Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 100, Psalm 100. The other Lord's Day when we concluded Psalm 51, I thought that was the end of our series, but in the Psalms, but I forgot about Thanksgiving. So this is another familiar Psalm that I hope after today we can sing anew. Charles Spurgeon referred to Psalm 100 as a psalm set ablaze with grateful adoration. And so I thought it would be a fitting psalm for this Thanksgiving service. Indeed, its superscription reads, a psalm for Thanksgiving. And so as we come to this psalm, let me pray for us. Father, in your light, we see light. And so we pray that you would come now and illuminate the reading and the preaching of your word so that we would see all that you have done for us in Christ and return thanks to you. And we ask this for Jesus' sake. Amen. Psalm 100. A Psalm for giving thanks Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever. And his faithfulness to all generations. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. I am a sojourner among you, an exile in a foreign land. My family included, though two of our children have come into our family in the land of our sojourning. As we have lived among you, we have noticed some interesting customs. You drive on the wrong side of the road. You like really bad chocolate called Hershey's. It's like you've never heard of Cadbury's. You speak the king's English, but with a funny accent. When you write the king's English, sometimes you misspell his words, like honor and fever and savior. And then there's this thing called thanksgiving. a gathering of family and friends with no presents, just food for the sole purpose of giving thanks. It's not for anyone's birthday. It's not for an anniversary. It's just a gathering for giving thanks. And I must admit, as sojourners among you, we have come to love Thanksgiving, though we eat Cadbury's on Thanksgiving, not Hershey's. I have come to love Thanksgiving so much. I said to Jackie the other year, I absolutely love Thanksgiving. There's no tree to go and get and decorate, no last-minute presents to buy and wrap on Christmas Eve, no forgetting to buy AA batteries to go with the presents, because there are no presents, no going back to work the next day. I said to Jackie, if we move back to the UK, I want us to keep celebrating Thanksgiving. That's how much I've come to enjoy it. I love the origins behind the tradition. the three-day harvest feast in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, when the Native Americans and British pilgrims shared a meal together to celebrate their first successful harvest after a year that had claimed so many lives. And then what began as a small celebration by few grew to a big celebration by many until in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday to be observed on the last Thursday of November, making it a four-day weekend. Who doesn't love Thanksgiving? But what's the reason for Thanksgiving today? We know about its origins, but I doubt many of us will be meeting with Native Americans today or celebrating a successful harvest from our farmland. So what's the reason for thanksgiving for ourselves today? The poem, all in a word by Aileen Fisher, provides some help, boys and girls. Maybe you've learned this poem at home or at school. Tea. For time together, turkey talk and tangy weather. H for harvest stored away, home and hearth and holiday. A for autumns, frosty art and abundance in the heart. N for neighbors and November, nice things, new things to remember. K for kitchen, kettles croon, kith and kin expected soon. S for sizzles, sights and sounds and something special that abounds. That spells thanks for joy and living and a jolly good Thanksgiving. Eileen Fisher captures all the things we associate with Thanksgiving. Time together with food and family and friends in front of a fire. But they can also be quite fleeting and fickle and frail, can't they? Because what if this Thanksgiving you can't enjoy the things that Aileen Fisher speaks about? What if your health has taken a bad turn this year, so bad that a meal is the last thing you feel like? What if the kith and kin that come to your house create a din? and after an argument or a fallout? Or what if some of your beloved kith and kin are not present due to their sad departure this year or last year or in decades past? Times like Thanksgiving are often when the absence of loved ones are felt the most. What if this year has been so hard that you can't even remember some nice things or new things to remember this November? I know that as a church, this has been one of the most painful years in tense history. So will it be a happy Thanksgiving for you, for us? Of course, there's nothing wrong with Eileen Fisher's poem. It's good to remember some of the reasons for Thanksgiving, but let's be honest. They're fleeting. They're fickle. They're frail. What's interesting about Psalm 100 is that it is a circumstance-less psalm. It's an occasion-less psalm. We're given no context for the occasion of this psalm. All we know is that it would have been sung by Israel as a congregation as they entered the gates of God's temple courts. Why they gathered, for what occasion they gathered, we're not told. Which means that Psalm 100 is a psalm to be sung on any and every occasion. Augustine said that the words in Psalm 100 are, quote, few, but big with great subjects. Few words, but big with great subjects. Well, Psalm 100 gives us two big, great reasons to give thanks to God this Thanksgiving. Reasons that are more solid and durable than those proposed by Aileen Fisher. Whatever is going on in our lives or in our homes, however we feel, whoever is present, whoever is absent, here are two big, great reasons to give thanks to God this Thanksgiving. Number one, give thanks to God because he is God. Give thanks to God because he is God, verses one to three. This short psalm is divided into two parts, verses one to three and verses four to five, and each part has the same structure, three commands plus a reason. Take a look at verse one to three. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. There's the three commands all wrapped up in the dress of joy and gladness. Shout, serve, come with singing. And then the reason, verse three. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Here's the first big, great reason to give thanks to God in all circumstances. Whatever our circumstances this Thanksgiving, here's the reason. Our covenant God is God. Whatever our circumstances, we can still thank God for his Godness. But what is God's Godness? What does it look like? Well, the psalmist shows us in a couple of ways. Verse three, he created us. It is he who made us. He created us. Have you ever paused to think about just that fact for a moment, that you exist, you're alive because God made you? God is life and has life in himself. We don't. Our lives are derivative from his life. We live because he lives. But we didn't always live. There was no time when God was not, but there was a time when we were not. There was a time when we did not exist, and now we do exist. Just think about that. The only reason you exist is because God gave you life. Because out of all the hundreds of millions of sperm, he decided which one would fertilize the egg in your mother's womb. Had it been another sperm, out of the hundreds of millions of sperm, you wouldn't be here today. It would be somebody else. You only came into existence because of God. He made you. In God, we live and move and have our being, as the Apostle Paul says on Mars Hill. God made us. We live and exist because of him. This is how we see his godness. He made us. He created us. We also see it in the next comment in verse three. And we are his. We are his people. He created us and he chose us. He chose us. That's what the words we are his refer to. Just three words in English, two in the Hebrew, but two to three words that contain a whole universe of wonder. We are God's people because he chose us to be his people. We did not choose him. He chose us. Perhaps I can press the point home a little by asking you a question. What are you doing here this morning? Why are you here? You say, well, I belong to 10th Presbyterian Church, that's why I'm here. Sure, but how did you come to belong at 10th Presbyterian Church? Well, my parents came to the church and I was brought up in it, or I was converted and I came to the church. Okay, sure. How were your parents converted? How were you converted? And if you kept answering me, I could ask you a thousand questions, but why? But why? But why? Until we got back to the first and ultimate reason why you are here this morning, and that is because God chose you. That's why you're ultimately here this morning. Of course, there are a thousand steps along the way to bring you to 10th Presbyterian this morning, but the very first step was God's step toward you in choosing you. We are His. We are His people. We are here on earth today because He created us, and we are here at 10th today because He chose us. And when did He do that? Before the foundations of the world, before the times began, which means that we are all here today only by God's grace. He chose us, we are His. This is the second aspect of God's Godness. We are to thank Him for creating us and for choosing us. We are God's people, the chosen of the Lord. There's one more aspect of God's godness that we are to thank him for. It's the last part of verse three, and the sheep of his pasture. God cares for us. He created us, he chose us, and he cares for us. The psalmist employs the metaphor, the picture of sheep and shepherd and pasture to convey God's care for us. God is our shepherd. We are his sheep and he feeds us. He gives us pasture. He provides for us. Of course, this would include clothes and food and home and family and friends, but the metaphor is used in the context of God's covenant relationship with his people. He provides for our spiritual needs. As we saw some weeks back in Psalm 23, he leads us beside still waters. He restores our soul. And in the valley of deathly darkness, He is with us, His rod and His staff, they comfort us. I know some of you need to hear that this morning because in recent weeks or earlier this year or just last year, some of you entered that valley of deathly darkness. For some of you, it has been decades and maybe you have felt you've never got out of that valley. Well, whatever our valley experience is, let us hear this wonderful truth this morning, that we are the sheep of God's pasture. He cares for us. He guides us. He feeds us all the way home. And even when we encounter any evil, He is there as our shepherd. For every evil, we have a shepherd. providing for our needs and presencing himself with us in our griefs and sorrows, because he cares for us. This is the first big, great reason to give thanks to God this Thanksgiving, because God is God. He created us, he chose us, he cares for us. Here's the second big, great reason. Give thanks to God because He is good. Give thanks to God because He is good, verses four to five. We are to give thanks to God because He is God, and we are to give thanks to God because He is good. This second part of the psalm has the same structure as the first part. Three commands plus a reason. The three commands are in verse four. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. Notice again, they're wrapped up in the dress of gladness and joy in praise. And then comes the reason, verse five, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations. This is the second big, great reason why we are to thank God. because he is good. We're to thank him because he is God and because he is good. Now that statement, God is good, is one of those truths of scripture that we learn from our earliest years. But have we ever really thought about what it means? God is good. Boys and girls, maybe you know the song, God is good, all the time. Maybe your parents can play it in the car on the way home. What does it actually mean to say or sing God is good? Theologians have written whole chapters on those three words. Here's one definition. God's goodness is the perfection of all his attributes communicated toward us. It's the perfection of all his attributes communicated toward us. God is good in his perfect love. God is good in his perfect grace. God is good in his perfect mercy, in his perfect faithfulness. As one Puritan put it, God is so good that he cannot be bad. God is so good that he cannot be bad. That is, God is essential goodness, and he is never not anything but good in all his ways with us. Verse five gives us two examples of the way God has related to us in his goodness. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. God's essential goodness is seen in his eternal love toward us and in his enduring faithfulness toward us. In the original Hebrew, there's an emphasis on the eternal part, the enduring part. Verse five more literally reads, his steadfast love forever endures. To all generations, his faithfulness. Now, steadfast love, it's one of those phrases in the Bible that we're so familiar with, perhaps we haven't stopped to think about what it means. It is from the Hebrew word chesed, just one word in the Hebrew, but it is translated steadfast love. What is steadfast love? One theologian explains it like this, it is God's sacred affection of mercy and grace without respect of merit. It's his grace and mercy without respect of merit. In other words, God loves us just because he loves us. He loves us without any thought of what we could do to earn His love. And so because He Himself is the foundation of His love toward us and not anything we have done, it is a steadfast love because it depends on Him, not us. It's also an eternal love. It endures forever. It is like a river ever running. Boys and girls, have you ever stood in a river that's fast and flowing past your feet and legs? My children love to go wading in the Wissahickon River, but we always make sure it's in a safe place where it's not running too fast past their legs. Well, one time I got to stand in a fast flowing river in Jerusalem called the Gion Spring in Hezekiah's Tunnel. It's a river that flows underground under the city of Jerusalem. In the Bible, King Hezekiah dug a tunnel to bring that river into the city when King Sennacherib surrounded the city and cut off all food and water supplies. I once got to walk through that tunnel with the cold, fresh water running fast past my feet and legs. And as I stood there, I remember thinking to myself, this is amazing. This river has been running for thousands of years. It has never not been running since the day it began. Well, that's a bit like God's steadfast love. It's a forever love. It's like a river ever running. Our love is like the tide. It ebbs and flows. God's love is like a river, a river ever running. Perhaps you're familiar with the hymn, like a river glorious is God's perfect love. Like a river flowing is God's steadfast love. This means that the work God began in us, electing us before the foundation of the world, saving us in our lifetime experience, this is the work that he will finish in taking us to heaven one day because his steadfast love endures forever. This is how God's goodness is seen toward us in his eternal, steadfast love. It's also seen in his enduring faithfulness toward us. God remains the same God toward us through thick and thin, highs and lows, on the mountaintop and in the valley. And here we should think of God with the picture of a rock. We've seen the metaphor of a river with respect to God's love. Now we have the metaphor of a rock with respect to His faithfulness. Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 4, the rock. His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He. Now, boys and girls, when the Bible speaks of God being a rock, don't think of the rock that you pick up at the Wissahickon River and you throw it into the river. No, think about one of those big boulder rocks by the sea that is completely immovable. Even when the waves crash against it, they don't move it an inch. That is like God in His faithfulness. He is immovable, always faithful. And again, the emphasis is on the duration. To all generations, enduringly faithful, eternally loving, enduringly faithful. Perhaps this is a timely reminder for us as a church during this interim season of uncertainty with all that has happened. with all that will happen. Let us remember that our God's steadfast love endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations. So we've seen two big, great reasons to give thanks this Thanksgiving, whatever our circumstances. Give thanks to God because he is God. He created us, He chose us, He cares for us. And give thanks to God because He is good. He is eternally loving toward us. He is enduringly faithful toward us. But let me close by bringing this psalm to a conclusion with Christ. We've all heard of a Christless Christmas. Well, I don't want to send you off with a Christless Thanksgiving by preaching a Christless sermon. So let me conclude with how this psalm relates to Christ. It relates to Christ in a very simple way. All the graces and benefits that are promised in this psalm come to us only in and through Christ. As we enter God's courts and his gates with praise, we do so by faith in Christ alone, because without Christ, none of the things we've seen would be true. God created us. through Christ, John chapter one. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made, and that includes you and me. We were made by God through Christ. God chose us in Christ. Ephesians 1, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. God cares for us in Christ. John chapter 10, I am the good shepherd, said Jesus. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. only because of Christ were we created, chosen, and now cared for. And God's steadfast love and faithfulness is fully and finally revealed in Christ. John 1, verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Those two words, are the Greek equivalent of the Old Testament words, steadfast love and faithfulness. The Word made flesh was full of steadfast love and faithfulness. God's steadfast love and faithfulness is ultimately seen in the appearing of the Word made flesh. So, if we're going to have a Christian Thanksgiving this year, then we need to tweak our two points. Give thanks to God because in Christ, He is God, creating us, choosing us, caring for us. And give thanks to God because in Christ, He is good, eternally loving, enduringly faithful. And if we keep these as our two big reasons for Thanksgiving this year, then whatever our circumstances, it will truly be a happy Thanksgiving. Let us pray. Father, we pray that by your Spirit, you would enable us this Thanksgiving to give thanks in all circumstances. because of what you have done for us in Christ. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.