Redeemed Responses | Psalm 107
Wes Ward | July 2, 2017

Lord, we are a people that are here today believing what we just sang, that you are our lives, and there’s a disconnect. We often feel conflicted when we sing things like that, because we also know us too, so we long for every word of every song that we sing to be true, and at the same time we know it’s not yet complete, so thank you, Lord, as we’ve been talking about thankfulness, thank you for your enduring patience with the likes of us. We need you, and I pray that you would attend to us today.

Work through your word, work in our hearts, and I pray that you would tenderize us where we need that, encourage us where we need that, give us boldness for action where we need that. Little gatherings like this can produce a lot in the kingdom because we believe in stories like the fish and loaves, so in this room, Lord, there could be someone activated today to do new things for you that would maybe be unseen for the next 20 or 30 years, but 100,000 years from now we can see and savor the goodness of God in what he did through his people. So thank you that you have redeemed, thank you that you are redeeming, and we look forward to the full and final redemption.

I pray that the words of my mouth would honor you, that the meditations of my heart as well. I pray that I would decrease, that you would increase, and that all of us today would have a right impression of you and a right taste of you. Work in our midst today. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Hi. Are you thankful this morning for something? I hope so. We’re going to spend some time this morning just kind of unpacking thankfulness, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to talk with you guys today.

Last night Luke Potter, Dr. Potter, as some of you guys know him, who is pastor at New City church, he was texting me about their service and he said something about the word joy, and that’s on my heart for us today as well. So here’s a little bit of our texting back and forth last night.

This is me to him: “You mentioned joy. My main burden is the amount of joyless lives I see on planet earth.” I’ll just tell you what I’m going to be telling you throughout this next hour or so, that I’ve really been thinking a lot about this lately, about the amount of joylessness that we see on planet earth. We certainly see it with a lot of people that don’t know Christ, but we also see it right here in the church, right, and in this room, and in this life. So that kind of concerns me, and I think it should.

So, texting to Luke, “My main burden is the amount of joyless lives I see on planet earth, and it’s heart wrenching to know we believers are some of the worst at joy, when joy should be the chief differentiator of our lives. My aim is to convince us that thanksgiving is a missing main thrust in our discipleship.

“Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that the entire Christian life should be that of thanksgiving, and I need all of this. My natural default,” again, this is my texting to Dr. Luke, “my natural default is pessimistic and angry and anxious. That is practical atheism. The whole in my own spiritual growth is the need to cultivate a new default of thankfulness to God for everything—” stop right there—there is always, always, always something to be thankful for “—leading to new trust and hope and confidence, replacing my petty unbelief. I want to be known as, ‘Wes was all thanksgiving,’ and I have a long way to go, but the call is there, ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord.’ Why? Because he is good and his love keeps on coming after me. The only reason I’m loved is because I’m loved.”

And then Luke said in response to that, “Amen to that! Our joy is a blood-bought gift; what it cost was too precious for ingratitude, and what we can experience is too precious not to fight for it. Praying that you lead the church and yourself into grateful joy tomorrow.”

So that’s on my heart this morning, and so I’m just here to tell you I have a problem, I have a gap in my life, and it’s something that I feel and see. It’s also something, again, I see in the church. I’ve been thinking on this for awhile and I’ve come to think that there’s really a fundamental hole in our discipleship. So, if there is something that’s worth pursuing and I’m not doing that I should learn more about this.

So there’s a hole in our discipleship and I think it’s also a hole in our lives as well. So, we’re going to explore that a little bit this morning. I see that joy is just missing way too much. I’ve been thinking about this in my life. It’s not entirely absent; I mean, every day has some joy to it, this morning has had some joy to it, but not all of this morning has had joy to it. Filling in for Brian is not always all joy, right? But I want to fill this absence and this gap with right things, and I want to encourage you to do the same thing.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, I alluded to this in the text with Luke, says this, “The primary and fundamental note of Christianity, and therefore the chief characteristic of the Christian, is the giving of thanks to God. Not only are Christians concerned about their relationship with God, but in their hearts is a sense of gratitude, of thanksgiving to God. They are anxious to praise him. God is to them the Lord of their lives, and they are conscious of a sense of dependence upon him, they have a sense of the goodness of God.

“The thing that characterized the first Christians was a joy that was irrepressible. It did not matter what you did to them. You could throw people like Paul and Silas into prison and put their feet in stocks, but what did they do at midnight? They prayed and they sang praises unto God. It did not matter, I say, what happened to them,” says Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “there was this joy within them, their hearts were singing, they were praising God.”

So as we get started this morning I want to invite you to take a mental inventory right now as we get started here. What is your default setting? Are you just naturally bent towards anger easily? Are you naturally bent towards irritation, anxiety, unbelief, fear, bitterness? These are all really fun words, aren’t they? Discontent, just this constant unsettledness, this restlessness in your life. Maybe it’s a low-grade fever of all of these things.

So what’s the antidote to this? Well, as Christians we are known to be filled with joy; that’s what Lloyd-Jones says. And what’s the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control; these kinds of things. So if we see a lack of joy in our lives we might see a lack of some of the other fruit as well, right? So they come together.

So, starting with the end in mind as something that’s been on my mind lately, you do this sometimes in games, right? I’m never going to play Noah Bundus in chess—well, I might; it’s be a quick experience. He’s great at chess, and what I understand with a lot of games is it’s best to start with the end in mind. So if you want to actually beat Noah you don’t memorize ten moves on the front side; you learn what will kill his king the quickest, right, and then you work back from there. So we kind of start and kind of reverse-engineer the game.

People do this in business all the time. They’re looking at, “Okay, what do I want 2017 to look like, what do I want the end of 2018 to look like?” They create lag and lead measures and they find out what are the main one or two thrusts for the year or for the couple of years. So they start with the end in mind, and this morning, what’s been on my mind not just this morning but for the last several months is let’s start with the end of our lives in mind.

Carrie and I went to a funeral a few weeks ago. Ecclesiastes tells us that it’s actually good to do that from time to time, to kind of take stock and say, “Hey, Wes, you’re not actually immortal,” you know, “you’ll be here too, unless Jesus has some other plans.”

Moses says in Psalm 90 that we are to number our days that we can present the Lord a heart of wisdom. So this morning and the last few months I’ve been thinking about the end of mine, what I want my life to be characterized by. So if we were at Wes’s funeral and my body was here, you wouldn’t really talk too much about my job, probably, or the stuff that I have; you’ll talk about the character of my life. What’s Wes’s story? So again, my prayer is, “This guy in the casket, he was all thanksgiving. He was all joy.”

And I want that for you as well, and as we look at our heroes in the Christian faith, it’s not so much what they have accomplished always. We look at the character of their lives, and so I’m hungry for you guys, for myself, to be joy-filled like we’re not right now. So you with me? This is all preamble; that’s where I’m wanting to go.

We often are settling for angry lives, anxious lives, irritated lives, unsettled lives, dull lives, and ho-hum lives. So what I believe is the good news, the hope for us this morning, is the Bible teaches some things that are really helpful at this point. Right in the middle of your average, simple life; right in the middle of this average, simple town, you can have joy, and it can be joy inexpressible.

Here are my aims for today. As we pursue and talk about joy, a couple of main points for today that we’re going to go for.

Number one is I want you to consider the steadfast love of the Lord. We’ve been singing about it this morning, and again, we look at Scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, as the whole foundation as Christian Scripture, right? So we will be in the Old Testament, but as you read Psalm 107 with me this morning, think about how all of this is true because of what? Because of Christ and Jesus and everything we’ve been talking about.

So I want you this morning to consider with me the steadfast love of the Lord, but I also am asking you to make that the default position of your life as well. These two points I’m talking about right now I believe the Scriptures are telling us, “This is what can flip you from being that irritated, anxious, dull, ho-hum angry whatever,” fill in the blank whatever you are, “to a joy-filled Christian.”

The second thing that we’re going to do this morning is give thanks to the Lord. The way we’re going to do this is we’re going to look at a passage of Scripture, Psalm 107, and we’re just going to trace out the goodness of the Lord in that passage together, and then the next big section of the time that we’ll be talking here I’m going to give you a few tips to giving thanks to the Lord and keeping us moving that way.

So again, the hope for the rest of this year is that I’m going to be around some more joyful people than I am right now, so I have some real benefit in this. You guys are going to be better people out of this, but 15, 50 years from now as well I’m going to be around a lot of people that, whenever I go to your funeral, “He was all thanksgiving. He was all joy.” That’s my pursuit this morning.

Psalm 107 is interesting. I was listening to a sermon by John MacArthur, and he was talking about this passage, and he said that when he was preaching this one time in southern California there was a young man in his congregation who...he didn’t know him, he had not yet met him, he met him after the service. But this man was deep in a sinful lifestyle in the Los Angeles area; so much so that he had a death sentence on him in that he had been in so much behavior that he brought affliction onto his body, okay? So he contracted a disease through his lifestyle, he didn’t know the things of Christ, he was not a Christian, but he had this expiration date on his body and he was worried and he was talking to his friends, also in that community, and they said, “You need to go to Grace Community Church.” They had a reputation of being helpful, even though they weren’t there.

So he went, sat in on the service, and the Scripture that I’m about to share with you is the Scripture that this man was hearing, and he started to kind of get irritated at John MacArthur, because in the middle of that he knew he needed the Lord, he just didn’t know what to do.

So if you’re in that predicament this morning as I start to read this and you go, “I need the Lord, I just don’t know what to do,” let me just encourage you, don’t wait until the end of the service, don’t wait to talk to a friend. In the bulletin, the little handout that we give you when you walk in, there are a couple of prayers in there to help you if you are skeptical about the things of the Lord.

But the thing that I want to encourage you about this morning is not just to believe that there was a historical person named Jesus and you believe that like you believe that there was also a Bonaparte and a George Washington; I want you to throw all of your hope and trust in him, like the songs that we’re singing. It’s his blood-bought work that you’re trusting in to save you, so if in the middle of the reading you say, “I need you, Jesus,” you’re thinking the exact right things.

As we go to the Scripture this morning, here’s what I want to ask you to do, a little bit different approach for us. I’m going to ask you just to actually close your Bible and just listen to it. These were psalms, these were oral things; I promise we will open it back up. So I’m not going to go in some weird direction; this is still Fulkerson, right, we’re still going to open up the word. But I want you to hear just the power of the word; I don’t want you to try to track with it, I just want you to take it in and drink it in for what it is for you today and listen with me there.

Listen again as we are considering the steadfast love of the Lord. I want you to listen for who is God in this passage, okay? What has he done, past tense? What might he still be doing today, because this is the heart and ways of God. So what of this might still be true today? And then what’s the in the future, what’s coming in the future? So those four things. Be looking for who God is, what he’s done, what he’s doing, and what he’s yet to do.

Also, there are some people in here that you might share something in common with. I do. There are four groups of people in here we’re going to find out a little bit more about them.

Let’s pray again, and then I want you to hear the word.

Lord, we are loved only because we are loved. There is no merit that got us to this place of being loved by you, and we want to consider the steadfast love of the Lord this morning. Make us see your love, make us a thankful, trusting, believing people, leading to a deep and satisfying joy. Lord, I pray that my friends in this room and my myself, that we would not live distracted lives. Help us to be fully with you. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Hear the word of the Lord.

"Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble
and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to a city to dwell in;
hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He led them by a straight way
till they reached a city to dwell in.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.
Some were fools through their sinful ways,
and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;
they loathed any kind of food,
and they drew near to the gates of death.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He sent out his word and healed them,
and delivered them from their destruction.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving,
and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!
Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits' end.[b]
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad that the waters[c] were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
He turns rivers into a desert,
springs of water into thirsty ground,
a fruitful land into a salty waste,
because of the evil of its inhabitants.
He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
And there he lets the hungry dwell,
and they establish a city to live in;
they sow fields and plant vineyards
and get a fruitful yield.
By his blessing they multiply greatly,
and he does not let their livestock diminish.
When they are diminished and brought low
through oppression, evil, and sorrow,
he pours contempt on princes
and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
but he raises up the needy out of affliction
and makes their families like flocks.
The upright see it and are glad,
and all wickedness shuts its mouth.
Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things;
let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.”

This is God’s word, and God’s word’s good, right?

So this morning we’re going to attend to that. You can open up the word now, so we’re going to official with making sure we do that.

Here’s the outline for today, and it’s a fairly straightforward passage.

In the first three or four verses there you get a call to thanksgiving. Before we get any context in the Scripture we just get right to, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” Okay, so that’s the call to thanksgiving.

Then there are the five portraits that we look at. There’s the portrait of the wanderers, people in the trackless wastes in the desert, there are the prisoners. Then we look at those that are afflicted with sickness, then we get into the storm-tossed, and then there’s this final portrait of God and what he does and his heart and his ways with people. And then this final call in the last two verses, that we just heard, which is the call to never lose the wonder of the steadfast love of the Lord.

So as we look at this, look at the people again, the people of Psalm 107. Here’s what we’re going to do in the next few moments. We’re briefly going to look at these people and what share in common with them, but we’re going to get the spotlight of the people and back to God really quickly. He is the hero of the passage, he’s the hero of our lives, and our job here this morning, as we work with me, is to consider the steadfast work, the love, the character of our God.

So here’s what we saw in Psalm 107, and just let your eyes go through the verses as you do this. These were wandering people; these were hungry people; these were thirsty people. These were people in trouble and darkness and the shadow of death, they were in prison, they were fools, they were scorners and spurners of God, they were evil plotters, they were suffering because of sin, they were storm-tossed, they were without courage, and ultimately they also this: they were ungrateful, right? They weren’t centering and organizing all of their lives around Christ or the Lord, in the passage. They were without thanks.

Then we also see that with each one of these groups, they all cried to God in their distress, and we see them then being gathered; we see them being people that are being led; we see them being people that are being satisfied. They’re being rescued. I love, in verse 30, that these are people that are brought to not just a haven, but their desired haven. So the psalms tells us that they actually ended up where they were wanting to go. So they were led, they were gathered, they were rescued, they were freed, they were healed, they were brought in.

So we also see here that there is this call that they all received to do what? To let them say and talk about the thanksgiving of the Lord.

A friend of mine, he and I were talking about this passage, and he said what he loves about it is that when it said, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,” the way he said it is, “Wes, that’s so cool. We get to tell our God stories over and over. We are the redeemed ones; everybody’s story’s a little bit different, so we get to tell our stories.”

So they are led to the Lord for his steadfast love, they are told to see and consider God’s love, and they are commanded as redeemed ones to express their gratitude creatively. Some of them offered sacrifices of thanksgiving, there were songs that were written, there were stories that were told.

Then the pattern of Psalm 107 is, again, pretty simple. It’s ungrateful living. There are four big things happening in the passage: ungrateful living, away from God, cries to God for help, redemption, and then this call to thankful living, okay? So the heartbeat of Psalm 107 is what we saw at the beginning and the end, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever.” “Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.” So that is the heartbeat.

Now, here’s what I want to do. Rather than me having you track with everything on the PowerPoint and rather than me giving you exactly what to fill in, you’re going to get to be creative right now in seeing the steadfast love of the Lord on your own. So, here’s a chart that I think you can use as we examine the passage today, but it’s also something that you can do on your own.

So, here’s what we’re going to do, and I asked you to do this before we got going. We want to look at who God is in the passage, we want to see what God has done in the passage, we want to see what God might still be doing, and what God will do.

So, we’re going to do that with Psalm 107, but again, you’ve been commanded by God to be thankful to the Lord, to consider the steadfast love of the Lord, so I want you to take this as sort of some homework, to say, “I can do this with a lot of things in my life with the passage, and I don’t need Wes or Brian or anybody to do this.”

Okay, so under “who God is” let me give you some things that I’ve found in this passage, and we’re going to start with verses one through three. So I find in verses one through three that God is—this is really difficult to grasp—God is good. Okay? His steadfast love endures forever. I also see in verses one through three that he’s the redeemer, and I see that he’s a lover and a gatherer.

So, that’s who God is in verses one through three. What are some of the things that he’s done in verses one through three? He’s redeemed his people from trouble. He’s gathered them in. What might he still be doing? If the heart and ways of God, if God’s love is, “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.” The actual rendering of that is, “Surely goodness and mercy will be in hot pursuit of me all of the days of my life.” If that’s really true of God’s steadfast love like it was back then, and he’s still active today. So what God is doing today; here are some of the things I think he’s doing.

I think his love is continuing still, I think his goodness persists. What’s he going to do? Love! Be good! These are some of the things I see in verses one through three.

The Desert

In the desert. Again, just the same four questions, and you discover your own findings on this, but here are some of the things I find that are true. Who God is in the desert? He was a deliverer, he was an answerer, he was a leader, a satisfier, and a giver. What did he do, past tense? Well, pretty simple: he led them, he delivered them; he also satisfied them. He filled not just with things, but with what kind of things? Good things, right? What’s he still doing? Hey, good news! He’s still leading, he’s still filling people with good things, he’s still making the thirsty have living water. We sang about it this morning. So, that’s some of the things going on in the desert.

Now, what’s he going to do? Okay, so it’s really cool to me in this passage that they wandered, they couldn’t find a city, and what was a city oftentimes? It was a safe place, it was a place of refuge, it was a place of commerce, it was a place of community, it was a place of food. So here we are in our lives, and some of that restless stuff that we were talking about at the beginning is just that “now and not yet” feeling; we’re not yet home kind of feeling. So what’s he going to do? Ultimately, he’s going to lead us to the new city. Ultimately, there will be no more wandering. We won’t have to wonder about what happens tomorrow, because tomorrow is so clear before us because we’re in the new city.

Another way to say it is one day he’s going to make the wandering cease and you will be a person, if you’re in Christ, who will have 100 per cent satisfaction. So that’s some of the things he’s doing in the deserts.

The Prisons

In the prisons. Again, all of these things were because of sin and affliction that they brought on themselves, choices, ungratefulness leads to wandering, right? Gratefulness leads to us staying on course with him.

So in verses ten through 16 we see that in the prisons—who is God in the prisons? He’s a discipliner, okay? So verse 12, “He bowed their hearts down with hard labor.” So he’s a discipliner. He’s also a deliverer. Ultimately, he’s an emancipator who gets them out of chains; he’s a rescuer. I love how the Scripture says here he bursts things, he breaks things, he shatters things. I don’t know about you, but I would like some bursting of some things in my life, and some shatterings of some other things.

So, that’s some of the things he was doing. What did he do? He bowed hearts down, he delivered from distress, he freed people. What’s he still doing? Well, like it or not, he is still bowing some hearts down, right? The Lord disciplines his children; it’s a good thing; he prunes. So we on this side of heaven are going to be bowed down, and particularly when we go astray. Sometimes it’s because of our sin, sometimes it’s because of discipline; ultimately all of it’s because of love, right? It’s his kindness that leads us to repentance. So he still bows hearts, he still bows Wes’s heart; but he also still frees. Jesus is the truth that sets us free. He rescues.

So what’s he going to do? Well, one day he’s going to silence all oppression and all evil. You know, you look at the headlines every morning, you see a broken world. Del used to talk about Shepard talking about sin in the driveway; there’s a whole lot of sin in a whole lot of driveways. The world is cracked and broken, but what one day all things are going to be made new, he’s going to silence all oppression and evil, he’ll free us from the chains of this world, and again, in this passage we see the exiting from darkness into light. So one day everything’s going to be fully known.

In Affliction

Again, in affliction, verses 17 through 22, who his God? Again, common things we’re seeing here: he is a deliverer. It also says that he sends out his word. So he’s a word-giver, and he’s healer. What did he do? He sent his word, he delivered, he healed. What’s he still doing? Right now he’s sending out his word to you, in this very moment, because you’re being called to something that’s good for you, being called to a life of thanks. He still sends out his word. He still heals.

What’s he going to do? Final and full healing is coming. All of us have broken bodies that are...not going to make any comments about anybody not being in their prime in the room, but you know, we all struggle with life, right? One day everything’s going to be right, and I’m looking forward to that.

So we’ve looked here at, again, desert wanderings, we looked at imprisonment, we looked at afflictions; we’re all in these predicaments, distresses, in one way or another, right?

The Storms

In case I’ve missed you, storms gets everybody, right? So in the storms what do we see? Who is God? He’s the ruler, he’s the master and commander of the sea, he’s a wonder-worker, he’s all power[ful]. Past tense, what has he done? He sent the storms. He also calmed storms, and he brought them into their desired haven.

So what’s he still doing? Well, he’s still creating some storms, just like what we were saying a moment ago. Some stuff bows us down. But he’s also still quieting storms, and he’s bringing us in. And ultimately, what’s he going to do? He’s ultimately going to cease and make everything be quiet and calm and bring us safely in; Brian preached about that a few weeks ago.

So then in the praise portrait, the last few verses from verse 33 on to the end of the chapter, here are some of the things I see about God. Who is God in that passage? He is a multiplier, he’s a judge, he’s a family maker. What’s he done? He moves heaven and earth in goodness; he makes things happen for his children. He makes things go against those that are spurning him.

What’s he still doing? Romans eight; what’s Romans eight talk about? “All things work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” I love Romans eight, because it just reminds me that God is for me, and to me there’s nothing more helpful than to know, “Hey, Wes, God is for you.” He’s also gladdening us. We see that in this passage, that, verse 42, “the upright see it and are glad.” So this hope of joy that I’m talking about this morning and this pathway through thanksgiving is possible for us because he is gladdening us. Ultimately, what’s he going to do again? Final and ultimate redemption.

So, as we consider the steadfast love of the Lord there are lot of different ways that you can consider the steadfast love of the Lord, but I want to encourage you to maybe take this approach, put this in your toolkit, because you have been asked by God to consider the steadfast love of the Lord. How do you do that? Well, you look at his character; who God is. Open up the pages of Scripture. On every page, “God, who are you on these pages? What have you done, past tense?” How has he worked? Look at those markers.

Also start to make—this is why journaling is so good for you—make a list of how God has moved in your life. What’s he currently doing? How can you see him? And then what’s he going to do?

So, again, what we’ve been doing here is considering the steadfast love of the Lord, and that’s sort of the main point of the first point of the message to you. The second part is the idea of training ourselves to be actively noticing God’s heart and God’s ways and to activate this idea of thanksgiving, and to normalize the growth of it your life. So, point two is I want you to give thanks. How can we do that? We’re going to look at that right now.

So, there are a few ideas here. If we sat together in a class we probably could come up with a lot more, but again, maybe on the flip side of the paper after you’ve considered the works of the Lord, turn your paper over and then say, “Okay, Lord, I want to be a noticer of good things. I want to see and savor who you are.”

One of our core values is that we say that we are people that see the goodness of the Lord. Pray, think, and act. So I’m going to give you some ideas in each one of these categories. The dilemma in this sermon, my family will tell you, is I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and you should take me to lunch some time, you really should, and I’ll talk to you about all the things I’ve been learning the last few months that I couldn’t squeeze into this morning.

There are so many rich places that I’ve been because, again, I’ve felt personally—this was a quest for joy for myself, that this has been a missing hold in my discipleship. Because I bump into people a lot and notice that there’s a lot of irritation and anxiety, unbelief, fear, in the world, I feel like this probably is a good word for most of us too. So feel free to take me to lunch, we can discuss who treats, I’ll be thankful, and we’ll share some stories about what I’m learning.

I’m just going to throw into your boxes some of the things, but again, this is for you to do. Your job is to consider the steadfast love of the Lord, and it’s your job to be thankful. We can do that in community, but I want these tools to work for you once you walk out of the room.

So, again, we want to activate thanksgiving, normalize it as growth in our lives, so here are some ideas for how to become a better noticer. Again, the passage says the wise and upright heed these things; they consider these things. So I’m calling you to consider how do you do this. So see, notice, consider.

Every day God is at work. This morning he’s already been doing things for you. You’re breathing. You’re standing on a planet that is revolving and orbiting in perfect precision. The temperature in this room’s not bad for some, other people are freezing, other people are hot. Some people are thankful, others aren’t. We have some new bathrooms downstairs, some of you had food this morning, there’s a frappacino over—I mean, you can just start unpacking little things to big things, right?

You’re loved by a God who gave his life for you, this morning. You’re breathing and your heart’s beating, and this sign over here says there’s always, always, always, always something to be thankful for.

I, by default, can tell you everything wrong in this room, by the way. I’m very good at that. I can tell you what I don’t like about this room, I can tell you what I don’t like about some of you in this room. I’m not going to do that; that would not be right. I can tell you what I don’t like about myself, I can tell you… I mean, I’m really good at that.

Now, I’m a pretty gentle, decent guy; a lot of that’s going on in my head, but it’s going on, right? How many of us are having conversations in our heads, right? I have to go to Colossians three, “Put off, put on,” and I’m telling you, I have to become a much more thankful person. So now everybody’s wondering, “What’s he thinking about me?”

God’s at work, study the promises of God as well. One of the things I recently discovered is that Desiring God and John Piper’s ministry, I think I found out the secret sauce to what they’re all about. It’s all about promises. Go to DesiringGod.org and just type in the word “promise” and see what you get. I did that a couple of months ago and then I was like, “Oh, that’s what this thing is all about.” He’s rooting you in the promises of God. So, there are new mercies every day.

There’s somebody in our congregation that actually, I think, is a really good person at this, Maggie Paulus. Glory in the grime, right? She’s a noticer of things happening all around her. So if you want to become a better see-er and noticer of things around, take Maggie to lunch before you take me to lunch and ask her how she did it.

Getting ready for this I messaged Maggie and I said the following, “How has learning thanksgiving changed you? Go.” So that was my question to Maggie, and here’s what she said, “Thanking God for what is right—” she didn’t know what I was doing, by the way. “Thanking God for what is right in front of me daily stabilizes my emotions. I see again and again that even though the world is jacked up, still it’s beautiful, God is here, and I am blessed.”

“When did you start learning it?” That was my next question. “What was your pathway to learning thanksgiving?”

She said, “Oh, that’s right, you did ask about learning. My dear mother taught me when I was just a kid. Especially she helped me as young person when I would begin to feel overwhelmed and depressed. ‘Honey, you have a good life. Just enjoy your life. Tell God what you’re thankful for; count the things. This will help you.’ I started back then, and now I do these things with my kids.” And then she said, “What are you working on? Your message? We’re going to miss it. We’re going to be in Arkansas. Waa.” Okay.

I want to call you to become a see-er and a noticer. There are lots of ways to do that. Here are some more things related to that.

(1) Pray

Pray. A few weeks ago I gave you the acronym that I discovered from John Piper, which was APTAT. Weird acronym, but it works. First, Acknowledge and admit your need, that you can’t do whatever it is that you’re trying to do without Christ. P, Pray, you basically now say, “Okay, Christ, what I just acknowledged I’m saying to you. I can’t do this without you.” T, Trust in some specific promise of Scripture. Again, I told you that the secret sauce of Piper’s ministry is grabbing onto promises and making them true. So he said for him Isaiah 41:10 is the verse that he goes to time and time and time again, and he said, “Don’t feel bad if you keep going back to one verse in your life.” He said—I mean, the great theologian John Piper does one verse a lot to do this, so, Isaiah 41:10 for him. So trust in one thing. Then he says Act; go do the hard thing, whatever the thing is, and then T, Thank. I get back to thanksgiving.

So with APTAT I’ve actually been doing that a lot with some of the hard things I’ve been going through, but I’ve brought, I don’t know what that TAT, I’m starting with thanksgiving and I’m ending with thanksgiving; I’m trying to put it all in the middle as well.

So pray on this quest of trying to become a more thankful person that your friend Wes is saying that you really, really need to do. Tell God about that, and I think he’ll help you with that. He’s been helping me; really has.

Also, with regard to prayer, ask the Lord to help you see your life objectively. Again, I said the thing about how I can look at your life and I can give you may not—Del, you and I can sit down and I could talk to you about your blind spots, that would be really fun for one of us, and maybe the Lord would be so kind to start telling you some of the things that you need to know about yourself, right? I’ll give you some more help on how to be objective in a just a minute, too.

Also, prayer and meditation. Pray, but particularly pray the promises. If you want to become a thankful person know what the promises of God are, more and more, and pray them. Make them real.

Piper says of Isaiah 41:10; he says, “I’ve done that so much now it’s as if Jesus is standing right in front of me and he’s saying, ‘Fear not, be not dismayed; I am with you.’” He said, “It’s like Jesus is in the room talking to me,” because he’s so rooted the promises into his heart and life.

So we are people of promise. We sang so many songs this morning about that; get to know the promises. That was a hole in my—full candor—that was a hole in my discipleship as well, that I realized I was not studying the promises, knowing the promises, banking my hope and trust in the promises.

Psalm one, that’s our goal. Like that guy; remember that guy planted by streams of water? What did he do? He meditated on it morning, noon, and night, in the middle of the night. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you kind of get that irritated feeling like I do of, “I really wish I was back asleep right now,” be thankful. “Hey, thank you, Lord, you woke me up to pray and to go deeper with considering the steadfast love of the Lord.”

(2) Think

Okay, think. After prayer, think. Here’s where I’m going to ask you to study and read. If you’re not a reader, become one. I heard someone say this week, “Ten years from now you probably won’t remember that really cool Facebook post that you read, but ten years from now you probably might remember an idea that you read in a book.” Books are lifechangers; spend a little bit more time in the Book and other books than Facebook, and find trails and find people.

So read Maggie’s book, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has a book on gratitude, a great book; read that. I have throughout the summer been reading—I think I may be one of one or two guys on planet earth that read One Thousand Gifts from Ann Voskamp. The target audience is generally women. I highlighted all the good quotes, so if you want to skim it I’ll give you my notes on that too. A lot of great things in there about seeing the daily graces of the Lord, getting to thanksgiving very quickly, and finding joy. That’s really the heart and a lot of where my heart has been this summer has been captivated by seeing the graces, getting to thanksgiving, and finding joy in the middle of all of that. So, One Thousand Gifts from Voskamp.

Also, as you think and study, study the heroes of the faith. What were their lives like? Why do we look at them as heroes. I bet you that you’re going to find that these were a lot of joyful people, and they understood how to find thanksgiving in him.

Also, study the life of Paul. He wasn’t automatically content in all things. He said, “I learned to be content in all things.” So there’s so much that Paul has to say about anxiousness and trust and satisfaction and contentment. The Lord Jesus has a few things as well to say about that, so let me encourage you to study what they have to say.

(3) Act

Then finally, act. You have to kill your critical spirit and know your first reactions. Again, we live in a pretty comfortable society and it’s pretty easy to have a critical spirit, and I’m not going to dwell too much there; I’m going to come back to that in a second. But replace it with a noticing and appreciation for God, for people, and the things that are good.

One of the things that we do in our workplace that we’re really pretty good at is tracing back; when something breaks we go back to the root cause and we find out, why did it break? What was the people process, the training thing… Let’s get to the root cause. We do it often with the problems, but we’re also encouraging ourselves, when something really goes well, trace the good and find out what’s the root cause of the good as well.

Ann Voskamp, Nancy, and others talk about a gratitude journal. So that’s what One Thousand Gifts is all about; she was writing down 1,000 things that she was grateful for. It could be as small as, “Thank you for the cup of tea that I had this morning,” to, “Thank you for my children,” but also learning to thank him when it’s really hard to.

Let me encourage you to get a 360 of your life, and what I mean by that is coming up with a handful of questions related to your pursuit of joy and thanksgiving and have some candid conversations with your family, with your friends, with people that are kind of casual, and again, start with the end in mind. If you’re trying to prevent being in this casket and they’re struggling for things to say about you, start reverse-engineering that right now and have some conversations. You know, “Do you see gratitude in my life? What do I do that’s full of thanksgiving? Where am I struggling?” Come up with a handful of questions, but get a 360, talk to those that really know you, those that casually know you, and get an action plan going there, and just talk about it in community.

So, let me close with one more warning. I said that we have to kill our critical spirit, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not just that we are called to be thankful. There are some things that we need to know about not being thankful. It’s not just that I’m saying to you add thankfulness to your life and rock on, I’m saying we need to kill our ungrateful spirits, and we need to cultivate thanksgiving.

Here’s what John Piper says from a devotional that’s called Violence, Ugliness, Faith, and Gratitude. He’s blending all of that stuff together; again, Violence, Ugliness, Faith, and Gratitude: Thoughts on Arrogance and Sacrilege. So he says that “the Bible says, ‘in the last days there will come times of stress.’” I think we see that. “‘For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents,’” and do you know what it says next? “‘Ungrateful.’”

So, notice—that was Second Timothy chapter three, by the way—Piper says, “Notice how ingratitude goes with pride and abuse and insubordination. This is worth pondering. In another place Paul says, “Let there be no obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, but rather thanksgiving,” Ephesians five. So it seems that thanksgiving is somehow the opposite of ugliness and violence.”

He says, “The key to unlocking a heart of gratitude and overcoming bitterness, ugliness, disrespect, and violence is a strong sense of dependence on God, the creator, sustainer, provider, and hope-giver. If we do not believe that we are deeply dependent on God for all we have or hope to have, then the very spirit of gratitude and faith runs dry. Remembering our dependence on past mercies kindles gratitude, pondering the promises of tomorrow’s mercys kindles faith. Gratitude is past-oriented dependence; faith is future-oriented dependence. Both forms of dependence are humble, self-forgetting, and God-exalting. That is one reason they are the opposite of mean-spirited and violence.”

So, what we’re talking about here is going to work about some of the core issues of the human condition.

As I was getting ready for this and have been thinking about this for probably way too long but not long enough, because I’m not done, I have a long way to go, one of my friends and colleagues at work, his step-dad, this was two weeks ago on a Thursday night about midnight I got a message from him, and he said, “My step-dad is missing.” Fifty-year-old guy in the Fayetteville/Bentonville, Arkansas area, just went missing. He had been released from his job, they found his vehicle near a lake, keys in the vehicle, wallet in the vehicle, and he said, “This doesn’t look like it’s going to end in a good way.”

The next two days were excruciating search and rescue teams, and then Saturday morning they eventually found Jesse’s step-dad’s body in the water. Jesse’s a young guy, just turned 31 this week, and I was following what he was saying, but then this was a big deal in the press down in the Fayetteville area, a young guy in his prime, 50-year-old guy in his prime. Jesse was quoted in the newspaper. He was giving the details, but he was oozing with thanksgiving right after his step-dad was found in the lake.

In the course of that week Jesse kept having these stories of thanksgiving. I asked Jesse on Friday, two weeks later, “How did you do that? How was thanksgiving even a part of that?” He said, “Well, Wes, in our family we didn’t wait for the circumstances to be right to get into thanksgiving and joy; we cultivated joy and thanksgiving way before bottom dropped out, so it’s sort of a natural default. It is in our DNA.”

I want to be like Jesse when I grow up. That’s pretty cool.

So, the thankful life is the Christian life, the thankful life has to be learned and attended to. You have to train and retrain, repent and re-repent. You have to kill the critical spirit and be thankful to God. The thankful life is the gateway to joy because the thankful life is the trusting life. He still works in our distresses, he’s active, he’s trustworthy. Find the stories of Scripture, find the stories of friends in this room.

As I was getting ready, Dave Ernsperger, I was thinking about you often. Dave has had some career ups and downs through the years, right? We were out on a softball field last year. That man over there was talking about thanksgiving in the middle of trial. I remember last year, Dave, going, “How does he do that?” It’s a life of walking with God.

So, back in the idea of acting. There are friends in this room—he’s one, Maggie’s one—other people in this room can help you learn how to cultivate thanksgiving in your life. So that’s my charge to you this morning, because it’s the Bible’s charge, to consider the steadfast love of the Lord, see his grace, and be a thankful person.

Let’s pray.

So, Lord, just like I said a moment ago, I can’t do this without your help, so I’m going to ask for it right now. Make Wes a thankful person. Would you do the same thing with my friends in this room as well? I know that if we’re breathing right now and we’re your children we’re going to feel there were moments in this conversation where—we had to have had moments where you were speaking to us because we are your children and you’re good.

So, would you not let us just be hearers of the word, but doers as well? Thank you for that young man who was in John MacArthur’s congregation who was drawn to the congregation because he heard that they were joyful people. Would you help Fulkerson be a place where people are drawn here because they hear that we are joyful people? We repent of our ingratitude; we repent of our ungrateful spirits. Lord, send a renewal and revival of gratitude in our lives, of thanksgiving, and help us to constantly be chasing hard after you.

Thank you that in this story that we read, these portraits, they cried and you rescued and redeemed. You didn’t say, “Get your act together, do A,B, and C, and then I’ll rescue,” you just rescued. You’re a good God. Thank you for letting us consider the steadfast love of the Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.