Voice of the Nazarene 11-23-25

Voice of the Nazarene 11-23-25

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Ray, coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene a week by week, venture into the Word of God, sponsored by the Bucyrus Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our pastor, Reverend Ray La Salle, and the voice of the Nazarene

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 0:18

from the diary of David. He expresses how we are to approach God, and he writes to that 100th Psalm, verse four, enter into his gates with what Thanksgiving and into his courts with what with praise, and we're to bless, we're to give thanks unto him and bless his name. That's the way we approach God. And most of the time, instead of that, we come and and we almost come with an attitude of repentance, and I failed. And what it does, it puts a whole emphasis on us and our weaknesses and our failures. But when you approach him with thanksgiving and praise, it shifts our perspective of who he is and his greatness, His holiness, His ability to transform and and to change us. Let's make a let's make it a habit to approach him with thanksgiving and with praise. The Chamber of Commerce had invited a pastor to come and offer blessing at a banquet to honor some elected officials. Master of Ceremonies somehow overlooked, inviting the preacher to offer that blessing about halfway through the middle. It dawned on him, and he was so embarrassed, but he wouldn't give up on it. He stood to his feet and said, I forgot to ask the preacher to bless the food. I'm going to stop right now everything and ask him to stand and bless the food. And he stood and said, bless the Lord. O my soul and all that is within me. Amen. And that's the psalm I'm looking at just for a moment or two, if you don't mind my mentioning that this morning, bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all His benefits, who forgiveth all thy iniquities, Who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, and who crowneth thee with a loving kindness and tender mercy, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle. I love that little phrase that the preacher used at that banquet, Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. For nearly 3000 years, God's people have recited those beautiful lines and yet never seem to have come to grips with the fundamental question, how does a person bless God. I understand God blessing us, but who am I to bless God? I can see Jesus as he touches those little children, and he lays his hands on them and pulls them up on his lap, and and the disciples are trying to get the kids out of the situation and and distracting and all that, but Jesus is blessing the children. So how does the children bless Jesus? I look at David's life and all the times that God blessed David, but how does David, in return, bless God? And then David answers the question in the next phrase, Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all, all of his benefits. A person blesses God by remembering what God has done and giving thanks. Have you stopped to remember if they tell us there's going to be a special star that will only show up about once every 100 years or 1000 years. We all go out in the backyard and look for that star. And yet, every evening, God hangs stars all over the heavens, and we forget about it and forget what he's doing. God blesses people with gifts in return. I think we ought to bless God with gratitude, and when God blesses us with things, I believe we ought to return and bless God with thanksgiving. Thanks blesses God. It's got to be wholehearted. David's called on all within him to remember all the Lord's benefits and God's all cannot be praised with less than our all. But I believe in blessing God, we need to be specific in some of those reminders of his benefits. And so David lists some of the things God gave for him which he was grateful. And why not join David this morning and blessing God and thanking God for some of his benefits, I get to the conclusion of the service, but it's not yet, from the looks of things, it's getting close, but I think when I get to the end, if I feel like I feel right now, I'm going to have Keith grab a microphone and Michael grab another cordless microphone. You grab that side, and you grab that side and let people just share something they're grateful about, something they're thankful for, something they're remembering that God did, especially in their life, and they want to remember it as a reminder of God's benefits. We don't need a book. You don't have to write a book. You don't have to give us a world history just one thing, no more than two things. And so David is listing some of those blessings, and we want to join with him. And he begins with this thing of forgiveness, who forgiveth all thine iniquity. David needed forgiveness. His soul was stained with sin. He had blown it and had fallen beneath his high calling as a man of God and as a king. One night, looked From His Rooftop to the neighboring rooftop, and there was this beautiful lady who was topless and bottomless. David got in trouble. It's not long she's expecting, she's pregnant, and he begins to connive how he can cover himself and not look bad, as the king politics a big issue, you know, little cities, big countries and around the world, and all of us, we got our little political systems going, and he connived how to put that husband of hers to death, adultery, Murder, and surely, David's cheeks must have burned in shame as he laid awake at night dealing with the guilt of what he had done. He had a wife and he'd shamed her. Now he's got a mistress, and now he's murdered, and there's no way to change things. There's no way to fix things. The only thing he could do was call upon God. I've sinned. And he said, My sins. I'm tired of people praying for mine. I wish they'd pray for their own. He said, My sins are ever before me. There they are. They're dancing along the bottom of my bed and they're laughing and they're pointing David, I'm your sin. I'm the sin of adultery. Another says, Yeah, but I'm your sin of murder. And they're laughing, they're dancing along the dresser. My sins, if you die and your sins Unforgiven, your sins will be laughing at you at the close of time. My sins, David needed forgiveness, and they call out to God, and guess what? God came and graciously, and he was kind and good, and He forgave him all of his iniquities. He forgave him. And I have a feeling if he offered Thanksgiving, we ought to offer some thanksgiving for his forgiving us, who among us hadn't come up short, who among us, at least at some point in our life, needed to come and beg God to forgive us of our sins? And remember how the hot tears spilled down your cheeks and and God came in a matter of moment and begin to lay his loving hands on you and begin to wipe your slate clean and give you a brand new start, and took all of your sins and cast them into the sea. There's some areas of the ocean that's more than nine miles deep. I don't guess the devil to dig those sins up. I'm saying, Lord, put them out there in that crevice where they'll never be found again and never be reminded again. And we can stand up this morning with David and thank God for His forgiveness. But I thought some time ago about the lady that died. She was a. Secular humanist. Her name was Mars LA, and she said, What I envy the most about Christians is forgiveness for she said, I have nobody to forgive me, and you have somebody to forgive you. And haven't we been forgiven? And when you count your blessings, thank God for forgiveness, but what about being thankful for good health? We call it healing. It's there in that third verse, In this second part, the sweet singer of Israel declared that it was the Lord who healed all his diseases. And it simply means that whenever and wherever and however there was a healing, it was God who had done it. David, give God all of the credit for his health, for his well being, for his sicknesses that were healed. Now if people ask me if I believe in divine healing, I confess that I do, for there is no other kind. All healing is divine. God may use the doctors in medicine and hospitals mainly, and God may heal without the doctors in medicine and hospitals, God might even heal, despite the doctors and medicine and hospitals. I sat and talked with a kind doctor in town the other day whose wife had died, and he had been in another state and had to get her to the hospital quickly and she died, and he said, stay away from hospitals if you want to live. But don't stay away from God. You need God, and it's God that brings all healing. That's what I'm trying to say, always and only it's God. More than 100 years ago, a French doctor by the name of Ambrose pray said, he said, I dress the wounds, but it's God that heals. I just dress the wounds and God heals. There are some that are alive, and you're here today because God healed you when you're some disease had sapped your strength and robbed you of your health, and an injury left you broken and dying. God touched your body and healed you. Think of those who have died from mumps and measles and heart attacks and fever and malaria and cancer, and we could go on and on 1000 other medical problems, but we who are here are alive for one reason, one reason only. God healed. So we all ought to give Him thanks, but don't limit his healing just to physical healing. God can heal the mind, and God can heal our soul. There in San Francisco at the university 1978 a big conference, a lady stood and said, I while the speaker was speaking, I bowed my head and I told God, can you heal me of my shame? And God took all of my shame, and that service broke out, and people began to weep and begin to pray, and people stood at their feet, and God forgave memories. God forgave hurt. God forgave attitude problems and on and on, and it spread all throughout the and I want to tell you something. God can deal with your depression, your grief, whatever it is that you're wrestling with. We need to give God praise this time of the year. Thank Him for His healing. But what about his protection? It said, who redeemed thy life from destruction. And one, one rendition, said from the pit. Well, David, the pit was a place of death destruction, and redeem meant not so much bringing back his life from that realm, but keeping him from it. And David praised the Lord for rescuing him from premature death in the dark moments when his life was threatened and calamity confronted David, God stepped in and saved his life. And I've read the story of David again this week, and it seemed like even from his earliest days, he was a child of Providence. He had cliffhangers, narrow escapes by the dozen. He almost seemed to live a charmed life, I mean, from the jaw of the lion and the Paul of the bear and the sword of Goliath and the Javelin of Saul and the armies of Absalom and forces of the Philistines time after time, and God delivered him, and God stepped in and snatched him, literally, from the clutches of death. No wonder he sang that song. He redeemed my life from the pit. May I just say that every person in here is a child of Providence? Everyone. Of us leads a charmed life more than you think you're alive today because God protected you from danger and death. And I look back on my life even from the earliest beginnings, how God followed me and from moments that were so close, deadly accidents, lethal illnesses, God stepped in. I was pulling out of my little road where I live, onto four, and there's a double yellow line. So because coming down four, you're not to be passing because there's an intersection. And so I just looked one way and started to pull out, and my other half screamed. If she hadn't screamed and I hit the brake, I would not be here. Here was a 18 wheeler roaring, probably up to 60 miles an hour or better. Passing a car would have taken us out in a moment, but God spared just with a scream of that woman, and when you count your blessings, thank God for protection. What about loving? Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercy? And the Hebrew word for Crown comes from the root that means to circle or to surround or to hem in. And David is saying, in those moments when my enemies had surrounded me, God set up a little table let me eat, and he looked over my shoulder and fed me and protected me from my enemies. He surrounded me with with love and loving kindness. A farmer put up a weather vane, and on it were written the words, God is love. And his neighbor who wasn't into church and wasn't into religious stuff, he said to him, said, so your God is a God of the changeable, like the weather, whichever way the wind blows. No, no, no. He said, God is love whether the wind blows or it doesn't blow, and if it's fair weather or if it's foul weather, God is still love. God's always love, and when you count your blessings, thank God for His loving kindness, but he satisfies look at look at that fifth verse, God satisfies my wants with good things. Cried David. David may have meant that God provided food to eat. And that's that's a wonderful thing in itself. It's good enough for thanksgiving and praise the Scotland's pride, Robert Burns. He wrote a poem. Some must meet and cannot eat. Some would eat that wanted, but we have meat and we can eat. And so we thank God for it. But even if it's groceries, and that's enough we can be grateful for. But, you know, even groceries can't satisfy. God somehow has made us that we need other things. I know. Mick janger. Mick Jagger, maybe you're with him. He's all the time moaning and singing that song. You know, I can't get no satisfaction. Well, I want you to know that God has put a God shaped void in us that only he can satisfy. And you can go out and try money, you can build monuments, you can acquire fame. You can try drugs and and all kinds of other things. But as St Augustine said, Thou has made us for thyself, and our hearts find no rest until they rest in thee. And when you count your blessings, thank God that He satisfies. And I quit on this next one, because it's the last one. David mentioned, when you run out of material, you quit or you repeat, strengthening so that thy youth is renewed, like the eagle. David meant that God gave him a buoyancy, tireless strength. And when his vigor faded and his strength was almost gone, God gave him a vitality. And I believe there's been times when we all would have despaired and we felt like we've gone as far as we can go, and we're at the end of ourself, and we're about to go under our strength has failed, and God comes along, and he lifts us up. Count your blessings. Give Him praise for renewal of strength. Now David's list is only suggestive. It's not exhaustive, and in just a few moments, we're going to have Mike take one side, Michael, and we're going to have Keith take the other side and give you a chance to mention something that you're grateful for. God's good the old gardener, working for the master, had a beautiful garden, but there was one rose bush that produced the most beautiful flower he had ever seen. He even took some of his friends down to the garden to see that flower. He would tend it every. Day and be sure that it had enough water to try to make it last as long as it could. It even had an edge around, almost with a pastel collar. Besides the red rose, part of it, he loved that flower. Talked about the flower, and he got up one morning and he told his wife, I'll go down. Look at that rose. And he headed down. And when he got to the garden, somebody had taken it, somebody had broken it off, somebody had left with it. And he was angry, and began to complain. And somebody else that worked there said the master came down here early this morning, and he said it was the most beautiful flower that had ever seen. And he took it. The master took it. The gardener stood there, and tears gathered in his eyes and said, Well, if it pleases the master, then it pleases me. And he said, If he wants to take it, I'll let him have it. I'll lose it, because actually was his anyway to own. And may I say this, I pastored here 33 years, and for the first time in all of these years, I've lost more people to death than all the other years. And I can't go through the the list this year, but Nancy Cooper, Mary Jane Kelly, Harlan Williamson, that's just beginning. And Friday, I married a man that I pastored the entire time I've been here. Rodney alck served on our board. Always faithful. If you needed somebody that could pull the service back out with a good prayer, I'd call on Rodney elk. He had a great voice. First time I'd ever met anyone that had the dying grace that he had, and I mentioned it to the Lord a little while ago, and it was like the Lord spoke, but all of those were mine, and they're mine to take. And then I remember, job the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, blessed be the name of the Lord. And I'm saying, as a pastor, God, if you wanted to take them, I'm willing to lose them, because actually they're going to the same place I'm heading for. Has God been good to you this year? Has God supplied your needs? Has God protected you? Just for a moment, grab some mics, if you would.

Unknown: 22:41

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with B and C's pastor. Ray La Salle for more information regarding B and C, visit Bucyrus nazarene.org, you.