[0:00] We're going to get back to Psalm chapter number 138, verse 4 here in a moment. If you're a guest with us today, we're so glad you're here. The schedule's a little bit different, but the main thing is still the main thing.
[0:11] We want to make much worshiping our God, and it's a joy to get to preach with Brother Greg and Brother Warren as we walk through this chapter together.
[0:22] Gratitude or thankfulness is one of those things that we know that we shouldn't struggle with, right? When we think about it and when we get to where we should be, we think, how is this ever difficult for me?
[0:34] How could I ever be an ungrateful person? But we find ourselves back at it quite often in our lives. I know that I do. I often experience times where I'm just not grateful as I should be, and it's something for every one of us.
[0:49] As we saw in verse number 1, it says, I will praise thee with a whole heart. We know that everybody should. It's nice to have the kids in here with us today involved. And I said last week, some of us are still sitting at the kids' table at our families' right.
[1:03] You're trying to hope you get promoted this year. Some of us, that's why Dan had so many kids, so that the kids' table would be full, and he had to be moved over to the adult table. And no argument that every one of us ought to be grateful people.
[1:17] But not just every one of us, but all of us completely, our heart completely, my whole heart. And the challenge with that is there's just so much competition for my heart.
[1:31] Everything is trying to get some percentage of it. Everything is trying to get my attention. And one of the ways in which we will know if we are praising thee, as it says in verse number 1, with my whole heart, is that it will be declared.
[1:46] That it will just have to come out. It will have to be spoken about. So that difference between knowing, yes, I know that I should be thankful, and I can't help but be thankful, is where we always want to be moving from.
[1:58] Mentally, it's very easy to know we should be thankful. But as we experience that. So the things that have been told to us so far is that we should praise God for who he is, his loving kindness, and his truth.
[2:11] In our service tonight, we have a short service before the meal. I'm going to ask some of the men to join me at the altar, and we're going to pray. And we're going to thank God. Before we talk about the things that he has done, we're just going to thank God for the attributes of who he is.
[2:25] He's loving, he is kind, he's merciful, he's truthful. And then we praise God for his word that was magnified to us. We would not know God unless he revealed himself to us.
[2:36] And so we're thankful for that. We're so thankful that we know him from his word. We're so thankful that Jesus Christ came and that God was manifested, that we got to see him live here on earth and die in our place.
[2:51] And then also we saw him for what he has done. David responds at a time of crisis. And I'm grateful. David always finds himself in trouble. In the Psalms, he is always in some kind of trouble and some kind of crisis, and he praises God in the midst of it.
[3:08] Maybe you can relate as well. You find yourself always going into some kind of trouble or coming out of it, and we don't have to wait till we're on the other side of it to praise the Lord. Because most of our Psalms, David is right in the middle of those problems when he praises the Lord.
[3:24] So when we get to verse number four, it says, that all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.
[3:39] All the kings. The names are the ones that you remembered on that history quiz, and the names are the ones that you forgot. Those that you would vote for and those that you would never imagine voting for.
[3:50] There's no exceptions. All kings. All kings. All authorities. Someday, when they know what we have learned about our Lord from His word, once they hear His word, they will bow down and they will worship Him as a response to the words of His mouth.
[4:07] And we've given those reasons. They will learn that He's loving and kind. They will learn about His word. They will learn what He has done. And so the effects of this in our lives is that we would go forth and praise Him that we would be people that would sing verse number five.
[4:23] That's why music is such a central part of who we are as Christian people, as a church family, because we take the words that are given to us to communicate for us.
[4:34] So here's David. He says this, but there's something specific he wants to highlight to those kings. To all the kings there that will one day praise the Lord. The kings of the nation, if they were to gather round, he would say, I want to show you something.
[4:49] I want to show you something of the glory of God, and it's this. As though He is high, He regards the lowly. And isn't that glorious?
[5:00] That God regards the lowly. Verse six, Though the Lord be high, He hath respect unto the lowly, but the proud He knoweth afar off.
[5:12] We should be so grateful for that, to know that He found us, that His hand was not short, that He reached down. He saw us as enemies of the cross. He saw us in our sins, and He had, but He saw it, but we come to the realization, and we were humbled by that fact, that God drew us close to Him.
[5:34] Some of you might have been blessed to have a grandfather like mine, that when we would gather for a family meal together, whether Thanksgiving or whatever it was, we'd have a lot of food, and a lot of food would have cheese in it.
[5:45] That was my grandma's go-to thing, right? If she wasn't quite sure, like, what does this meal need? It needs cheese, all right? And I'm okay with that. There's few things that aren't made better about putting a bunch of cheese on it.
[5:57] But I would always remember when my grandpa would pray, he would thank God for many things, and he'd say, God, would you be with those that are less fortunate than us today?
[6:07] God, would you be with those who do not have a warm home, who do not have a warm meal? And I always was amazed by that, in the middle of us rejoicing and celebrating and taking all that we had, and that meal, that he took time to regard the lowly.
[6:24] And that's moving to me, to have a grandfather that thought like that, but so much more, that the God of heaven would regard the lowly, not just the kings, but the lowly.
[6:35] We don't serve a God who is distant from his people. We serve a God who came near. In the Old Testament, he dwelt among people in the tabernacle. In the New Testament, God sent his son, wrapped in human flesh, to live among us.
[6:51] Abraham Lincoln, when Thanksgiving became a national holiday that would be placed on our calendars, he made a proclamation to all Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving. And he asked, he said, he asked God to commend, that we would ask God to commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable, civil strife, and to heal the wounds of a nation.
[7:19] In the New Testament, it's repeated, at least on two occasions, that God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. What a wonderful thing that God has respect unto the lowly, that he sees you today.
[7:33] If you feel marginalized, you feel forsaken, you feel forgotten, you have those things in your life that you feel that nobody else cares about, that we come to God humbly, and he knows that he cares about us.
[7:44] Eight billion people in the world is what we learned last week. But God is able to see you exactly as you are, and what's going on in your life. I'm in your family.
[7:55] And I'll close with this and say a short word of prayer before we pray. The Deuteronomy 33, verse 27. It says, The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
[8:09] That he holds us. I want to pray, as my grandfather would. I would like to pray for those that are less fortunate. I'd like to pray for those that won't have the meal that will have the night, certainly.
[8:21] I want to pray for those that don't have the warm Christian fellowship that we have. I want to pray for those that don't understand that God is loving, kind, and all the things that this psalm is going to give us.
[8:33] And I want to rejoice in the fact that underneath are his everlasting arms. You're held today. You feel like you're at your lowest place? You can know that at that lowest place that you can be upheld by his everlasting arms.
[8:47] Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word today. Lord, my kids and other kids in this church, Lord, they sung songs that were just filled with gospel truth, that were just filled with Bible, and they were growing up, Lord, just so incredibly blessed.
[9:06] Regardless of anything else that they will receive in this life, Lord, they've already been blessed to know that you are loving and kind, to know your word, and to know the wonderful work that you have done on our behalf to save us.
[9:22] Father, we know that outside of here, there are people, Lord, that don't have the same Christian fellowship who do not know the same truth. And Lord, that's the most important.
[9:34] Our heart first goes out to those that do not have the spiritual truth that has been given to us from your word. Father, we also pray for those that are less fortunate physically, those that do not have all the blessings that we have.
[9:49] Lord, we pause today, and we reflect, and we are mindful of them, because, Lord, we know that you are mindful of them. There is not a person in this world in any situation that you are not aware of.
[10:03] And so, Lord, we pause today, and we consider all those people. Lord, I'm thankful that when we were at our lowest, when we came to the realization that we were sinners, that you would not turn your back on us, but you reach down, you embrace us in your arms.
[10:21] And so we are grateful for this relationship. Lord, we are grateful for a relationship that is not based upon our doing, that's not based upon our merit, it isn't based upon where we were born, or what we have accomplished.
[10:34] But, Lord, it's only based upon the fact that you first loved us. And as a church family, Lord, we want to respond. Where Thanksgiving is just not a, it's not a heavy burden to us, it's not a duty, or an obligation, but, Lord, it's just the natural flow from our hearts, because we recognize that you have been far better to us than we could ever deserve.
[10:58] In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.