Micah McCormick: help me to serve in the strength that you supply, that you might receive all glory, and we pray that from our hearts we'd be able to give thanks to you because, indeed, your faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: We pray these things in Jesus name, amen.
Micah McCormick: This is a Psalm of thanksgiving.
Micah McCormick: Each of the first three verses begins give thanks to the Lord, and the final verse also begins give thanks to the Lord.
Micah McCormick: So you could really read that almost as though every single verse could begin give thanks to the Lord.
Micah McCormick: But the psalmist who wrote this Psalm, who's inspired by God, but the psalmist who wrote this psalm, who's inspired by God, he didn't choose to specifically highlight give thanks to the Lord every single verse, but he does, under God's inspiration, highlight the reason we're called to give thanks to the Lord.
Micah McCormick: Give thanks to God because his faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: Give thanks to God, his faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: Okay, I got it, mike, I got it.
Micah McCormick: Why does this Psalm repeat so much?
Micah McCormick: Because God is so great that sometimes, like those angels, you just want to cry out holy, holy, holy.
Micah McCormick: Because God's love is so deep that sometimes it just takes a barrage of praise to really put ourselves in the place where we're rightly acknowledging him, because God knows that we need repetition.
Micah McCormick: You that are parents know this, but God, speaking to his children, he knows this also.
Micah McCormick: This psalm is a song.
Micah McCormick: The 150 Psalms are the earliest Christian songbook that we have.
Micah McCormick: It's the only inspired songbook that we have.
Micah McCormick: And if you turn in, that first song has a chorus that repeats 26 times.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes I'll be talking with someone.
Micah McCormick: A song will come up and I'll say, ah, we shouldn't sing that song.
Micah McCormick: I'll say, why?
Micah McCormick: Say it repeats too much.
Micah McCormick: Say, tell me, tell me more.
Micah McCormick: And they say, well, the chorus repeats like five times.
Micah McCormick: And sometimes now I'm sure this would never, ever happen in our church, but sometimes they say it in a way that's kind of like.
Micah McCormick: You know, I feel bad for all those poor, immature Christians who like a repetitive song, but thankfully I've moved beyond that in my Christian life.
Micah McCormick: The inspired psalmist repeats the chorus 26 times.
Micah McCormick: We need intensive repetition.
Micah McCormick: It can be good to have songs that have intensive repetition.
Micah McCormick: His faithful love endures forever 26 times.
Micah McCormick: Now, having said that, let me also say how many Psalms are like this one.
Micah McCormick: There's 150.
Micah McCormick: Other Psalms do have repetition, but not the same way that this one does.
Micah McCormick: So that's one out of 150.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes you're listening to an album or a radio station, you're in a church service and it feels like eight out of 10 songs are trying to do a Psalm 136.
Micah McCormick: You know what I mean.
Micah McCormick: That's not wrong, but if you never have intensive repetition you're not matching the breadth of what you find and the variety in the Psalm.
Micah McCormick: And if you are always leaning into intensive repetition, you're not also quite matching the breadth of what we have here in the psalm.
Micah McCormick: And one other thing if you notice it doesn't repeat 26 times in a row, every single verse.
Micah McCormick: There's a new example of God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: So you've got fresh fuel every single time you get to that wonderful chorus that's rehearsing God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: But this is a sermon on 136, and I can understand why Pastor Doug would have given me this psalm because, as I said, it begins and ends with thanks and we should give thanks to God for his faithful love.
Micah McCormick: We need repetition.
Micah McCormick: I think I can prove it Now.
Micah McCormick: Hopefully this doesn't backfire.
Micah McCormick: I want you to raise your hand.
Micah McCormick: Do not be shy.
Micah McCormick: Often a week of Thanksgiving we might go around the table or at some point during the week and give thanks to God for something.
Micah McCormick: So how many of you this past week said I want to give thanks to God because his faithful love endures forever?
Micah McCormick: Go ahead, put the hands up, don't be shy.
Micah McCormick: Now.
Micah McCormick: I was at a Thanksgiving meal where Nikolai actually brought up this Psalmsalm without any provocation from me.
Micah McCormick: So Nicholas is being shy, but that's one, nikolai.
Micah McCormick: Who else?
Micah McCormick: All right, okay, okay, there are a couple of hands, thank you, very good.
Micah McCormick: So we have like two or three hands, over a hundred people here.
Micah McCormick: It's not that we all have to say this every single time every Thanksgiving, but you think I got it.
Micah McCormick: I got it.
Micah McCormick: This faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: But if it's really lodged in our hearts, if it's really on the tip of our tongue, don't you think it would have come out a bit more than that?
Micah McCormick: In a group this size, I won't do it, but if I said how many of you thank God for the food or for family, how many hands would go up with those things?
Micah McCormick: And those are good things to give thanks for.
Micah McCormick: We need the repetition because perhaps this truth of God's faithful love isn't planted in our hearts and on the tip of our tongues the way that it should be.
Micah McCormick: So here's what we're going to do this morning.
Micah McCormick: First we're going to explore what God's faithful love is.
Micah McCormick: We need to unpack that.
Micah McCormick: And then, as you look at the Psalm, it breaks into two sections.
Micah McCormick: So there's the opening, thanks, but then there's two main sections in the Psalm.
Micah McCormick: If you look, you'll see verses four to nine speak of God's acts and creation, and then verses 10 to 24 speak of his acts for Israel.
Micah McCormick: So we'll consider God's faithful love and creation is faithful love for Israel.
Micah McCormick: And then, finally, we'll conclude by again reflecting on God's faithful love in our lives and what that means for us.
Micah McCormick: So first, god's faithful love defined.
Micah McCormick: What is it?
Micah McCormick: Well, the chorus of this Psalm, as we read it from our pew Bible, which happens to be the Christian standard Bible.
Micah McCormick: It reads his faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: If you're looking at a King James Bible this morning and it's another excellent translation that reads his mercy endureth forever.
Micah McCormick: Okay, mercy and love, that's two different words.
Micah McCormick: That's interesting.
Micah McCormick: If you're looking at the English Standard Version today, it says his steadfast love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: So that's very similar to the CSB.
Micah McCormick: You know, steadfast, faithful those are overlapping words.
Micah McCormick: In our everyday English we use the word faithful a lot more than steadfast, but that's very similar.
Micah McCormick: And then if you're looking at the NIV this morning these are all great translations the NIV just says his love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: So what is the psalmist trying to communicate here?
Micah McCormick: Yes, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, so your first inclination might be to say, okay, well, in Hebrew does it say love or mercy, does it have an adjective faithful or something like that, or does it not?
Micah McCormick: Translation is not always as simple as that.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes there are words that have different shades of meaning in different contexts and it's not always easy to communicate that in a translation.
Micah McCormick: Think about our English word love.
Micah McCormick: If I say I love my parents and I say I love Thanksgiving turkey, I love Thanksgiving turkey.
Micah McCormick: If someone's trying to learn English, would they conclude okay, so they love.
Micah McCormick: So he has the same relationship to his parents as he does to Thanksgiving turkey.
Micah McCormick: I understand.
Micah McCormick: I hope for my parents' sake that that's not true.
Micah McCormick: The love I have for my parents is a much higher love.
Micah McCormick: There's a family commitment and obligation there.
Micah McCormick: There's a depth of relational experience to that.
Micah McCormick: When I say I love Thanksgiving turkey, I just mean I like the taste of it a lot, the word that's here in Psalm 136 is the word hesed in Hebrew.
Micah McCormick: To pronounce it correctly, you have to act like you're about to spit on someone.
Micah McCormick: Let's not do that today.
Micah McCormick: But it's a word that's used quite often in the Old Testament and there's no extra adjective of faithful or steadfast in the original language.
Micah McCormick: So you could say in this case, the NIV actually is the most word-for-word translation if we're going to say it that way.
Micah McCormick: But the reason why translations like our Pew Bible or the English Standard Version say faithful love or steadfast love, they're trying to communicate that this is not just a generic love, it's a special kind of love.
Micah McCormick: Many times this word is used in the Old Testament in the context of forgiveness Numbers 14, 18,.
Micah McCormick: The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, forgiving iniquity and rebellion.
Micah McCormick: Pardon the iniquity of this people, in keeping with the greatness of your faithful love.
Micah McCormick: There it is again.
Micah McCormick: Your hesed, just as you have forgiven them from Egypt until now.
Micah McCormick: Numbers Nehemiah 9, verse 17.
Micah McCormick: They refused to listen, did not remember your wonders you performed among them.
Micah McCormick: They became stiff-need and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt.
Micah McCormick: But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in, has said faithful love, and you did not abandon them.
Micah McCormick: Psalm 25, 7,.
Micah McCormick: Do not remember the sins of my youth or my acts of rebellion, in keeping with your faithful love.
Micah McCormick: Psalm 25, 7,.
Micah McCormick: So that's probably one reason why the King James translators use the word mercy because we think of a love that's so forgiving.
Micah McCormick: We do think of mercy, of a love that's so forgiving, we do think of mercy.
Micah McCormick: But those verses that I just read that use the same word that we heard over and over again in Psalm 136, they emphasize also the idea of covenant loyalty.
Micah McCormick: God especially shows his chesed to Israel.
Micah McCormick: He especially shows his chesed to Israel.
Micah McCormick: He especially shows his chesed to David because he entered a covenant with them, he had a commitment to them.
Micah McCormick: He entered into a covenant with David, he had a commitment with David.
Micah McCormick: So this is a word of unwavering loyalty.
Micah McCormick: In 1 Samuel 20, jonathan and David are talking together about what to do in light of Saul's, jonathan's father's, hatred of David, and Jonathan asked David to show him chesed.
Micah McCormick: So it's not always used only of God, but it is used here in the context of a deep loyalty Show him chesed from the Lord.
Micah McCormick: And Jonathan even says if I die, don't withdraw your chesed, david, from my household.
Micah McCormick: And then it says Jonathan once again swore to David and his love for him because he loved him as he loved himself.
Micah McCormick: So Jonathan and David have already committed themselves to each other in this covenant of friendship and deep loyalty.
Micah McCormick: Committed themselves to each other in this covenant of friendship and deep loyalty.
Micah McCormick: And now, as they prepare to part, jonathan calls to mind that commitment and says don't you ever stop showing chesed to me, and even if I die, you better show chesed to all of my family.
Micah McCormick: So if we had a Venn diagram up here with this Hebrew word for faithful love, we'd have overlapping English words like mercy, like love, definitely loyalty.
Micah McCormick: That's what we're talking about here in this verse.
Micah McCormick: Psalm 136 celebrates a deeply loyal love.
Micah McCormick: Give thanks to God because his faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: And let me, before we press on, let me also say we have visitors, sometimes more than usual on the holidays.
Micah McCormick: If you're here visiting, maybe someone in your family convinced you just come to church with me.
Micah McCormick: This morning he said all right, like whoa, I didn't come looking to get a lecture on the semantic domain of a word from 3000 years ago.
Micah McCormick: I just want the preacher to tell me to love my family and I can get back home and watch some football and eat some leftovers.
Micah McCormick: What's going on here?
Micah McCormick: It's okay to watch football.
Micah McCormick: It's wonderful to eat leftovers.
Micah McCormick: You should give thanks for your family, and we don't.
Micah McCormick: We don't talk about specific Hebrew and Greek words every Sunday, but the Bible we believe in this church is the word of the living God.
Micah McCormick: It's God's speech to us.
Micah McCormick: It's not just a moral totem that we take in our pockets to kind of help our lives be a little better.
Micah McCormick: So if God is speaking to us, we're desperate to know what he says.
Micah McCormick: So we do hope that when you would come, you'd find people that are hungry to know.
Micah McCormick: What is God saying?
Micah McCormick: What does this word mean?
Micah McCormick: I want to know it for myself and my life.
Micah McCormick: Second heading this morning, creation sings God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: Verse four invites us to give thanks to God because God does great wonders.
Micah McCormick: What wonders are those?
Micah McCormick: Verses five to nine tell us some of those wonders.
Micah McCormick: God, because God does great wonders.
Micah McCormick: What wonders are those?
Micah McCormick: Verses 5 to 9 tell us some of those wonders.
Micah McCormick: And they're the wonders of creation, making sky and land great lights, like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Micah McCormick: This is a very frequent theme in Psalm the glory of God in creation.
Micah McCormick: You could look at Psalm 8 or Psalm 19 or Psalm 139.
Micah McCormick: But truly we can say the heavens declare the glory of God.
Micah McCormick: Here this Psalm brings us all the way back to the first pages of Genesis.
Micah McCormick: In verse 5, it says God made the heavens.
Micah McCormick: In Genesis, chapter 1, it said God created the heavens and the earth.
Micah McCormick: Here, in verse number seven, god makes the lights Genesis 1.14, god made the lights.
Micah McCormick: Verses eight and nine of this Psalm picture the sun ruling over the day and the moon ruling over the night.
Micah McCormick: Again, language borrowed from Genesis chapter one.
Micah McCormick: So from creation until the time when the Psalm writes, so from creation until the time when the psalmist writes, until now, you see God all throughout.
Micah McCormick: We could be tempted, can't we, to think that the sun just kind of rises and sets on its own, the moon and the season cycles and the waves just kind of come and go on their own.
Micah McCormick: No, it's God that maintains the created order.
Micah McCormick: He upholds all things by his powerful word.
Micah McCormick: It's amazing.
Micah McCormick: When we think of creation, we often think of God's skill, his wisdom, his power.
Micah McCormick: And it's true, we even see.
Micah McCormick: In verse number five.
Micah McCormick: It mentions that skill, but the psalmist still is emphasizing God's faithful love throughout.
Micah McCormick: You notice that we might expect the writer here to say who spread the land on the waters, his power endures forever.
Micah McCormick: That's not what he says.
Micah McCormick: We might expect the psalmist to say the moon and stars to rule by night, his craftsmanship endures forever, but he doesn't say that.
Micah McCormick: We might expect the writer to wait until we turn to Israel, god's covenant people, and then to introduce the idea of his faithful, loyal love.
Micah McCormick: But he doesn't do that.
Micah McCormick: So how does creation reveal God's hesed, his loving loyalty?
Micah McCormick: God is not forgiving the whales when they eat other fish.
Micah McCormick: God doesn't have a personal relationship with the stars.
Micah McCormick: In the same way he's got a personal relationship with Adam and Eve, with Israel.
Micah McCormick: How does creation reveal God's faithful love?
Micah McCormick: Give you a few ideas.
Micah McCormick: These aren't mutually exclusive.
Micah McCormick: First, exclusive.
Micah McCormick: First, we have to remember that God's hesed is part of his nature.
Micah McCormick: It doesn't just emerge at some later point in time.
Micah McCormick: It's part of who he is.
Micah McCormick: It's always been a part of who he is.
Micah McCormick: And there's a contrast here.
Micah McCormick: The gods of the ancient world think of the Egyptian gods or the Greek and Roman gods.
Micah McCormick: They're powerful, but they're often not loving and personal and loyal in the way that God is, and that's been true all the way from the beginning.
Micah McCormick: God is not just merely some ogre who throws down lightning bolts.
Micah McCormick: He does throw down lightning bolts, but he's not an ogre.
Micah McCormick: He's always been a God of love and he sends rain on the just and the unjust in commitment to his creation.
Micah McCormick: Second, god created the world for his own enjoyment, but he created the world for our enjoyment as well, for his people.
Micah McCormick: Creation is a gift of God's love to us.
Micah McCormick: So when you see a beautiful sunrise, that's God's love for you.
Micah McCormick: When you see, on a crisp, clear night, that full moon, if you know the Lord, that's a token of God's love for you.
Micah McCormick: When you taste a slice of warm pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream, the world and everything in it belongs to God.
Micah McCormick: That's God's love for you.
Micah McCormick: So all of creation should be a reminder to us that our God made it.
Micah McCormick: And yes, our God made it, and yes, he's a God of faithful love who loves his own.
Micah McCormick: Third, god's commitment to upholding the created order should remind us that he will always be faithful to love his people.
Micah McCormick: Jeremiah 33, 25.
Micah McCormick: This is what the Lord says.
Micah McCormick: If I do not keep my covenant with the day and with the night and if I fail to establish the fixed order of heaven and earth, then I might also reject the descendants of Jacob and my servant, david.
Micah McCormick: You hear the logic in those verses.
Micah McCormick: God is saying he's got a commitment, a kind of creation covenant with the day and the night and he's moving those things along with perfect regularity with the day and the night.
Micah McCormick: And he's moving those things along with perfect regularity.
Micah McCormick: And then he says to his own people look at, look at the seasons, look at the day.
Micah McCormick: Has that stopped?
Micah McCormick: Why would you think my love for you would stop?
Micah McCormick: It's, it's a witness to his love for his people.
Micah McCormick: So all of the created order sings of God's faithful love in the reminder that his faithfulness will never end.
Micah McCormick: He will be loyal all the way.
Micah McCormick: And that leads us right into the last half of the Psalm.
Micah McCormick: Because, yes, creation sings God's faithful love, but Israel sings God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: We see that in verses 10 to 24, the Bible so often recounts God's wonders in the life of the people of Israel.
Micah McCormick: It recounts those wonders here, verse number 11, he brings them out of Egypt.
Micah McCormick: Verse 13, he divides the Red Sea so they can walk through Verse 16,.
Micah McCormick: He leads Israel through the wilderness Verse 21, he gives them an inheritance.
Micah McCormick: And all of these acts showcase God's chesed sacrifice.
Micah McCormick: God's chesed, his faithful love, his merciful loyalty.
Micah McCormick: There wasn't anything in Israel.
Micah McCormick: Deuteronomy says he loved them because he loved them Pure, benevolent love.
Micah McCormick: But it's a love of commitment and it's a good thing that it's not based on them, or it would be a love that changed.
Micah McCormick: But God made that commitment.
Micah McCormick: God made a promise.
Micah McCormick: He made a promise to Abraham and God doesn't go back on his promise.
Micah McCormick: He's loyal even when his people are not loyal.
Micah McCormick: How could Israel forget God's faithful love?
Micah McCormick: But they do.
Micah McCormick: Why would they need to be reminded of it 26 times in one Psalm?
Micah McCormick: Because they do.
Micah McCormick: They need to be reminded of it, just like we need to be reminded of it.
Micah McCormick: The Psalm here hits some of the high points in Israel's history, out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, into the wilderness, into the promised land of inheritance.
Micah McCormick: It hits those high points.
Micah McCormick: It couldn't detail every single occasion of God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: That would be too much.
Micah McCormick: But it hits those high points to remind them in part.
Micah McCormick: God is always acting in faithful love.
Micah McCormick: It's not just once in a while.
Micah McCormick: These great occasions show us that God is faithful in the every day of Israel's life.
Micah McCormick: He's faithful in the every day of our life as well.
Micah McCormick: So sing Israel.
Micah McCormick: Sing of God's faithful love that endures forever.
Micah McCormick: Verse 23 says he remembered us in our humiliation.
Micah McCormick: It's a beautiful theme in the Old Testament of God remembering his people.
Micah McCormick: It doesn't mean that he oh yeah, israel.
Micah McCormick: Let me get back to that.
Micah McCormick: It wasn't that he forgot and now it comes to his mind.
Micah McCormick: It's covenant language.
Micah McCormick: He always has his people on his heart and there are times when he moves to act in specific ways on behalf of his covenant.
Micah McCormick: He knows and he remembers.
Micah McCormick: When they were in Egypt in slavery, god knew and God remembered this Psalm.
Micah McCormick: It's a Psalm of Thanksgiving.
Micah McCormick: As I said, it contains a lot of violence and some of you and I know some of your mind works like I know it's Thanksgiving.
Micah McCormick: I know this is.
Micah McCormick: You know we want to emphasize God's love, but when you talked about all the things God did for Israel, you skipped over every other verse where there was a lot of violence.
Micah McCormick: And this gets back to what I said earlier.
Micah McCormick: I'm glad you're thinking that way.
Micah McCormick: We love all of God's word.
Micah McCormick: We know it's all good for us, and there's a lot of violence in this Psalm.
Micah McCormick: So if we could ask well, how does creation showcase God's faithful love?
Micah McCormick: Showcase God's faithful love?
Micah McCormick: What about?
Micah McCormick: Isn't there judgment here alongside of love?
Micah McCormick: How does judgment showcase God's faithful love?
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 18.
Micah McCormick: Look at it in your Bibles.
Micah McCormick: God slaughtered famous kings.
Micah McCormick: His faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: How does that work?
Micah McCormick: In this Psalm?
Micah McCormick: God's judgment is not a separate thing from God's love, just as the creation is not a separate thing from God's love.
Micah McCormick: He created with a view to showing his love for his people and he judges, yes, for his glory.
Micah McCormick: He judges also with a view to showing his love for his people.
Micah McCormick: Verse 22 says god gave israel an inheritance.
Micah McCormick: He gave them a land.
Micah McCormick: It was promised as an inheritance, but then, if you look back at verse 21, the land was not all virgin wilderness.
Micah McCormick: Other people were living in the land, and god takes and he gives.
Micah McCormick: Others, others are cursed and Israel is blessed.
Micah McCormick: You might say, well, that sounds a little bit loving, but a lot unfair.
Micah McCormick: Friends, remember God owns everything.
Micah McCormick: He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.
Micah McCormick: It is his to distribute as he pleases.
Micah McCormick: He made the world and everything in it.
Micah McCormick: We can put a no trespassing sign in our yards, but that's not for God, that's for our fellow citizens.
Micah McCormick: God already owns it all anyway.
Micah McCormick: He's in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases.
Micah McCormick: And notice also these are not innocent people.
Micah McCormick: There's verse number 24 says they are Israel's foes.
Micah McCormick: They aren't trying to help God's people, they're trying to kill God's people.
Micah McCormick: And this goes all the way back to Egypt.
Micah McCormick: Pharaoh was not trying to help Israel get their economic feet in place so they could stand on their own as a nation.
Micah McCormick: He ruthlessly enslaved them.
Micah McCormick: And God flicks his finger and hurls Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea.
Micah McCormick: Verse 20 mentions Zion, king of the Amorites.
Micah McCormick: Perhaps he was famous in his own day, not so famous in our day.
Micah McCormick: Listen to Numbers 21.
Micah McCormick: Israel sent messengers to say to King Zion of the Amorites let us travel through your land.
Micah McCormick: We won't go into the fields or vineyards, we won't drink any well water.
Micah McCormick: We'll travel the king's highway until we have traveled through your territory.
Micah McCormick: But Zion would not let Israel travel through his territory.
Micah McCormick: Instead, he gathered his whole army and went out to confront Israel in the wilderness.
Micah McCormick: Gathered his whole army and went out to confront Israel in the wilderness.
Micah McCormick: So this king wouldn't even let Israel walk through his land, much less give them any food and water.
Micah McCormick: He tried to put up a no trespassing sign, and it's never a good idea to tell God no trespassing.
Micah McCormick: So in Psalm 136, these occasions of judgment even highlight God's faithful love for his people.
Micah McCormick: You don't mess with the Lord's bride.
Micah McCormick: You see, there there's something else about this love.
Micah McCormick: It's not a wispy, sugary love.
Micah McCormick: You can watch all kinds of Hallmark movies this time of year and find all kinds of platitudes.
Micah McCormick: If that's what you're looking for, god's love is a deep and affectionate love.
Micah McCormick: It's a tender love, but it's a love that has teeth, it's tenacious.
Micah McCormick: He's plowing through mountains, he's walking across surging oceans in behalf of his own beloved ones.
Micah McCormick: That's the kind of fiercely loyal love that God has.
Micah McCormick: Creation sings God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: Israel sings faithful, god's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: And finally, beloved.
Micah McCormick: Yes, we should sing God's faithful love.
Micah McCormick: How does this Psalm intersect with us and with our lives?
Micah McCormick: Well, in Luke, chapter one, mary is the mother of Jesus.
Micah McCormick: She rejoices at the coming of Christ and she says that the Lord has helped his servant Israel, remembering his and then most of our versions say his mercy.
Micah McCormick: That's the same word in Luke that the translators, the Greek translators of the old Testament, used over and over and over again in this particular Psalm.
Micah McCormick: So that's probably another reason why the King James has the word mercy here.
Micah McCormick: But Mary's point is, god's got this promise.
Micah McCormick: He had this promise of this loving loyalty, this willingness to forgive all the way in the past, and now it's coming to fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: And that's where we see the reality of how is God extending forgiveness and judgment.
Micah McCormick: Well, in Jesus we see both judgment and forgiveness, because Jesus himself was judged in the place of those who trust in him.
Micah McCormick: He bore the wrath of God's judgment that we might experience mercy, not just the mercy of defeat over a temporary area and territory for one period of time, that we might receive eternal mercy in Christ.
Micah McCormick: God has looked with pity on his people and God's love is so determined that he actually took up residence among sinners.
Micah McCormick: He humbled himself the son of God did and became obedient to death, even death on a cross, that we might receive the gift of righteousness.
Micah McCormick: Oh, what faithful love.
Micah McCormick: What has said God has shown to us?
Micah McCormick: Psalm 136 traces Israel's history.
Micah McCormick: It traces the steps of their history out of Egypt through the Red Sea into the wilderness, into the place of inheritance.
Micah McCormick: Consider the steps of Jesus out of Egypt into the waters of the Jordan River, tempted in the wilderness, now exalted and has received his inheritance from the Father.
Micah McCormick: Israel's history becomes Christ's history.
Micah McCormick: You see how that is happening.
Micah McCormick: As we bring in the rest of scripture in the New Testament to this, a text like this, israel's history becomes Christ's history.
Micah McCormick: So now, through our union with Jesus Christ, if indeed we've turned from our sin, we're trusting in him alone, we are united to Christ, so that Christ's history becomes our history.
Micah McCormick: He's our representative.
Micah McCormick: Christ's history becomes our history.
Micah McCormick: He's our representative.
Micah McCormick: But then that also means that through Jesus Christ, israel's history becomes our history too.
Micah McCormick: Whether we're Jew or Gentile, by faith we share that history through Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: We think about the high points of Christ's work his birth, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, all of those high points, just like the high points in this Psalm.
Micah McCormick: They remind us oh, god's always at work to show his faithful love in the high point and every way in between.
Micah McCormick: Ephesians says that he has appointed Christ to be head over all things for his church, which is his body.
Micah McCormick: Christ is always ruling in a way that reflects his faithful love, his deep, loyal, covenant commitment to his people.
Micah McCormick: Having loved his own, which were in the world, he loved them to the end.
Micah McCormick: His faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: Give thanks because the Lord's faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: Often people have forever plans.
Micah McCormick: They're going to have a forever spouse and forever children and a forever job, and sometimes those plans are adjusted, sometimes those plans are shattered.
Micah McCormick: You know some of you.
Micah McCormick: You're sitting around a table this week and there was someone that you always thought was going to be there, and they're just they're not there, they're gone.
Micah McCormick: Thought was going to be there and they're just they're not there, they're gone.
Micah McCormick: And even apart from being sinned against and the sin that we contribute at times ourselves, death can intrude into our lives at any time, and the Burghards experienced that this week.
Micah McCormick: But there is a real forever that moves beyond the disappointments, the massive disappointments of commitments that have since come and gone, to the disappointments of death, to even the very sweetest relationships.
Micah McCormick: That God gives to so many of us till death, do us part.
Micah McCormick: This is an actual, forever, eternal love.
Micah McCormick: So, no matter what our present situation in life, we can give thanks to God because his faithful love endures forever, and a love that's that big, that's that vast, that's that high and deep, as Ephesians, is praise for all the saints to know the height, the breadth, the depth, the length of this loyalty of our Lord, oh, that's where we can rest, that's where we can enjoy the gifts God has given to us in this life, where we can pray, where we can seek him.
Micah McCormick: It's distraction where, even amidst plans that are not at all what we thought they were going to be, the faithful love of our God endures forever.
Micah McCormick: And, ultimately, there's only one forever faithful love.
Micah McCormick: Because there's only one forever Lord, the Alpha and the Omega.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray, oh Lord, how we thank you that this is the faithful love that we need, this is the loyalty that our souls crave and long for.
Micah McCormick: So write it on our hearts and blazon it in our souls that reflexively, involuntarily, we would be saying the faithful love of God endures forever.
Micah McCormick: That we give thanks in all circumstances because God's faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: That, as we see death and destruction and as we anticipate future judgment to come, your faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: And as we see the way you've provided for us all things that we truly need in Christ, how your faithful love endures forever.
Micah McCormick: When we see the love of father, son and spirit, this eternal bond and commitment that we can be invited into, that, that the love the Father has for the Son can be placed in us, that the joy, the expanding and abounding, super abounding joy of the Lord can be brought to us.
Micah McCormick: Lord, give us as much as possible in this life the eyes of faith to have that real experience of your love.
Micah McCormick: That it would not be merely a vain repetition, but a repetition that is fueled by the knowledge of all of your word and deeds in the past, of your redemption in the past, the anticipation of redemption in the future and the present experience that we can say from our hearts we love you because you first loved us.
Micah McCormick: We have peace with you through our Lord, jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: We have a communion with Father, son and Spirit, and this is no small communion.
Micah McCormick: This is a communion that envelops our whole souls and motivates every deed of our lives.
Micah McCormick: So write that into our hearts, make it a beautiful writing, Make it a permanent writing.
Micah McCormick: We pray in Jesus' name, amen.