He may be seated. Well, as many of you know, we've been working through a series in the Vesper services on praying with Scripture, and the last two weeks we have been considering the Psalms of Lament, and we took some time to not only exposit a few Psalms of Lament, but also give some time in prayer in lamenting ourselves, which we are reminded and encouraged to remember there is a place in the life of the Christian for lament psalms. But tonight I'd like to turn our focus and turn to Psalms of Thanksgiving. And tonight I want to do that from Psalm 95. So please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 95. And if you remember this morning, and it was a long time ago, but if you remember Psalm 95 was actually our response of reading and it very much tied into the message because it reminded Israel of the proverbial warning of not growing hard-hearted and doubtful as they did at Massah and Meribah. And what I'm going to do this evening is just read the whole psalm. And you're hearing all 11 verses that we will primarily be focusing on the first seven verses. So let's give our attention to the reading of God's word. Psalm 95. O come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, they are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." Thus far the reading of God's Word, may He add His blessing to the reading, hearing, and preaching thereof. Let's ask the Lord for illumination tonight. Father God, we thank you for bringing us to the end of this day. We thank you that we have had opportunity this morning to worship with your saints, and in between, hopefully, some of us were able to have rest. And now, Father, as we bring our focus and attention to this psalm, a little bit later as we enter into the school of prayer, I pray, Father, that you would give us the ability to give attention to this text And to focus specifically, Father, on how we can give Thanksgiving to you. Father, we confess to you that we are more apt to come to you with a grocery list of petitions, and you're such a good God that you invite such petitions. But Father, what may be sorely lacking in many of our prayers is just simple thanksgiving. There are a multitude of things for which we can thank you for, Father. But thankfulness and thanksgiving comes from a heart that recognizes that all things come by grace. And Father, you have made us to be a people of grace. I pray that you would burn upon our hearts the reminder that there is nothing that we have that does not come by your sovereign grace. And help us in our time of prayer to break forth with this realization and in this realization by giving thanksgiving to you. Help your servant father as he unpacks this text to apply the meaning and application to him. We ask these things in your son's name, amen. So we saw this morning that Jesus Christ is the Rock of Ages, who not only clefts for us, that is to say, He hides us in the crevasse or the cave, as it were, and shields us from the glory of God. He does this by taking the wrath of God upon Himself on the cross when He died. But He is also the one from whom His side, water and blood, come pouring out. He is the one that appeases the Father in His wrath. He is the one who appeases the Father in giving to the Father the obedience that we do not have, that we could never give if we had a million lifetimes to do it, simply because we are children of Adam, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. Jesus gives all of this to us as the rock of ages. And the incident at Massah and Meribah was the classic textbook example of what we as children of God should not do. What did they do at Massah and Meribah that we should not do? What did they do that the psalmist in 95 exhorts the Israelites in his generation And by extension, the author to the Hebrews exhorts us not to do in the generation of the first century Christians and even by extension today when we read it, it is to doubt God. It is to harden our hearts to God when He speaks to us in the person of the Son through the Word of God. We are not to doubt God. We are not to grow hard-hearted toward God. And I showed this morning that the latter part of this text in Psalm 95 is that warning, but if we're not careful, we can miss the fact that the first seven verses are thanksgiving. The first seven verses are a psalm of thanksgiving. They are exhorting the people of God to give thanks to the Lord. And so I think that we ought not forget that we can give thanks to the Lord, that we should give thanks to the Lord. And this evening, I would just like to unpack very briefly what the psalmist says about giving thanks to the Lord. We all know that we should give thanks to the Lord. There's no doubt about that. We all know a few things in our life for which we can give thanks to the Lord. But in this psalm, the psalmist not only exhorts us to give thanks to the Lord, but he also gives us reasons why. And that's what I want to focus on tonight. So big idea. We should give thanks to the rock of our salvation. Let me consider this under four headings this evening. Number one, what is the root of the first recorded sin? I want to talk about that very briefly. And we all know, according to Romans chapter 5, that the first sin that entered the world was Adam and Eve's transgression of God's clear command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we all know that it was that sin that plunged all of humanity, i.e., you and me, into sin and into death. And we know that until the second Adam comes along, we cannot be set free from that curse and condemnation of that sin. But we also know that that action of sin, that action of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and any sin that you have, that action never begins with the action of sin. The action of sin always begins with desire. or the lack thereof. In fact, James says this in James 1, 13-15. He says that no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one. But verse 14, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. So what was the attitude and or the desire and or the lack of desire in Adam and Eve that led them to carry out their disobedience to the Lord which brought condemnation? I think that we could probably say that it was the desire to know what God had said that they should not know. And that would be true if we said that. They wanted to go beyond eating the tree and see what kind of quote-unquote knowledge that it would bring. We could say that. We could say that they desired to be wiser than God as per the instructions of the serpent, and that would be true to say that. But I think there is one oversight on their part that deeply and profoundly and incredibly is simple that we should note. Instead of giving thanks to God for all that he had given them they refused to give thanks. Isn't that just so simple? It's just so simple, but in fact in Romans 1 21 and 22 Paul is laying out how the whole world is under condemnation. He's talking about humanity and he says something that has echoes of our first parents in the garden. He says this, for although they knew God, They did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools." I submit to you that at the heart of every single sin is a refusal or an unwillingness or an arrogance that fails to give thanks to God. We should be a people that are constantly giving thanks to God. And at the heart of this ingratitude is an assumption, here's what the assumption is at the heart of it, that we are owed something. The millennials always get a bad rap, especially in our day. Everybody wants a pick on the millennials. Maybe there's good reasons for it, but the fact of the matter, okay, the fact of the matter is that it's really more conducive, well, it's more indicative of all humanity that we're just not grateful. We're just not grateful. We all have in some sense, whether you are a baby boomer or a hippie or a hipster or a millennial, I don't care what part of the generational spectrum you fall on, there is a sense of entitlement that we have. There is a sense in which we think people owe us things. And when people owe you things and they give it to you, you don't say thank you, you say that's what was owed to me. And I think at the heart of every sin is this sense that something is owed to me. The most beautiful thing about grace is the realization that God owes me nothing but the kind of thing that I don't want. The kind of thing that I don't want is judgment and misery and death, and that's what I deserve, being a child of Adam, and then I compound it by my own sin and my own misery. That's what I deserve. But the beauty of the gospel is that God gives us what we don't deserve, and that's why everything, not only the gospel, but the hair that you still have on your head, for some of you, the clothes that you have on your back, the work that you're able to accomplish, the health that you have in your body, is all a gift of God. I think sometimes we think, you know, God, I'm just gonna get up in the morning, and I'm gonna brush my teeth, and I'm gonna do my hair, whatever the case may be, and I'm gonna go to work, and I'm gonna do my thing, and I'm gonna leave the rest to you, as if all those things, in all those things, we're not dependent upon God. We are dependent upon God for every single detail of life. Everything we are to give thanks to the Lord. And at an early age, I don't know about you, but my parents often taught me to say thank you to everyone who did something for me. And it seems so simple, but this habit is more than just a civil nicety. This habit creates a particular posture in the human soul, and that posture is this, again, I deserve nothing good. Any good thing that is given to me is given by grace, and we should always respond with gratitude. Some of you know that when I was in college, I spent some time in Israel in spring of 1999. And while I was there studying, I spent a lot of time with Orthodox Jews. I would go to the Western Wall, and I would try to evangelize them. Nothing, unfortunately, ever came of it. But I did get to know a lot of Orthodox Jews, and some of them were very kind, and very gracious, and very merciful. But I would get into conversations with them, and one of the things I noticed is this. Some of the more devout Orthodox Jews would thank God for literally everything, okay? So if a Jew is going out to plow his field, he's thanking God that he has a field to what, to plow. If a man is sharing a time of bliss with his wife and with his family, he thanks God that he has a wife as a helpmate, and he thanks God that he has children, fruit of the womb, because he recognizes that it comes from God. I'm gonna get a little graphic here. I'll try to be a little euphemistic, and the rabbis would teach this as well. Even the man who's able to relieve himself, while he's doing so is thanking God that he has the ability to relieve himself. Now, is that overkill? No, not at all. That's not overkill at all. That's a man or a woman who recognizes that everything that we have is a gift of grace from God. I was talking to a man some time ago who we were talking about prayer and he told me, he's all, what's with this thing we always say at the beginning of our prayers, God, thank you for this day. God, thank you for this day. God, thank you. He's all, that's just so rote and ritualistic. And I'm like, well, it certainly can be if you don't think about what you're saying. But what you're saying is, God, thank you for another day. Because you don't owe me another day. And the fact that I was able to open my eyes and get up from bed and go and do it all again is by your grace. So it is a completely legitimate thing to say, God, thank you for this day, either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day. So the psalmist exhorts his listeners to give thanks to the Lord, and I wanna unpack very quickly just three reasons. So I've already covered one, what is the root of sin, it's unthankfulness or ingratitude, but now three reasons why we give thanks to God. First one, we're to give thanks to God as the God above all gods. Notice that he says in verse one, he is the rock of our salvation. Now that metaphor is incredibly important when you think about your life. If you were to catalog all the things in your life that were certain, it would be God and traffic jams on the bridge tunnel, right? I mean, like, there's not a lot of things that are certain in life. Okay, death and taxes, okay, fine, those things, okay? But when it's all said and done, God is the one who is stable. God is the one who, unlike so many things in life, is not like shifting sand. God is the one who, in the midst of all your instability, is going to be stable for you. So God is our rock, and for this reason we are to give Him thanks. And He's not just God, but He's, verse 3, a great God and a King above all gods. You see, there were other kings and other so-called gods in the world in the time of the psalmist and in our day. Do you know why the greatest commandment according to Jesus is that we have no other gods before him? Because virtually anything can be turned into a god. And we all say, yeah, yeah, that's true, idolatry, whatever. But almost every day my wife and I, as we seek to instruct the hearts of our children, deal with this, and so I tell my oldest son, who's in a season right now, he just wants to be on his tablet. He wants to be on his tablet all the time. He thinks about his tablet morning, noon, and evening. When he's a teen, it'll be something else, and we all know what it is, but right now, he just wants to be on that tablet, and we're trying to communicate to him, like, hey, this is a good thing. God has made it. It's for you, and it's meant to be for your blessing, but at the same time, you could take this thing, and you could turn it into a God. A God that you worship, a God that you give your time over to, your energy over to, your resources over. And Cohen, son, I just want you to guard your heart that you don't turn this into a God. And you know what the hardest thing as a parent is in doing that? Is as those words are coming out of my mouth, I'm thinking of all the things that I turn into a God. I turn things into God. And that's why constantly throughout the Old Testament, even, I think it's in 3 John, it might be 2, but the last thing he says, the last thing John says, anybody remember what he says? My children, keep yourself from idols. Keep yourself from idols. It seems, in a sense, out of place in the New Testament, but the problems that our Israelite forefathers had are the same problems that we have. We turn things into gods. And what the psalmist is saying here is He is a great God above all gods, lowercase g. He is the God who rules over all of those gods, and for this reason you are to give Him thanks. If you give yourself over to Him with reckless abandon, it will go well with you, whereas if you give yourself over to the gods, who are not really gods at all, it will not go well with you. So we are to give thanks to Him because He's a God above all gods. Secondly, we give thanks to the God over the expanse. Look at verse 4. In His hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Verse 4 and 5. It's interesting here that he mentions the height and the depth. Paul picks up on this in Romans 8, 38 and 39. He says, Many of you know this. Many of you have it memorized. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In the Greek, much more than in the Hebrew, in the Greek when Paul mentions this, those terms height and depth You know what they are? They're astronomical terms. They're referring to astronomy. They're referring to entities in space. And though many of us, if not most of us in this room, would not even think twice of consulting entities in space to consider our destiny and how our day's going to go, the fact of the matter is many people do every day in the paper. What's it called? Your horoscope. And they look to the stars, they look to the interpretation of the stars to tell them, how's my day gonna go? Who should I stay away from? Who should I congregate to? How should I be? What attributes should I exercise? Because I want luck, I want prosperity. And Paul says here, neither height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, which is to say, as powerful as those entities are, those stars, as powerful as they are, as high as they are, as broad as they are, they are creations of God and we serve the one who made those things. Now, you know what's interesting? If I could just embellish a little bit the story of Jonah, All those guys are out on the boat. Jonah's there. They don't know. They don't know what's going on. And then the sea starts to churn. You know what the sailors are doing? They're making their sacrifices to the God of the sea, to the God of the wind, to the God of the who knows what. And Jonah's just thinking, yeah, there's no mysticism out in that sea. There might be some sea monsters. You might want to be careful about that, but I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about the God who made the sea. I'm worried about the God who sends the wind. I'm worried about the God who has hung the sun and the moon and the stars in the expanse. That's the God to whom I render my worship, and so it is with us. We give thanks to the God who has made all of these things, who is master and ruler and king of the expanse. He made the sea and the dry ground, and He is the one to whom we give thanks. Finally, when this is significant, verse 7. We give thanks because He is our God. Verse 7. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. You know, it's one thing to get into the intricacies of talking about the power of God, the omnipotence of God, the omnipresence of God, how amazing God is, and there's something to be said for that. But here's the thing, as powerful as we talk about God being, as in control as we talk about God being, and all those attributes that we wish to give to Him from the Scriptures, That means nothing if He's not first our God. That means nothing if He's not for us. As Martin Luther would always say, the gospel is the gospel of prepositions. That He is for us, that He is our God, that He is my God. And the only way that God becomes my God, the only way that God becomes your God, the only way that God is for you, is not a tip of the hat to cultural Christianity, is not a walk down the aisle and saying a prayer. The only way that God is for you in the gospel is through Jesus Christ, through coming to Him through repentance and faith, giving your life over to Him and saying, His person and His work is the ground rock, bedrock foundation of my acceptance before God. And when you do, God is for you. He is your shepherd. You are His sheep. and you are in union with Jesus Christ. This is what the psalmist is celebrating here. He's celebrating the fact that this God is for us, and he's giving thanks to the Lord for it. So let me just end with this thought. When you think about your prayers, are they tilted more toward just a bunch of requests and petitions? And again, our God is so great and so gracious that He is willing to tolerate that, and He's happy to hear our petitions. But could it be that we could stand to give more thanksgiving to the Lord? I mean, as we heard this morning, I mean, when the Israelites came and there was no water, what should they have done? What should they have done? I don't know that it was wrong that they asked for water. Maybe it was wrong in the way they asked for water or demanded water. But instead, perhaps, of demanding water and instead, perhaps, of bringing charges against Yahweh, the Almighty God, which is a pretty crazy thing to do, How about recounting all the ways in which God has been faithful to them, and parting the Red Sea, and giving them quail, and giving them bread, and turning the bitter water into sweet water, and saying like Habakkuk does in Habakkuk 3.2, oh Lord, I have heard of your works of old, and now I ask that you would renew them in the days to come. That's okay. Thank You, Lord, for what You have done in the past and would You renew those mighty works of old in this day. Why don't we do that this evening? Why don't we give thanks to the Lord for specific things, not generic things, but specific things that the Lord has done in our life, and maybe even use that as a platform or a catapult, if you will, to then petition Him to do something similar in this day, to do something similar perhaps for what you need God to do and act and be in this moment. but prefacing it with how God has done something similar in the past, because you know what you're doing when you do that? You're pointing up his faithfulness and his goodness and his kindness, and you're telling him, God, you're a faithful covenant God, and you know what? That's what he wants to hear. You say, God already knows that. Yeah, he loves to hear the things that he already knows. He loves to hear the things that he already is. You know what we're doing when we do that? That's called worship. When we worship, we're telling God what He already knows and we're praising Him for it. We're making a spectacle about it. We're giving Him glory for it. That's the definition of worship. So let's enter into worship tonight with our prayers and have a season of thanksgiving. And as I've done the last two Sundays, here's what we're going to do. There's no specific requests. I'm going to open it up. Actually, I take that back. Pastor Jim is going to open us up, and then we're going to have an open season. Anybody can pipe up with any prayer requests. I prefer and suggest that it be a Thanksgiving prayer request, but if you have something else, that's fine. And then after a season, I will close this out.