulpit just to appear relevant and that kind of thing. And they were saying that's the next for dad, he's going to start swearing in church. And of course I was embarrassed and I was kind of falling all over myself and I was saying, oh no, I'm sorry, that was either a typo or auto correct. Changed what my typo? And so our third child, our second son, is the instigator in the family and if there is trouble to be found. About 90% of the time he's the source of it. So he starts typing hey dad, you know that auto correct works by using the most familiar words that you use, and then it corrects your misspelling based upon your history. Right? I don't know whether or not that's true it certainly wasn't in this case but it got me thinking. What if we were able to list the most common words that we use? What would that reveal about us? What would it reveal about our hearts and our relationship to the Lord and the way in which we view or approach life? Now I know for my wife, if there was such a way to compile a list, one of the words that would be at the very top of that list would be thank you.

Speaker 1: 18:55

She is one of the most intentionally grateful individuals I know. The theme verses of her life are 1 Thessalonians, 5, 17 and 18, praying without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, and she very much recognizes that all that she has is a result of God's goodness to her, and she attempts to be thankful as a result. You see, jesus said that it's out of the overflow of our hearts that our mouth speaks, and if you are genuinely hearing yourself saying thank you and expressing appreciation to other people who have been good and kind to you, and you are offering those same types of expressions of gratitude and thanks to God in prayer. Be encouraged. It is God's work in your heart that those expressions of thanks are resulting, but if that is not a common part of your vocabulary, then you should be grateful that God is perhaps showing you ways in which you can grow in your relationship with Him and you can start praying. Lord, make me more thankful. Help me to see that what I have has been given to me by the goodness of your hand, through the merit of Jesus Christ, and help me to express my appreciation and to encourage others for the way in which they bless me.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Now, verses 4 and 5 in this Psalm I'm just referring to them here quickly show the struggle of the Psalmist's own art. I mentioned a little bit ago that verse 6, he states that he has interpreted the blessings of his prosperity as the fruit of his own labors and his own provision and therefore he became self-reliant upon them. And then in verses seven and eight he realizes Lord, it was by your favor that you made my mountain stand strong and as a result of my arrogance of thinking it was by my own efforts. You hid your face from me and I was dismayed the word dismayed there is literally terrified when he realized that he thought that he was not going to be experiencing the fullness of God's presence or his blessing. And in verse eight, then, his response is to you, oh Lord, I cry and to you, the Lord, I plead for mercy. You see, that whole experience of having his sin made known to him brought him to that place of reliance, independence upon God, that it was from him and him alone that he had received his blessings.

Speaker 1: 21:51

So if you're grateful, praise God. If you hear expressions of thanks and kindness to others, thank God. But if that's something that you're lacking in, thank God For the example of David, for the instruction of the word of the God and the power of the spirit that can help even the most ungrateful of people to become grateful. I mean, come on, if it happened for Ebenezer Scrooge, it can happen for us. But one of the other things that we learn from thanksgiving is that thanksgiving arises in our hearts from a concern for the glory of God. And verses nine through 12.

Speaker 1: 22:39

I don't know if you've ever seen one of those clips on YouTube or some other place of an airline attendant going through the spiel at the beginning of flight, of all the safety check-in features and blah, blah, blah that are usually rather routine and you can tell, legally required. But every once in a while one of those flight attendants attempt to spice it up and be a little bit funny. And I saw this one where this one flight attendant was talking about putting on the seatbelt, that you take the buckle and you put it in the clasp. And the flight attendant went on to say and it works like every other seatbelt that you've ever used. And if you don't know how to use a seatbelt, you probably shouldn't be out in public unsupervised. And of course that got the attention of everybody on the plane.

Speaker 1: 23:30

And there is a sense where David is doing the very same thing here in Psalm 30. He says something to us that is quite surprising, that we don't expect. In verse nine he says to God what profit is there in my death If I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? And so what he is saying to God, and somewhat of a shocking fashion, is, is that if you don't restore me from this bed of illness that I'm on, or whatever the need is that he faces and he dies and he returns to dust. How is that gonna result in any praise being given to God? But if God would keep him alive, then he would be genuinely thankful out of a desire and a concern for the glory of God. Now, before you're a little too hard on David, we need to remember that what is motivating that statement before God is a genuine concern for the glory of God. David is concerned that if his lips are silent, that there will be one less person to glorify God in the world and to result in others glorifying him as well. And that is why David tells the community of faith to join and thank in God that he might be glorified. And verse four he says sing praises to the Lord.

Speaker 1: 25:09

O, you, his saints, often, if you're like me, might ask other people to pray for a particular need you have. I'm not always the greatest at following that up and telling people how God answered the prayer. And in second Corinthians, chapter one, paul says he asks people to pray for extraordinary needs that he was facing at that time and he is explaining a little bit of why God may permit people to go through difficulty, and he lists many things in that chapter, but one of them is is he says that these things happen, that we might not rely upon ourselves but upon God, who raises the dead. And then he goes on to explain so that others may express their thanks to God and answer to his prayers and to the prayers of many people. So you see, when we share our prayer needs, we should be careful and intentional about sharing how God has answered those prayers and calling people along with us to give glory to God for the way in which he has answered those extraordinary prayers.

Speaker 1: 26:31

So one last lesson that Thanksgiving should teach us this morning, or that we should learn from being thankful. That is this that Thanksgiving teaches us to judge our circumstances according to God's character and not to judge God's character according to our circumstances. You see, when you get into a situation where your thankful like, for instance, when God answered me in my time of physical need, but my friend Dale he did not. Or my brother he did not, and who similarly had pancreatic cancer and died within seven months of his diagnosis, why is it that God answers prayer for one person one way and another person for another way. Does it mean that God is good to this person and bad to that person? It does not.

Speaker 1: 27:34

I realize it's hard to understand sometimes and it's difficult for finite minds like ours to grasp the infinite mind of God and the way in which he moves and works. But if we truly believe that God is who he is, then we need to say in the very good times yes, god is good. But even in those difficult times when he hasn't answered in the way that we think that he is, should that God is equally good. Like Job said, even though he slay me yet, I will praise him because we are firmly convinced that God knows more than we do, that he is good and that he is wise that we can bank on and therefore we should judge our circumstances in that light rather than judge in the light of the character of God. I mean, rather than judging God's character by our circumstances.

Speaker 1: 28:31

And we'll see next week, when we take to looking at a psalm of remembrance, how that flushes itself out, when we can recall God's working in the past in a favorable way and how that helps us to get through current struggles where God may not be responding in the way in which we think. So may we be people who are thankful, not just because it's an important thing to do, not just because it looks like we are appreciating other people. May we be people who are thankful for the heart because of what Christ has done for us. May we be concerned for the glory of God and therefore we want to give thanks. And may we also ask God for the faith that we can grow, so that we will not judge his character by our circumstances, but we'll do it the other way around and you know, as we do so, people will start to take notice and they'll begin to ask us what makes you tick, and we can give testimony to the goodness of God for why we are thankful. Let us pray.