Psalm 107 • O Give Thanks to the Lord
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
In case you haven't noticed, the theme is thankfulness.
[Laughter]
For God's great faithfulness.
That's the theme of the psalm we'll look at as well this morning, Psalm 107.
Psalm 107.
I'll ask that you look in your Grace bibles, if not in your own; that's page 506, because I'm going to ask that you repeat a portion of that psalm with me in just a moment.
As you think about the subject of thanksgiving, one of my favorite accounts of being thankful in all things is by Matthew Henry.
Some of you may like that devotional study that Matthew Henry does of the Bible, but he actually has an account of giving thanks after he was robbed one day.
He was robbed and wondered how he could meet that obligation of the Bible of giving thanks in all things.
And so he said, "Well, I'm thankful that the robber took my money and not my life.
I'm thankful that what he took wasn't very much.
I'm thankful that I have not been robbed before.
And, finally, I am thankful that I was robbed and was not the robber."
They're all pretty much the same thing: thankfulness that though things could have been worse they weren't.
The psalmist has a different perspective: not thanking God because things could have been worse but thanking God because He could not be more faithful.
Let's stand, and I'll ask that you read along with me verses 1-3.
After I've read those to you, I'm going to ask you to think about the words in a very special way in just a moment.
The psalm begins.
I'll read just the first three verses and then talk more about what follows.
The psalmist says, "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."
Let's do what the psalmist says.
Let's give God thanks.
>>> Heavenly Father, we have had such great opportunity to thank You this day already: for the provision of a building and for faithful hearts who have given for that building to be a vessel for the proclamation of the gospel.
And still we recognize, Father, what we are thankful for is not only for what You have done but what You are doing.
You make us members of the household of faith.
And in doing so, You make us also the instruments of Your proclamation, not just by a physical facility but by being the church that is the body of Christ, each equipped in a very special way, ways that we don't always perceive by the words that we say, the experiences we go through, the faithfulness we express sometimes even in the worst of times.
To be mechanisms by which thankfulness to God becomes a means by which others will see who He really is: a faithful God who preserves souls forever, through the good, through the bad, through everything that we might be with You forever by the knowledge that we have made known in this place and places like it.
Teach us not just to value the beauty of the place, the sturdiness of it, the niceness of it.
Father, help us to value what You do here.
Make the love of Christ known.
For then we shall be truly thankful and instruments of Your praise which we would be in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
Ann Voskamp in the book "One Thousand Gifts" explains the origin of her book by saying she was asked to meet a dare.
She was dared to see if she could list a thousand things she loved and was thankful for.
She accepted the dare, thinking, "This is going to be easy."
But about the time you get to number 567, you know, your imagination starts to run a little dry.
Until she recognized what the thousand gifts were.
She later wrote that as she was identifying a thousand things that she loved, having been provided by God, she recognized ultimately that the thousand things that she loved were evidences of God's love for her.
And the more she recognized that, the more her reasons for thanks multiplied.
She says, "The more I realized I was writing down a thousand ways God loves me, it awakened in me to embrace everything about me, recognizing I didn't deserve them, I didn't warrant them, and yet they were mine.
I get to breathe today.
The sun came up.
My heart is beating.
Jesus died for me.
Seeing all of these gifts," she wrote, "I really saw the truth of scripture that no one receives anything unless it is given to him from heaven."
She now has four thousand reasons to thank God that she has written down.
All the reasons that God loves me: It multiplies her praise.
I think that's what the psalmist is doing as well as the psalmist lists in verse 1 what we are supposed to be doing.
The words are, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good."
And I actually think the most critical word in that sentence is the very first one: Oh.
Because you recognize what that word, this is more than just a command from a surly psalmist, the way your mother might talk to you when you're supposed to appreciate your vegetables: "Now you eat your vegetables, and you be thankful for them!"
[Laughter]
Once you put the "oh" at the beginning of that phrase, you recognize this is kind of a gasp of goodness.
The psalmist says, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good."
That's this note of exclamation and ectasy of something wondrous is being recognized.
It's not just a command to a duty.
And you begin to sense the wonder that causes the gasp of grace when you see the words that follow in verse 2.
"Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble."
Awful things have happened from which God has rescued His people.
And when they recognize that, it's not just, "Okay, I'll thank Him."
It is, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so."
You're the redeemed of the Lord.
What did the Lord just say to you to do?
Say so.
Let's do it.
"Oh give thanks unto the Lord."
Say it.
>>> Oh give thanks unto the Lord.
>>> For He is good.
>>> For He is good.
>>> Now let's put the "oh" in the beginning.
Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
Now, I want you to recognize how hard it must have been for the Israelites to say that.
"For he has redeemed us from trouble."
In the footnotes of a lot of your bibles you will see that that word "trouble" means "the hand of the enemy."
And what has that enemy done?
We're unsure of the exact time of the writing of this psalm: if it's after the conquest from Assyria or the conquest from Babylon.
But we know what has happened: The people of Israel have been conquered and dispersed.
They have gone to the east and to the west and the north and the south.
And now God, we are told, begins to redeem them.
He takes what is distant and brings it back near again.
I know that just sounds like some ancient account.
But if there's ever a people who could say, "We at least know something of what this means," it should be us.
After all, what is in the news right now but Christians by the tens of thousands being driven out, not of Assyria but Syria.
Christians already because of war and because of persecution over the last decade by the hundreds of thousands driven out of modern Babylon, which is Iraq.
And to recognize what God is saying to the people of that ancient time is what we should recognize in some way in this time.
Our God is such a redeemer.
He can take those who were far and bring them near again.
And for us, that's not something that should just be national news or international news but something highly personal if you think what it would mean when God says, "I can take My children who are far away and I can bring them near again."
I think about a couple that's very dear to Kathy and me who took a child discarded by his family, adopted that child and raised him.
And now in his adult, young adult years, attracted, captivated, enslaved by a love of gambling.
He has gone far away to the shores of Alabama where the casinos are, and he spends his days trying to get rich, loses his money over and over again.
And to ante up sells everything he has and he sells everything he is, and he's so far away.
What would it mean to believe that we believe in a great redeemer and He makes clear that He can take those who are far away and bring them near again?
Should that happen in this life?
Should it happen in your life?
Should God redeem in such a way?
I know how you would respond.
You would say, "Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He has good."
He has done this wondrous thing.
We give Him thanks.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
It would just flood from you.
And God shows us not only that He is a great redeemer because He brings people from a distance, but He brings them out of distress.
If you move into the psalm, it says in verse 4, "Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in.
They were hungry and thirsty; their soul fainted within them."
These are not those who are just distant: They are now refugees.
Again, if you think of it in the ancient times, you'd think of those who were so scattered from their homeland in ancient Israel that they lost their livelihood.
They lost food.
They lost shelter.
And that is not just an ancient story either.
Just in our own local newspaper yesterday, you may remember, we were told that there are now fifty million refugees in our world today because of the wars that are happening right this very minute.
I went to a website where there are people who keep track of those who are refugees in our world right now, and it simply described their situation.
Some of you may know this website: Million Souls Aware.
Trying to make us feel what it would be like to be a refugee.
Imagine life as you know it disappears in the blink of an eye.
War, disaster, famine: for whatever reason, you have to walk for miles, days or weeks.
No McDonald's, no Holiday Inn, no rest stops.
You find shelter with thousands in a squalid tent camp.
You depend upon charities to provide occasional food, clean water or basic healthcare.
You begin to watch the stomachs of your children distend in semi-starvation and malnutrition.
You clothe them in rags as beasts of prey, both animal and human, prowl the camp, seeking your children.
But what will claim most of them is cholera and dysentery and hepatitis and malaria and infection.
Some of you in this congregation have been there.
I have been there.
To think of those camps, to be in them even for a few days makes you so revolted you can hardly imagine being there, much less your family being there.
And, yet, there are fifty million people in our world today for whom that is their daily existence and their only future hope as far as they know.
Nine million just from the ri--, from the fighting in Syria.
Five million, mostly Christians, in Sudan, our brothers and sisters.
That is their daily existence.
And should God rescue them, should He take them out of that existence, what do you think would be their response?
What would be your response?
You would say, "Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
He has redeemed us from this distress."
And that is what God is saying He can do, because He is such a great redeemer.
And that is not the end of the story.
For those who had experienced this in ancient Israel, other things have happened.
Verse 10, "Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons."
There are those who are imprisoned as well in this awful world with all its fallenness and wickedness that can come upon the people of God.
It's not just the ancient stories.
It's not just Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and Daniel in the lions' den.
I've related to you my former student, Kenneth Bae, who even now is in a prison camp in North Korea.
At our general assembly in Houston this last week, his pastor, a P.C.A. pastor, spoke to the assembly, urging us, "Do not forget to pray for Kenneth," that the God who redeems would give him encouragement and strength and redeem him from imprisonment which he experiences now simply because he was seeking to share his faith in North Korea.
Or some of you know the story of Mariam Ibrahim, a young mother with a 20-month-old child, expecting again, who is in prison under a death sentence in Sudan right now.
What was her crime?
She was a Muslim who became a Christian.
Now under a death sentence with a 20-month-old child and expecting because she became a Christian.
Should God rescue them, what would we say?
Oh thanks be to God, for He is good.
We have to pray.
I'm going to ask you to do it right now.
>>> Father, for Kenneth and for Mariam, we pray right now.
We do not believe this is foolish.
We believe it is the hearts and voices of Your people united before the throne of God where the sovereign King of the universe can order all events for what is best and right.
And we pray for these, a brother and sister in Christ, right now, that You would work in their behalf.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> There is a significant difference, though, between Kenneth and Mariam and those who are described in this passage.
I read to you about their imprisonment in verse 10.
But I did not read verse 11.
Verse 11 says: Why are these people in prison?
"For they rebelled against the words of God."
Why are these people in Israel in prison?
Because they had turned to idolatry.
They had rejected the Word of God.
They had turned to their own ways.
In some ways, God could simply turn His back and say, "You deserve it."
Instead, this great God, our Redeemer, says this: What happened?
Verse 13.
"Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress."
Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
For what He did to people who had turned away from Him in idolatry, rebellion and sin: When they called out to Him, He delivered them.
He did not say, "Make your bed; now lie in it."
It was the grace of God of the Old Testament.
It is the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ that for those who are experiencing the consequences of their sin, when they call out to Him He hears and redeems, because He is the great Redeemer.
The dimensions of that begin to unfold more in the psalm.
If you'll look at verse 17, it says of these who were in Israel experiencing such awfulness, "Some were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction."
Verse 18, "They loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death."
I am not saying that all sickness is a consequence of sin.
I am saying that God can discipline.
And one of the things that are being shown here is that people who are going through affliction are needing to examine: Lord, is there something in me?
God says here there are people who are simply suffering the consequences of their foolishness.
Have you ever wondered about that?
Is what you or your family going through a consequence of your foolishness?
In the first four years of our youngest daughter's life, she spent three Christmases in the hospital.
Every Christmas that came around, it seemed like she would get terribly sick and have to be in the hospital.
So frequently was she in the hospital at Christmastime that at one point when she was four years old she was asked what was her favorite Christmas song?
And she said, "I love the song about the Holly and the I.V."
[Laughter]
She knew about the I.V. because she had a blood poisoning so intense that we had to do a antibiotic drip into her heart cavity to try to save her.
Scary times for us as a family.
Our family doctor at some point during that fourth Christmas went to a seminar somewhere and discovered something: He discovered that the doctors were discovering that in natural Christmas trees in their shipping and storage often accumulate a mold that some children are intensely allergic to.
Like our daughter.
And we recognized: Why was she getting sick every Christmas?
We were doing it to her.
We were bringing in the Christmas tree into the house and exposing her to the mold to which she was terribly allergic.
And it was putting her in the hospital every.
We are smart people.
We got college degrees.
[Laughter]
We should have figured this out.
[Laughter]
And we look back and we say, "How foolish we were."
But, folks, you and I know things.
We look back at times at our families and our distress, and we wonder: We put God on the periphery of our lives.
We did not make Him part of our homes and our devotions and our family life.
We put God on the extreme, and then somewhere things happen to us and we say to ourselves, "What was I thinking when I put God on the periphery when there, inevitably, is going to come into every family the time that we need Him so desperately?"
And sometimes we think, "I can't go back to God.
I put Him on the corner for so long; it would be just wrong and foolish to ask God to help now."
But the wonder of the psalm is he repeats again verse 19 these very people are on the edge of death because of their own foolishness.
Verse 19, "Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress."
This same God in His great mercy and grace, who had had every reason to walk away, is saying, "No, you call on Me again, and I will hear you."
And this is the God who redeems.
And if you've been a family in those dire straits and God has delivered, what do you say?
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.
And there are some whose distress is of another nature.
They have not been made refugees or imprisoned or suffered affliction, but rather they have simply been humbled.
Verse 23, "Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters."
It's kind of the navel portion of the hundred and seventh psalm.
And we think of it often because of its poetic nature, but we don't recognize what's being said.
What happens when these people go down to the sea in ships?
They see the hand of God is greater than they.
Verse 24, "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."
They mounted up to the heaven; they went down to.
Are you getting seasick?
[Laughter]
It's the intention of the psalmist that you would recognize in business of any sort the waves of the world are greater than you.
It can be tough to realize.
We go through a certain career period in which we're just flying along.
We don't need the Lord.
Our ability, our smarts, the opportunities are all there.
And we just think: I could just keep going like this.
And then suddenly you recognize: There are waves out there.
And there is wind of greater resistance than you have.
And some of you have experienced that.
You did your business on great waters, and the waters began to consume you.
And if you've been on the waters without God, you think, "What use is it to call on Him now?"
And the psalmist answers, reminding us to remember.
Verse 28, "Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress."
Our God is a great Redeemer.
And what we believe as a people of God is He can take those who've experienced distance from Him.
He can work in such a way to cause us to rejoice in His goodness.
He can work with those who experience the captivity of their own vices and addictions.
He can take those who have wandered far away.
In their pride they have failed to be humble, and when they are now humbled out of their failure or affliction or oppression or imprisonment or refugee status, God says, "I will hear you yet if you call to Me."
And it is that knowledge that calls out of us the great awakening to say, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good."
Though I did not deserve His care, though I didn't warrant His grace, nonetheless He is the God who hears His people when they cry.
And for this reason, we give thanks unto the Lord.
And when we do that, what we believe is that He is able to redeem, because He can take the circumstances as they are and reverse them.
Look at verse 33.
"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."
Our God is not just the great Redeemer: He is the great Reverser.
Now, the first reversal here that is described is He can take what is fertile and good, a land with rivers, and turn it into a desert.
And for that reason, we are warned.
That God cannot be on the periphery of our lives.
He who can take what is evil and punish it, He can take what is unconscious of Him and bring back to consciousness.
He can reverse the situation.
And we need to take warning.
We cannot exclude God.
You don't tug on Superman's cape.
You don't ignore God.
But there is another reversal.
Verse 35, "He turns a desert into pools of water, and parched land into springs of water."
He can reverse things.
He can take that which is wrong and gone and abhorrent to Him, and when we cry to Him, He can turn it around.
We don't just worship a great Redeemer: We worship a great Reverser.
When you believe that, it will change what you're willing to pray for, what you're willing to believe God can do.
I said I would not mention names, so I won't, but I will mention friends in this church who just a few weeks ago because of their belief in God as the great Reverser did a very special thing.
Driving home from a movie one night, they were at a stop, and on the curbside in the dark was a young woman with her head down.
They rolled down the window.
"Are you okay?"
"No.
I'm not okay."
And they asked her where she needed to go and what she needed.
And so they gave her a ride to the place that she said she needed to go.
She grabbed her possessions in the black plastic garbage bag, got into the car and told the story.
Kicked out of the house by the boyfriend, now needing to return to her grandparents' house, because her mother was dead, her father's a crack head, and she had been raised by the grandparents.
A pastor's home, by the way.
But she had turned her back on all of it, wandered away, gone another direction.
And as she was now reaching out for help from them and they listened, just with care for her, that's all, just with care, listened to her story, at some point she said, "I'm a Christian.
Are you Christians?"
[Laughter]
They said, "Yes, we, we're Christians."
And so when they got to the grandparents' house, they said, "Could we pray for you?"
And she practically shot into the front seat, putting her hands up to hold their own, say, "Yes, would you pray for me?"
And they prayed for her, at the end of which she said, "Wow.
Isn't God great?"
Now, if you're cynical you say, "Well, what difference did it make to pray for her, to give her the lift or get her back to her family?
Because, you know, she's just going to take advantage and go down the wrong path again."
Unless you believe that our God is the great Reverser: that He can take what is a desert life and He can put streams of water into that life again, that He can bring the gospel in, that He can change a heart, that He can take the witness of a couple in a car after a movie and He can use it as an instrument of His own grace to reach a heart.
It's what we're all believing in this place, what we're celebrating this day: that we believe in a God who's a great Redeemer and even a great Reverser.
It's what you believed as a church when you built this church.
This is not to be our playpen.
This is not our trophy.
This is a vessel for the grace of God to come out of our lives into the world around us.
And when you believe that, you didn't give to release a debt in some way so that life would be easy: You did it so that you would fuel ministry, so that you would believe profoundly that what God has redeemed you from He may redeem others from.
And though you may have gone astray, He still would listen to your prayers.
And there are people who have gone astray, and they will be heard by a God who can reverse the course of their lives, because He is the Redeemer who reverses things.
And you believe that.
And that's why you're here, and that's this wondrous thing that we are doing in this place is making sure the world hears it.
Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
And we want people to hear our story so that their story will be different too.
And the reason we believe it's possible is because of what God says toward the end of this psalm.
Verse 40, "He pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes."
This is God pointing to those who have taken advantage of the people of Israel.
He says, "I can reverse their course too."
But then He says to the people of Israel, verse 41, "But he raises up the needy out of affliction and makes their families like flocks."
Now, I want you to think.
If you're an Israelite in a refugee situation or in a prison somewhere and hears this promise of God, "I can make your family like a flock, like a flock of sheep in green pastures on a hillside.
I'm not just the God who reverses things: I can restore them.
For the people who call out to Me in humility and love and seek My way again, I can restore you."
It may not even be in this life.
It may not be in every immediate situation, but I recognize what you must recognize where the psalmist began.
His steadfast love endures how long?
>>> Forever.
>>> Forever.
It's not just the immediate.
Our God is saying He is working on an eternal plane.
And what He is able to do because He is the Redeemer who is the Reverser who is the Restorer eternally of His purposes is He is saying, "I can make things right again.
I can take the years that the locusts have eaten and I can restore them.
I can make it right again."
Listen, I don't know anyone who can say that with greater authority than I.
I look at my own family: my parents at odds for decades until my brother was put in prison.
And then because of his mentally handicapped state as they had to minister to him and work through the attorneys and work through the legal system and work through all the systems they had to, how they needed each other desperately and God used the worst of occasions to bring my parents together.
So that now in their eighties as my father is struggling with kidney disease and heart disease and I watch my mother care for him with such tenderness and love that I have never seen in the rest of their lives and I look at the beauty and the wonder and the goodness of their relationship, I say: These are the years the locusts ate that God is restoring in my own family.
This is beautiful.
This is wonderful.
Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
And His mercy endures forever.
It is the wonder and the goodness of grace that we have to say, it's why we are here.
It's what we profoundly and deeply believe: that our God is a great Redeemer.
And our God is a great Reverser: He can take what is wrong and make it right.
He really can.
And He does that because He is a great Restorer.
He works not just in this life but in the life to come as He takes all that is happening, Joel said it so beautifully before, to work all things together for good because of the great God that He is.
When you know that, you want to be a part of this purpose.
It's why you're here today.
It's what this church is about.
To actually believe that God can reverse things: that a church can be in decline for three decades and God can reverse that; that a family can be broken apart and God can restore that; that God can take a people who don't earn or deserve His blessing and He can make them a blessing, because He is good and His faithfulness endures forever.
When you know that, you know what you want to do?
You want to be a part of the game.
To say, "God, if you're doing that, I want in that game.
I want to be part of what You're doing."
It's what you've contributed to.
It's what you're doing.
And it's what will keep us moving forward as well.
You know, in St. Louis, every year there is at the botanical garden the Japanese Festival.
And what my kids always wanted to go see was those who would take a piece of paper and they would make something beautiful out of it.
Now, if you're like me, this is about as good as you can do with a piece of paper.
[Laughter]
Right?
Right?
>>> Here, Kerry.
Boom.
[Laughter]
>>> But when you go to people who really know what they're doing, you know, they can take a piece of paper and they can turn it into a bird whose wings move.
Or a dragon or a crystal or a snowflake or the Taj Mahal.
[Laughter]
And when you see them take what was so plain and turn it into something beautiful, you know what I want to do?
I want to say, "Have another piece of paper."
[Laughter]
I want to see what you can do.
[Laughter]
And when we have seen what God has done in this place, we say, "God, how about a little more?
Show us what You can do."
It's His call not only to thanksgiving but stewardship, because it's what He said, right?
"Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so."
Because we want to see what He's going to do next.
Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His faithfulness endures forever.
>>> Father, help us to behold the wonder of Your hands.
You have redeemed us without our deserving, without our warranting it.
When we fell to our knees and in our sin said to You, "God, help me," You did.
You redeemed us.
There are those who are still wanting, Father, to see Your hand.
They are wanting the great reversal still, of the path and the course of their lives.
So start the reversal.
And where the restoration of their soul is the beginning of the restoration that makes all their lives meaningful and significant, I pray that You would work that restoration even this day forward.
And make us the instrument of it: a church who so well knows that God is good that we love to tell the story and You make us a great instrument of that purpose.
So use us, we pray, as we give thanks to You.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Let's stand and sing of the joy of telling the story.