SPEAKER_00: The word of God I'm reading this morning comes from Psalm 116.
SPEAKER_00: This is a psalm about Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very personal psalm, as you'll see, and a very instructive psalm.
SPEAKER_00: So let's hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
SPEAKER_00: The snares of death encompassed me, the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me.
SPEAKER_00: I suffered distress and anguish.
SPEAKER_00: Then I called on the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Gracious is the Lord and righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is merciful.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord preserves the simple.
SPEAKER_00: When I was brought low, he saved me.
SPEAKER_00: Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
SPEAKER_00: For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
SPEAKER_00: I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
SPEAKER_00: I believed even when I spoke, I am greatly afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: I said in my alarm, all mankind are liars.
SPEAKER_00: What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?
SPEAKER_00: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of his people.
SPEAKER_00: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, I am your servant.
SPEAKER_00: I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.
SPEAKER_00: You have loosed my bonds.
SPEAKER_00: I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, and errant word.
SPEAKER_00: May we ask his blessing upon our hearing and doing.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you that you have given to your people all that we need for life and godliness with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, without thanksgiving, without thanksgiving, oh Lord, it does not in any way reveal what we've received.
SPEAKER_00: So teach us how to be thankful this morning through the life of this psalmist.
SPEAKER_00: Open our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Open our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We pray, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: A life of thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my question.
SPEAKER_00: How do we learn how to live a life of thanksgiving?
SPEAKER_00: Here's my second question.
SPEAKER_00: Would the people who know you best describe you as a thankful person?
SPEAKER_00: How do we get beyond?
SPEAKER_00: How do we move past our grumbling hearts?
SPEAKER_00: How do we move past our complaining spirits?
SPEAKER_00: If an invisible tape recorder was hung around your neck, catching your words throughout the course of a day, the course of a week, the course of a year, and it was just played back.
SPEAKER_00: How would that feel like?
SPEAKER_00: Would that reveal a life of thanksgiving?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we have a lot to learn from this psalmist.
SPEAKER_00: Who was he?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Some scholars think it might have been King Hezekiah, possibly.
SPEAKER_00: Some people think it was post-exilic, possibly.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter so much that we know exactly who it was, but that we learn what he learned.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's important.
SPEAKER_00: This is in the midst of the Psalms, Psalm 113 through 118.
SPEAKER_00: These halal psalms, these psalms of thanks, these psalms of praise that were used in Jewish liturgy during the times of Passover, during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, and other times as well.
SPEAKER_00: These are the very songs that Jesus Himself sang the night before his death in the upper room with his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that as we go through this song.
SPEAKER_00: The very hours before his suffering, he sang these words.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to look at three things: the rescued, the rested, and the repayment.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the rescued.
SPEAKER_00: We find a man on the brink of death.
SPEAKER_00: It seems as though it was a severe illness.
SPEAKER_00: It seems as though it was sickness.
SPEAKER_00: He thought he was going to die.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to die.
SPEAKER_00: He cried out to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, he says, For you delivered my soul from death.
SPEAKER_00: This man must have wept a lot in his circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the grip of fear.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't know what to do until he remembered that there was a God who would listen.
SPEAKER_00: There was a God he could cry out to.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You kept my feet from stumbling.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Then I called on the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, I pray, deliver my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever prayed such a prayer?
SPEAKER_00: I suspect many of us have.
SPEAKER_00: Because there are times in life through circumstances where it feels that it is soul crushing, that heavy things are voiced upon our hearts that almost feel suffocating.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, would you deliver my soul?
SPEAKER_00: I said it's a very personal psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed it is.
SPEAKER_00: The personal pronoun I, me, or mine, occurs 35 times.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't get more personal than this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: What does the hymn say?
SPEAKER_00: Abide with me.
SPEAKER_00: When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that hymn precious to many of us?
SPEAKER_00: It captures the sentiments of what's going on in this situation.
SPEAKER_00: Real trouble produces real prayer, at least it's supposed to.
SPEAKER_00: You've seen that in your life, haven't you?
SPEAKER_00: When you just at your wit's end, you don't know any other recourse.
SPEAKER_00: You don't see any other possible solutions.
SPEAKER_00: We cry out to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And there's something about hardship and difficulties that are intended to bring us to cry out.
SPEAKER_00: Not to mumble a little prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a heart cry prayer?
SPEAKER_00: I think the Bible's pretty clear that that ought to be part of our experience.
SPEAKER_00: We don't do it often, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: We don't necessarily do it in prayer meetings, although it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, have you just prayed to God from the top of your lungs?
SPEAKER_00: Because you just felt it viscerally, whatever you were feeling so deeply.
SPEAKER_00: You know, God is good with that.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to hurt his ears.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, that just seems very appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2, because he God inclined his ear to me, that Hebrew word inclined, it means to stoop down, to lean in.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe like a doctor leaning over a sick man whose voice is so weak it's hard to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe a child who's very soft-spoken, and you just lean over because you really want to capture what the child is saying.
SPEAKER_00: It's important.
SPEAKER_00: The verb suggests to us that God moves toward us.
SPEAKER_00: He leans in when he sees the cry of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the same when we're mindlessly, thoughtlessly saying our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the same.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the same when we're just kind of conflicted in what we're saying to God.
SPEAKER_00: Like, well, you know.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think when when our heart's really in it, I think he leans.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the verb says.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to hear.
SPEAKER_00: And you could say, well, does he have to lean?
SPEAKER_00: He's got well, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's symbolic of the fact that he's all in.
SPEAKER_00: Just this morning, Phyllis Sargent emailed me.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Phyllis.
SPEAKER_00: A year ago at the Linconia Christmas service, Monica, the director, asked us to pray for her daughter that she didn't know where she was.
SPEAKER_00: She was gone for a long time, praying, praying for her return.
SPEAKER_00: From Phyllis this morning to me, Dear Pastor Tom, you'll remember at last year's Linconia Christmas event, the activities director, Monica, asked all of us to pray for the return of her adult daughter, who had been missing for years.
SPEAKER_00: I am thrilled to report that Monica's daughter has been found and returned safe and sound to her family this past week.
SPEAKER_00: Many wishes from Monica.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks to the APC, to all who have prayed for her safe return.
SPEAKER_00: That's the power of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: A mother has her adult child returned to her safe and sound after being worried so much for so long.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon said, we would not thank a beggar who informed us that he will continue to beg even more because we granted his request the first time.
SPEAKER_00: We would not thank a beggar who informed us that because we granted his request, he would not stop begging us.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, doubtless, our God tells his children to never stop begging.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon said many times, I have a license to beg with God.
SPEAKER_00: What would that life look like if we believed that?
SPEAKER_00: That far from God shunning us, far from God telling us to leave, God said, No, come.
SPEAKER_00: Beg more.
SPEAKER_00: You see, beggars are beggars because they don't have anything.
SPEAKER_00: Beggars are beggars because they know that they have need.
SPEAKER_00: They bring their need to someone they think can maybe help.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, brothers and sisters, are we not beggars?
SPEAKER_00: Art we not to come to God and say, God, our cupboards are bare.
SPEAKER_00: Would you give what we need?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6, when I was brought low, he saved me.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, friends, our God has saved many.
SPEAKER_00: He saves many.
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about that this week.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of us are thinking right now of times and places where he saved us.
SPEAKER_00: And we know he saved us.
SPEAKER_00: He saved us from death.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us know that.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us know that he saved us from grave difficult circumstances where we were just lost.
SPEAKER_00: We can think vivid times and places where he reached out and he saved us and we know it.
SPEAKER_00: But what about the times that we don't know?
SPEAKER_00: I often think about that.
SPEAKER_00: What about the times and the situations that we don't know all that he rescued us from, all that he protected us from?
SPEAKER_00: And we don't even know.
SPEAKER_00: Because of his kind providence.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, may we give him thanks for the things that we know as well as the things that we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Spurgeon said, I saw that this was this was copied by all, this is taken by all the commentators today.
SPEAKER_00: They must have all gotten it from Spurgeon.
SPEAKER_00: His children, God's children, never die prematurely.
SPEAKER_00: They shall be immortal until their work is done on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: And when their time shall come, then their death shall be precious to God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read that again.
SPEAKER_00: God's children never die prematurely.
SPEAKER_00: Not one minute before he's done.
SPEAKER_00: Not one minute before we're done doing his work that he assigned to us on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: We shall be immortal.
SPEAKER_00: The enemy cannot take us prematurely.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing can take us prematurely.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that good news?
SPEAKER_00: Until our work is done.
SPEAKER_00: And when our time shall come, even then our death shall be precious to God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the verse said.
SPEAKER_00: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, these are words of comfort.
SPEAKER_00: To be rescued by God.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, to be rested, verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Return, O my soul, to your rest.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew says once more.
SPEAKER_00: Return once more to your rest.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's kind of striking language, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: How many times have you walked away from your rest in Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody here can count that high.
SPEAKER_00: How many times have we walked away from our rest?
SPEAKER_00: He says, return, O my soul.
SPEAKER_00: What he's doing here is he's preaching to himself.
SPEAKER_00: At APC, we call that preaching the gospel to ourselves because we forget the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, take hold of your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see he's talking to himself here?
SPEAKER_00: O my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Return, O my soul, come back to your rest because you lost your way.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
SPEAKER_00: This man absolutely lost his rest.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know for how long.
SPEAKER_00: Some people lose their soul rest for a very long time, and they're miserable.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can lose your soul rest and still come to church on Sunday and still sing and still listen.
SPEAKER_00: That's not for you.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says, You re Lord, return to me, restore to me my soul rest, so that when I sing, I sing with all my heart.
SPEAKER_00: I sing with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: That when I pray, I pray with a thankful heart.
SPEAKER_00: This is meditation.
SPEAKER_00: You see what he's doing here?
SPEAKER_00: He's asking the Lord to convince him to believe deep down in his soul what he knows to be true in his head.
SPEAKER_00: I like the way Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Lloyd-Jones put it.
SPEAKER_00: I read it years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I just can't stop forgetting about this.
SPEAKER_00: It's we need to learn how to talk to ourselves and stop listening to ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We listen to ourselves way too much.
SPEAKER_00: We listen to that orphan spirit, that orphan voice.
SPEAKER_00: We sometimes we listen to the voices of people that told us things, narratives, people that tried to write narratives for our life years ago.
SPEAKER_00: People who tried to tell us what we were, who we were.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we still believe.
SPEAKER_00: We need to learn how to talk to ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We need to learn how to invite the Holy Spirit in, to point us to the truth, to show us the truth.
SPEAKER_00: What do we know to be true from the Word of God?
SPEAKER_00: Not what we manufacture, not what we conjure up from our worst narratives.
SPEAKER_00: He's asking the Lord to convince him.
SPEAKER_00: Deep down in his soul, what he knows to be true in his head.
SPEAKER_00: What is the voice of the orphan?
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't really care about you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know by that by now?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't there enough evidence that you've accumulated in your investigation?
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you accumulated enough reasons to believe that God doesn't care about you?
SPEAKER_00: Because if he did, look what he would have given you.
SPEAKER_00: Look what he would have done for you.
SPEAKER_00: The voice of the orphan.
SPEAKER_00: You've blown it.
SPEAKER_00: How many chances do you think you get?
SPEAKER_00: How many times have you spurned God?
SPEAKER_00: How many times have you walked away from God?
SPEAKER_00: Why in the world would you think that he's listening to you now?
SPEAKER_00: That's the voice of the orphan.
SPEAKER_00: Are you learning to distinguish the difference between the voice of the orphan and the voice of the Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: The gospel.
SPEAKER_00: How does your soul find rest?
SPEAKER_00: What's the way back?
SPEAKER_00: Is there a way back?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there is.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite prayer mentors, O.
SPEAKER_00: Hallisby, in his book on prayer, said it like this: Helplessness is the real secret and the impelling power of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: True prayer is a fruit of helplessness and faith.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: Seldom are these two ideas held together.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's true.
SPEAKER_00: True prayer is a fruit of helplessness.
SPEAKER_00: I mean real helplessness.
SPEAKER_00: Not, God, I've got this.
SPEAKER_00: But if I don't, I know where to call.
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time?
SPEAKER_00: You can honestly say you just felt a complete sense of helplessness.
SPEAKER_00: And you could say to your soul, and you could say to God, I don't have anything here.
SPEAKER_00: The real purpose, real prayer is a fruit of helplessness and faith.
SPEAKER_00: Seldom are these two ideas held together.
SPEAKER_00: The real purpose of our wrestling in prayer is therefore to render us so impotent and helpless, not only in connection with our physical and spiritual needs, but above all, our inability to pray.
SPEAKER_00: That our prayers really become a prayer for the spirit of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: That is so true.
SPEAKER_00: You see, most of all, what we need to learn is how to come to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He's the spirit of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We need a new spiritual prayer antenna, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We don't work this up.
SPEAKER_00: This comes down.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the advocate.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the one who convinces us that Jesus loves us.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the one who convinces us that God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: He's not left you, He's not abandoned you.
SPEAKER_00: We can't work that up.
SPEAKER_00: Not very well.
SPEAKER_00: Halisby says we should through prayer give Jesus the opportunity of gaining access to our souls, our bodies, our homes, our countries.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We should through prayer give Jesus the opportunity of gaining access to our souls.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the psalmist was doing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where he found his rest.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where you're going to find your rest.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you're going to find your rest.
SPEAKER_00: Your rest.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to find it any other way.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you.
SPEAKER_00: This brings us to the last point, the repayment.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 12 to 14.
SPEAKER_00: What shall I render to the Lord for all of his benefits to me?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he healed me, he rescued me.
SPEAKER_00: Now what do I do?
SPEAKER_00: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of his people.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord has dealt bountifully with me.
SPEAKER_00: Who here this morning can say that?
SPEAKER_00: Who here this morning can say the Lord has dealt bountifully with me?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I see that hand.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: We forget that, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, I know it.
SPEAKER_00: I know it.
SPEAKER_00: Does your life reveal that?
SPEAKER_00: Does your life reflect that?
SPEAKER_00: Do people see you as a woman, as a man of thanksgiving?
SPEAKER_00: Are you living a life of thanksgiving?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing short, nothing less is good enough.
SPEAKER_00: May I remember that?
SPEAKER_00: May you remember that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would we believe this?
SPEAKER_00: Remember what Paul said in Romans chapter 11, verse 35?
SPEAKER_00: Who has given a gift to God that he might be repaid?
SPEAKER_00: And yet, here the psalmists and throughout the scriptures, they talk about repaying the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?
SPEAKER_00: Well, intrinsically, there's nothing that we can give him.
SPEAKER_00: He has everything already.
SPEAKER_00: Yet what he's saying to us is there are very valid ways to express, tangible ways to express what we believe about him and his goodness, to express our thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: For he who spared not his own son, how will he not also with him graciously give us what?
SPEAKER_00: All things.
SPEAKER_00: This is a powerful argument.
SPEAKER_00: He has already given us his very best.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think he is now going to withhold lesser things?
SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying this morning, what the psalmist says, what the scripture says, look back.
SPEAKER_00: Look back to what he has already given you at the cross of his son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Look forward eternally to all the promises that you believe, that you believe.
SPEAKER_00: That one day in heaven, through eternity, the blessings that you are going to live with for eternity, look back, look forward, now look present.
SPEAKER_00: He's making an argument here.
SPEAKER_00: Give him thanks for all that he has already done for you, for all he has promised that he will do for you eternally.
SPEAKER_00: Now look to your present circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: Will he be less faithful now than he was at the cross, or he will be throughout eternity?
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody here really think he's gonna be less faithful now with these lesser things?
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes these lesser things seem like so prominent things to us that we're willing to judge his character by it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just nonsense, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he did at the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he will do throughout eternity.
SPEAKER_00: It's just nonsense to think, no, but I'm gonna judge his character by what he's doing right now in this exact situation.
SPEAKER_00: That's foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the psalmist tells us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the scriptures tell us over and over and over again, and yet we're not immune to that, are we?
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, return my soul to rest.
SPEAKER_00: Return my soul to rest.
SPEAKER_00: They say love is blind, but when we love God, our affection has its eyes open and stands up to the most rigid logic we can think of.
SPEAKER_00: It's been said we have reasons, we have super abundant reasons for loving God, for trusting God.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do.
SPEAKER_00: Spurgeon said the best return for one like me, so wretched and so pure, is from gifts to draw a plea and ask him still for more.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, as we close, just two points, two thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, let's go back to the one who sang this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus on the night before his death in the upper room with his disciples, literally sang this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: But what's different between his singing of the psalm and ours, and our reading it today?
SPEAKER_00: What's different?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Mark chapter 14, verse 34, the night before his death, my soul is sorrowful even to death.
SPEAKER_00: That night Jesus was sorrowful to the point of death, like drops of blood flowing down his cheeks.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus asked for the removal of that cup, didn't he?
SPEAKER_00: Three times he prayed, Father, take this cup from me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to drink this cup.
SPEAKER_00: Did the father answer that prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Nah.
SPEAKER_00: The father said, You will drink this cup.
SPEAKER_00: You will drink the cup of my wrath, so that one day my people will lift up their cup.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he says about this in the text.
SPEAKER_00: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Is this a pointer ultimately to the Lord's table?
SPEAKER_00: I think it is.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we lift the cup, it's a reminder with thanksgiving that Jesus himself bore the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: He took the cup, he drank the dregs of the cup.
SPEAKER_00: This is where it's different between Jesus and us.
SPEAKER_00: But we can thank him and we can trust him.
SPEAKER_00: That he sang this song, he understood these truths, and he understood them and lived them for us.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus himself lifted the cup that night with his disciples, didn't he?
SPEAKER_00: The disciples had no idea at that moment what Jesus meant by saying, This cup.
SPEAKER_00: They would come to find out.
SPEAKER_00: They would come to understand, and it would change their lives.
SPEAKER_00: Has this changed your life?
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus drank the cup of wrath.
SPEAKER_00: And he even gave thanks for it, didn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He lifted up the cup and he gave thanks.
SPEAKER_00: And I say to myself, how could he have done that?
SPEAKER_00: How could he have done that?
SPEAKER_00: Knowing what was in the cup for him, not what's in the cup for you.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, if we don't see this, we're not going to have a life of thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't see this, we're going to sin greatly against our God with unthankful hearts, with grumbling, grumbling lives.
SPEAKER_00: This is a repayment.
SPEAKER_00: What did Jesus also say that night?
SPEAKER_00: Not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: Can you say that?
SPEAKER_00: Can you pray that prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Not my will, but your will be done, because I know that you are for me.
SPEAKER_00: I know that you are good.
SPEAKER_00: I know that you were wise.
SPEAKER_00: Not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we can say that by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And we're not gonna we're gonna stop judging God by the circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: He's already proven his goodness to us, he's already proven his love for us.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist said, What do you want, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 51, David, after he was rescued.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, if I brought, if I brought the best oxen in Israel to you, if I brought the best bulls to you, is that what you want?
SPEAKER_00: He said, No.
SPEAKER_00: I know what you want, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You want a broken and contrite heart from me.
SPEAKER_00: You want to see true brokenness in me.
SPEAKER_00: You want to see true thanksgiving from me.
SPEAKER_00: I know what you want, you really want is my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, friends, let's give them our hearts this morning in gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: Let's thank them.
SPEAKER_00: God's gift to us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Worthy is the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: The last thing I'm gonna say is the mercy may come in secret, but the praise is given in public.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what your story is or what you might testify to this more this evening when you come back.
SPEAKER_00: But the mercies are often private, personal, but the praise is to be public.
SPEAKER_00: Did you see this in the psalm?
SPEAKER_00: The praise is to be public.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm was written to help us find words for our own public thanks.
SPEAKER_00: May you think about that this afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: May you think about this this afternoon, even before you come back tonight.
SPEAKER_00: How will you give glory to God?
SPEAKER_00: How will you give thanks to God so that others may be encouraged by the goodness of God and give thanks with grateful hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Please pray with me.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we we do thank you.
SPEAKER_00: We do love you.
SPEAKER_00: You have rescued us.
SPEAKER_00: And we will say it again this morning, you have rescued us.
SPEAKER_00: Please accept our thanks, accept our praise.
SPEAKER_00: God, would you please create in us broken, contrite hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Father, will you forgive us of our pride?
SPEAKER_00: We can be so proud.
SPEAKER_00: We can be so self-sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: Our prayer lives can wither up and be very, very cold.
SPEAKER_00: Warm our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Warm our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: May we see what Jesus Himself, the one who sang this hymn, the one who lived this hymn, the one who died this hymn, the one who was resurrected from the grave this hymn.
SPEAKER_00: May our eyes be on the one who did for us, so that we would live lives of thanks in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: This is our prayer.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.