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[0:00] It's my great pleasure to open God's Word with you. I thought I would look with you this morning at Psalm 136. So if you have your Bibles with you this morning, I hope that you do. You can turn with me to Psalm 136.

[0:14] I love this kind of song of thanksgiving. As I think about all that the Lord has done in my family over the years, and even as He is providing for us in this very different season of life, very real challenges that come with this very new call and all the kind of things that we have no idea what we're getting ourselves into and what we're doing, we find that what we have seen the Lord do again and again and again is remind us that He is there and He is holding us fast, that His steadfast love, it endures forever, and that He will hold us to the very end.

[0:46] And He's reminded us that again and again, so I thought it was a fitting place for us to consider this Psalm of thanksgiving this morning. But before we read God's Word together, let's look to Him for help in understanding it.

[0:57] Let's pray with me one more time. Our great God and Father, we bow before You this morning, and we are just so grateful to open Your Word and to hear from You this morning.

[1:09] You told us Your Word is living and active. We need it to be so this morning. You told us that Your Scriptures are breathed out by God and they are profitable to us for our reproof and for our correction and for our training and righteousness, that You might equip us for every good work.

[1:30] We pray that You would do that for us this morning, that Your Spirit would lead us into all truth as You said He would, and that Your Word would come alive to our hearts today, and that You would not leave us where we are, but You would meet us there and carry us a little further down the road to where You would have us be.

[1:47] And all for the glory of Your name, we pray it for Christ's sake. Amen. Psalm 136. Hear God's Word this morning. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.

[2:03] Give thanks to the God of gods for His steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords for His steadfast love endures forever. To Him who alone does great wonders, for His steadfast love endures forever.

[2:19] To Him who by understanding made the heavens, for His steadfast love endures forever. To Him who spread out the earth above the waters, for His steadfast love endures forever.

[2:31] To Him who made the great lights, for His steadfast love endures forever. The sun to rule over the day, for His steadfast love endures forever. The moon and the stars to rule over the night, for His steadfast love endures forever.

[2:48] To Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt for His steadfast love endures forever and brought Israel out from among them for His steadfast love endures forever.

[2:58] With a strong hand and an outstretched arm for His steadfast love endures forever. To Him who divided the Red Sea in two for His steadfast love endures forever. And made Israel pass through the Red Sea for His steadfast love endures forever.

[3:13] To Him who led His people through the wilderness for His steadfast love endures forever. To Him who struck down great kings for His steadfast love endures forever and killed mighty kings for His steadfast love endures forever.

[3:28] Sihon, the king of the Amorites for His steadfast love endures forever. And Ag, king of Bashan for His steadfast love endures forever. And He gave their land as a heritage for His steadfast love endures forever.

[3:42] A heritage to Israel, His servant, for His steadfast love endures forever. It is He who remembered us in our lowest state for His steadfast love endures forever.

[3:54] And He rescued us from our foes for His steadfast love endures forever. He who gives food to all flesh for His steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven for His steadfast love endures forever.

[4:11] Thus far His word, may He add His blessing to it this morning. You know, Psalm 136 is an interesting psalm of repetition, isn't it? If you were reading this in your own personal devotion, you might find yourself even kind of skipping over this refrain, as steadfast love endures forever.

[4:30] Let me just hit the high points. I get it, as steadfast love endures forever. Let me just see why. Let me just skip the refrain because of its repeated nature.

[4:40] Additionally, the psalmist starts the psalm repeating the phrase, give thanks, give thanks, give thanks. And he ends the psalm at the very end saying, give thanks. What is it that the writer of this hymn of thanks is communicating to us?

[4:57] What is it we're supposed to understand, not only in the content, the substance of what he's trying to say, but even in the form or structure in which he's saying it?

[5:09] Is there something that can and should be learned about the format of this great hymn that will better help us understand its content as well? I think we need to understand both the form and the substance of it.

[5:20] After all, there is a reason why this hymn is called the great halel, the great psalm of praise in Jewish tradition. I think there's a few things on the front end that we might consider by way of form and structure that would help inform us as we consider the substance of this great hymn.

[5:40] The first thing we might see just by way of form and structure is that what he's calling for here in this psalm of thanksgiving is more than just thanks. It's more than just saying, hey, give thanks to the Lord.

[5:52] The term here translated as give thanks is more than a command to say thank you. The word here means to confess or to acknowledge. And it carries with it the idea of acknowledging through thoughtful and gratitude-filled words.

[6:09] Through thoughtful and gratitude-filled words that spell out exactly what we have found out and come to know all too well about the glorious goodness of our God and King. It means to be some informed understanding.

[6:22] It's not just thank you because I perceive what you're doing or I'm interpreting what you're doing in my life to be good. No, it's I know who you are. I know how you worked and I can see the substance of it in my life and I want to confess it.

[6:34] I want to acknowledge it. It's much like the Apostles' Creed to say with informed understanding who God is and what He has done for us.

[6:46] It calls for informed acknowledgement of grace received and experienced. It's more than simple thank you. It's an acknowledgement, a confession of all that He is and all that He has done.

[6:57] It's also by way of form and structure liturgical in nature. For the psalmist, Psalm 136, in this Psalm 136, this repetition of this phrase, His steadfast love endures forever, has as much to do with its form as it does with the substance.

[7:15] We'll talk a little bit later about the significance of that phrase, often repeated through this great psalm. But the people, the structure of it is just as important because the people would have used this great hymn as an antiphonal response from the worship leader.

[7:31] If I was the worship leader, and thankfully I won't be after this week and y'all can be satisfied with not having to hear me sing again after this week, but if I was to stand up here and I was to be the worship leader, I would look to you and I'd say, give thanks to the Lord for He is good and you would respond, His steadfast love endures forever.

[7:51] And I would say, give thanks to the God of gods and you would respond, His steadfast love endures forever. And it would be this responsive reading back and forth that we know in our tradition in many contexts.

[8:04] And in a sense, it's a call for the congregation not to sit idly by and to just think about the promises of God, but to respond to them and say, this is the God of gods and the Lord of lords.

[8:14] And you would say, yes, His steadfast love endures forever. It's a song that calls for response, urges us to respond to, to acknowledge and to engage the beautiful promises found herein.

[8:32] And then there's this power of repetition itself. We often like to pick on contemporary worship songs because it's, you know, like three chords and a chorus, I think is the joke that's often made.

[8:45] The repetitious nature of songs today. And I think there's much to be critical of. A lot of what passes for worship today, but I think also sometimes we tend to be hard on those who would repeat phrases because the Bible actually puts a great emphasis on repetition.

[8:59] It often tells us to remember, remember, remember. It's actually one of the largest themes of the Old Testament as it calls us again and again to remember His commands and His promises to us.

[9:11] He has us build altars and set stones of remembrance to carve into tablets so that we won't forget to bind His promises, signs on our hands and frontlets between our eyes and to mark it over the doorposts of our houses.

[9:24] He tells us, He told us to repeat them, these promises regularly when we rise up and when we go to bed and we walk along the way, namely those truths that we so often forget and neglect.

[9:41] It's what we just got through singing. Prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave. The God I love. Repetition was a way of driving truths home to our hearts so that we would not so easily forsake or neglect them.

[9:57] Repetition was also the way that they emphasized certain central tenets of the faith in the Old Testament and the New. You saw Jesus do this often when He would say, truly, truly, I say to you. And any time you see Jesus say those words, you better mark it.

[10:10] He's got something He really wants you to get a hold of. When we think about God communicating to us His holiness in the Old Testament, He says, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty to emphasize the set-apart nature of who He is.

[10:27] Repetition was important to stress to us something and hear in this psalm. He means for us to see in the form of this psalm the significance of what He's calling us to. That is why this psalm is called the great Hallel or the great psalm of praise in Jewish tradition.

[10:44] It is the psalm God means to highlight for us regarding the proper worship of God both in form and in substance. By way of form, it tells us the importance of regular, informed, and thoughtful confessions of our belief in songs and confessions and in celebration of His goodness to us.

[11:04] It gives us some form and structure to our worship that is community-driven, that acknowledges and is meant to foster, as it were, mutual joy and excitement of the Lord's goodness to us as we respond together in antiphonal worship, right?

[11:20] It's meant to encourage us and to pull us in, to not be bystanders, as it were, in the pews, but engaged in the worship of God. Lastly, it teaches us the power of repetition, of memorization and meditation as we hide His Word in our hearts through song and Scripture memory and catechism and Bible study.

[11:43] Something about the form that does inform us concerning our own worship and the way we engage our God, but what of the substance of what He says here? If that tells us something of the form we should see as we look at the structure of 136 and think about it, what about the content of His message here?

[12:03] I think there's two things that we can see from the content of the message itself. The first is, He gives us three expressions of thanksgiving and He tells us, and as He kind of gives us these three expressions of thanksgiving that He wants us to consider, and in a sense, you get to the end of each one of them and you go, I just can't say thank you enough for this expression of who He is and what He does for us.

[12:28] The first expression of thanksgiving He gives is regarding His sovereignty. His sovereignty. In verses 1-3, we see our sovereign God express to us in praise, give thanks to the Lord for He is good.

[12:41] Give thanks to the God of gods. Give thanks to the Lord of lords. The psalmist declares God to be the God over all gods and Lord over all lords.

[12:52] He is the sovereign God over all things. A.W. Pink says it well concerning the sovereignty of God. He says, what do we mean by this expression, the sovereignty of God?

[13:03] We mean the supremacy of God, the kingship of God, the Godhood of God, if you will. To say that God is sovereign is to declare that God is God.

[13:15] To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the Almighty, the possessor of all power in heaven and earth, so that none can defeat His counsels, thwart His purpose, or resist His will.

[13:29] This is our God. The psalmist grounds his thanksgiving in the truth that God is the Almighty, all-powerful, sovereign King of the universe.

[13:42] To be the God over all gods is not to admit or to acknowledge some sort of polytheism, right? That there's a bunch of gods and He's just the head God over all of them. This is not Zeus over the lower gods.

[13:54] That's not what he's saying when he says He is God over all gods. Rather, it acknowledges that there is an idolatry in the heart of man such that mankind worships and lives in a false allegiance to all manner of false idols, false gods, and he is offering, the psalmist is here offering the praise and thanksgiving that is worthy of the God who is over all those gods.

[14:20] He is in a sense saying, let no one praise their gods like we praise the one true and living God. Let no one cherish, adore, and celebrate their so-called gods, those things which we stake our hopes, our ambitions, our identity in in this world.

[14:38] Let no one pursue, celebrate, have ambitions towards those things like we cherish, adore, and celebrate our God because there is no other God like Him.

[14:51] That's His invitation to us here at the beginning. Give thanks, give thanks, give thanks, He says. Additionally, He declares Him to be Lord of all lords.

[15:02] Over against all kings and rulers of the world, our God is Lord over all lords. Every power and principality of the world cowers before the might of our God and pays allegiance to His great power and worth.

[15:16] There is no one who can stand before His presence, rather all bow before Him. This idea of His sovereignty shapes the whole of the psalm. The whole of the psalm is shaped by this idea of His sovereignty.

[15:28] Everything else kind of falls kind of underneath this primary aspect of what the psalmist seeks to celebrate. We see that because he closes, he bookends the psalm this way, saying he gives thanks to the God of gods and the Lord of lords.

[15:41] And he gets to verse 26 and he says, give thanks to the God of heaven. A term reserved in the Scriptures to describe the one true and living God. In fact, the only other place where these descriptions of God, God of gods, Lord of lords, and God of heaven are mentioned is in Deuteronomy 10, 14-17.

[16:01] Many believe that Deuteronomy 10, 14-17 is actually the backdrop, as it were, of the psalmist's hymn here. He's actually drawing from Deuteronomy 10, 14-17 in writing this great hymn of the faith.

[16:17] Deuteronomy 10, 14-17 says this, Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart and love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them.

[16:30] You, above all peoples, as you are this day, circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who is not partial and takes no bribe.

[16:47] It would seem that the writer of this great hymn of the faith is basing it on this early story of redemption as a reminder of the covenant faithfulness of our God. The psalmist looks back at the giving of the law and then remembers the God who declares Himself to be the sovereign King of the universe who is worthy of our gratitude again and again and again and again for a thousand generations.

[17:12] The first reason He gives us to be thankful, the first song that should well up within our hearts as we come to sing and to celebrate His grace to us is He is our sovereign God and King.

[17:24] The second area of thanksgiving He offers us or calls us to this morning is He is also our Creator God. In verses 4-9, He begins to express this God of creation to Him alone who does great wonders to Him who by understanding made the heavens to Him who spread out the earth above the waters to Him who made the great lights the sun to rule over the day the moon and the stars to rule over the night He goes again and again into this God who has created all things following this declaration of God as our sovereign God over all gods and kings and over all rulers of this earth He establishes this truth in the most logical place that we should begin.

[18:06] Once we see Him as sovereign over everything the way that begins to meet us is He's given us life and breath and everything. This sovereign God has created all things by the Word of His glorious power.

[18:22] We see this meted out in the New Testament in John 1-4 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.

[18:36] In Him was life and life was the light of men. We understand it from Romans 11-36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. That's what the psalmist is calling us to give thanks for to celebrate, to sing to Him be the glory forever.

[18:51] Amen. Paul says in Romans 11-36 in Colossians 1-15-17 He says He is the image of the invisible God the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things were created through Him and for Him and He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.

[19:18] The psalmist says we can look to the God who has created all things and sustains all things and we can once again sing and celebrate His steadfast love endures forever.

[19:29] Forever. Everything finds its origin in the God of heaven. Thanksgiving is the natural response of the creature to the Creator. Even creation itself sings of the glory of God.

[19:41] Psalm 19 tells us the heavens declare the glory of God. The sky above proclaims His handiwork day after day it pours forth speech and night after night it reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor other words where its voice cannot be heard.

[19:55] Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In Luke 19 verses 37-40 when the disciples were singing and celebrating Jesus and saying blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord peace in heaven and glory to God in the highest.

[20:11] The Pharisees said rebuke your disciples what are they doing? Apparently it was a little too charismatic for the Presbyterians of that day, right? It says rebuke your disciples. And He said if I told them to be silent the rocks would cry out.

[20:25] Even the rocks would cry out. Romans reminds us that even all of creation groans for that day when it will be removed.

[20:36] The stresses and strains of sin and brokenness from this world will be removed. And they will sing again freely. All of creation sings. All of creation testifies to the fact that we can never thank Him enough.

[20:51] We can never praise Him sufficiently. We can never sing loud enough or long enough to acknowledge His goodness to us as our God and Creator. He is sovereign.

[21:02] He is our Creator. And the psalmist lastly wants us to understand His redemptive work in our lives. He is our sovereign King. He is our gracious Creator. And He is our redeeming God. In verses 10-15 He begins to map out exactly how He fleshes out His grace to us and the fact that He is a God who redeems us.

[21:23] He shows it to us in the kind of historic nature in which He has been faithful to the people of God. Deuteronomy 10-17 is the backdrop of the psalmist's reflections. Then the story of God's redemptive work in delivering Israel from Egyptian captivity is the focus of this celebration of God's redeeming work.

[21:42] The psalmist recounts God's delivery of the people from the hand of Pharaoh. And he carries that sovereign work of the Lord over all lords through the years that followed as He defeated the great and mighty kings of the earth Og and Sohon.

[22:00] Time and time again He has demonstrated Himself to be the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And the psalmist is rehearsing here as a reminder that there is no king or rulers or powers that would dare exalt themselves over our great king and it would be easy for us as it were to read this accounting this historic accounting of God's faithfulness through the years and to pass over this great song of redemption at this point and think lightly about this great king of a bygone age.

[22:31] Yes, He was a God then. Yes, we read of His faithfulness then. Yes, we see it then. But the psalmist's intention here in rehearsing His faithfulness long ago is to be reminded that He is still our great God and King.

[22:45] President Biden, President Xi, King John Il, King John Un, Vladimir Putin, they all cower at the might and will of our great King and Lord. He is still on His throne and He is still working His perfect plan to absolute perfection.

[23:00] And as we wring our hands and we speak in frustrated tones over dinner tables and fellowships together with one another over the condition of our country and the nature of the world that we currently live in, we can rest assured that He is still sovereign, creator, sustainer, and redeemer who is willing and working to His good pleasure even still.

[23:24] He is still our redeeming God who holds absolute authority over this world. He has set that forward in this kind of explanation of His historic redemption that He has been faithful in times past and He talks about it in regards to His loving redemption to us even still.

[23:41] And with all of this language of God's sovereign lordship, His might and His power over the kings of the earth, can you feel it as He begins to talk about I have set my authority over the kings of this earth, over all of creation.

[23:53] I have created all things. I sustain all things. I am the God of all gods. I am the Lord of all lords. And if you read as the psalmist reads and as the writers of all the New Testament read and write, if you think about the way the argument tends to build throughout the scriptures, then you can feel it kind of build up in your own heart.

[24:11] Where does that take us? What do you see begins to well up as you consider all this language about this sovereign God who is the creator of all things. Can you feel the song well up within you?

[24:23] Can you feel this overwhelming song or prayer arise in your heart kind of like it did in Psalm 8 as we read in our call to worship this morning? Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth.

[24:35] You have set Your glory above the heavens. And when I look at the work and when I look at the heavens and the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have set in place, here's what I'm left with.

[24:46] What is man? What is man that you are mindful of Him? The Son of Man that you care for Him.

[24:58] See, there's a humbling process when the people of God come into contact with the God as their sovereign king, as their creator and sustainer. When Moses came before Him, he took off his shoes because he was on holy ground.

[25:13] When Job encountered this God, he says, I've heard of you by the hearing of my ears, but now I see you and I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes. When Isaiah saw Him high and lifted up, he said, woe is me, I am undone.

[25:26] When the psalmist here calls to us to give thanks to a God who is sovereign, who is our creator and sustainer, he comes to the same conclusion. It is He who remembered us in our lowest state.

[25:42] Despite having every reason to the contrary, despite our infinitesimal worth in the span of the universe, much less as we stand before the great kings and rulers of this speck of a planet and the vast expanse that is the universe in which it sits, you remember us.

[26:06] Why should we remember you in song and in praise? Why should we sing to you and celebrate and give thanks to you? Why should we be reminded again and again of your steadfast love which endures forever?

[26:20] Because you remember us. In our low estate, in fact, we have never left your mind from before the foundations of the earth.

[26:38] Your heart has stayed on us, O Lord, the psalmist says. When we go up to the heavens, you are there. When we make our bed in the depths, you are there. Where can we flee from your presence?

[26:48] Where can we go from it? And the answer Psalm 139 is giving us is there's nowhere you can go. When His heart is stayed upon you, it is a steadfast love that endures forever.

[27:11] He always remembers us. Hebrews 7.25 says that Jesus ever, He sits at the right hand of God the Father and He ever lives to make intercession for you. He says, consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God and it is His daily ambition to plead your case to His Father.

[27:33] This is our God, our Redeemer, who considers, who remembers us in our lowest state, not us, in His glorious state.

[27:45] He remembers us and draws us near. These three expressions of praise and thanksgiving are given to us by the psalmist, but there is one refrain. If these are the three things that call us to praise and thanksgiving, He said, but there is one refrain that should hold us.

[28:01] One refrain that should resonate in our hearts and minds again and again. Three reasons, but one refrain. His steadfast love endures forever.

[28:15] The second point here is the one refrain that He gives us, that He is our chesed God. In the Hebrew, the antiphonal response offered is pretty straightforward. His chesed love endures forever.

[28:28] This word chesed, it's a sufficient enough translation. His steadfast love endures forever. The words, steadfast love endures, is all what we get from that simple expression chesed.

[28:42] It's a good enough translation, but to the Hebrew listener, there's a little bit more tied to it. There's a little bit more fixed in this word of chesed.

[28:55] Chesed is the Hebrew word grounded in God's rich covenant promises to His people. It's synonymous with words like faithfulness and loyalty and unfailing love. However, our expression of it here should not be an exercise in verbal gymnastics.

[29:09] As I try to explain it to you, as you seek to understand it, as we try to wrap our heads around it, it shouldn't be us trying to get the right kind of word mix to properly compel you to understand it because it's not the words that describe the God.

[29:22] It's the God who makes the promises that we are to fix our gaze upon. It is the God who stands behind His promises that He calls us to look to, to understand.

[29:33] It is a word ascribed to a God who has been tried and tested again and again and has been found faithful time and time again. It is a term that seeks to encapsulate the sovereign, faithful work of a God in creation and redemption.

[29:49] It's a word to which we are to ground our own hope because it is a word that binds us to a God who is faithful and unfailing in His love for His people. I think the best illustration for this my wife actually reminded me of not too long ago.

[30:07] She was reminded because she's, I think, read through Pilgrim's Progress, I don't know how many times with our kids at this point. Too many. It reminds me of the story of Christian and Hopeful as they were imprisoned in Doubting Castle under the rule of the giant despair and his wife mistrust.

[30:23] See, Christian and Hopeful had strayed from the king's highway and were captured by the giant despair and imprisoned in Doubting Castle. They were beaten down and verbally abused to the point that the giant despair encourages them to take their own life because they will never be free from the clutches of Doubting Castle nor the power of the giant despair and his wife distrust or mistrust.

[30:46] But Hopeful keeps Christian alive by his encouragement and truth-filled observations of their situation. And one night, they stayed up all night praying and at dawn, they were reminded of the key that was in his pocket all along.

[30:57] It was the key of God's promises that opened every door of Doubting Castle. That unlocked every single door in Doubting Castle and that got them back again to the king's highway where the giant despair had no power.

[31:18] It was the promises of God that would remove all of despair and all of the doubting and all of the mistrust that sin and doubt brings, the shame that comes along with it, that would set them again on God's path.

[31:29] It is the promises of God that hold us. It is His chesed. It is covenant faithfulness that holds us. And so when we sing about our sovereign God, our Creator God, our God who is a redeeming God, we do so because He is a God who has demonstrated Himself chesed, faithful again and again.

[31:49] And we can lean with everything we have into the promises. We can pull the key out over and over again because it unlocks every door. A challenge and struggle and difficulty and despair in our lives.

[32:02] So I'll give you three quick conclusions, maybe points of application as we think about what the psalmist is calling us to this morning as he calls us to sing and to give thanks to a God who is sovereign and good to us, who redeems us, who has created us and He also redeems us.

[32:21] He set three quick conclusions just this. First, the chesed love of God, His faithfulness, love and mercy up to now and the promises and the assurance that He, the chesed love of God, His faithfulness, His love and mercy up to now and the promise and assurance that He will carry us to the very end as the sovereign Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of His people is worth singing about.

[32:43] As much as God gives us the breath to do it, it is worth singing about. I will say to you that the people of God need to learn to sing more, to celebrate more.

[32:56] There's a reason He puts songs in nearly every book of the Bible. It's a reason the longest book in the Bible is a collection of songs. It means for us to sing because in song, we are afforded the opportunity to give heart expression as it were to the truths we understand all too well, but we need to be reminded of.

[33:19] We need to proclaim. We need to confess. We need to celebrate. We need to acknowledge. And He bids us come, sing, taste, and see that the Lord is good.

[33:30] Celebrate and sing. Second, these truths, these promises need to be confessed and acknowledged together regularly in the assembly. It's hard sometimes to explain to people as a pastor in church planning and through the years why it's important to be at church.

[33:46] and to be a part of a local body of believers because it's not just about proof texting. I can show them all day long. It says here, do not forsake the assembly of yourselves together. I can tell them the proof text and I can tell them why it is, but it's hard to explain to them what it is God intends for us to have together in the context of worship.

[34:09] He is the God of gods. Yes, His love endures forever. He is the Lord of lords. Yes, His love endures forever. We are meant to see and hear and acknowledge together these promises that are good.

[34:20] He gives us the keys and He tells us to gather together and to raise the flag of that key of God's promises together so that we are not, we are reminded again and again that we are not alone in this struggle.

[34:32] The most heartbreaking things to read right now and as you read some of the accounting of people posting on Facebook is how isolated and alone they are. They're in the dark literally because their power is out, their house is flooded and they can actually hear the screams of people yelling for help in the distance if you are reading about what is going on and I am just reminded of the fact that when He calls us to gather as the people of God, He does that so that we don't ever feel that in the struggle of this life that we respond together in worship.

[35:02] We gather together as the assembly to one another together as the New Testament tells us so that we might overcome and push back against the clutches of the giant despair and His wife mistrust.

[35:17] Three, we need to repeat these truths to our hearts again and again and again and again. We are prone to wander. We are prone to leave the God we love.

[35:28] We often stray from the King's Highway. We often face obstacles and trials, loss and fears. And our response is never the little engine that could.

[35:39] You know, you all read that as a child? I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I can. Because I got to the top. It's not the Christian's response.

[35:50] It's not pull yourself up by your bootstraps and repeat to yourself I think I can. I think I can. It's not a faith in faith. As long as I believe hard enough. No, our response is always it is the Lord who has.

[36:05] It is the Lord who does. It is the Lord who will to the very end give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His chesed love endures forever. I need to hear that every day.

[36:17] I need to pray that every day. I need to sing that every day. I need to gather with the saints and be encouraged regularly about those truths weekly and daily if possible. So that I know that I'm not alone in those truths as I stand in them.

[36:32] may God grant us the grace to sing to celebrate to rejoice and to give thanks to our chesed God whose love endures forever. Would you pray with me? Our great God and Father we bow before you this morning.

[36:46] it is with great joy that we sing and celebrate your grace to us in the Lord Jesus. We ask, O Lord, that you would tune our hearts to sing your praise this morning.

[37:00] That you would help us, O Lord, celebrate your grace and your goodness to us. That you would remind us of your steadfast love that endures forever. Help us now even as we respond to you in song celebrating your grace to us in the Lord Jesus.

[37:16]  And we ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.